Quelle: The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 19 | Issue 5 | Number 7 | Article ID 5548 | Mar 01, 2021
Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan Focus


Reconstructing the History of the “Comfort Women” System:
The Fruits of 28 years of Investigation into the “Comfort Women” Issue in China

Zhiliang Su
translated by Edward Vickers

Abstract:
Since 1991, scholars from all over Asia have sought to reconstruct the history of the Japanese military’s “comfort women” – that is, to recover the facts relating to this system of sexual slavery – by analysing documentary records and interviewing survivors. As a result, an international consensus has emerged concerning the status of this system as a wartime atrocity involving large-scale violation of human rights, for which Japan ought to apologize. However, within Japan many persist in denying responsibility for the invasion [of China and associated atrocities]. Therefore, no effort should be spared to pass on the memory of this history to future generations, through discussing this atrocity of sexual slavery in school textbooks, applying for a [UNESCO] Memory of the World inscription, producing documentary films, or building museums, memorials and so forth. Other Asian countries thus continue their intense disputes with Japan over the nature and scale of the comfort women system, and the appropriate terminology for describing it. ....

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