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Three Japanese historical associations and a Japanese group released a joint statement

Japanese academics and activists have released the first joint statement in the country calling for the retraction of a controversial academic paper by Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer that describes the former comfort women as prostitutes.

Three Japanese historical associations and a Japanese civic group held an online press conference Wednesday and released a statement criticizing Ramseyer’s paper. The groups are the Association of Historical Science, the Historical Science Society of Japan, the History Educationalist Conference of Japan, and Fight for Justice, a group that operates an academic website about the “comfort women” system of brothels operated by the Japanese military during World War II.

“The article not only ignores previous research,” the four groups said in the statement, “but it also makes essential assertions without offering any evidence.”

“A vast body of research has made it clear that […] most of the women […] were made to work as ‘comfort women’ without contracts, through deception, violence, and human trafficking. Nevertheless, Ramseyer ignores [that].”

“Ramseyer does not provide even one contract between a proprietor and a Korean ‘comfort woman,’ even though such a document should be essential to his own argument,” the groups said.

The statement continued: “This article completely lacks any perspective on women’s human rights and overlooks the authority exerted by a patriarchal system that placed restraints on women.”

The groups also voiced concerns about the ramifications that Ramseyer’s paper could have on Japanese society.

“This article’s significance goes beyond that of simply being a piece of research by one researcher. It has been embraced by people who wish to deny Japan’s responsibility for perpetrating harm,” the groups said in their statement, adding that the controversy was “revitalizing an undercurrent of xenophobia and hatred toward Koreans in Japanese society.”

The four groups intend to keep highlighting the problems with Ramseyer’s paper and calling for its retraction.

“While our goal is having the paper retracted, it’s also important to raise awareness of its serious problems to prevent it being quoted in academia,” said Ryuta Itagaki, a professor of modern and contemporary Korean history at Doshisha University, during the press conference.

On Sunday, the four groups will be holding an online seminar to criticize Ramseyer’s paper.

Yoshiaki Yoshimi, professor emeritus at Chuo University and the preeminent authority on comfort women research in Japan, will be among those attending the seminar.

In an “expression of concern” posted Tuesday, the International Review of Law and Economics, the journal that accepted Ramseyer’s article, said that the article is “a formal and final publication,” indicating once again that the article would appear in its next printed edition.

By Kim So-youn, staff reporter

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