TOKYO (AFP).- A Japanese man has been arrested for allegedly sending a threatening fax to an exhibition that featured a controversial depiction of South Korean wartime sex slaves, police said Friday.

The exhibition in Aichi prefecture was dedicated to showing works censored elsewhere but was shut down last week after just three days following safety fears.

It featured a statue of a girl in traditional Korean clothes symbolising "comfort women", who were forced to work in wartime Japanese military brothels during World War II.

The suspect allegedly sent a fax to organisers that read: "Remove the statue immediately. Otherwise, we internet citizens will visit the museum carrying a gasoline container."

His threat evoked an arson attack on an animation studio in Kyoto that killed 35 last month.

The 59-year-old was arrested for "obstructing the event by force", a police spokesman told AFP.

Aichi governor Hideaki Omura said the exhibition -- originally scheduled to run for more than two months -- had received a number of threatening emails, phone calls and faxes and organisers feared the show could not be staged safely.

The statue stirred debate on social media, especially after Nagoya mayor Takashi Kawamura demanded the artwork be removed, saying it would harm the "feeling" of Japanese people.

But many others defended the exhibition, saying that freedom of expression should be supported.

Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also other parts of Asia including China, were forced to work in Japanese military brothels.

Activists have in recent years set up dozens of statues in public venues around the world, many of them in South Korea, in honour of the victims.

The statues have drawn the ire of Tokyo, which has pressed for the removal of one outside its embassy in Seoul.

The two countries are also mired in a long-running dispute over the use of forced labour during World War II that has now spilled over into an economic row, with both countries this month removing each other from their lists of favoured trading partners.


© Agence France-Presse