JAPAN Politician " Sex Slaves Were Necessary"

I'm not the most savvy on Japanese culture when I mean pervasive I mean that there was a popular and practiced standard for all parts of a person's life to be upheld but it fell short when it came to treating foreigners. I don't believe they tried or cared enough outside of their own society not that they didn't care about their own however which leads to the sort of justification in the video above.

JP Onry?

Dude, there is plenty of EU racism on MMOs. Its not a Japanese exclusive thing.

Doubt it, seeing as the EU is a union of vastly diverse people of varying ethnic backgrounds and languages.

Doubt it, seeing as the EU is a union of vastly diverse people of varying ethnic backgrounds and languages.

Every country in the history of the existence of Earth has committed acts observed as appalling by today's standards. America, Australia, Britain, China, etc. It's literally every country. If not unto other nations, than unto themselves.

Live in a delusion if you want. On GW2 there was pretty clear tiering of Europeans by some players. You could escape it by speaking English.

The problem of course is xenophobia, not a people.

do you not understand the difference between the Indian Wars and, say, Barack Obama getting on television in 2013 and saying "it was probably necessary to commit genocide in order to get us some sweet *** lebensraum"

I honestly haven't encountered that myself. Might really be occurring as you say. Would surprise me. Have you encountered it on the scale of "JP ONRY" ?

And? Look at the states... we're all a part of the same country and some of us still find a reason to hate people from other states lol... I used to play in a European shell on XI and some of em would talk trash about other countries in Europe lol...

I bet you could find some politicians that would say dropping the A-bomb was necassary at the time...

That's besides the point though... you're trying to make this into something it isn't... all the guy is saying is that at the time this is how it was... he's not saying that it was how it should of been or that it was pretty or that it is how it should or will be in the present or future...

There's a lot of things in the past that you can look back on in disgust and such but it doesn't mean it wasn't necassary for certain other things to take place or just a product of the times... The only important thing is to learn from the past and try not to repeat the same mistakes... politicians should be more straight forward but you can see why they're not sometimes...

do you not understand the difference between the Indian Wars and, say, Barack Obama getting on television in 2013 and saying "it was probably necessary to commit genocide in order to get us some sweet *** lebensraum"

I bet you could find some politicians that would say dropping the A-bomb was necassary at the time...

That's besides the point though... you're trying to make this into something it isn't... all the guy is saying is that at the time this is how it was... he's not saying that it was how it should of been or that it was pretty or that it is how it should or will be in the present or future...

There's a lot of things in the past that you can look back on in disgust and such but it doesn't mean it wasn't necassary for certain other things to take place or just a product of the times... The only important thing is to learn from the past and try not to repeat the same mistakes... politicians should be more straight forward but you can see why they're not sometimes...

do you not understand the difference between the Indian Wars and, say, Barack Obama getting on television in 2013 and saying "it was probably necessary to commit genocide in order to get us some sweet *** lebensraum"

I do understand that. But you might have overlooked the second part of your post, bolded. History's lessons are often forgotten in due course. A politician making such statements today is an indicator to me. Politicians are professional PR monkeys. Its not like this one made the statement in private. Nor was it caught by a microphone that should have been turned off. THIS politician made the statement openly. His words, his stance on the subject were all measured. Now if that had occurred in times of a better relationship between China, South Korea and Japan it would be worrying enough. But the current climate between China and Japan is at the lowest it has been in decades. Do you really think that this politician didn't know his words would cause a Chinese reaction? You can be certain that he did. China has been insisting on apologies from Japan for the past 50 years. Its a very controversial issue. For a politician in Japan to even touch on the subject without an outright "We're so fugging sorry" statement ready, indicates something beneath the surface brewing in Japan. It might be REALLY early, but there's still cause for concern - which is why a Chinese foreign minister responds. One of the most senior offices in the country.

At the time it probably was... and so what if he does say it? omg a straight talking politician not afraid to say something because someone else might take it out of context and then others will try to use it to ruin their careers! I mean cmon... people should be able to speak their minds and address harsh truths without getting crucified because someone mistook or didn't like what they said... even if it is the truth...

So what if a German mayor came out and said what the nazis did to the Jews was sorta kinda ok?

It was aLEADING POLITICIAN of the main opposition who said that...

Im shooting in the dark here but maybe he made this statement to rile up the nationalist base in JP who want to militarize amidst Chinas ascendance as a regional power and the US floundering?

Say something provocative, get attention, apologize, get a voting bump. Again, idk ***about Japanese politics.

I do understand that. But you might have overlooked the second part of your post, bolded.

History's lessons are often forgotten in due course. A politician making such statements today is an indicator to me.

Politicians are professional PR monkeys. Its not like this one made the statement in private. Nor was it caught by a microphone that should have been turned off. THIS politician made the statement openly. His words, his stance on the subject were all measured.

Now if that had occurred in times of a better relationship between China, South Korea and Japan it would be worrying enough.

But the current climate between China and Japan is at the lowest it has been in decades.

Do you really think that this politician didn't know his words would cause a Chinese reaction?

You can be certain that he did. China has been insisting on apologies from Japan for the past 50 years. Its a very controversial issue. For a politician in Japan to even touch on the subject without an outright "We're so fugging sorry" statement ready, indicates something beneath the surface brewing in Japan. It might be REALLY early, but there's still cause for concern - which is why a Chinese foreign minister responds. One of the most senior offices in the country.

The comments brought a quick backlash from senior Japanese politicians.

One of the strongest rebuttals came from a top official in Hashimoto’s own party.

“This is not something that’s coming out of our party. I think Mr. Hashimoto was expressing his own private opinions,” said Sakihiti Owaza, a senior official in the Japan Restoration Party. “If these comments continue, we will need to look into his true intentions and put a stop to this.”

Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary in the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, declined to directly criticize Hashimoto; doing so would be considered inappropriate because they are members of different parties.

He said, however, that the government’s position on the matter was clear: "The issue of comfort women is an experience of an unspeakable, painful suffering for which we also feel extreme anguish.”

Cabinet Minister Tomoko Inada did not let the protocols of political politeness stand in her way.

“It might not be appropriate to comment on what has been said by a leader of another party, but I believe the system of comfort women was a tremendous violation of women's human rights,” she said.

Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura said he heard about the comments while on visits to Washington and London and he thought they had been not been “properly understood” by foreign media.

Despite that, given the tensions between Japan and its Pacific neighbors, he said that “the timing of Mr. Hashimoto’s comments couldn’t have been worse.”

“I strongly wonder where there was anything positive in making these comments,” he said.

Hashimoto’s remarks about comfort women represented a break with what has become a Japanese tradition.

In 1994, then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued an official apology for Japan's conduct before and during the war, including the treatment of those who came to be known as comfort women. Since then, subsequent administrations have upheld Murayama’s apology.

On Monday, Hashimoto agreed that it was important to accept Japan's role as an aggressor in the war and apologize for its atrocities, but he argued that other countries have had brothels for their troops.

"When a group of men is risking their lives, when this group of men are in a psychologically tense state, … anyone could understand that they would need something like the comfort women system," he said.