Governments throughout the region have long waited for Japan to come clean on the “comfort women” scandal. That may be why the response from Japan’s neighbors was less than ecstatic. “Welcome, but late,” said Philippine President Fidel Ramos. South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung Joo called the report “a first step” to improved Korean-Japanese relations. Such officials are still skeptical about whether incoming Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa will admit to much more. To this day, standard grade-school textbooks only sketchily describe Japan’s role as an aggressor, glossing over such atrocities as the 1937 rape of Nanking. Last week Tsutomu Hata, a key Hosokawa backer, promised that the new government would be franker about Japan’s past sins. Cold hard cash would help, too: the comfort women and their families are still waiting for reparations payments to atone for what they suffered.
