Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto dug himself in deeper after holding a news conference today to attempt to apologize for controversial remarks advising US Troops in Okinawa patronize adult entertainment businesses as a way to reduce rapes.  Say, isn’t a Mayor just supposed to make sure the buses run on time and the garbage gets picked up?

Those remarks earlier this month earned a rebuke from the Pentagon, calling it a “stupid” idea.  Hashimoto says his comments were “inappropriate”, but made in an attempt to act on his "strong commitment" to curbing sexual crimes committed by American soldiers in Okinawa, home to more than half the 50,000 troops based in Japan.

“I understand that my remark could be construed as an insult to the U.S. forces and to the American people,” he said at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Tokyo.

He then seemed to rebuke his earlier statement that it was “necessary” for Japan to force Asian women from conquered territories to work in front-line brothels to maintain discipline and provide relaxation for soldiers.  Hashimoto says it was an “inexcusable act that violated the dignity and human rights of the women.”

And then the Hashimoto Bullet Train went off the rails.

Hashimoto tried to let Japan off the hook, claiming it was not the Imperial Government’s “will” to imprison the women, and claimed that there is no evidence the government of the 1930s and ‘40s was involved.  In fact, there IS overwhelming evidence and Japanese Scholars dug much of it up.

And then he kept digging.  Hashimoto attempted to equate what Japan did to other countries, accusing the United States, the UK, and other western powers of doing the same thing, which of course did not happen.

It’s not clear how he could believe that.  No one’s saying that bad things never happened in war, but surely no other nation ever rose to Imperial Japan’s specific, systematic, and institutional abuse of women.

The row threatens Japan’s relationships with its neighbors, which still consider Tokyo’s grudging acceptance of its wartime responsibility as a sore spot.  If Hashimoto ever gets a national office, it will not sit well with China, South Korea, and other nations.

“By making such remarks, Japan will be further isolated in the international community,” said South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung Se after Hashimoto’s news conference.

“Many see such remarks as being far below common sense, embarrassing and shameful. If he made such remarks at the U.N. General Assembly or the U.S. Congress, that would cause serious damage to Japan's many conscientious people.”

Four female South Korean lawmakers from the ruling and main opposition parties went to Tokyo to condemn Hashimoto.  They also met with Japanese academics and leaders of Japan’s opposition Democratic Party, and it might have exposed another facet of the Hashimoto problem.  These South Korean lawmakers are female, and the South Korea President is a woman.  But there are no women in significant positions of power in the Japanese government right now. 

Having never served in the military, Hashimoto simply has no first hand experience in the horrors of war on the front lines or the home front.  Born in 1969 in the tail end of the “Economic Miracle”, he has no first hand experience of the hardship his defeated nation suffered before the “Economic Miracle” lifted the newly Democratic Japan.  But surely, he could have read a history book?

Since his comments and the controversy, Hashimoto’s approval ratings have plummeted and polling suggest his nationalist “Ishin No Kai” political party is not going to do when in upcoming Upper House elections.  That’s a good indication that the majority of Japanese disagree with this sort of nationalist poppycock that seemed to have been dying out with and older, more conservative generation. 

Many Japanese people cannot understand why Hashimoto persists in making his troubling and trouble-making remarks.  Hopefully, they will form an electoral majority.