The Japanese government has asked the author of a UN report on "comfort women" to retract part of the content that Tokyo sees as "false," but the request was rejected on Thursday.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan lawyer and former UN special rapporteur on violence against women, published the report in 1996 which concluded that Japan's wartime sexual slavery was a violation of international law and urged Tokyo to apologize and compensate for the atrocity.

According to the Kyodo News, the Japanese government made the request based on a major Japanese daily's admission to its false report on this controversial issue.

In August, Japan's Asahi Shimbun acknowledged "major errors" in many articles on the "comfort women" issue, retracting all stories dating back decades ago that quoted Seiji Yoshida, a Japanese man who claimed he kidnapped about 200 Korean women and forced them to work at wartime Japanese military brothels.

Kuni Sato, Japan's ambassador in charge of human rights and humanitarian issues, met with Coomaraswamy on Tuesday in New York, said Kyodo News. But the author said she did not see the need to retract or make a correction to the report, given that Yoshida's testimonies constitute only part of the evidence.

The existence of "comfort women," as part of the Japanese military's wartime ferocity, cannot be denied. Historians estimate that as many as 200,000 "comfort women," mostly from China and South Korea, were forced into the Japanese Army's brothels before and during World War II. Only less than 100 victims are still alive now.