Historians and Public Memory in Japan: The "Comfort Women" Controversy; Introduction

An intellectual battle divides public life in Japan today. Since 1995, writers calling themselves advocates of a "liberalist view of history" (jiy...shugi shikan) have attacked academic historiography and the contents of public-school textbooks. Coming from the political right, these critics question the dark narrative of Japanese imperialism and wartime fascism. Historians have responded with a variety of arguments and recently unearthed documents. As a result, the major journals in the late 1990s have featured more discussion of World War II than at almost any time since the end of the war. Debate has focused particularly on one symbolic issue: the forced sexual labor and brutal abuse of thousands of women who were made to serve the Imperial Army. Since 1991, when a few of the victims brought the first lawsuits against the Japanese government, the story of the so-called "military comfort women" (j...gun ianfu) has received international attention. Successive Tokyo administrations since then have trodden a fine line, expressing measured contrition while avoiding outright acknowledgement of Japan's responsibility. "Liberalist history" advocates claim that the women were simply ordinary prostitutes and deny that the military coerced them.(1)
(11). While the group persists in claiming the label "liberalist," ironically the official English-language name is "Japanese Institute for Orthodox History Education." Laura Hein and Mark Selden, "Learning Citizenship from the Past: Textbook Nationalism, Global Context, and Social Change," Textbook Nationalism, 9.
(17). The position against the "debate method" is laid out in theoretical terms by Ikeda Kumiko in Usami Hiroshi and Ikeda Kumiko, "Kingendai shi no jugy... kaikaku" hihan (A critique of"Reforms in Modern History Teaching") (Tokyo, 1997), 140-71.