rebuttal 復習

　過去の出来事のとらえ方の不一致により、日韓関係の改善がとどまっているようです。

Japan and South Korea Want to Look to the Future. But They Can't Agree on the Past.

Japan has already signaled that it will continue its combative stance toward South Korea through the Comfort Women issue. Within days (May 23) after Representative Moon’s Tokyo visit, Japan’s Foreign Ministry submitted a rebuttal to the UN Committee Against Torture’s suggestions that the December 2015 agreement needed to be revised, and that the Comfort Women were “sex slaves.” Abe then misrepresented his discussion with UN General Secretary António Guterres on the sidelines of the G-7 Taormina Summit (May 26) as supportive of the December 2015 accord. And on June 1, Japan’s consul general in Busan was replaced for criticizing the prime minister’s Comfort Women views and possibly sending the “wrong message” to Korea.

The narrow result is that the Abe administration has repeatedly abrogated a provision in the December 2015 accord against “criticizing” South Korea about the Comfort Women issue “in the international community, including at the United Nations.” This has been a pattern throughout the past year—such as the February submission by the government of Japan of an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for the removal of a Comfort Women memorial in Glendale, California—but is now accelerating.

（一部抜粋）

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/japan-south-korea-want-look-the-future-they-cant-agree-the-21102

　今回はrebuttal /riˈbətl/ について調べました。

　Oxford Dictionary of English(Second Edition Reserved, Oxford University Press)によると、 “an instance of rebutting evidence or an accusation”とのことでした。定義の中にでてきたrebutも引いたところ、 “claim or prove that (evidence or an accusation) is false”と “drive back or repel (a person or attack)”と書かれておりました。

　『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第五版，大修館）には、rebuttalで「反論，反駁」、rebutで「（反証や正論によって）反論する，反駁する」などと載っておりました。

　語源は古フランス語のrebuterで、reが「反対」、buterが “to butt”すなわち「頭などを突き当てる（こと）」を意味しているそうです。（Gomez）