Overcoming Double Erasure: Japanese “comfort women”, nationalism and trafficking | Asia-Pacific Journal | Cambridge Core

Overcoming Double Erasure: Japanese “comfort women”, nationalism and trafficking | Asia-Pacific Journal | Cambridge Core



Overcoming Double Erasure: Japanese “comfort women”, nationalism and trafficking


Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Morita Seiya and
Caroline Norma
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Women of Japanese nationality have been erased in relation to the history of the wartime ‘comfort women’. For many decades after the war the existence of military ‘comfort women’ as a whole was ignored, and Japanese women, too, were ignored, at least in respect of their status as victims of wartime sexual violence. As we know, this deadlock over the history of the so-called comfort women was broken in the 1990s by survivors publicly testifying about their experiences, specifically those from North and South Korea. These women spoke widely about their experience of violence and abuse at the hands of the Japanese military, and campaigned for the restoration of their human dignity, compensation for their suffering, and for the Japanese state to take responsibility for apology and reparation. It was this bravery that gradually turned invisibility into visibility for the former ‘comfort women’, and led to the restoration of their individual subjectivity and dignity as survivors. This achievement was attained not on the basis of just one public action; it took years of persistent campaigning, and not just by survivors. Many individuals and organisations supported their work.

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TypeResearch Article
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Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 21 , November 2017 , e3
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1557466017013821[Opens in a new window]
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2017


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Translator's note: This facility is still in operation in Tokyo, and continues to prioritise women survivors of prostitution among its cohort intake. Its director is active in antiprostitution and pornography campaigning.