Now I have to apologize...

...to the PM, of all people.

A few weeks ago I gave the PM grief for a particularly egregious utterance at the Camp David press conference:

"The 20th century was a century that human rights were violated in many parts of the world. So we have to make the 21st century a century -- a wonderful century in which no human rights are violated. And I, myself, and Japan wish to make significant contributions to that end. And so I explained these thoughts to the President."

I must admit, I sort of lost all control over the soul crushing myopia of this statement.

Now thanks to this morning's Asahi Shimbun (sorry, no link) I find out the PM was not the perpetrator of this thought crime. Okazaki Hisahiko seems to have bequeathed this dangerously-close-to-ironic-dig-at-the-United-States-over-Abu-Ghraib-and-Guantanamo-Bay ("The 20th century was a century that human rights were violated in many parts of the world...") to the PM immediately prior to the Washington-Camp David visit.

Sadly, the story does not end there.

In remarks in Tokyo on Tuesday, Okazaki not only crowed about his formulation, but revealed his understanding of the context framing the issue.

"During the 20th century, in China, tens of millions of people were killed. Stalin in his purges killed millions. For the United States too there were the atomic bombs and Dresden. The 'comfort women'? Hardly a problem."

OOOhhhh, no you didn't.

Not the

(Comfort Women) < (Hiroshima + Nagasaki + Dresden)

inequality!

Silly former Ambassador to Thailand! Don't you know Americans hate math!

But did Okazaki stop there about the comfort women?

No, why stop digging when the hole is only up to your neck?

"When there is enough of a supply, coercion is unnecessary. Now is there enough documentary evidence showing the level at which the compensation was sufficient for recruitment and the provision of supply? It's not likely that the creeps (yatsu) who saved up money to open their own kisaeng houses* will offer us reports."

Oh, Okazaki-sensei.

What can I a mere blogger say except, "Thank you. Thank you ever so much."

===========================

* Odd, telling little error by the Asahi Shimbun. Rather than call the kisaeng houses "Korean houses of prostitution" [Chōsen(jin) no baishun shisetsu] it called them "houses of prostitution in South Korea" [Kankoku no baishun shisetsu].

Oh, I am sure the Asahi is quoting the dictionary definition...but I think it is inappropriate, given the context.