Fanning the Flames with Misinformation
The Japanese government offered apologies and compensations to former comfort women, but their efforts only produced backlash and invited more attacks.
Unfortunately, ethnic Koreans with anti-Japanese leanings have been thoroughly exploited in the "unrestricted warfare" of the Chinese Communist Party. In Strathfield, Australia, for example, a Chinese political group named "The United Austral Korean-Chinese Alliance against Japanese War Crimes" was organized suddenly and instigated Korean groups to erect a comfort woman statue.
Under the circumstances, even ordinary Japanese citizens have been reviled by the propaganda. That is why many Japanese who are not academics began to raise objections to the film. The conservative speakers who appeared in The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue set an example by objecting to the propaganda of anti-Japanese organizations.
A decent scholar with or without leftist political leanings would quickly recognize that the claims of the anti-Japanese organizations are nonacademic fiction. Dezaki must have recognized this.
However, I have yet to encounter a left leaning scholar who would acknowledge the following:
- Most claims of the anti-Japanese organizations are academically flawed.
- They should leave the facts of the comfort women issue to the scholars to illuminate.
- It is completely unproductive to promote the erection of comfort women statues for distorted political reasons at places which have nothing to do with the issue, so it has to be stopped.
