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J. Mark RamseyerJ. Mark Ramseyer
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Jason MorganJason Morgan
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The Comfort Women Hoax: A Fake Memoir, North Korean Spies, and Hit Squads in the Academic Swamp Hardcover – January 23, 2024
by J. Mark Ramseyer (Author), Jason M. Morgan (Author)
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 6 ratings
During World War II, the Japanese military extended Japan’s civilian licensing regime for domestic brothels to those next to its overseas bases. It did so for a simple reason: to impose the strenuous health standards necessary to control the venereal disease that had debilitated its troops in earlier wars. In turn, these brothels (dubbed "comfort stations") recruited prostitutes through variations on the standard indenture contracts used by licensed brothels in both Korea and Japan.
The party line in Western academia, though, is that these “comfort women” were dragooned into sex slavery at bayonet point by Japanese infantry. But, as the authors of this book show, that narrative originated as a hoax perpetrated by a Japanese communist writer in the 1980s. It was then spread by a South Korean organization with close ties to the Communist North.
Ramseyer and Morgan discuss how these women really came to be in Japanese military comfort stations. Some took the jobs because they were tricked by fraudulent recruiters. Some were under pressure from abusive parents. But the rest of the women seem to have been driven by the same motivation as most prostitutes throughout history: want of money. Indeed, the notion that these comfort women became prostitutes by any other means has no basis in documentary history.
Ramseyer and Morgan’s findings caused a firestorm in Japanese Studies academia. For explaining that the women became prostitutes of their own volition, both authors of this book found themselves “cancelled.”
In this book, the authors detail both the history of the comfort women and their own persecution by academic peers. Only in the West—and only through brutal stratagems of censorship and ostracism—has the myth of bayonet-point conscription survived.
Review
“The cancel culture mob can come after anyone, for saying something that is actually politically incorrect, or simply twisted into seeming so. Truth is irrelevant. It takes courage to publish a controversial article in the face of that threat. Jason Morgan wrote in 2015 and Mark Ramseyer in 2020, and both had the courage not to stand down when attacked. Read their book and decide on the truth for yourself.”
-Bernie Black, Nicholas J. Chabraja Professor, Northwestern University
“I grew up in the USSR, the home of the original cancel system; for a while, it was also the home of serious efforts to understand this phenomenon. Ramseyer and Morgan give us a new entry to that sad database of systemic madness. The book is a captivating, fast-moving, occasionally terrifying read, an account of colossal personal and institutional failures: internet mobs, spiteful academics, gutless administrators, pathological publishing process, all wrapped in fascinating details about the life in the elite academy.”
-Kate Litvak, Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
“The Comfort Women Hoax is a riveting account of Korea’s 'comfort women,' but also of hideous academic corruption in both Korea and the West. It illustrates how closed-minded professors with political agendas will ostracize, deplatform, and try to silence any honest scholar who, by debunking myths, undermines their favored narratives. Mark Ramseyer and Jason Morgan shed new light on the pernicious forces that are discouraging dispassionate and objective inquiry on politicized topics.”
-Timur Kuran, Professor of Economics and Political Science; Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies, Duke University
About the Author
MARK RAMSEYER spent most of his childhood in provincial towns and cities in southern Japan, attending Japanese schools for K-6. He returned to the U.S. for college. Before attending law school, he studied Japanese history in graduate school. Ramseyer graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1982. He clerked for the Hon. Stephen Breyer (then on the First Circuit), worked for two years at Sidley & Austin (in corporate tax), and studied as a Fulbright student at the University of Tokyo. After teaching at UCLA and the University of Chicago, he moved to Harvard in 1998. He writes and lectures in both English and Japanese, and has also taught or co-taught courses at several Japanese universities (in Japanese).
JASON M. MORGAN is associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, Japan. He is the translator of esteemed Japanese historian Hata Ikuhiko's scholarly history of the comfort women, and is also the author of an intellectual biography of Japanese legal philosopher Suehiro Izutaro. Morgan is an editorial writer for the Sankei Shimbun newspaper in Tokyo, a managing editor at the news and opinion site JAPAN Forward, and a researcher at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo, the Moralogy Foundation in Kashiwa, and the Historical Awareness Research Committee also in Kashiwa.
Product details
Publisher : Encounter Books (January 23, 2024)
Language : English
Hardcover : 388 pages
ISBN-10 : 1641773456
ISBN-13 : 978-1641773454
Reading age : 18 years and up
Item Weight : 1.6 pounds
Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inchesBest Sellers Rank: #1,102,662 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)#1,430 in Japanese History (Books)
#3,408 in Women in History
#9,804 in World War II History (Books)Customer Reviews:
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 6 ratings
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Jason Morgan
Jason Morgan (PhD, History) is a researcher and author based in Chiba, Japan. Morgan studies Japanese and American history and politics, Japanese law, legal history and philosophy, political history, and the philosophy of the human person.
Morgan's work has appeared in JAPAN Forward, New Oxford Review, Chronicles, Seiron, The Remnant, the Sankei Shimbun, Modern Age, Logos, the Michigan Historical Review, Libertarian Papers, Reitaku University Journal, Human Life Review, Society, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Public Discourse, Crisis, the Fellowship of Catholic Studies Quarterly, the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Studia Gilsoniana, Ethika Politika, Reitaku Review, Historical Awareness Research, Mises Wire, The American Conservative, and the Quarterly Report of the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies.
Morgan is a veteran translator, and has also appeared on television, radio, and video programs in Japan and the US.
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
DeepThinkingReader
5.0 out of 5 stars A new dimension to the comfort women issue by scholars who took the ultimate riskReviewed in the United States on February 5, 2024
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This groundbreaking work adds an entirely new dimension to the controversial comfort women issue, the military brothel system by the Imperial Japanese military.
In addition to going over the history of the comfort women controversy since the early 1990s as well as sharing their academic persecution by taking an unpopular stance on the issue, professors Ramseyer and Morgan meticulously expose the deep multinational network involving Communist North Korea (which no doubt is tied to CCP China) working with allies in South Korea to disrupt the U.S.-Japan-S. Korean alliance that is vital to peace and stability in the Far East.
Readers will realize that regardless of how emotionally attached they may be to the issue, there was always a latent geopolitical agenda behind what has become a decadeslong women's rights movement depicting Imperial Japan for never sufficiently repenting, let alone paying for her past crimes. Ultimately, one can say that the real victim of this ongoing propaganda against Japan is South Korea - there's simply nothing the country can benefit from this, unless she has chosen to strategically join the Communist regimes in the north.
But what's quite shocking is how the systematic abuse and professional ostracism both Ramseyer and Morgan have suffered at the hands of Western humanities eggheads professing to be experts on Japan Studies. The book details their ordeal in length, illustrating the extent of today's English-speaking academia becoming an intolerant agenda-driven, narrative-driven cult that has done away with superior scholarship by way of critical thinking and solid research.
What's simply amazing is that many in Japan Studies do not seem to value academic work in the Japanese language. Why, especially when the vast amount of literature on a topic is found in that language? This can only be explained as a bizarre form of elitism that evidently pervades that clannish community.
13 people found this helpful
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NoToRevisionism
1.0 out of 5 stars Sounds and reads like a typical right-wing funded denialist online blogpost.Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2024
Nothing in the book tells anything of actual substance and reads like some sexually frustrated individual who hates women with possible disturbing proclivities. Why even pay over $20 for this garbage when you can just read more of the same on some online post or read better informative books out there on this topic?
The author being a Harvard professor is quite baffling and at the same time not suprising at all, considering the state of that institution if you have been following the news these days....
2 people found this helpful
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A Movie Lover
5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing expose of "Cancel Culture" at work in academiaReviewed in the United States on March 3, 2024
Verified Purchase
The authors describe what happened to them in today's academic world in which certain thoughts and beliefs which run counter to the leftist narrative are punished by both mob action through social media as well as by the failure of the very institutions which are supposed to support truth and intellectual diversity. The motto of Harvard is "Veritas" - Truth - but Harvard's reality is far different from the ideal. Anyone concerned about the leftish takeover of academia and the extremes to which wokism will go to extend its power should read this book.
7 people found this helpful
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Fair and balanced
2.0 out of 5 stars Hoax is on the readerReviewed in the United States on February 18, 2024
I thought this book was going to be an explanation of how the comfort women were really prostitutes and how the world has been duped into thinking they weren't, but that's not this book. This isn't a scholarly book, it's more like a rant. I found this very disappointing because I was ready to learn something. I expect more from a Harvard professor.
16 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport
Tuan D. Nguyen, A.L.M.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book. A must read.Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2024
A great book. A must-read.
2 people found this helpful
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13 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport
NoToRevisionism
1.0 out of 5 stars Sounds and reads like a typical right-wing funded denialist online blogpost.Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2024
Nothing in the book tells anything of actual substance and reads like some sexually frustrated individual who hates women with possible disturbing proclivities. Why even pay over $20 for this garbage when you can just read more of the same on some online post or read better informative books out there on this topic?
The author being a Harvard professor is quite baffling and at the same time not suprising at all, considering the state of that institution if you have been following the news these days....
2 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport
A Movie Lover
5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing expose of "Cancel Culture" at work in academiaReviewed in the United States on March 3, 2024
Verified Purchase
The authors describe what happened to them in today's academic world in which certain thoughts and beliefs which run counter to the leftist narrative are punished by both mob action through social media as well as by the failure of the very institutions which are supposed to support truth and intellectual diversity. The motto of Harvard is "Veritas" - Truth - but Harvard's reality is far different from the ideal. Anyone concerned about the leftish takeover of academia and the extremes to which wokism will go to extend its power should read this book.
7 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport
Fair and balanced
2.0 out of 5 stars Hoax is on the readerReviewed in the United States on February 18, 2024
I thought this book was going to be an explanation of how the comfort women were really prostitutes and how the world has been duped into thinking they weren't, but that's not this book. This isn't a scholarly book, it's more like a rant. I found this very disappointing because I was ready to learn something. I expect more from a Harvard professor.
16 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport
Tuan D. Nguyen, A.L.M.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book. A must read.Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2024
A great book. A must-read.
2 people found this helpful
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Goodreads
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April 2, 2024
This book takes a contrarian and highly controversial approach to the issue of WWII's "comfort woman," a topic that dozens of other authors have tackled -- all with the same viewpoint.
It delves into the origins of the comfort women narrative, questioning the authenticity of key testimonies and documents that have played a crucial role in shaping international perception. The book posits that certain memoirs, which have been pivotal in promoting the story of comfort women, may contain fabrications or exaggerations, and it suggests that North Korean operatives could have had a hand in disseminating disinformation to discredit Japan on the global stage.
The authors also explore the academic community's response to the comfort women issue, critiquing what they describe as an 'academic swamp'—a milieu allegedly prone to bias, uncritical acceptance of certain narratives, and possibly the suppression of dissenting viewpoints. The book is replete with accusations of academic hit squads that target scholars and researchers who question the established narrative, painting a grim picture of the state of scholarly debate on this issue.
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