The opening paragraphs reveal the Asahi’s intention was to influence public opinion on the comfort women issue. The report was aimed at creating a dramatic setting, timed for the prime minister’s upcoming visit, by presenting evidence to demonstrate the Japanese government had committed “perjury” by denying there had been state involvement in recruiting Korean comfort women.
The January 11 report came out just five days before Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea. The prime minister had neither the option of changing his itinerary nor much time to prepare a response to the outrage erupting in South Korea.
I was staggered by the timing of the Asahi’s report and its strategy of focusing on the single point of kanyo (involvement), which is an ambiguous concept.
It is worth pointing out, however, that it was a well-known fact among researchers that Rikushimitsu Dainikki (a collection of official documents exchanged between the Army Ministry and army units dispatched to China), which had been declassified thirty years earlier and kept at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), contained documents about comfort women and the involvement of the military in comfort stations.
