ニューヨーク・タイムズ(web)の2014年12月3日に、掲載された社説で、安倍首相によって日本の右翼的勢力が力を得ていると述べているとうので、アクセスしてみた。
わからない英語は、ルビを振った。
NEWYORK TIMES
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
Whitewashing History in Japan
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDDEC. 3, 2014
Right-wing political forces in Japan, encouraged by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are waging a campaign of intimidation(脅し、脅迫) to deny the disgraceful(不名誉な) chapter in World War II when the Japanese military forced thousands of women to serve in wartime brothels(売春宿).
Many mainstream(本流) Japanese scholars and most non-Japanese researchers have established as historical fact that the program allowed Japanese soldiers to sexually abuse(虐待、乱用) women across the Asian warfront — based on widespread(広く知られた) testimony(証言、証明) from the “comfort(慰安) women.”
Now a political effort to treat these events as wholesale(大量の) lies concocted(捏造した) by Japan’s wartime enemies is gaining traction(引っ張る), with revisionists(修正主義者) trying to roll back the government’s 1993 apology for the coercion(強制) of women into prostitution(売春). The Abe government, intent on stoking nationalistic fervor, was rebuffed(拒否した) earlier this year in its effort to have revisions made to a 1996 United Nations human rights report on the women Japan forced into sex slavery. But, at home, the right wing continues to hammer away at The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, seizing on the paper’s retractions of articles published in the 1980s and 1990s that turned on limited aspects of its coverage to deny the larger historical truth of the “comfort women” program.
The Abe government is playing with fire in pander(つけ込む)ing those demanding(要求) a whitewash of wartime history. “They want to bully(脅かす) us into silence,” Takashi Uemura, a former Asahi reporter, said in describing how ultranationalists have made violent threats against him and his family.
Mr. Abe, under criticism from China and South Korea and frustration in the United States, said in March that he would uphold(維持する) the apology(謝罪). In it, Japan admitted that tens of thousands of women from South Korea and elsewhere were coerced into sexual slavery. This is where the historical truth stands, despite(~にかかわらず) revisionist(修正主義者) scheming(策動にたけた).