Statues honoring 'comfort women' in Germany and New Zealand have reignited tensions between Japan and South Korea. Japanese conservatives are uncomfortable with these memorials that represent women forced into sexual slavery during WWII.

Statues erected by South Korean civic groups on the other side of the world honouring the tens of thousands of women forced into sexual slavery by imperial Japanese forces during World War II have once again succeeded in making Tokyo’s elites deeply uncomfortable. The decisions by local governments in Germany’s capital and New Zealand’s largest city to rescind or decline to renew permits for “comfort women” memorials have been pounced on by conservatives within Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic....