The Japanese government is suggesting it will “revise” its historic for its wartime system of sex slavery.  It’s feared that the nationalist cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will weaken the apology and draw fury from South Korea and beyond, worsening tensions in the region.

It’s the latest in a series of gaffes and offensive statements from senior officials around Abe in recent weeks.  One of Abe’s appointments to the board of the national broadcaster NHK denied that the 1937 “Rape of Nanking” ever happened – a view not shared by any mainstream historian, let alone the survivors.

Another one of Abe’s NHK appointees said sex slavery was common in many militaries and was only wrong when judged against modern morality.  Every legitimate historian agrees up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also from China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan, were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels.

Even Abe himself in 2007 was quoted as saying there was no evidence Japan directly coerced comfort women.

In 1993, the chief cabinet secretary met with 16 South Korean women who him about how they were abused by Imperial Japanese troops in World War II.  Yohei Kono acknowledged Japan’s official complicity in the coercion of women into sex slavery and offered “sincere apologies and remorse” to the women and vowed to face the historical facts squarely.  Japanese nationalists never accepted it.

To the events of the past few weeks, China issued a stern warning.

“Any attempt by Japan to negate the crime and overturn the verdict on its history of aggression will meet with vehement opposition from victimized people and the international community,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.