The "History Wars" and the "Comfort Woman" Issue: Historical Revisionism in Contemporary Japan and the U.S.

An issue of intense controversy currently in Japan is “comfort women”, with many in the right wing relentlessly attacking the accepted historical narrative and denying that there was any government involvement in, or corresponding responsibility for, a system of sexual slavery. Right-wing media and intellectuals have begun to use the term “history wars” to refer to this development. Japanese revisionists now consider the United States to be one of the major “battlefields” on the “comfort woman” issue. They have criticized the “comfort woman” memorials, museum exhibits, and coverage of “comfort women” in history textbooks and curriculums in the U.S. They have also promoted events that aim to deny and attack historical facts about “comfort women” in the U.S. Thus, the controversy on “comfort women” is hardly limited within academia but spread outside of the academy, beyond national borders. With the recent diplomatic agreement between South Korea and Japan, the revisionists’ argument that the “comfort woman” issue is not a global women’s rights issue but merely a diplomatic problem may permeate even further.

Based on my anthropological fieldwork on historical revisionism and the Japanese right-wing, I will demonstrate how this issue functions as an important rallying point to tie together disparate right-wing elements including the Abe government. I will also highlight how the acts of remembering and commemorating the survivors’ experiences of wartime violence against women become such a contentious, political issue that mobilize the Japanese right-wing so intensively and emotionally in Japan and the United States.