scholarly journals Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, and: Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation (review)

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Kohn Goodman
2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-356
Author(s):  
Constance Youngwon LEE ◽  
Jonathan CROWE

AbstractThis article reflects upon the continuing historical denialism concerning the Korean “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. We argue that the refusal of the Japanese government and others to squarely confront this wrong is made possible through the exploitation of adifférendin Jean-François Lyotard’s sense of the term. Thedifférendarises from a complex set of social, cultural, and legal sources, including patriarchal, colonial, and nationalistic constructions of the wrong and its victims. We seek to tentatively expose the nature of thedifférendby identifying these factors. We then sketch the beginnings of a possible response, drawing on Luce Irigaray’s strategy of emphasizing sexual difference and separation to pave the way for reciprocality between the sexes. The testimonies of the “comfort women” must be allowed to speak for themselves before a response can emerge based in other discourses.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeewon Lee ◽  
Young-Sook Kwak ◽  
Yoon-Jung Kim ◽  
Eun-Ji Kim ◽  
E Jin Park ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Yani Yoo

Correlated to the experiences of Korean comfort women, the story of Solomon’s judgment (1 Kgs. 3:16–28) becomes a resistance narrative to hegemonic powers. The interpretation discusses the literary strategies of the women’s identities and naming, the emerging reversal of power, the issues of mimicry, mockery, ambiguity, and the conspiracy of readers. The Japanese military comfort women of World War II serve as the geopolitical context with which the interpretation justifies its focus on the two biblical women. It becomes apparent that colonizing and patriarchal powers ignore victim-survivors of sexual violence and abuse whether in the biblical text or in recent Korean history. Biblical texts and recent wartime events illuminate each other.


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