The recent slurs by Japanese rightist politicians like Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have caused a worldwide anger. They are provoking a strong backlash inside Japan too, but the rightist politicians don’t seem to know how to stop their ludicrous statements.

As a matter of fact, Japanese politicians have a long history of giving thoughtless remarks related to racism, historical distortion and territorial disputes.

On July 23, 1988, Michio Watanabe, chief of the governing Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Affairs Research Council, triggered a diplomatic friction between Japan and America when he said, “Japanese people, facing bankruptcy, fly by night or think of a familial suicide, but blacks think it’s no such a big deal, saying, ‘Bankruptcy, and I don’t have to pay from tomorrow.’?”

On June 13, 2008, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said, “Obama is black and Hillary is a woman. I guess it would be difficult for them to win.”

On Aug. 28, 2012, Shintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo, said, “There is no evidence that the Japanese military coerced women into sexual slavery. In those hard times, prostitution was a very profitable business.”

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*Han Seung-bum, President of the Korean Wave Research Institute

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