Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday that Japan would not apologise again for forcing women, mostly Asians, to act as wartime sex slaves for its soldiers even if US lawmakers adopt a resolution calling for an apology.
Abe, seeking to bolster support among his conservative base, has already sparked diplomatic ire by appearing to question the state's role in forcing the women to prostitute themselves for soldiers during World War Two.
US Congressman Michael Honda, a California Democrat, has introduced a non-binding resolution calling on Japan to unambiguously apologise for the tragedy that thousands of Asian women, many Korean, endured at the hands of its Imperial Army.
"I have to say that even if the resolution passes, that doesn't mean we will apologise," Abe told a parliamentary panel on Monday, adding the US resolution contained factual errors.
But Abe repeated that he stood by a 1993 government apology that acknowledged the Japanese military's role in setting up and managing wartime brothels and that coercion was used. "It is not true that Japan has never reflected or apologised," he told reporters later. "The facts are as contained in the (1993) statement."
Abe, who wants to rewrite Japan's pacifist constitution and restore a sense of pride in the nation's past, upset his core conservative supporters and startled critics when he softened his stance on wartime history after taking office last September.
Among those shifts was his decision to stand by the 1993 apology, known at the "Kono Statement," after then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, in whose name it was issued. The softer stance on history was widely seen as an attempt to smooth the way for summits with China and South Korea and improve ties that had chilled under his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi.
Then last week, Abe sparked a fierce reaction from Seoul when he appeared to question the degree to which physical coercion was involved in recruiting the women for the brothels. "There is no evidence to back up that there was coercion as defined initially," he told reporters on Thursday, apparently referring to accusations that the Imperial Army had kidnapped women and put them in brothels to serve soldiers.
An outraged South Korea charged that the comment cast doubt on the sincerity of Japan's past apology and the matter is likely to be broached in bilateral talks slated for March 12 in Tokyo. On Monday, Abe said there seemed to have been some apparent cases of coercion, such as by middlemen, but he added: "It was not as though military police broke into people's homes and took them away like kidnappers."
Some experts agree that not all or even most of the women were physically coerced, but they say that does not absolve the Japanese government of responsibility for their suffering.