Japan’s state-level responsibility for the “comfort women” issue in the context of the country’s history of licensed prostitution system

The data that exists on the Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’ is classified into several categories. First of all, we have the data produced by the Japanese military, which acted as the principal for the organization and operation of the comfort stations. It is the most accurate data as it was created by the directly involved parties. A considerable amount of data has been unearthed that describes the installation and operation of the comfort stations, allowing us to fully grasp the harsh reality and identify the complete responsibility of the Japanese military. However, a large amount of the data created by the Japanese military have since vanished due to the organized destruction of the pertinent materials, which has made it intrinsically difficult to bring the remaining data to light owing to various circumstances.

Until 2022, when the book The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory was published, it was widely thought in Singapore that there were no Singaporean "Comfort Women" who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military.

Hwang Byoung-joo  The author's interest lies in the modern transformation of Korea and he conducts relevant studies. He is currently involved in the project related to the war crimes of the Japanese military against ‘comfort women’ at the National Institute of Korean History.  

Historian Harrison C. Kim traces how discourse on “Comfort Women” in North Korea has evolved—at times in dialogue with the outside world—while developing distinct advocacy practices and perspectives.

The “Comfort Women” system was not only a violation of women’s rights, but also a grave infringement of children’s rights. In this article, Professor Ñusta Carranza Ko examines how imperial Japanese authorities systematically violated the rights of underage girls, in direct contravention of international conventions of the time, reframing the issue as a case of child rights violations.

The irony is that Germany, which is often hailed as a “model” country for past liquidation by providing compensation to victims of wartime forced labor through government-industry collaboration, did not even include women forced into sexual slavery in the category of victims entitled to such compensation and still does not recognize their legal victim status.

Testimony and publishing activities concerning wartime sexual violence and “Comfort Women” carried out by the Association of Returnees from China (Chukiren), which atoned for their perpetrators’ actions in postwar Japanese society.

A report on the “Comfort Women” survivors rescued by the Allied Forces, as featured in the Chinese magazine “Da Zhan Hua Ji,” published just beforethe end of World War Ⅱ.

The role and function of “comfort stations” as revealed in numerous memoirs written by Japanese soldiers