Tokyo — Japan's top court rejected on Tuesday an appeal from a group of South Korean women seeking compensation for having been forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during the Second World War.
The decision is a setback for other groups of women suing Tokyo for being forced into sexual servitude during the war.
In the ruling, the Supreme Court upheld a 2001 appeals court decision overturning a lower court order for the government to compensate the women, court spokesman Mitsuhiro Miyamoto said.
The women appealing the case had argued that refusing to pay redress went against the Japanese constitution's outline for a moral country, but Justice Toyozo Ueda of the top court's third petty bench said there was no legal basis for their appeal, Kyodo News reported.
Hiroshi Momose, a history professor at Hiroshima City University, said the ruling may serve as a precedent for other cases making their way through the Japanese judicial system.
About 40 similar lawsuits have been filed by either former sex slaves or forced labourers, with many of them still being contested in courts.
"It is a wrong decision, showing a lack of recognition of history. The compensation issue concerns the human rights of the women involved," Mr. Momose said.
The women were among 10 plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit with the Yamaguchi District Court in 1992, seeking a total equivalent to about $4.8-million (Canadian) in official compensation. They also demanded an official apology from the government. One of the plaintiffs has since died.
While the lower court awarded them a total of $11,000, the Hiroshima High Court ruled that the government did not need to pay because abducting the women as forced labourers and sex slaves was not a serious constitutional violation.
The 1998 lower court ruling was the first judicial decision requiring the Japanese government to compensate women for being forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army.
Tokyo has acknowledged that its wartime army established brothels and forced thousands of Koreans into military service, but it has refused to redress individuals officially or indirectly.
Historians say as many as 200,000 women, mostly Koreans but also Chinese, Dutch and Filipinos, were forced into sexual slavery during the war.
The Japanese government insists that the compensation issue was settled on a government-to-government basis in postwar treaties. The stance has drawn criticism at home and abroad that it remains unrepentant for its wartime wrongs.
