TOKYO —- The sensitive debate over Japan's wartime conduct was reignited Thursday when nationalist lawmakers demanded that the government recant its admission that the Japanese military forced women into sexual slavery, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed there is no evidence that it did.

But Abe also said the government would not revise or reopen debate on its 1993 apology to the victims, in which it acknowledged the Japanese military's role in forcibly recruiting women and holding them in "comfort stations" against their will.

A group of about 120 lawmakers from Abe's governing party want the prime minister to revise the official apology, which has become a pillar of Japanese diplomacy and a litmus test of its sincerity about atonement for war crimes.