Can you just go away

He's at it again.

As reported in the Japan Times, Toru Hashimoto (everyone's favorite mayor of Osaka), is at it again.

It seems like every year someone in Korea or China reiterates demands that Japan finally fess up and admit that the military coerced women into prostitution in WWII, and every year some Japanese politician craps up the same old responses - it didn't happen; they were happy to be sex holes for the army; whatever.

And now it's Hashimoto's turn.

The Japan Times quotes Hashimoto:

"There is no evidence that people called comfort women were taken away by violence or threat by the (Japanese) military."

Of course, this is all despite numerous accounts from the women themselves. Just look around online and you'll find mountains of evidence, like this story here or this one here.

The saddest thing, IMO, is that people who say stuff like this get so much support. But I guess that's to be expected. There will always be people in every country who are more than ready to whitewash the bad parts of history in the name of patriotism or some kind of false intellectualism.

Heck, the first time I was even introduced to the whole sex slavery issue was by a former coworker of mine (an otherwise intelligent man), who stated how the girls involved were happy to bang their Japanese military liberators because it gave them a real source of income.

Give me a break.

I just wish for once making a comment like this would be enough to lose an election, but as you see time and time again, in Japan that's usually not the case.