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During the Asia Pacifi c War (1937-1945), the Japanese Imperial Army forced women in Japanese East Asian colonies to work as so-called “comfort women” (sex workers). The justice movement for these women is an international intersectional alliance of feminists from Japanese ex-colonies in East Asia, the former colonial power Japan, and other societies, such as Australia, Germany, and the USA. This long-term feminist justice movement has campaigned for an apology and compensation from the Japanese government, as well as for recognition of “comfort women‘s” suff ering and of sexual violence in war in cultural memory. Through researching this justice movement from a processual intersectionality perspective, this paper shows that it gained power and legitimacy from refl ecting and working on its internal intersectional inequalities. This included refl ecting on the class hierarchies between many former “comfort women”, who had power of defi nition, and intellectual feminist activists, as well as on the postcolonial divide between former Japanese colonies and the former colonial power Japan, leading it to develop horizontal cooperation and practices. Following an overview, the paper outlines the movements in South Korea, Japan, and Germany, and highlights the different postcolonial constellation between East Asia and Germany, the main actors, and their aims. While the Japanese government rejected the justice movement‘s demands and the right wing mobilised against it, has been able to infl uence cultural memory to widely recognize sexual violence in war and the dignity of the “comfort women”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the global slump, China emerged as a major „winner" of worldwide economic and political rebalancing. The paper tries to evaluate the effects of the ascent of China with special regard to current power relations in East Asia. Although China gains in importance and has spearheaded several of the steps toward regional cooperation, there will be no far-reaching political integration under the hegemonic leadership of Beijing in the foreseeable future. In a world marked by economic turbulence, nationalist backlash and American and Japanese challenges to „Sinocentered" Asian regionalism, disintegration tendencies and rivalries will not easily come to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]