Yohei Kono (pic), who as Japan’s chief cabinet secretary issued a landmark 1993 apology over women forced to work in wartime military brothels, has died. He was 89.
Local media said he died on Monday, without specifying the cause.
A staunch opponent of efforts by former prime minister Shinzo Abe to push for a more muscular military and revise Japan’s pacifist constitution, Kono was a rare moderate voice in the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party even after retiring from politics.
His standout achievement in a political establishment loath to acknowledge Japan’s deeds during World War Two was issuing what came to be known as the Kono Statement in August 1993, the first time the government acknowledged that the Japanese Imperial Army had forced women, many Korean, to work in military brothels.
The plight of the so-called “comfort women” hurt Japan’s ties with South Korea for decades.
Kono was deputy premier in a coalition government in 1995 when socialist prime minister Tomiichi Murayama issued a “heartfelt apology” for wartime damage and suffering inflicted by Japan.
Other leading politicians rejected such contrition. Abe, who died in 2022, expressed reservations about both Murayama’s and Kono’s apologies. — Reuters
