Osaka Mayor Hashimoto, co-head of the Japan Restoration Party, blustered in May last that the practice of using women to work in front-line brothels before and during World War II was necessary to maintain discipline in the military. And Shintaro Ishihara, who co-heads the same party with Hashimoto, defended him, saying that "any military is commonly associated with prostitution and that is like a principle of history."

This was barbarism as it insulted not only the women who were forced into disgraceful sexual servitude for the Japanese imperialists in the past but also human conscience.

Japan's attitude toward the sexual slavery is an outstanding issue directly linked with its admission, apology and reparation for all the crimes it committed against mankind in the last century. This is because the sexual slavery was the most corrupt and bestial one among all the crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the war, a hideous inhuman crime which baffled human imagination.

Japan's denial of the sexual slavery means a denial of its crime-woven past and a challenge to justice and human conscience.

That is why the international community is unanimously expressing indignation, rebuff and condemnation of Japan's attitude to evade the blame for the sexual slavery at any cost.

But the right-wing forces of Japan have gone the lengths of claiming "necessity" and "truth", not content with letting loose a spate of reckless remarks on the issue of sexual slavery.

They are now seeking to evade the liquidation of the past by embellishing the crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists against humanity and incite militarism among Japanese in a bid to realize the ambition for "the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

Japan is, indeed, a state which suffered a total ruin in the aspect of morality and a dangerous enemy state which can throw our planet again into misfortune by committing all sorts of crimes against humanity.

The moves of the right-wing forces to shun the liquidation of the past lead to a self-destruction as they becloud the prospect of Japan.

Voices denouncing the right-wing politicians for praising the above-said bestial acts as "acts of hurting the state interests" continue ringing out even in Japan.

If they persist in such crimes, far from drawing a lesson in the past, Japan will not be able to escape a ruin.