The testimonies of many "comfort women" - a few are still alive - are proof that they did not choose to serve Japanese soldiers. But Japan chooses to turn a deaf ear to their testimonies.

"Japan must face up to history. That Yoshida's stories about 'hunting' comfort women were fabrications do not mean that comfort women never existed. The comfort women system was a tragedy that occurred during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and wars of aggression," the Mainichi has said in its editorial.

A question has been baffling some people in Japan: Why their country has lost out to Germany, which is almost free of the burdens of its wartime past thanks to its soul-searching on and settlement of Nazi war crimes? And why is Germany, unlike Japan, today trusted by its neighbors and the rest of the world?

Defeated 69 years ago, both Japan and Germany started from rubble and chaos. Supported by the US-led Doge Line and Marshall Plan during the Cold War era, the two countries re-emerged as big economic powers. Open about the darkest chapters of its history - as evident in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin - Germany started by reconciling with France and played a leading role in founding the European Union. It has since continued to play an active role in the EU's expansion.

In contrast, by denying some chapters of its wartime history, Japan has strained its relations with China and the Republic of Korea time and again. Even many non-Asians, distrust Japan.

Four American experts who helped draft a 2007 US congressional resolution have weighed in after the Asahi retraction. The resolution asked Japan to "formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery".

The experts said Yoshida's stories did not influence the issue from the US perspective. A careful look at the facts, they said, "will refute the view of the Japanese history revisionists and the Abe administration that the Yoshida memoirs, as reported by Asahi Shimbun, colored all understanding of the comfort women tragedy". They added: "We are further troubled that the Abe administration appears to adhere to this view".

People close to Abe have been quoted by the Japanese media as saying that the government plans to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II next year with a new official statement, which will emasculate the Kono Statement. In their words, the role of Kono Statement is to be "finished".

If this is the approach Japan intends to take to exonerate itself, it will cover itself with more indignity.

The author is China Daily's Tokyo bureau chief. caihong@chinadaily.com.cn