The mayor in a press conference that day did not hesitate to claim that "the system of comfort women was necessary" under the situation in those days and "why the issue of Japan's system of comfort women only is regarded as problematic."

It is an evident crime to trample down the rights of women or the weak in a war or in any case and reduce them to sexual slaves, the council said, branding what the mayor uttered as an act of insulting the victims to the war of aggression ignited by Japan.

Japan admitted early in the 1990s that the state and army committed the crimes related to sexual slavery in a systematic and organized manner, the council stressed.