Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Record on Sexual Violence and “Comfort Women”

We were stunned to learn about the death and killing of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by gun violence. We are fundamentally troubled by this personal attack against a political leader whose legacy is undoubtedly influential and complex.  We condemn his assassination in the strongest terms.

We are also deeply concerned by the fulsome praise about Mr. Abe that is being disseminated, particularly by Anglophone voices.  And we are concerned that the tragedy will lead to the further scapegoating of minorities in Japan, especially against Zainichi Koreans.

Let us be clear.  On the issue of sexual and gender-based violence against women of Asian descent, Mr. Abe’s record is indefensible.  He was notorious for denying the rape and sexual slavery committed by Japan’s imperial military against the “comfort women” — young women and children who were trafficked and abducted from throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands into inhumane and exploitative conditions and confines — which we explain extensively in our recent petition to UN human rights experts.

For Shiori Ito, the journalist who became the face of the #MeToo movement in Japan, Mr. Abe’s complicity with her rapist and, tellingly, his biographer Noriyuki Yamaguchi, was devastating.  Yesterday, however, she won an appeals court ruling, which found that she did not defame her rapist by suing him for rape.

Rather than rape culture, perhaps the biggest challenge we face in our work is overcoming impunity culture.  Tragically, the unmitigated praise that is being wafted about Mr. Abe as a purported champion of gender issues contributes to that impunity.

As diaspora activists, we condemn Mr. Abe as a war crimes denier and those actors who minimize the atrocities inflicted by Japan’s imperial fascist regime and its geopolitical ripples, which led our families to seek opportunities outside of their homelands.  Valorizing Mr. Abe as a champion of women’s rights is hagiography, and it rings hollow just weeks after outcry by the Biden administration and other Western governments about the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Today, there are approximately 100 survivors of Japan’s WWII military sexual violence who are living in Asia.  Some of them, particularly 94-year-old Lee Yong-soo in South Korea, continue to demand that Japan’s government make authentic reparations to the individual survivors of Japan’s systemic wartime sexual violence and human trafficking.

Please support “comfort women” survivors like Lee Yong-soo by signing the petition here:  change.org/ComfortWomenPetitionICJ

If you have any questions, please contact us at comfortwomenaction@gmail.com