TOKYO: Japan’s biggest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, has apologized to its readers for using the term “sex slaves” and “other inappropriate expressions” to describe the women forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

The conservative paper used the more euphemistic term “comfort women” in its apology instead.

The move — which one analyst described as “astonishing” — comes amid a broader movement in Japan, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to re-assess Japan’s wartime history and cast it in a better light. It is certain to inflame already-rocky relations with Korea and China, the source of most of the comfort women.

In an editorial published Friday in the Yomiuri newspaper and on its English language website The Japan News, the paper said it had conducted a review of its coverage and found it had used terms like “sex slaves” in 85 stories published in English between February 1992 and January 2013. This was because it was difficult for non-Japanese people to understand the term “comfort women,” it said.