Throughout the Abe era and its aftermath, the comfort women dispute functioned as a lens through which Japan’s domestic politics, conservative identity project, and grand strategy were visible. In East Asia, historical narratives remain closely tied to statecraft, alliance politics, and national security strategies. The Big Picture: Why This "Old" Dispute Still Matters Strip away the diplomatic euphemisms, and an uncomfortable truth emerges: Shinzo Abe’s handling of the "comfort women" issue—the tens of thousands of women forced into sexual slavery by Imperial Japan during World War II—was never purely about historical truth. It was about statecraft and power . At its core, the dispute centers on identity: Should Japan remain permanently shackled to post-1945 penance, or should it shed its post-war guilt complex to re-emerge as a major security actor? Understanding Abe’s posture on this issue is a master key to decoding contemporary Japanese foreign policy,...