EDITORIAL — Abe's gentle looks belie a darker side

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe does not deserve to be a leader if he has absolutely no regard for human sensibility. Leaders are no ordinary people. What they say do not come in one ear and out the other.

When Abe, in a fit of unrestrained irresponsibility, declared there was no evidence to prove the Japanese Imperial Army of World War II snatched Asian women and turned them into sex slaves, he showed an utter lack of disrespect for their sensibilities.

Worse, he is now blaming the media for the flap his own statements generated, and the flak he is getting for it. No leader can be worse than one who does not take responsibility for his own actions, one who elects to blame others instead for them.

Nobody can force anyone what to think. If Abe really thought that the so-called " comfort women " only invented their tales of rape and torture, then there is nothing anyone can do about it. But if he had any sense of humanity in him, he would have kept his thoughts to himself.

These women are now mostly in the twilight of their lives. They gain nothing by putting up a show. Of what benefit is it to them if, perchance, they get compensated for their ordeals. Their frail hearts no longer quiver at the sound of silver.

All they need is an acknowledgement that their nightmare actually happened, that their ordeal is the mother of the emotional scar that they must bear forever. Japan need not even apologize since there is always the possibility that its apology would be insincere.

But if their ordeal goes unrecognized, or even vilified as something contrived, then their entire lives become meaningless to the very end. Going through hell sometimes needs to be advertised, if only to make everyone see the sacrifice and understand the pain.

Abe cannot go on pretending that war-time atrocities did not happen. Wars are always the same, whether the conflicts are in the Middle East or in the Far East. Only the dates and names change, and the degree to which man inflicts his worst on another.

If Abe is not convinced of the incapacity of his people to sink so low, then maybe he should look closer to home, even right in these very times of peace and prosperity in Japan. With a click of a mouse he can access Japanese porn sites that speak tons of what he is not admitting.