| Abstract | When the victims are bold enough to break their silence, we have no choice but to embark from their own overwhelming "reality." By "reality," I do not mean here the same thing as "facts." When this great a disparity exists between the experience of the perpetrators and the victims, how can one call the incident a single "fact?" Rather, two "realities" exist. Of course, I know the counterarguments that will be leveled immediately against this approach: shall we tolerate all sorts of histories, including liberalist history? An undecidable battle will ensue over what constitutes "correct history." Doesn't this deny "truth" and lead people to relativist nihilism? Several people who would react this way come to mind at once. But acknowledging multiple "realities" in place of one irrefutable "truth" does not mean judging which among the various "realities" is "truth." There is still today an almost unbridgeable gap between the "realities" of former soldiers, some of whom relate in nostalgic tones the memory of their "relations" with comfort women, and the reality of the women themselves. This does not mean that the former soldier's "reality" is simply in error. The problem is recognizing that the "reality" of the oppressed, which has been concealed and forced into conformity by the "reality of the dominant," has such an unimaginably different face. It is difficult for people living the dominant reality to acknowledge that there is another reality not visible to them. However, when a victim begins spinning the fragmentary thread of her own narrative, telling a story that announces "my reality was not the kind of thing you think," an alternate history emerges, relativizing the dominant one at a stroke.
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