Osaka Mayor Says Comfort Women Were Necessary Evil For 'Rough Men'

Dispensable comfort women — women and girls forced to provide sexual services to the Japanese military during World War II — were necessary to sate the lust and harness the virile power of Japan’s brave soldiers, according to the mayor of Osaka.

Some historians say Japan forced around 200,000 mostly Chinese and Korean women to essentially become sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during WWII; others believe that there were significantly fewer comfort women and that they chose to serve the army in that way. But many women who survived long enough to speak out/weren’t shamed into being quiet have said they initially thought they were being recruited for other types of labor and described horrifying stories of being beaten and forcibly raped by 20-40 officers every day.

The Japanese government formally apologized to the comfort women in 1993 but still won’t admit that the military actually coerced the women into serving against their will; it was kinda a half-assed “sorry you’re offended” type situation. The most recent spin from Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto: dudes needed to bone by any means necessary in order to serve their country!

From the Wall Street Journal‘s “Japan Real Time” blog:

“Anyone can understand that the system of comfort women was necessary to provide respite for a group of high-strung, rough and tumble crowd of men braving their lives under a storm of bullets,” Toru Hashimoto told reporters on Monday. Putting aside the moral question, “back then it was a necessary system to maintain military discipline,” he said.

Hashimoto also questioned whether the women were really coerced — it’s convenient that most comfort women have passed away by now and so are unable to challenge that assessment (and fight for their long-denied compensation) — and said U.S. servicemen in Okinawa should “make more use” of the local, legal sex industry to “relieve the sexual energy of the Marines” so that they don’t rape local women. Just stop talking.