When the Korean wrote the long series on Korea-Japan relations to explain why Koreans are still angry with the Japanese, a lot of people responded: “Today’s Japan is a very different place from the Imperial Japan during World War II. So Koreans should just get over it.”

Is it now? Today’s Japan has a mayor of a major city, who is considered a potential future Prime Minister, telling the world that sex slaves are necessary in times of war and the U.S. forces in his own country should visit brothels more often. Today’s Japan has a Prime Minister who is a grandson of a Class A war criminal. But rather than having a heightened consciousness about his country’s past crimes, he sits in an airplane with the number 731—clear invocation of Unit 731, which conducted live human experimentation during World War II—grinning and giving a thumbs-up.

The fact that these two leaders think Japan did nothing wrong during World War II was hardly a secret. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo announced to the world that he would withdraw Japan’s apology to former Comfort Women, and denied that Imperial Japan forcibly recruited the Comfort Women to serve as sex slaves. Yet the Japanese people overwhelmingly elected Abe, as well as the candidates for the far-right Japan Restoration Party, to which Mayor Hashimoto belongs.