Did the Japanese government apologize for its crime of military sexual slavery during WWII?
The Japanese government has not offered an official apology. A few past Japanese Prime Ministers expressed regret, but the apology they offered was expression of their personal feelings, not the official apology from Japanese government. When the Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryotaro issued the “letter of apology (owabi in Japanese)” to be sent along with the money from the Asian Women’s Fund in 1996, it was not the serious acknowledgment of wrong doing and proffering of an apology (shazai in Japanese). The expression “owabi” in Japanese in most cases means a sense of apology slightly weightier than an “Excuse me.” Even though it is an expression with a wide scope for interpretation, the Prime Minister’s owabi in this case can only be interpreted as something trivial since the Japanese government refused to acknowledge any crime.
