Hashimoto has since attempted to clarify his earlier statements, claiming that his comment simply meant that Japanese military heads at the time found it necessary. Sorry but that's simply not good enough. Imagine if a US politician were to say that "our forefathers found it necessary to have slaves" without some serious qualifications regarding why that was morally wrong and we don't do it anymore, there would be no discussion - the person would be pilloried for such comments and rightly so. People have done and continue to do horrible things to other people, and we should not lose an opportunity to point out not only that these things are wrong, but why.  And just two days ago, he has courted even more controversy by claiming there is "no evidence" that the Japanese Government forced thousands of women to become comfort women.  The coverup of the comfort women issue is so great that there has never been a full and accurate account of what happened. Some estimate that 20,000 women were used by Japan's military in this way while other sources put the number as high as 400,000.  South Korean comfort women rally against Japan's government earlier this month  The exact nature of the practice is disputed in Japan, and in 2007 the government there concluded that "No evidence was found that the Japanese army or the military officials seized the women by force", in spite of much evidence to the contrary, including records and testimony from the women themselves describing beatings, forced abortions, and abuse at the hands of doctors. Japanese officers were found guilty of the practice at a war crimes court after the conflict; one soldier was even executed for it. Modern denials are a slap in the face of history.  The experience as described by survivors like Kim Bok-dong, who was forced into a military brothel at the age of 14 and never even told her husband about her ordeal, is compounded by the shame the women feel. To have such an experience written off as 'boys will be boys' is disgusting. To this day the surviving women have not received reparations for what was done to them.  South Korean Vietnam War veterans stand beside a comfort women statue during their rally earlier this month in front of Japanese embassy  Mayor Hashimoto has claimed Japan was "unfairly singled out" for the practice - but crucially no other army in the conflict has been linked to the same kind of organised and widespread sex slavery that occurred there. Accusations outside of the country suggest Japanese officials are simply waiting for the final survivors to die so the issue can be buried forever.  As with the case of the women institutionalised and forced into labour in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, some brave women are stepping forward to demand acknowledgement and a full apology. With the eyes of the world on Japan this surely is the time to make a full and frank account of what happened open to the public and to try in whatever way possible to right past wrongs.
As the mayor of Osaka denies that there is any evidence that the Japanese   government made sex slaves of thousands of women during World War II, Dr   Brooke Magnanti calls for Japan to face up to its 'comfort women'.