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The Abuse of History: A Brief Response to J. Mark Ramseyer’s ’Contracting for Sex’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Alexis Dudden
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For those who read Professor Ramseyer’s article at face value, unseen are assertions that advocate a current Japanese political ideology. This worldview is racially essentialist, revanchist, and history-denying, resonant with similar movements around the world such as Trumpism, LePenism, Modi-ism, and so on. In Japan, among other things the impulse seeks to challenge universalisms that have grounded Japan’s post-World War II legal, economic, and social order. Were it to succeed, for example, its adherents’ proposal for revising Japan’s standing constitution would replace the current preamble, “We, the Japanese people,” for an entirely different one: “Japan is a nation with a long history and unique culture.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 5 , March 2021 , e10
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2021

References

Notes

1 Tawara Yoshifumi, “What is the Aim of Nippon Kaigi, the Ultra-Right Organization that Supports Japan’s Abe Administration?” in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 15, Issue 21, Number 1, 1 November 2017.

2 Keigo Komamura, “Constitution and Narrative in the Age of Crisis in Japanese Politics,” 26 Wash. L. Rev. 75 (2017).

3 Harvard University Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Constitutional Research Project. See the English translation of the 2012 “Draft for the Amendment of the Constitution of Japan” archived together with numerous commentaries in English and Japanese on the open access site.

4 Radhika Coomaraswamy (1996) and Gay J. McDougall (1998), UN Commission on Human Rights. (UN Doc. E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.1); (UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13).

5 Chapter II, “Rights and Duties of Subjects,” Article XVIII and Chapter I, “The Emperor,” Article VI of the Meiji Constitution, which is available in English online through Columbia University’s “Asia For Educators” open access portal. In this instance, the source is Ito Hirobumi’s, Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (originally translated and published by Ito Miyoji in 1889); this appears also in Arthur Tiedmann, Modern Japan: A Brief History New York: D. Van Nortrand Reinhold Co., 1962).

6 Amy Stanley, Hannah Shepherd, Sayaka Chatani, David Ambaras, and Chelsea Szendi Schieder, “’Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War’: The Case for Retraction on Grounds of Academic Misconduct,” Letter to the Editors of IRLE, February 16, 2021; also, Tessa Morris- Suzuki, Letter to the Editors of IRLE, February 11, 2021.

7 An effort supported and launched by Ramseyer himself with his January 12, 2021 opinion essay published on the unapologetically neo-nationalist website, “Japan Forward;” see, J. Mark Ramseyer, “Recovering the Truth About the Comfort Women,” japan-forward.com. Subsequently, related Japanese-language media picked up the story to promote its effort, turning the moment into the political issue it has now become around the world.

8 Eric Randall, “Hillary Clinton and Japan are in a Tiff Over ‘Sex Slaves’ and ‘Comfort Women,’” The Atlantic, July 12, 2012.

9 Survivor testimonials in the documentary, “Breaking the History of Silence,” Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery, Tokyo, Japan, 2000; available free on the open-access website of the Tokyo Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace.

10 I reject Ramseyer’s use of the term “prostitute” for this history and have used “women” although “minor children” may be correct, too; Ramseyer, “Contracting Sex,” 2; 6. See, Koboyashi Yoshinori’s best-selling, Sensōron (On War) (Tokyo: Gentosha, 1998), 280: “Because it was a war zone and dangerous, the money was great. There were lots of them who earned more than 10 times what a college graduate did in those days and 100 times more than a soldier. In 2-3 years they built houses back in their hometowns.”

11 See among other excellent publications, Nishino Rumiko and Onozawa Akane, eds., Nihonjin ‘Ianfu’: Aikokushin to Jinshinbaibai to (Japanese ‘Comfort Women’: Patriotism and Human Trafficking) (Tokyo: Gendai Shokan, 2015).

12 Ramseyer, 4.

13 Etsuro Totsuka, “Could Systematic Sexual Violence against Women during War Time Have Been Prevented? —Lessons from the Japanese Case of ‘Comfort Women,’ 506-507.

14 Totsuka, Ibid., 512; 508.