ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1
Keyword(s)DisciplineAuthorYear / DateTitleSourceKeywordAbstractLink
2
Journal Article
3
Journal Name
Volume Number
Page numberTranslator
4
Legal activismLawAbe, Kohki2013
International Law as Memorial Sites: The "Comfort Women" Lawsuits Revisited
The Korean Journal of International and Comparative Law
1(2)166-187
Age of Apology; comfort women (Japanese military sexual slavery); histories of international law; trans-temporal justice; The Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land; memorial sites; Supreme Court of Japan; The Agreement between Japan and the Republic of Korea on the Settlement of Property and Claims Disputes and Economic Cooperation; right of access to justice; crimes against humanity
This article revisits the legal and philosophical frontiers passionately explored in the “comfort women” lawsuits in Japan. The epoch-making judicial battle challenging the legality and legitimacy of Japanese military sexual slavery has created an innovative space for combining justice and history. Of enormous practical import are a series of lower court judgments that determined the wrongfulness of Japan’s shameful involvement in the heinous abusive practices during the wartime period. Invoking the nebulous concept of the “Framework” of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, the Supreme Court rendered a decision in 2007 to procedurally shut the door to the war reparation claims. The decision, however, may not be sustained from the perspective of contemporary international law that is increasingly infused with the quality of trans-temporal justice. The author argues that the Government of Japan should discharge its responsibility by faithfully adopting measures required under international law, an act powerfully called for in the “Age of Apology” and within a new global paradigm against violence against women.
https://doi.org/10.1163/22134484-12340019
5
Movement for Justice
Women's Studies
Akibayashi, Kozue
2020
Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence: An Island Feminism Reclaiming Dignity
Okinawan Journal of Island Studies
137-54
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12000/45770
6
History of Japanese military sexual slavery, Legal Activism
LawArgibay, Carmen2003
Sexual Slavery and the ‘Comfort Women’ of World War II
Berkeley Journal of International Law
21(2)375-389Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, International Criminal Law, Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, Sexual Slavery, Sexuality, Asia, East Asia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea
http://doi.org/10.15779/Z38VW7D
7
2000 Women's International War Crimes Tribunal
LawAskin, Kelly D2001
Comfort Women - Shifting Shame and Stigma from Victims to Victimizers
International Criminal Law Review
15-32
https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/intcrimlrb1&div=7&id=&page=
8
Movement for Justice
Women's Studies
Balaubaeva, Binur; Nuralieva, Sania; Parpiyev, Syrym
2020
A study on feminist scholarship and human rights activism against practices of gendered-based violence: focused on Korean comfort women movement
E3S Web of Conferences
1591-8.
This article focused on the Korean comfort women issue(Chongshindae issue).The Chongshindae issue is not just a question, which was silent for about 50 years. It has an important influence on contemporary times in Korean and other Asian societies. Moreover, it can prevent future problems related to social class, gender issues, violations against women and the impact of patriarchal organizations. This article argues, first, the issue of the comfort women system during the war between Japan and South Korea evolved into a universal dispute in the contemporary world. Moreover, not only Korean feminists, but also feminist scholars and human rights activists from different countries were involved. In otherwise, it is important to note that the gender hierarchy and patriarchal society in both countries of Japan and Korea limited the opportunities of feminists and human rights activists over the comfort women issue. The Controversial AWF seemed like a tool of Japan to avoid their legal responsibility and official apology. Nevertheless, the Chongshindae movement had achieved remarkable success regarding the comfort women issue, despite the controversies between the two countries, especially in establishing the historical monument. Moreover, a feminist national context helped to raise the issue of comfort women as a political issue, and made it symbolic.
https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202015905011
9
Literature & ArtsSocial Sciences
Berndt, Caroline M
1997
Popular Culture as Political Protest: Writing the Reality of Sexual Slavery
Journal of Popular Culture
31(2)177-187
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1997.00177.x
10
Movement for Justice
Women's StudiesChai, Alice Yun1993
Asian-Pacific Feminist Coalition Politics:
The "Chŏngshindae/Jūgunianfu" ("Comfort Women")
Movement
Korean Studies1767-91
This article examines the Chŏngshindae/Jūgunianfu issue from an Asian-Pacific feminist perspective. The Chŏngshindae/Jūgunianfu were women (primarily Korean) who were drafted by the Japanese military during the Pacific War, ostensibly to serve as laborers, but mostly to serve as sex slaves. They are referred to euphemistically as Jūgunianfu (military "comfort women") in Japanese, and Chŏngshindae (Women's Volunteer Labor Corps) in Korean. This article discusses (1) historical links between Japan's Pacific War military sex slaves and their contemporary parallels, (2) reasons why the military sex slavery issue has been buried for almost half a century, (3) the social context for politicization of the issue, and (4) global feminist and grassroots coalition politics: the Chŏngshindae/Jūgunianfu movement in Korea and Japan that has recently spread to other East and Southeast Asian countries.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23720041?seq=1
11
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Political ScienceChang, Mina2009
The Politics of an Apology: Japan and Resolving the "Comfort Women" Issue
Harvard International Review
31(3)34-37
http://www.jstor.org/stable/42763319
12
2000 Women's International War Crimes Tribunal
Law
Chinkin, Christine M
2001
Women's international tribunal of Japanese military sexual slavery
The American Journal of International Law
95(2)335-341
https://doi.org/10.2307/2661399
13
Victim-Survivors' Testimonies
AnthropologyChoe, Hanwool2021
The other-granted self of Korean “comfort women”: Analyzing interview narratives of Korean women coerced into the Japanese military’s sexual slavery during World War II
Narrative InquiryOnline
agency, positioning, interview narrative, victimhood narrative, self-making, identity, comfort women, small-n narrative, big-N Narrative, master narrative
Bringing together “identity as agency” (Schiffrin, 1996; De Fina, 2003), Bamberg’s (1997) three-level positioning, and Tannen’s (2008) narrative types, I analyze three interview narratives of Korean women coerced into the Japanese military’s sexual slavery during World War II, commonly known as “comfort women”. Through an eye toward “others” – e.g., Japanese soldiers, “comfort station” managers, interviewers, and sociocultural and sociopolitical forces – I investigate the manipulation of the women’s agency with their identities positioned as victims, rather than survivors. Meaning- making strategies, such as “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 2007[1989]), repetition, deixis, and third turns, present the ways in which various others objectify and marginalize the women as well as control their stories. These illuminate how the women’s identities are granted and defined by others. This other-granted identity work reinforces aspects of language ideologies and ideologies of being silenced.
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20136.cho
14
Sexual violence in conflict & sexual exploitation
Women's StudiesChuh, Kandice2003
Discomforting Knowledge: Or, Korean "Comfort Women" and Asian Americanist Critical Practice
Journal of Asian American Studies
6(1)5-23.
https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2003.0025
15
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
SociologyChung, Chin Sung1997
The Origin and Development of the Military Sexual Slavery Problem in Imperial Japan
positions: east asia cultures critique
5(1)219-255
https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-5-1-219
16
Movement for Justice
Social Sciences
del Pilar Alvarez, Maria
2020
Nationalizing Transnationalism: A Comparative Study of the “Comfort Women” Social Movement in China, Taiwan, and South Korea
Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
19(1)8-30.
Most literature on the “comfort women” social movement focuses on the case of Korea. These works tend to transpose the meanings generated by South Korean organizations onto the transnational network, assuming certain homogeneity of repertoires and identities among the different social actors that comprise this network. Even though there is some degree of consensus about demands, repertoires, and advocacy strategies at the international level, does this same uniformity exist at the national level? In each country, what similarities and differences are present in the laboratories of ideas, relationships, and identities of social actors in the network? Symbolically and politically, do they challenge their respective societies in the same way? This article compares this social movement in South Korea, China, and Taiwan. My main argument is that the constitutive base for this transnational network is the domestic actions of these organizations. It is in the domestic sphere that these social actors reinforce their agendas, reinvent their repertoires, transform their identities, and expand their submerged networks, allowing national movements to retain their latency and autonomy. Following Melucci’s relational approach to the study of social movements, this research is based on a qualitative analysis of institutional documents, participant observation, and open-ended interviews with members of the main social actors.
http://doi.org/10.17477/jcea.2020.19.1.008
17
2000 Women's International War Crimes Tribunal
Social SciencesDudden, Alexis2001
"We Came to Tell the Truth": Reflections On The Tokyo Women's Tribunal
Critical Asian Studies
33(4)591-602
https://doi.org/10.1080/146727101760107451
18
History Denialism & Distortion
HistoryDudden, Alexis2021
The Abuse of History: A Brief Response to J. Mark Ramseyer’s 'Contracting for Sex'
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-4.
https://apjjf.org/2021/5/Dudden.html
19
Statue of PeaceHumanitiesChun, Dongho2020
The Battle of Representations: Gazing at the Peace Monument or Comfort Women Statue
positions: east asia cultures critique
28(2)363-387
http://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-8112482
20
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
History
Frost, Mark R; Vickers, Edward
2021
Introduction: The “Comfort Women” as Public History - Scholarship, Advocacy and the Commemorative Impulse
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-21.
Comfort women, heritage, historiography, public history, reconciliation
In this introductory essay to the special issue of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus on “The Comfort Women as Public History,” we analyze the turn since the early 2000s towards “heritagization” of this controversial issue. After reviewing the political, cultural and historiographical background to ongoing disputes over “comfort women,” we examine how the reframing of this issue as “heritage” has been accompanied by increasing entanglement with the global politics of atrocity commemoration, and associated tropes. Prominent among such tropes is the claim that commemoration fosters “peace”. However, following recent critical scholarship on this issue, and drawing on the papers that comprise this special issue, we question any necessary equation between heritagization and reconciliation. When done badly, the drive to commemorate a contentious issue as public history can exacerbate rather than resolve division and hatred. We therefore emphasise the need for representation of comfort women as public history to pay due regard to nuance and complexity, for example regarding the depiction of victims versus perpetrators; the transnational dimension of the system; and its relationship with the broader history of gender politics and the sexual subjugation of women.
https://apjjf.org/2021/5/Frost-Vickers.html
21
History Denialism & Distortion
History
Gordon, Andrew; Eckert, Carter
2021Statement
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-4.
https://apjjf.org/2021/5/Gordon-Eckert.html
22
Asian Women's Fund
CommunicationsGu, Xin-yuan2014
A critical discourse analysis of the Asian Women's Fund website
Discourse & Society
25(6)725-740
comfort women, corpus assisted analysis, critical discourse analysis, discourse in historical context, political apology
The so-called ‘comfort women’ were women (including teenagers) taken by force and treated as sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during the Second World War. The Asian Women’s Fund, as an extension of the Japanese government, is an institutional device for political apology regarding the ‘comfort women’ issue. As an initial step to consider postwar history cognition in Japan, this article examines some of the web pages on the Asian Women’s Fund website, analyzing the lexical items, the rhetoric, and the defining/summarizing/quoting strategies with corpora evidence. By examining related details, the article uncovers how ‘facts’ and ‘history’ were presented in the discourse, and thus uncovers the infelicity of the apology.
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0957926514536838
23
Legal activismLawHao, Xiaoyang2021
Transmitting Knowledge and Gaining Recognition: Chinese “Comfort Women” Reparation Trials in the 1990s and 2000s
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-20.
Comfort women, reparation trials, litigation, procedural approach, recognition, testimony, feminism
In the wake of the explosion of the “comfort women” issue, with the help of lawyers and activists, Chinese comfort women instigated four class-action lawsuits against the Japanese government. However, how the lawyers represented the history of comfort women and what happened in the courtroom have remained obscure. Unlike the conventional verdict-centered approach to civilian trials involving comfort women, this research adopts a procedural approach by delving into the court transcripts, legal briefs, and other evidentiary materials tendered to the court. It argues that although the plaintiffs lost every case, through the court proceedings the victims and their lawyers managed to carve out an official space for knowledge transmission and recognition. These proceedings have the potential to serve as an exemplary model for future civil trials adjudicating injustices (historical or otherwise) involving sexual and gender-based violence.
https://apjjf.org/2021/5/Hao.html
24
Movement for Justice, Statue of Peace
Political Science
Hasunuma, Linda; McCarthy, Mary M.
2019
Creating a Collective Memory of the Comfort Women in the USA
International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society
32145-162
Comfort women, Memorialization, Transnationalism, Asian Americans, Women’s activism
We offer a new perspective on the recent controversies surrounding the memorializa- tion of comfort women in several American cities by shifting the focus from bilateral historical grievances and tensions between the national governments of Japan and South Korea, to the grassroots and transnational politics involved in the siting of these monuments. We find that the construction of a transnational Korean identity among the Korean diaspora in the USA, and their creation of a collective public memory of the comfort women are evidence of their growing political consciousness and engage- ment in American civic life, and it is notable that most of the leadership and membership of the main organizations involved are women. These women are part of the global feminist and human rights movements which advocate for the inclusion and recognition of the experiences of women during wartime and colonization. Therefore, the memorials are not only symbols of historic reconciliation and remem- brance, but of the skillful and strategic organizing, activism, and leadership of Asian Americans. This article also shows how the movement is evolving through the development of educational and curricular initiatives in honor of the comfort women in the USA.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9302-1
25
Sexual violence in conflict & sexual exploitation
Women's Studies
Hasunuma, Linda; Shin, Ki-young
2019
#MeToo in Japan and South Korea: #WeToo, #WithYou
Journal of Women, Politics & Policy
40(1)97-111
Japan; South Korea; #MeToo; #WeToo; #WithYou; gender; sexual harassment; activism
This article compares the impact of the #MeToo movement in South Korea and Japan. In South Korea, #MeToo inspired many women to go public with their accusations in numerous high- profile cases. Those accusations inspired the mobilization of mass demonstrations and demands for legal reform. In South Korea, the movement’s impact is evident in policy proposals and the revision of laws on sexual harassment and gender- based violence. In Japan, however, the movement has grown more slowly. Fewer women went public, and if they did, many remained anonymous. The movement remains limited to a small number of cases that resulted in the formation of a professional network to support women journalists. We argue that the different outcomes in these countries can be explained by the strength of women’s engagement in civil society and the nature of the media coverage in each case. In both countries, however, women continue to face a powerful backlash that includes victim-blaming and social and profes- sional sanctions for speaking up.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1554477X.2019.1563416
26
Japanese Government's Stance
Political Science
Hayashi, Hirofumi
2008
Disputes in Japan over the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” System and Its Perception in History
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
617(1)123-132
comfort women, sexual slavery, perception of history, war responsibility
In 2007, then-Japanese Prime Minister Abe stirred up controversy by denying that "comfort women" were
coerced by the Japanese military. He was supported by more than a few politicians, and his opinion may be
viewed as a reflection of the nationalistic atmosphere of Japanese society. Since the early 1990s, research has
been establishing proof that the Japanese government and military were fully and systematically involved in
the comfort women system and that the system violated numerous international and domestic laws.
Ultrarightist groups have been trying to erase the fruits of such research. The U.S. House of Representatives'
resolution in July 2007 (H. Res. 121) and Abe s sudden resignation seem to mean that the ultrarightist move
ment toward historical revision has come to a deadlock. The comfort women issue and other questions about
Japan s war responsibilities may have an important impact on Japans future.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716208314191
27
Sexual violence in conflict & sexual exploitation
Women's StudiesHeit, Shannon2009
Waging sexual warfare: Case studies of rape warfare used by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II
Women's Studies International Forum
32(5)363-370
Even in peacetime, women are victims, though to a lesser degree, of the same atrocities that become their fate in war. It is important to recognize that patriarchal and subjective attitudes towards women in peacetime make a logical, though horrifying, progression to the treatment of women during war and armed conflicts. Rape during wartime is an act as old as war itself, but it was not documented as a strategic military practice of warfare until World War I. After World War I these crimes were never prosecuted, further encouraging the use of mass rape as a strategic military operation in subsequent conflicts. Using case studies of documented rape warfare under the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, we are able to discern two categories of rape: that as a weapon of terror as seen in the example of The Rape of Nanking during World War I and that as a form of sexual slavery as exemplified in the case of the “Korean Comfort Women” stations during World War II. This article outlines what actions must be taken to bring the perpetrators of wartime rapes to justice—a necessary step to bringing peace and reconciliation to the victims and in preventing future atrocities.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2009.07.010
28
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Women's StudiesHenry, Nicola2013
Memory of an Injustice: The “Comfort Women” and the Legacy of the Tokyo Trial
Asian Studies Review
37(3)362-380
comfort women, Tokyo Tribunal, collective memory, Japan, IMTFE, denialism
International criminal prosecutions for serious violations of human rights are not only connected to a collective consciousness about the past; they also shape contemporary memory contestation. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE or Tokyo Tribunal) was established in 1946 to try Japanese defendants for war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. Part of the legacy of the Tokyo Trial is the debate that has ensued over the collective memory of injustice, including critiques of “victor’s justice”, as well as the failure of the Tribunal to adequately prosecute crimes such as the vivisection of prisoners, biological warfare and the systematic sexual enslavement of the so-called “comfort women”.

In this article, I argue that the proceedings and judgment of the Tokyo Trial have been frequently deployed to both confirm and deny the plight of the comfort women, particularly among revisionists and victim advocates The article illustrates not only the power of law to dictate how and what past events will be remembered, but also the transformative power of law as a site of memory contestation. As such, I argue that the “selective memory” of historical war crimes trials can be both an injustice and a collective memory of the past. Such legal memory is not stable and settled, but shifts and changes shape over the passage of time.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2013.771770
29
Transnational solidarity
Women's Studies
Herr, Ranjoo Seodu
2016
Can Transnational Feminist Solidarity Accommodate Nationalism? Reflections from the Case Study of Korean “Comfort Women”
Hypatia31(1)41-57
This article aims to refute the “incompatibility thesis” that nationalism is incompatible with transnational feminist solidarity, as it fosters exclusionary practices, xenophobia, and racism among feminists with conflicting nationalist aspirations. I examine the plausibility of the incompatibility thesis by focusing on the controversy regarding just reparation for Second World War “comfort women,” which is still unresolved. The Korean Council at the center of this controversy, which advocates for the rights of Korean former comfort women, has been criticized for its strident nationalism and held responsible for the stalemate. Consequently, the case of comfort women has been thought to exemplify the incompatibility thesis. I argue against this common feminist perception in three ways: first, those who subscribe to the incompatibility thesis have misinterpreted facts surrounding the issue; second, the Korean Council's nationalism is a version of “polycentric nationalism,” which avoids the problems of essentialist nationalism at the center of feminist concerns; and, third, transnational feminist solidarity is predicated on the idea of oppressed/marginalized women's epistemic privilege and enjoins that feminists respect oppressed/marginalized women's epistemic privilege. To the extent that oppressed/marginalized women's voices are expressed in nationalist terms, I argue that feminists committed to transnational feminist solidarity must accommodate their nationalism.
https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12213
30
Movement for Justice
Social Sciences
Hirofumi, Hayashi
2010
The Japanese Movement to Protest Wartime Sexual Violence: A Survey of Japanese and International Literature
Critical Asian Studies
33(4)572-580
https://doi.org/10.1080/146727101760107433
31
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
History
Hong, Yunshin; Ichiro, Tomiyama
2022
When Violence is No Longer Just Somebody Else’s Pain: Reading Hong Yunshin’s “Comfort Stations” as Remembered by Okinawans During World War II
The Asia-Pacific Journal
20(1)1-27.
“comfort stations” (ianjo), “comfort women” (ianfu), redress movement, military sexual violence, politics of death (necropolitics), Japanese military occupation of Okinawa, the Battle of Okinawa, U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, U.S. military bases in Okinawa, Japan’s postwar culture of historical denial, postcolonial memory, modern sovereignty and the nation state, colonial and neocolonial foreclosure (“exceptionalization”), Inner Japan and Outer Japan, internal colonies, alegality, presentiments of death, the encoding of racial and sexual bias, the violence of everyday life, an experiential epistemology of war, sites of remembrance and resistance, relational spaces, Okinawa’s “new communal”
This review plumbs the deep narrative structure of Hong Yunshin’s “Comfort Stations” as Remembered by Okinawans during World War II (Brill, 2020). It begins by situating her work in the historical tensions between Okinawa and mainland Japan as viewed through their disparate responses to the “comfort women” issue. Hong’s discussion of military “comfort stations” during the Battle of Okinawa focuses not on the sexually enslaved, but on the collateral trauma of Okinawans who witnessed that violence in their daily lives. Tomiyama hightlights the author’s emphasis on the postwar ressurection and reworking of battlefield memories, which today have become productive sites of remembrance and resistance. He joins Hong in noting that the memory work of war survivors is part of an ensemble of collective postcolonial practices that are shaping a self-reflective and distinctively Okinawan consciousness. This process of discovery, Tomiyama writes, challenges the territorial and ethno-nationalist assumptions of the contemporary Japanese state.
https://apjjf.org/2022/9/Tomiyama.html
32
Legal activismLawHsu, Yvonne Park1993
"Comfort Women" from Korea: Japan's World War II Sex Slaves and the Legitimacy of Their Claims for Reparations
Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal
2(1)97-129
During World War II, Japan forced 100,000 to 200,000.women from all over Asia into prostitution to satisfy the sexual cravings of Japanese soldiers. These women thus forced into prostitution were euphemistically called "comfort women". In December 1991, three former Korean comfort women filed suit in the Tokyo District Court, seeking damages for their sufferings. From both legal and moral perspectives, Japan needs to make reparations for violations of these women's fundamental human rights. By meeting the obligations arising from its past abuses of human rights, Japan will take a significant step toward preventing its militant past from re-occurring, fostering protection of human rights in the future and building trust among its neighboring countries.
https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol2/iss1/7
33
Legal activismLawIida, Keisuke2004
Human Rights and Sexual Abuse: The Impact of International Human Rights Law on Japan
Human Rights Quarterly
26(2)428-453
This article examines three major recent human rights issues in Japan relating to sexual behavior, and the measures taken to remedy them. It finds that although international human rights law and norms played a major role in each of these episodes, the influence of international law has been uneven. To explain this variation, the article focuses on the domestic balance of power in Japan and identifies three significant factors: (1) shared common interests between pro-human rights constituencies and their political opponents; (2) consensual decisionmaking; and (3) transnational coalition-building through international conferences.
https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2004.0022
34
Japanese Government's Stance
CommunicationsIzumi, Mariko2016
Asian-Japanese: State Apology, National Ethos, and the “Comfort Women” Reparations Debate in Japan
Communication Studies
62(5)473-490
Apology, Comfort Women, Ethos, Reconciliation, Reparations, Debate, Rhetoric of Responsibility
Recent scholarship on apology has shifted its critical emphasis from the juridical use of apol-
ogy as a means of self-defense to the moral value of apology as integral to specific reconcili-
ation processes. This article examines the ‘‘comfort women’’ reparations debate in Japan in
the 1990s as symptomatic of this change in how we think about apology and reparations. It
illustrates how ‘‘comfort women’’ reparation lawsuits disrupted the symbolic economy of
political apology in an inter-Asian political context and, thus, transformed the rhetorical
force of apology from a past-oriented to a future-oriented technology of care.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2011.588299
35
Memory Institutions
Humanities
Joo, Hee-Jung Serenity
2015
Comfort Women in Human Rights Discourse: Fetishized Testimonies, Small Museums, and the Politics of Thin Description.
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies
37(2-3)166-183
https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2015.1028836
36
Sexual violence in conflict & sexual exploitation
Women's StudiesKazue, Muta2016
The ‘comfort women’ issue and the embedded culture of sexual violence in contemporary Japan
Current Sociology
64(4)620-636
Bifurcation of women, comfort women, Japan, misogyny, sexual violence
For over two decades, survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery during the Asia-Pacific War, euphemistically called ‘comfort women’ (ianfu), have been demanding the Japanese government take responsibility for past atrocities to restore their dignity. They have yet to obtain a satisfactory response; indeed, their demands have frequently been met with verbal attacks from the right-wing, including influential politicians. This article seeks to identify and explain some of the reasons why the problem has remained a highly controversial, but stubbornly unresolved issue. It begins by offering a brief history of the issue and then maps out the contemporary controversy. It shows that right-wing attacks should be understood as stemming from a systemic and deeply embedded bifurcation of women in Japanese society that allows the adoration of some women to comfortably coexist with misogyny, powerful rape myths, and a porn culture. These deeply permeate many areas of society, including its courts.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392116640475
37
Legal activismLaw
Kim, Chin; Kim, Stanley S
1998
Delayed Justice: The Case of the Japanese Imperial Military Sex Slaves
UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal
16(2)263-280
http://doi.org/10.5070/P8162022114
38
Movement for Justice
Political ScienceKim, Hee Kang2012
The Comfort Women System and Women's International Human Rights
Korea Observer43(2)175-208
The primary objective of this paper is to revisit the women’s international human rights discourse in an effort to present positive insights into a feminist reconceptualization of human rights. For this purpose,I examine the Final Judgment of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal for the Trial of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery (hereinafter the Tribunal) and assess the Tribunal’s rationale in defining the comfort system as wartime sexual violence. I argue that the Tribunal’s determination that the comfort system constituted wartime sexual violence falls short of addressing the full scope of the injustice of the comfort system that was constructed, operated,and maintained under the oppressive structures of patriarchy, colonialism,and imperialism and their interactions. I therefore conclude that the women’s international human rights discourse should seriously consider the structural oppression from which individual women suffer and that a feminist reconceptualization of human rights should encompass the injustice of these structures.
https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001674829
39
Statue of PeaceSocial SciencesKim, Joohee2020
Going transnational? A feminist view of “comfort women” memorials
Asian Journal of Women's Studies
26(3)397-409
Sonyeosang; comfort women memorials; transnational memory activism; Pax Americana; Kim Hak-sun
Sonyeosang (“comfort women” memorials) have become symbols of the memory war between Korea and Japan. Amidst heated nationalistic competition, the main battleground of this memory war is the U.S. This study observes how Kim Hak-sun, a victim of military sexual slavery by Japan, decided to speak out after meeting an atomic bomb victim in 1991. Focusing on this meeting, I argue that the amnesia in East Asia regarding comfort women should be seen as a result of a systematic plan to build Pax Americana. Rather than complacently celebrating the Sonyeosang installation movement, which is now taking place actively across the world as a form of transnational memory activism, we should continue to call for a radical and active critique of the huge paradox of the East Asian peace regime that led to amnesia.
https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2020.1808287
40
Statue of PeaceSociologyKim, Mikyoung2014
Memorializing Comfort Women: Memory and Human Rights in Korea-Japan Relations
Asian Politics & Policy
6(1)83-96
comfort women, human rights, Korea-Japan, monuments, mnemonic reconciliation
Current paradigms of human rights and reconciliation call for democratization of memories, with former victims interjecting their interpretations of the past, challenging the versions recollected by the powerful. The trajectory of comfort women issues has implications not only for the Japanese democracy, but also for Korea. The shifts in memory are about respect for human rights and the beginning of a reconciliatory journey between former adversaries. Reconciliation involves multiple stages of self-reflexivity, acknowledgement, redistributive justice, corrective mechanisms, and a final movement of forgiving. In order to transcend the counterproductive blame games, memory, human rights, and reconciliation need to be interwoven. The rising global awareness of human rights helps to highlight the accountability of the individual, once largely overshadowed by groups, with political leaders, and nation-states. Memories are no longer confined within national borders. As the comfort women monuments in Korea and the United States suggest, they become increasingly transnational and even global.
https://doi.org/10.1111/aspp.12089
41
Movement for Justice
GeographyKim, Min Ji2019
Reparations for "Comfort Women": Feminist Geopolitics and Changing Gender Ideologies in South Korea
The Cornell International Affairs Review
85-43
This paper studies feminist geopolitical practices in South Korea in the context of “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese military around the Second World War. Although there has been a considerable amount of literature penned on the comfort women issue, existing discussions focus largely on the conflict between nationalist and feminist paradigms, while largely minimizing feminist activism and changing gender narratives within Korean society. Therefore, this research aims to expand the field by considering the struggles that comfort women have endured through the lens of feminist geopolitical scholarship. I argue that comfort women activism constitutes a form of feminist geopolitical practice in a way that challenges masculine gender narratives. It has opened up new spaces where comfort women survivors can produce a sense of “survivorhood” and move beyond passivity throughout their lives. The rise of their active voices signals the overturning of traditional patriarchal structures; consequently, along with other forms of activism, these narratives have eventually led to a shift in public attitudes. Unlike how nationalist accounts were dominant in the early 1990s, the increased public attention towards the feminist accounts in the mid-2010s has subsequently increased media coverage of survivors and feminist practices.
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10115479/1/CIAR_12_2_3.pdf
42
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Social SciencesKim, Min Young; Chang, Edward Taehan
Korean Forced Laborers and Women Used as “Sex Slaves” During World War II: Transported by Japan's Merchant Ships
Amerasia Journal29(3)99-110
https://doi.org/10.17953/amer.29.3.q1l8u18028370q23
43
Victim-Survivors' Testimonies
Social Sciences
Kim-Gibson, Dai Sil
1997
They Are Our Grandmas
positions: east asia cultures critique
5(1)255-275
https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-5-1-255
44
Victim-Survivors' Testimonies
Women's StudiesKimura, Maki2003
Listening to Voices: Testimonies of "Comfort Women" of the Second World War
London School of Economics, Gender Institute New Working Paper Series1-31.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/gender/assets/documents/research/working-papers/LISTENING-TO-VOICES.pdf
45
2015 "comfort women" agreement
Law
Knop, Karen; Riles, Annelise
2017
Space, Time, and Historical Injustice: A Feminist Conflict-of-Laws Approach to the Comfort Women Agreement
Cornell Law Review
102853-928
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol102/iss4/1
46
Japanese Government's Stance
Political ScienceKu, Yangmo2015
National Interest or Transnational Alliances? Japanese Policy on the Comfort Women Issue
Journal of East Asian Studies
15(2)243-269
When and why does a perpetrator state take a contrite stance on its past wrongs? More specifically, why do Japanese behaviors differ over time in addressing apology and compensation with regard to the comfort women issue? In this article I address these questions by testing two hypotheses, utilizing an instrumentalist approach and a transnational-political activism model. The former posits a perpetrator state is more likely to take a contrite stance on its past misdeeds when it calculates such action is in its security and/or economic interests. The latter hypothesizes that when transnational activism is powerful and a perpetrator state is led by a progressive ruling coalition, the state is more likely to adopt conciliatory policies toward historical issues. I find that the transnational-political activism model possesses more explanatory power than instrumentalism for within-case variations in Japanese behavior toward the comfort women issue. The two approaches are not, however, mutually exclusive and are complementary in some regards. The effect of transnational activism is heightened when the target state is faced with other geopolitical incentives and/or when the target state is led by a progressive ruling coalition and has weak conservative reaction.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S159824080000936X
47
Statue of PeaceHumanities
Kwon, Vicki Sung-yeon
2019
The Sony ̆osang Phenomenon: Nationalism and Feminism Surrounding the “Comfort Women” Statue
Korean Studies436-39
“comfort women”, statue of the “comfort women”, Sonyo ̆sang, Korean nationalism, feminism, military sexual slavery
This paper explores the cultural and social phenomenon surrounding Sonyo ̆sang, a bronze statue symbolizing the so-called “comfort women”—young women who were drafted for military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Fifteen Years War (1931–1945). After the 2015 agreement between South Korea and Japan over the issue of the “comfort women,” Sonyo ̆sang has developed into the Sonyo ̆sang phenomenon: voluntary citizen activism involving protecting the statue from being removed and installing replicas and variations of the statue in South Korea and abroad. Using the methods of art history and visual culture studies, the paper analyzes Sonyo ̆sang and the Sonyo ̆sang phenomenon in relation to the anti-colonial, patriarchal nationalism, and feminism that had reemerged in South Korea by 2015, examining how these discourses generate active interaction and participation with the statue from the viewers. It also discusses how these discourses either perpetuate the image of the “comfort women” as frail victims or, instead, transform it into one of empowered activists, generating solidarity among emancipated spectators and the subalterns of power.
https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2019.0006
48
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Medical Sciences
Lee, Jeewon; Kwak, Young-Sook; Kim, Yoon-Jung; Kim, Eun-ji; Park, E Jin; Shin, Yunmi; Lee, Bun-Hee; Lee, So Hee; Jung, Hee Yeon; Lee, Inseon; Hwang, Jung Im; Kim, Dongsik; Lee, Soyoung Irene
2018
Psychiatric Sequelae of Former “Comfort Women,” Survivors of the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery during World War II
Psychiatry Investigation
15(4)336-343
Comfort women, Japanese military sexual slavery, Psychiatric sequelae, Posttraumatic stress disorder.
“Comfort women” refers to young women and girls who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese military during World War II. They were abducted from their homes in countries under Imperial Japanese rule, mostly from Korea, and the rest from China, Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Netherlands, etc. “Comfort women” endured extreme trauma involving rape, sexual torture, physical abuse, starvation, threats of death, and witnessed many others being tortured and killed. This article reviews all the studies that have investigated the psychiatric or psychosocial sequelae of the survivors of the Japanese military sexual slavery. Most importantly, a re- cent study which conducted a psychiatric evaluation on the former “comfort women” currently alive in South Korea is introduced. The par- ticipants’ unmarried rate was relatively high and their total fertility rate was relatively low. Majority of the participants reported having no education and being the low economic status. They showed high current and lifetime prevalence of posttraumatic disorder, major depres- sive disorder, somatic symptom disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and alcohol use disorder. Participants showed high suicid- ality and majority of the participants still reported being ashamed of being former “comfort women” after all these years. This article high- lights the fact that the trauma has affected the mental health and social functioning of former “comfort women” throughout their lives, and even to the present day.
https://doi.org/10.30773/pi.2017.11.08.2
49
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Medical Sciences
Lee, Jeewon; Kwak, Young-Sook; Kim, Yoon-Jung; Kim, Eun-ji; Park, E Jin; Shin, Yunmi; Lee, Bun-Hee; Lee, So Hee; Jung, Hee Yeon; Lee, Inseon; Hwang, Jung Im; Kim, Dongsik; Lee, Soyoung Irene
2019
Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: Psychiatric Evaluation of Offspring of Former “Comfort Women,” Survivors of the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery during World War II
Psychiatry Investigation
16(3)249-253
Comfort women, Second generation, Transgenerational transmission of trauma
“Comfort women” are survivors of sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, who endured extensive trauma in- cluding massive rape and physical torture. While previous studies have been focused on the trauma of the survivors themselves, the effects of the trauma on the offspring has never been evaluated before. In this article, we reviewed the first study on the offspring of former “com- fort women” and aimed to detect the evidence of transgenerational transmission of trauma. In-depth psychiatric interviews and the Struc- tured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Axis I Disorders were conducted with six offspring of former “comfort women.” Among the six partic- ipants, five suffered from at least one psychiatric disorder including major depressive disorder, panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, adjustment disorder, insomnia disorder, somatic symptom disorder, and alcohol use disorder. Participants showed similar shame and hy- perarousal symptoms as their mothers regarding stimuli related to the “comfort woman” issue. Increased irritability, problems with aggres- sion control, negative worldview, and low self-esteem were evident in the children of mothers with posttraumatic stress disorder. Finding evidence of transgenerational transmission of trauma in offspring of “comfort women” is important. Future studies should include more samples and adopt a more objective method.
https://doi.org/10.30773/pi.2019.01.21
50
Literature & ArtsHumanitiesLee, Kun Jong2004
Princess Pari in Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman
positions: east asia cultures critique
12(2)431-456
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/171784/summary
51
Movement for Justice
Women's StudiesLee, Na-Young2014
The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military “Comfort Women”: Navigating between Nationalism and Feminism
The Review of Korean Studies
17(1)71-92
Japanese military comfort women, women’s movement, feminism, nationalism
The purpose of this study is to explore the multifaceted aspects of the Korean women’s movement of Japanese military “comfort women” from a postcolonial feminist perspective. Based on ethnographic research, over ten years of participant observation as an insider-outsider of the movement, and in-depth interviews, this paper analyzes the ways in which the movement’s activism and its dominant principles shifted within the context of an expanding political space brought on by ongoing negotiations and/or conflict with legacies of Imperial Japan and androcentric nationalism. From the outset, the “comfort women” movement questioned the colonial legacies and androcentric nationalism that doubly oppress colonized women. It has problematized the way in which the elision of “I” represented in repetitive national narratives, actually insists that subaltern “comfort women” cannot speak for themselves. I argue that the most important movement contribution is to lead “comfort women” to speaking out, which exposes the impossibility of nationalism without competitive performativity. Therefore, what we need to do, rather than insisting that the movement is a simple “nationalist one,” is to take responsibility to produce a new space that can offer insight about our past in the present with a transformative recognition of “comfort women.”
https://rks.accesson.kr/assets/pdf/7761/journal-17-1-71.pdf
52
Movement for Justice
Women's StudiesLee, Na-Young2021
Challenging the Global Human Rights Regime: Transnational Significance of the "Comfort Women" Redress Movement
Journal of Asian American Studies
24(3)417-441
“comfort women” redress movement, transnational feminism, global human rights regime, UN commission on human rights, Japan’s military sexual slavery system
The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of the move- ment to challenge the Japanese military system of sexual slavery as a transnational women’s movement. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which the process came to resonate with global human rights regimes. Combining oral history interviews with archival research and participant observation, I locate the ways in which the human rights framework of the international community, including the UN, has been changing through the varied forms of women’s solidarity. I argue that, for around 30 years, the interplay between activists and victim-survivors played a pivotal role in constituting the global norms of women’s rights through various international solidarity activities starting in the early 1990s. Due to this non-Western women’s movement to debunk the local/global framework, the UN bodies relat- ing to women’s issues could address the “comfort women” issue as a global issue.
https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2021.0034
53
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
History
Lee, SinCheol; Han, Hye-in
2015
Comfort Women: A Focus on Recent Findings from Korea and China
Asian Journal of Women's Studies
21(1)40-64
Until recently, the most important investigation on the issues of the “comfort women” was carried out by the Japanese government in the early 1990s. In the meantime, data from the Government-General of Korea (1910-1945) were never comprehensively investigated. As for the comfort women-related data from occupied China, even access to these has been difficult. To overcome this situation, a group of researchers that included us, recently formed a research team and began investigating data at the National Archives of Korea, the Shanghai Municipal Archives and Nanjing Municipal Archives, in China. This paper analyzes the significance of the new findings we made at these archives. Compared to the documents found by the Japanese investigation in the 1990s, our findings, in China in particular, give much more detailed information about the wartime recruitment and operation of “comfort women” and the military comfort stations.
https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2015.1029229
54
Japanese Government's Stance
LawLee, Sue R2003
Comforting the Comfort Women: Who Can Make Japan Pay
University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economics Law
24(2)509-547
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1256&context=jil
55
History Denialism & Distortion
Law
Lee, Yong-Shik; Saito, Natsu Taylor; Todres, Jonathan
2021
The Fallacy of Contract in Sexual Slavery: A Response to Ramseyer's "Contracting for Sex in the Pacifific War"
Michigan Journal of International Law
42(2)291-319
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2108&context=mjil
56
History Denialism & Distortion
LawLee, Yong-Shik2022
On Ramseyer’s Response to the Critics of “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War”
Law and Development Review
15(1)201-214
comfort women; sexual slavery; human rights; war crime; game theory
A controversial paper by Ramseyer, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” which argued that the victims of sexual slavery (“the comfort women”) perpetrated by the Japanese military during World War II were voluntary prostitutes under contract, has raised substantial controversy around the world. This argument has provoked a public outcry, and thousands of scholars, including Nobel laureates, have criticized this paper and denounced it. Ramseyer has subsequently published a response to these critics in a non peer-reviewed, publicly accessible paper series disseminated by the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard University. His response does not remedy fundamental flaws and inaccuracies in his original paper. This essay discusses these flaws and inaccuracies and also points out the problematic manner in which the author mischaracterizes and omits key materials, misleading readers. The war may have ended several decades ago, but its trauma continues today, exacerbated by the troubling denials of the atrocities.
https://doi.org/10.1515/ldr-2022-0004
57
2000 Women's International War Crimes Tribunal
Women's StudiesLévy, Christine2014
The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal, Tokyo 2000: a feminist response to revisionism?
Clio39125-145
Ianfu, ianjo, Comfort Women, Women’s international Tribunal, Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, historical revisionism (negationism), Asian Women’s Fund, Women’s Active Museum
The article examines the emergence in the 1990s of the issue of “Comfort women” and the conditions that led to the holding of The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal for the Trial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery. It argues that it was a response both to victims’ needs and to the prevailing revisionism concerning the violence committed during the Asian-Pacific war by the Japanese army, which had been the subject of the Tokyo war crimes trials of 1946-1948. The women’s tribunal represents a significant moment in the recognition and condemnation of the specific violence perpetrated against women in wartime and during armed conflicts: it is both the result of of new paradigms in women’s history and oral history, and the starting point for active support for women victims of violence.
http://journals.openedition.org/cliowgh/508
58
Movement for Justice
Women's Studies
Mackie, Vera; Crozier-De Rosa, Sharon
2019Remembering the Grandmothers: The International Movement to Commemorate the Survivors of Militarized Sexual Abuse in the Asia-Pacific War17(4)1-25.
https://apjjf.org/-Vera-Mackie--Sharon-Crozier-De-Rosa/5248/article.pdf
59
2000 Women's International War Crimes Tribunal
Women's StudiesMatsui, Yayori2001
Women’s international war crimes tribunal on Japan’s military sexual slavery: Memory, identity, and society
East Asia19119-142
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-001-0020-2
60
Statue of PeacePolitical Science
McCarthy, Mary M; Hasunuma, Linda C
2018
Coalition building and mobilization: case studies of the comfort women memorials in the United States
Politics, Groups, and Identities
6(3)411-434
Diaspora politics, coalition building, and the gender rights movement have come together to bring about the unexpected: the public memorialization in the United States of “comfort women,” young women from across Asia forced to provide sexual services to the Japanese Imperial Army during the 1930s and 1940s. In this article, we explore how local politics in the United States became the site of competing narratives over the comfort women, and debates over erecting memorials or statues in honor of these women on public land. Our analysis builds on the existing literature on the role of diaspora in international and local politics but also adds the important dimension of changing gender norms. Through case studies, we explore the dynamics behind the success or failure of the siting of a monument and the important role of activists and local politicians in mobilizing support throughout the process. Using a qualitative approach based on fieldwork and interviews, we highlight the size and trends of the ethnic Korean population, the relative strengths of supporting and opposing coalitions, and the use of the strategy of universalism in determining whether or not the goal of siting a memorial in honor of the comfort women is achieved.
https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2018.1491865
61
History Denialism & Distortion
Social Sciences
McCormack, Gavan
1998
The Japanese Movement to "Correct" History
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
30(2)16-23
Why is it that in Japan the question ofwar responsibility seems to have become more acute u time passes? Followingthe end ofthe coldwarglobally andofLiberalDemocraticPartyhegemonyinthe Diet domestically, a particularly sharp debate ensued in the media, Diet, courts, and in the national community in general As the 1995 commemoration of the fiftieth annivenary of the war approached, a national consensus in favor of apology, admission of the aggressive and colonial character of the war, and compensation to the victims, gradually took shape. In reaction. a counterforce, repudiating apology and reconciUation and insisting on the absolute purity of the national cause, abo emerged. The treatment of the wartime "comfort women" issue becamecentral This paperconsiden considenthe evolutionofthe LiberalViewofHistoryStudyGroup and the Society for the Making ofNew School Textbooks in History. What does it mean that these groups represent themselves as "Uberal" and what support do they enjoy? The paper concludes that the movement these organizations represent may be intenectually incoherent, but it possesses a considerable emotional force u the voice of a repressed nationalism, and u such deserves close attention
https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.1998.10411039
62
Legal activismLaw
McDougall, Gay J.
2013
Addressing State Responsibility for the Crime of Military Sexual Slavery during the Second World War: Further Attempts for Justice for the "Comfort Women"
The Korean Journal of International and Comparative Law
1(2)137-165
comfort women; sexual slavery; rape; World War II
Between 1932 and the end of the Second World War, the Japanese Government and the Japanese Imperial Army forced over 200,000 women into sexual slavery in rape centres throughout Asia. The majority of the victims were from Korea, but many were also taken from China, Indonesia, the Philippines and other Asian countries under Japanese control.

There has been no real redress for these injustices: no prosecutions of guilty perpetrators, no acceptance of full legal responsibility by the Government of Japan, and no compensation paid to the surviving victims. The present paper focuses primarily on the issue of state responsibility and the situation of the Korean survivors. The study concludes that Japan has a continuing legal liability for grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law, violations that amount in their totality to crimes against humanity. The study establishes, contrary to Japanese Government arguments, that (a) the crime of slavery accurately describes the system established by the rape centres and that the prohibition against slavery clearly existed as a customary norm under international law at the time of the Second World War; (b) that acts of rape in armed conflict were clearly prohibited by the Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention No. IV of 1907 and by customary norms of international law in force at the time of the Second World War; (c) that the laws of war applied to conduct committed by the Japanese military against nationals of an occupied state, Korea; and (d) that because these are crimes against humanity, no statute of limitations would limit current-day civil or criminal cases concerning the Second World War rape centres.

The paper also refutes the argument that any individual claims that these women may have had for compensation were fully satisfied by peace treaties and international agreements between Japan and other Asian States following the end of the Second World War.
https://doi.org/10.1163/22134484-12340018
63
Movement for Justice
Women's Studies
McGregor, Katharine
2016
Emotions and activism for former so-called “comfort women” of the Japanese Occupation of the Netherlands East Indies
Women's Studies International Forum
5467-78
This paper begins to chart the history of the understudied topic of Indonesian activism for the so called ‘comfort women’ of the Japanese military from World War Two. It asks how and why activists in the specific historical context of New Order Indonesia, the cultural context of Indonesia, the global rise in human rights claims and a new openness to war redress in Japan were variously constrained and enabled in their advocacy. Drawing on recent research into the history of emotions and social movements the paper analyses how and why Indonesian activists appealed to certain emotions to gain support within Indonesia and Japan for compensation. A focus on emotions and the political and cultural contexts surrounding early Indonesian activism allows us to better understand the local framing, reception and outcomes of this global protest movement in Indonesia.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.11.002
64
Literature & ArtsWomen's Studies
McGregor, Katharine; Mackie, Vera
2018
Transcultural Memory and the Troostmeisjes/Comfort Women Photographic Project
History and Memory: studies in representation of the past
30(1)116-150
In 2008 and 2009, a Dutch photographer, Jan Banning, and an anthropologist, Hilde Janssen, traveled around Indonesia to document, with photographs and testimonies, survivors of militarized sexual abuse by the Japanese military during the three-year occupation (1942-1945) of the former Dutch colony, the Netherlands East Indies. We argue that the resultant photographic project can best be understood within the framework of the "politics of pity" and the associated genres of representation. The project creators anticipated a cosmopolitan audience that might be moved to action to support the survivors. Yet, as the project was exhibited in different sites, the women's memories were interpreted through local knowledge systems and mnemonic practices. We analyze the reception of these photographs in diverse local contexts.
https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4481&context=lhapapers
65
Movement for Justice
Social Sciences
Mendoza, Katharina R
2003
Freeing the ‘Slaves of Destiny’: TheLolas of the Filipino Comfort Women Movement
Cultural Dynamics
15(3)247-266
The Japanese Imperial Army’s comfort system differs from other forms of wartime sexual violence in that it was a disciplinary institution that used sex not as a weapon of aggression but as a means to discipline soldiers into being more efficient tools for Japan’s imperial project. The Philippine comfort women movement employs discursive strategies that respond directly to the gender and race ideologies underlying imperial Japan’s practice of military sexual slavery during the Pacific War. As it seeks reparations for those wartime atrocities, the movement makes appeals to traditional notions of family and Filipino womanhood, a strategy that has done much to create awareness of and public support for comfort station survivors. However, these discourses carry within them the potential to reinscribe those very same patriarchal ideologies that made institutionalized rape possible.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740030153002
66
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
SociologyMin, Pyong Gap2003
Korean “Comfort Women”: The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender, and Class
Gender & Society17(6)938-957
sexual violence against women, colonial power, gender, class
During the Asian and Pacific War (1937-45), the Japanese government mobilized approximately 200,000 Asian women to military brothels to sexually serve Japanese soldiers. The majority of these victims were unmarried young women from Korea, Japan’s colony at that time. In the early 1990s, Korean feminist leaders helped more than 200 Korean survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery to come forward to tell the truth, which has further accelerated the redress movement for the women. One major issue in the redress movement and research relating to the so-called “comfort women” issue is whether Japan’s colonization of Korea or gender hierarchy was a more fundamental cause of the Korean women’s suffering. Using an intersectional perspective, this article analyzes how colonial power, gender hierarchy, and class were inseparably tied together to make the victims’ lives miserable. By doing so, it shows that a one-sided emphasis on colonization or gender hierarchy will misrepresent the feminist political issue and misinterpret the “comfort women’s” experiences.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243203257584
67
History Denialism & Distortion; History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Sociology
Min, Pyong Gap; Lee, Hyeonji
2018
The Public Knowledge of the Jeongsindae as Forcefully Mobilized “Comfort Women” in Korea
The Review of Korean Studies
21(1)141-169
https://www-dbpia-co-kr.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/journal/articleDetail?nodeId=NODE09373066
68
Statue of Peace, History Denialism & Distortion
Social Sciences
Mladenova, Dorothea
2022
The Statue of Peace in Berlin: How the Nationalist Reading of Japan’s Wartime “Comfort Women” Backfired
The Asia-Pacific Journal
20(4)1-28.
Comfort women, sexual violence, feminism, patriarchy, pornography, sex industry
In September 2020 a Statue of Peace was installed in the German capital Berlin. The Japanese government attempted to prevent the installation of the statue, but in the end, it was allowed to remain. Based on participant observation and interviews, this article introduces the background and motives of the coalition of civic groups that installed the statue, how they frame the statue’s meaning, and how the statue has acquired new meanings through unplanned interactions with the local population in Berlin. Summarizing the events related to the installation of the statue, this article examines how the conflict between a national and a transnational understanding of the “comfort women” experience played out in Berlin.
https://apjjf.org/2022/4/Mladenova.html
69
Movement for Justice
Political Science
Moon, Katharine H. S.
1999
South Korean Movements against Militarized Sexual Labor
Asian Survey39(2)310-327“comfort women,” Statue of Peace, transnational feminism, Germany, Japan
https://doi.org/10.2307/2645457
70
Sexual violence in conflict & sexual exploitation
Women's StudiesMorita, Seiya2021
Sexual Violence in Wartime and Peacetime: Violence Against Women in the 20st Century
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-16.
In this article, translated and abridged (with an introduction) by Caroline Norma, Morita advances a view of the “comfort women” system not simply as an isolated war crime, but as an extreme symptom of institutionalised, pervasive and persistent violence against women that extends to peacetime as well as wartime. Norma argues that Morita’s paper, first published in 1999, prefigures a “feminist turn” in interpretation of the comfort women system that has more recently been embraced by Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Kim Puja and other scholars and activists. Both Norma and Morita argue that the comfort women system can only be understood in the context of ingrained societal attitudes towards women, and that it is therefore closely related to phenomena such as pornography and the commercial sex industry. For both scholars, campaigning for recognition of wrongs committed against comfort women in the past is thus intimately linked to efforts to abolish institutionalised violence and discrimination against women in the present.
https://apjjf.org/2021/5/Morita-Norma.html
71
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
History
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa
2015
You Don't Want to Know About the Girls? The 'Comfort Women', the Japanese Military and Allied Forces in the Asia-Pacific War
The Asia-Pacific Journal
31(1)1-21.
https://apjjf.org/2015/13/31/Tessa-Morris-Suzuki/4352.html
72
History Denialism & Distortion
History
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa
2021
The ‘Comfort Women’ Issue, Freedom of Speech, and Academic Integrity: A Study Aid
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-11.
In December 2020, an article by J. Mark Ramseyer of Harvard University about the so-called ‘comfort women’ issue was published in the International Review of Law and Economics. This article caused widespread controversy amongst scholars, many of whom responded with serious criticisms of its content. On the other hand, some commentators argued that Ramseyer’s critics were seeking to suppress his right to express controversial opinions. In the past few years, there has been widespread international debate both about the protection of free speech and about problems of assessing the quality of knowledge and distinguishing well-founded information from ‘fake news’. Against that background, this study aid aims to encourage debate about ways to maintain research integrity while protecting free speech, and uses the example of the Ramseyer article to provide illustrative material. This is the first in a series of responses on the “comfort women” issue prompted by the Ramseyer article.
https://apjjf.org/2021/5/MorrisSuzuki.html
73
Japanese Government's Stance
Political Science
Motoyama, Hisako
2018
Formulating Japan’s UNSCR 1325 national action plan and forgetting the “comfort women”
International Feminist Journal of Politics
20(1)39-53
Security Council Resolution 1325, Women, Peace and Security, military sexual violence, imperialism, militarization
In September 2015, the Japanese government announced its first national action plan (NAP) to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325, just ten days after forcefully legislating controversial security bills that would effectively lift the constitutional restrictions on overseas exercise of military force. Why did the conservative administration embrace Resolution 1325 while propelling militarization? This paper examines the formulation process of Japan’s NAP, focusing on gendered struggle over remilitarization and war memory, especially that of the “comfort women,” or Japanese imperial military sexual slavery during World War II. I will examine how post–Cold War remilitarization in Japan was closely intertwined with the struggle over war memory and the gender order of the nation, and how the conservative administration embraced international gender equality norms in an attempt to identify itself as a powerful liberal democracy engaged in maintaining the international security order, and to erase the memory of imperial military sexual violence in the past. By doing so, I attempt to critically reconsider the framework of the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda, which constructs powerful developed nations “not in conflict” as innocent supporters of women in conflict zones.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2017.1413582
74
Victim-Survivors' Testimonies
Geography
Myadar, Orhon; Davidson, Ronald A
2020
“Mom, I want to come home”: Geographies of compound displacement, T violence and longing
Geoforum10978-85
Gil Won-ok, Comfort women, Geographical self, Place and self, Gendered violence, Displacement
This article focuses on former “comfort woman” Gil Won-ok’s story to explore the dialectical relationship be- tween place and self, or what Edward Casey calls the “geographical self.” Gil was one of thousands of women who were used as sex slaves by the Imperial Army of Japan at “comfort stations” during World War II. Taken from her hometown of Pyongyang when she was fourteen years old, Gil endured years of compounding violence in displacement away from her family and homeland. Today, at age 92, Gil still does not know what happened to her family as the division of Korea prevented her from returning home, extending her displacement. Despite the scale and brutal nature of this state-sponsored violence against thousands of young women and girls, geographic scholarship is critically lacking in addressing this violence. We hope to fill this gap. Theoretically, the article contributes to the broader literature on the dyad of place and self, and we do so by broadening the discussion of the geographical self to better understand the violence of displacement and longing for one’s lost place. But most importantly this article would make a modest contribution of recognition to Gil’s long struggle and perseverance.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.01.009
75
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Geography
Myadar, Orhon; Davidson, Ronald A
2021
Remembering the ‘comfort women’: geographies of displacement, violence and memory in the Asia-Pacific and beyond
Gender, Place & Culture
28(3)347-369
comfort women', displacement, gendered violence, sexual slavery
The ‘comfort women’ system of the 1930s and 1940s, in which girls and women were coerced to serve as sex slaves for the Imperial Army of Japan, was one of the most systematic and institutionalized forms of violence against female bodies in contemporary world history. In spite of the unparalleled scale and systematic nature of the violence against thousands of women, the world knew little about this system until the 1980s when former ‘comfort women’ began to speak out. Geographic scholarship remains virtually nonexistent on the geographies of the displacement and violence experienced by these women and girls enslaved across Japan’s war fronts in Asia-Pacific regions. By calling our collective attention to this gross and gendered violence, this paper situates Japan’s ‘comfort women’ system in broader spatial and temporal contexts to illustrate the historical and ongoing subjugation of and violence against women, their bodies and sexuality. Using a feminist geopolitical framework, we problematize the nationalist and geopolitical framing of the legacy of ‘comfort women’ and memorial sites that are dedicated to them. Rather, we center our analysis on the embodied, intimate and lived sites of violence experienced by the women and girls under the ‘comfort women’ system.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2020.1715351
76
Sexual violence in conflict & sexual exploitation
Women's StudiesNorma, Caroline2019
The First #MeToo Activists: Contemporary Campaigning in Support of the Former Japanese Military “Comfort Women”
CrossCurrents69(4)439-461
https://doi.org/10.1111/cros.12409
77
Education & Curriculum
Education
Nurpratiwi, Hany; Joebagio, Hermanu; Suryani, Nunuk
2017
Jugun Ianfu: The Construction of Students’ Awareness on Gender
International Journal of Multicultural and Multireligious Understanding
4(1)8-15.
Jugun Ianfu; gender; sexual violence; learning; students
In 1993, the Minister of Social Affairs of the Republic Indonesia, Inten Suweno, issued a mandate to find the victims of Japanese colonialism. One of the Japanese colonialism victims was women who became Jugun Ianfu (comfort women). The practice of Jugun Ianfu in Indonesia was undercover, but it legalized by the Japanese colonial government with a reason to meet the sexual needs of Japanese army in their colonies. In Japanese colonialism era, women considered as the second line and their body was free to use for meeting the sexual desire. Even, many of Jugun Ianfu had physical injuries due to the cruelty of the Japanese army when having a sexual intercourse. The Jugun Ianfu should observe as a study on gender, especially in the educational field where the reproduction of knowledge happens. The lack of awareness in the students on the issue of gender equality brings about the reasons on the implementation of history learning using the sources of Jugun Ianfu. The students’ gender awareness built when they analyze the sources of Jugun Ianfu and write an essay in a gender perspective. The discourses constructed by the students on the history of Jugun Ianfu are different. There are considerations that the history of Jugun Ianfu is categorizes as a sexual violence, gender injustice and human rights violation.
http://jurusan.iain-tulungagung.ac.id/tadrisips/wp-content/uploads/sites/117/2019/01/The-Construction-of-Students’-Awareness-on-Gender.pdf
78
Legal activismLawOkada, Taihei1999
The "Comfort Women" Case: Judgment of April 27, 1998, Shimonoseki Branch, Yamaguchi Prefectural Court, Japan
Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal
8(1)63-108
This court hereby issues the following judgment on the Plaintiffs' claim for an official apology and compensation for "Comfort Women and female Teishintai forced laborers from the city of Pusan, and an official apology and compensation for all female Teishintai forced laborers and "Comfort Women," based on proceedings in this court concluding September 29, 1997.
https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol8/iss1/13
79
History Denialism & Distortion
HistoryOnozawa, Akane2022
Problems of J. Mark Ramseyer’s “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War”: On Japan’s Licensed Prostitution Contract System
The Asia-Pacific Journal
20(6)1-17.
This article offers a critical assessment of J. Mark Ramseyer’s analysis of the wartime Japanese military “comfort women” system, “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War,” Closely examining the Japanese sources that Ramseyer cites, it finds the article flawed in distorting the evidence and in confusing the prewar system of prostitution and the wartime system.
https://apjjf.org/2022/6/Akane-Matsugu.html
80
Sexual violence in conflict & sexual exploitation
Law
Oosterveld, Valerie
2004
Sexual Slavery and the International Criminal Court: Advancing International Law
Michigan Journal of International Law
25(3)605-651
https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol25/iss3/2
81
Media & Awareness
CommunicationsPak, Hyeong-Jun2016
News Reporting on Comfort Women: Framing, Frame Difference, and Frame Changing in Four South Korean and Japanese Newspapers
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
93(4)1006-1025
comfort women, framing, frame difference, frame changing
This article explored South Korean and Japanese newspaper reports on the “comfort women” who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1930s-1940s, to examine how print media have reproduced the reality of the issue. I conducted a quantitative frame analysis of the contents of news articles (N = 384) on the comfort women in four South Korean and Japanese newspapers. The frames of comfort women articles in all papers can be considered to be very stereotyped, because they have changed little according to the newspaper’s political position (conservative/liberal), attitude (anti-Japan/anti–South Korea), and nationality (South Korean/Japanese). When the relationship of South Korea and Japan has been combative, conflict and morality frames have been abundant. In contrast, when the relationship has been favorable, human interest frames have been ample.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699016644560
82
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Social Sciences
Park, Jee Hoon; Lee,
KyongWeon; Hand, Michelle D.; Anderson,
Keith A. & Schleitwiler, Tess
E.
2016
Korean Survivors of the Japanese “Comfort Women” System: Understanding the Lifelong Consequences of Early Life Trauma
Journal of Gerontological Social Work
59(4)332-348
Comfort women, life course perspective, sexual abuse, trafficking, trauma
Prior to and during World War II, thousands of girls and young women were abducted from Korea and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese government. Termed comfort women, these girls and young women suffered extreme sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and trauma. Research on this group is not well-developed and people know little of the impact of this early life trauma on the lives of these women who are now in later life. Using snowball sampling, 16 older adult survivors of the comfort women system participated in semistructured qualitative interviews. Thematic analysis was conducted to gain an understanding of the trauma that these women suffered and how it impacted their lives. Results revealed the depths of the abuse these women suffered, including repeated rapes, physical beatings, humiliation, forced surgery and sterilization, and social exclusion. These early traumatic experiences appeared to reverberate throughout their lives in their family relations, their inability to marry and to conceive children, and their emotional and physical well-being throughout the life course and into later life. The experiences of these survivors illustrate the lasting impact of early-life trauma and can guide interventions with current survivors of sexual abuse or trafficking.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01634372.2016.1204642
83
Movement for Justice
HumanitiesPark, Soyang2005
Silence, subaltern speech and the intellectual in South Korea: The politics of emergent speech in the case of former sexual slaves
Journal for Cultural Research
9(2)169-206
https://doi.org/10.1080/14797580500063580
84
Movement for Justice
Women's StudiesPark, You-me2010
Compensation to Fit the Crime: Conceptualizing a Just Paradigm of Reparation for Korean “Comfort Women”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
30(2)204-213
In this essay, I explore the difficulties of conceptualizing and implementing compensation for Korean comfort women by focusing on the problematic and anxious relationship between two concepts: women's “well-being/welfare” and “shame.” I investigate what these comfort women are imagined to be entitled to, and why, and how mobilization around the issue of comfort women not only was defined by the nascent women's movement in Korea but also delimited the configurations of those movements. In this effort, I identify women's “worth,” “subjecthood,” and “citizenship” as the main concepts around which many debates and controversies revolve. By focusing on the “special” nature not only of sexual crime but also of suffering as a result of it, I argue that genuine compensation for the victims of structural and catastrophic violence can be sought only when 1) one steps outside the framework of modesty, dignity, virtue, and shame, and 2) one approaches compensation as a form of punishment that fits the crime, rather than as sympathy payment. Further, the “crime” committed against these women has to include not only the sexual violations perpetrated during their confinement in comfort stations but also the patriarchal, colonial, and militaristic devaluation and dehumanization inflicted on them before, during, and after that period that provides the context for the crime.
https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-2010-005
85
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
HumanitiesPilzer, Joshua D2003
Singing in the Life of Grandmother Choe, a Survivor of japanese Military Sexual Slavery
동양음악25167-188
https://hdl.handle.net/10371/87867
86
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
HumanitiesPilzer, Joshua D2014
Music and Dance in the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” System: A Case Study in the Performing Arts, War, and Sexual Violence
Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture
181-23.
https://doi.org/10.1353/wam.2014.0001
87
Movement for Justice
SociologyPiper, Nicola2002
Transnational women’s activism in Japan and Korea: The unresolved issue of military sexual slavery
Global Networks1(2)155-170
This article is about the transnational links formed between the Korean and Japanese women‘s movements in their campaign on behalf of the victims of ‘military sexual slavery’ during the Second World War. There is a growing literature that examines such networks. Yet, a deeper understanding of the emergence and activities of transnational advocacy networks is needed, particularly in the context of political opportunity structures. Social scientists who have developed the concept of political opportunity structures have, however, not provided a gender-specific analysis of these. Of particular interest is the exploration of the role played by gender in an international human rights discourse as a political opportunity structure for women’s groups in Korea and Japan. This article, thus, explores the ways in which the feminist movements in Korea and Japan have made use of transnational legal means in politicizing and popularizing the issue of ‘military sexual slavery’ at both regional and global scales.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0374.00010
88
Legal activismLawReal, J.R. Robert2020
Continuing the Quest for Justice after the Philippine Supreme Court's Decision on the Japanese Military Sex Slaves
Michigan International Lawyer
26(3)13-16
comfort women, military sexual slavery, diplomatic protection, judicial review, war crimes, reparations
On 12 August 2014, the Supreme Court of the Philippines wrote finis to the pleas for diplomatic protection of the World War II–era military sex slaves known as “comfort women.” According to the court in Vinuya v. Executive Secretary, it could not compel the Philippine government to file a case against Japan for an official apology and reparations, since the executive department had exclusive prerogative over foreign relations matters. This article seeks to analyze the legal implication of the court’s pronouncements in Vinuya. It attempts to categorize the nature of the statements as mere obiter dicta rather than definitive rulings on the ultimate interpretation of the settlement of claims under the two treaties. In attempting to conclude that the decision did not foreclose the claims of the survivors, the article looks into the nature of the suit filed as well as the limitations set by the Philippine Supreme Court in deciding the case. It also considers the context in which the judgment was made in light of the concurring opinions.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3603119
89
2000 Women's International War Crimes Tribunal
LawSakamoto, Rumi2001
The Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's military sexual slavery: A legal and feminist approach to the" Comfort Women" issue
New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies
3(1)49-58
https://www.nzasia.org.nz/uploads/1/3/2/1/132180707/comfortwomen.pdf
90
Transnational solidarity
Social Sciences
Schumacher, Daniel
2021
Asia’s global memory wars and solidarity across borders: diaspora activism on the “comfort women” issue in the United States
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-19.
Calls for reparations and apologies for crimes committed during the 1930s/40s war in Asia have been major points of contention in East Asia’s public memory since at least the 1980s. In recent years, a “history/memory war” over the “comfort women” issue has intensified. At the same time, the battleground has also shifted to the terrain of “heritage” and has increasingly taken on a global dimension. This paper considers an increasingly significant arena for East Asian memory wars, involving diaspora communities in Western countries. Its particular focus is the coordinated “comfort women” activism of Korean American and other Asian American diaspora groups in certain regions of the United States. While their decades-long activism has produced a ‘memory boom’ in its own right and resulted in raising the political profile of Asian Americans, I argue that this has also come at the cost of straining to breaking point post-war arrangements for symbolizing and cementing US-Japanese reconciliation. The paper builds on existing research to delineate the expanding scope of Asia’s memory wars and introduces new insights into some of the US activists’ inter-ethnic alliance building that underscores the increasingly global nature of these memory conflicts as well as the potentially lasting repercussions for societies far beyond East Asia.
https://apjjf.org/-Daniel-Schumacher/5547/article.pdf
91
Legal activismLaw
Sellers, Patricia Viseur
2011
Wartime Female Slavery: Enslavement?
Cornell International Law Journal
44115-142
https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/cintl44&div=11&id=&page=
92
Victim-Survivors' Activism
SociologyShim, Young-Hee2017
Metamorphosis of the Korean ‘Comfort Women’: How Did Han 恨 Turn into the Cosmopolitan Morality?
Journal of Asian Sociology
46(2)251-278
Comfort women, USA, diaspora, public history, heritage, memorials
This paper is aimed at showing how the ‘comfort women’ victim-survivors transform into cosmopolitan activists through Beck’s three lenses of emancipatory catastrophism: violation of sacred norms, anthropological shock, and social catharsis. First, the anthropological shock of the comfort women was so great that three traumas or han 恨 were found: the trauma of being a comfort woman, of being cut off from the family and hometown, and of not being able to live a normal life as a woman. The shock for the general public came 50 years later, which caused the emergence of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (KCWD). Second, social catharsis, i.e., the paradigm shift and cosmopolitan sympathy, was possible through the ‘meaning work’ by KCWD. In conclusion, the anthropological shock has a hidden emancipatory effect for the ‘comfort women’ and their life can be seen as the metamorphosis found in a butterfly transforming from a caterpillar through a cocoon to a butterfly.
http://doi.org/10.21588/dns.2017.46.2.003
93
Memory Institutions
Social SciencesShin, Heisoo2021
Voices of the ”Comfort Women”: The Power Politics Surrounding the UNESCO Documentary Heritage
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-19.
Comfort women, UNESCO, Memory of the World, civil society, heritage, diplomacy
This paper seeks to explain the process of collaboration among civil society organizations towards preserving the voices of the “comfort women” and registering related documents with UNESCO. The 14 civil society organizations from 8 countries, mostly those that suffered Japanese invasion and occupation, but also including one from Japan itself, have worked together to compile a dossier of “comfort women” documents for the submission of a joint nomination proposal to UNESCO. However, this project was threatened first by the political deal between South Korea and Japan in December 2015, and later by attempts to use money and state power to subvert UNESCO’s Memory of the World program (MoW). The resulting temporary freeze on the MoW program, talk of changes to its statutes and regulations, and UNESCO’s continued delay in implementing its own decisions raise serious doubts concerning the legitimacy and meaning of the program. A more fundamental question concerns whether and how the voices of victims of violation or discrimination, in this case of the “comfort women”, will be heard, preserved and transmitted to future generations to prevent the recurrence of such atrocities. If the efforts of the recent civil society movement end in failure, what alternative strategies are open to us?
https://apjjf.org/2021/5/Shin.html
94
Sexual violence in conflict & sexual exploitation
Social SciencesSkjelsbæk, Inger2001
Sexual violence in times of war: A new challenge for peace operations?
International Peacekeeping
8(2)69-84
https://doi.org/10.1080/13533310108413896
95
Literature & ArtsHumanitiesSon, Elizabeth W2016
Korean Trojan Women: Performing Wartime Sexual Violence
Asian Theatre Journal
33(2)369-394
Aida Karic’s The Trojan Women: An Asian Story (2007), an international collaboration between a Bosnian-born director and a Korean choreographer, a Korean composer, and a Korean theatre company, was first produced at the Schauspielhaus Wien in Austria and then toured to the United States and South Korea. Karic’s The Trojan Women interweaves the history of Japanese military sexual slavery, particularly of Korean survivors, with Euripides’s The Trojan Women. It relies on identifiable markers of Koreanness, such as the musical style of pansori and the visual imagery of shamanic ritual movement, to locate the narrative as a Korean tragedy. I argue that the re-visioning of these Korean cultural forms, such as the use of cloth in the ritual scene, offers a symbolic reclamation of violated bodies while providing a redressive space for the audience to witness the long history of wartime sexual violence against women.
http://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2016.0041
96
History of Japanese military sexual slavery
Law
Sonen, Michele Park
2012
Healing Multidimensional Wounds of Injustice Intersectionality and the Korean "Comfort Women"
Berkeley La Raza Law Journal
22(1)269-300
http://doi.org/10.15779/Z38G66M
97
Movement for Justice
Social SciencesSong, Anna2013
The Task of an Activist: “Imagined Communities” and the “Comfort Women” Campaigns in Australia
Asian Studies Review
37(3)381-395
human rights activism, “comfort women” and Australia, Asian diaspora, “imagined communities”, women’s human rights, Korean nationalism and feminism, third world feminism, Japan
From 2006 to 2010, I was an activist who organised grassroots campaigns about the so-called “comfort women” in Australia. During the course of these campaigns, this issue was framed in different ways by the Asian diaspora and feminist communities who supported the cause. Beginning with the premise that the human rights activist community is not harmonious or homogenous, nor is it organically formed, I ask the question: what is the task of an activist when faced with diverse and disconnected sources of support for our shared cause? I draw on adaptations of the concept of “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983, p. 7) by Ien Ang and Chandra Talpade Mohanty to discuss this question. I conclude that an activist must not be guided by an emotive and broad sense of “justice” alone. Rather, his or her key task is to seek localised and interdisciplinary knowledge and identity from the particular location of activism in order to mediate between the different “frames of meaning” in diverse communities.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2013.792783
98
History Denialism & Distortion
HumanitiesSong, Seunghyun2021
Denial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery and Responsibility for Epistemic Amends
Social Epistemology
35(2)160-172
Japan’s military sexual slavery; denial; epistemic injustice; liability; acknowledgment
This article argues that some denialists of Japan’s military sexual slavery are responsible for past epistemic injustices. In the literature on epistemic respon- sibility, backward- and forward-looking justifications of responsibility are rarely distinguished. Moreover, notions of epistemic responsibility are mostly forward-looking. To fill the gap in the literature, this article offers a notion of backward-looking epistemic responsibility by arguing that some morally responsible agents who committed epistemic injustices are liable to make epistemic amends for past epistemic injustices. The article proceeds as fol- lows. I introduce Japan’s military sexual slavery and how it is denied in two ways (state-led denial and individual-led denial). Both types of denial may involve epistemic injustices. Based on moral responsibility, I argue that some agents are liable to make epistemic amends for past epistemic injustices. I then offer three conditions to discern who is liable, which are conditions of causality, autonomy and epistemic competence. I apply my notion of back- ward-looking epistemic responsibility to Japan’s military sexual slavery and highlight its limits. Finally, I provide a concept of acknowledgment as a process of making epistemic amends.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2020.1839811
99
History Denialism & Distortion
History
Stanley, Amy; Shepherd, Hannah; Chatani, Sayaka; Ambaras, David; Schieder, Chelsea Szendi
2021
“Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War”: The Case for Retraction on Grounds of Academic Misconduct
The Asia-Pacific Journal
19(5)1-28.
https://apjjf.org/2021/5/ConcernedScholars.html
100
Movement for Justice
Women's StudiesStetz, Margaret D2010
Reconsidering the ‘Comfort Women’ and Their Supporters
Journal of Human Rights Practice
2(2)299-305
https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huq006