At a press conference held on Dec. 31 last year Abe expressed his will to reexamine the statement made by the former Japanese government in which it apologized for the crimes committed in the past including sexual slavery.

The New York Times on Jan. 3 strongly censured his outbursts as a shameful behavior, recalling that Abe did not hide his intention to rewrite the war history from long ago.

This is the international community's deserved curse and denunciation of the present Japanese government which started its office by negating the crime-woven history.

Japan is the special war criminal state which inflicted human, material and spiritual damage upon Korea and other Asian countries in the past century through aggression and colonial policy.

The sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army was the hideous state-sponsored crime committed through the direct involvement of the government and the military by the order and approval of Japan's king. This had already been clearly proved by a lot of historical materials.

That is why voices demanding the Japanese government's official admission to its past crimes and its apology and reparation for them are heard from different parts of the world including the U.S. even at this moment.

Abe as a grandson of a top war criminal should have felt ashamed of those crimes more than any others and taken the lead in liquidating them.

This being a hard reality, he let loose a spate of vituperation that there is no evidence proving the coercive nature involved in the sexual slavery and cried out for reexamination of the statement made by Kono. This cannot but be interpreted as the height of moral vulgarity.

Japan's settlement of its past crimes is an urgent international issue directly linked with peace and stability in Asia and the rest of the world.

The Japanese reactionaries are working hard to evade this responsibility as they are obsessed with a militarist ambition for reinvasion.

They are regarding the honest apology and reparation for the past wrongdoings as an obstacle to their revanchist moves for reinvasion.

Precisely for this reason, they have persistently worked to provide institutional mechanisms and bolster up the military capability for reinvasion while being busy with farces to deny the past crimes and distort the history.

They have become evermore undisguised in their moves for militarization in recent years.

They are getting frantic in their moves to turn all fabrics of society to the Right and militarize them as evidenced by the formation of the Cabinet with maniacs praising the Japanese imperialists' aggression and the moves to deny the past crimes and reexamination of the proposal for the revision of the Constitution for the exercise of the right to collective self-defense.

This is, however, no more than the foolish act of those obsessed with a daydream.

How Japan approaches its past history is a touchstone showing whether it will achieve progress and prosperity as a normal state and pacifist state or remain a state for militarist aggression and go to its final ruin.

Now is time for Japan to break not only with its disgraceful history of crimes but with the inglorious past when the country defended and embellished it.

The Japanese authorities would be well advised to face up to the past, the present and the future and make a right bold decision.