TOKYO, Aug 4, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A Japanese exhibition featuring a
controversial South Korean artwork depicting a wartime sex slave has been
cancelled after threats of violence as bilateral ties between the countries
fray.
The cancellation comes as relations between Tokyo and Seoul are soured by
bitter disputes over territory and history stemming from Tokyo’s colonial
rule over the peninsula in the first half of the 20th century.
The exhibition, which was part of a major art festival in Aichi, central
Japan, was shut down on Saturday after just three days.
Titled “After Freedom of Expression?”, the event was dedicated to showing
works that were censored elsewhere and was originally scheduled to run for 75
days.
The statue — a girl in traditional South Korean clothes sitting on a chair
— symbolises “comfort women”, who were forced to work in wartime Japanese
military brothels during World War II.
Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura, who heads organisers, said they received a
number of threatening emails, phone calls and faxes against the exhibition.
Omura said one of the faxes read: “I will visit the museum carrying a
gasoline container,” which can evoke last month’s arson attack on an
animation studio in Kyoto that killed 35 people.
“We made the decision as we fear that we can’t safely organise the
exhibition,” the governor said.
Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also
other parts of Asia including China, were forced to work in Japanese military
brothels.
Activists have in recent years set up dozens of statues in public venues
around the world, many of them in South Korea, in honour of the victims.
The statues have drawn the ire of Tokyo, which has pressed for the removal
of one outside its embassy in Seoul.
On Friday, Japan and South Korea rescinded each other’s favoured export
partner status and Seoul said it would review a military information
agreement, as a long-running row between the US allies hit a new low.
The two countries — both democracies and market economies — are also
mired in long-running disputes over the use of forced labour during World War
II.