Overview
- Yohei Kono, a longtime Liberal Democratic Party elder who served as chief Cabinet secretary, LDP president, foreign minister and lower house speaker, died on Monday at age 89, his family office said.
- As chief Cabinet secretary in August 1993, Kono issued the Kono Statement, which said the then-Japanese military was directly or indirectly involved in establishing and managing 'comfort stations' and offered the government's apology.
- The statement helped open space for the 1995 Murayama apology and eased ties with South Korea, but debates over its wording resurfaced after a 2014 Japanese panel reported Seoul had helped with the language, a finding South Korea rejected.
- Kono was known inside the LDP as a moderate who opposed efforts to revise Japan's pacifist constitution and who prioritized building trust with neighboring countries; his 2002 liver transplant from his son Taro was a widely reported personal detail.
- Japanese leaders and diplomats have offered condolences, and Kono's death is likely to revive discussion about wartime memory and whether postwar acknowledgments will be preserved or contested in future policy and diplomacy.