TOKYO — Two South Korean women who were forced during World War II to provide sex to Japanese soldiers canceled a meeting on Friday with a Japanese mayor who had caused an uproar by appearing to defend the system of wartime brothels.

Earlier on Friday, the cabinet of Japan’s conservative prime minister, Shinzo Abe, passed a resolution to support a 1993 apology that Japan issued to women forced into sexual servitude during the war. The motion was apparently intended to appease other Asian nations angered that Japanese leaders seemed to be seeking to whitewash the country’s past.

Those concerns were also apparently shared by the two women who canceled the meeting, Kim Bok-dong and Kil Won-ok. The women, now in their 80s, had hoped to explain how they and thousands of other so-called comfort women were forced to work in the brothels against their will, rebutting claims by Japanese nationalists that they were common prostitutes. However, the two decided that the mayor, Toru Hashimoto of the western city of Osaka, was just trying to use the planned meeting to repair his image and that he was not seriously showing remorse, the women said in a statement.

Mr. Hashimoto, 43, who is also a leader of a populist party, angered South Korea and other Asian nations by saying last week that the comfort women were necessary to provide relief to soldiers who faced the dangers of enemy fire. The comments seemed to confirm fears of many in the region that Japanese political leaders were shifting to the right with a revisionist agenda.