A man walks past advertisements for comic books and compact discs on the street in Tokyo. Jun Byung-hun, a spokesman for South Korea’s ruling Uri Party, said on Sunday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Four Japanese basketball players have been sent home from the Asian Games for allegedly paying prostitutes for sex, the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) said on Monday. Two people — the cartoonist and the chief editor of the comic book — have been fined 500,000 yen (4,700 dollars) each.
Kishi immediately appealed in the Tokyo High Court. But the term “comfort women” is set to disappear from many government-approved history textbooks for junior high schools from next year, Japanese media have reported. In a bid to narrow the gap over history, the two governments launched a joint study four years ago, but a report on its results issued on Friday showed the two sides were sharply at odds on many subjects, including the sex slaves issue. ĺ洲美女 Historians estimate that as many as 200,000 women, mostly Korean, were forced into sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels during World War II.
In addition to a territorial row over two tiny islands, many South Koreans feel Japan has not squarely faced its wartime past, including the brutal 1910-1945 rule of the Korean peninsula. Education Minister Nariaki Nakayama was quoted by media over the weekend as saying the term “comfort women,” a euphemism for the sex slaves, did not exist during the war and it was good the term had disappeared from school textbooks In April 2002, Kishi sold some 20,500 copies of the 144-page book, entitled “Misshitsu (Honey Room)” and marketed as for adults only.
Japan’s top government spokesman sought to contain any further damage, saying Tokyo was sorry for the sex slaves. Eminent academics and critics had testified that it was not a matter for the state to judge obscenity and 美女做愛 restricting expression was unconstitutional. Japan apologized again on Monday for the suffering of women who served as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II, a day after comments by a cabinet minister drew an angry reaction in South Korea.
Ties between Japan and South Korea have been strained by a range of feuds, A片 including one over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits to a Tokyo shrine for the war dead which Seoul, like China, sees as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism. South Korean politicians and media blasted Nakayama, who caused a stir last November by praising history textbooks that played down what he termed “excessive descriptions” of Japanese wartime wrongdoing.
A comic book which depicts genitalia and sexual acts in two thirds of its content was ruled obscene in a landmark court case which has sparked a debate on freedom of expression in Japan. The two sides have been unable to set a date for a regular summit meeting between Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, which they had agreed to hold by the end of June.