The Comfort Women and State Prostitution
Volume 16 | Issue 10 | Number 1 | Article ID 5143 | May 15, 2018 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus The Comfort Women and State Prostitution Onozawa Akane with an introduction by Nishino Rumiko, Kim Puja, Onozawa Akane. Translation by Robert Ricketts INTRODUCTION The Kōno statement and its limitations (1993) Nishino Rumiko, Kim Puja, Onozawa Akane In August 1991, three South Korean former comfort women, one using her real name, went The article by Onozawa Akane below is adapted public with their wartime experiences, filing from Chapter 3 (Comfort Women and State civil charges against the Japanese state later Prostitution) in Denying the Comfort Women: that year for the abuses they had suffered. As The Japanese State’s Assault on Historical other victim-survivors stepped forward, 1 Truth (London: Routledge, 2018). Originally transnational support groups formed in South published in Japanese by Ōtsuki Shoten in Korea, Japan, and elsewhere to assist them in 2013, the volume was written by prominent the lawsuits they initiated in Japanese courts. Japanese and Korean scholars—several of them Teams of lawyers, researchers, and human contributors to The Asia-Pacific Journal—and rights activists helped compile survivor edited by Nishino Rumiko, Kim Puja, and testimonies in Korean, Chinese, Filipino, and Onozawa for the Violence Against Women in English and translate them into Japanese, while War Research Action Center (VAWW RAC) in scholars began scouring Japan's national Tokyo. To place Onozawa's essay in a broader archives for historical documents bearing on context, we introduce the book as a whole the comfort women issue. before commenting briefly on the significance of her contribution.
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