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This project explores the intersection of public memory, violence, and the relationship between new media representations and the viewer in the context of Sujin Kim's (2021) animated short film, Unforgotten. To expand on current discussions of "comfort women" activism and the intersection of public memory and animation studies, I use a close reading method to identify four main representations: "comfort women" as metaphorical objects; "comfort women" as surreal alternative bodies; "comfort women" as the physical land; and "comfort women" as unseen and implied bodily forms. I explore the affordances and the limitations of the animation form and investigate the nuances of the film's relationship with the viewer. This documentary demonstrates the powerful potential of animation as a site for exploring sensitive subjects with metaphorical and fantastical elements to create disjointed narratives that replicate the traumatic, fragmented memories of "comfort women". Throughout history there have been efforts to render their narratives unintelligible through silencing and discrediting the survivors; but they and others have continually attempted to tell their stories. Despite their stories' suppression and the film's limitations, Kim's film provides an alternative mode of representing and witnessing stories of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Permeated by traumatic memories and claims for recognition and compensation of the colonial past, the bilateral relationship between South Korea and Japan experienced intense strains during the administrations of Park Geun-hye (2013-2017) and Moon Jae-in (2017-2022). Park stipulated that recognition of the colonial past would be a prerequisite for improving relations with Tokyo, and the Comfort Women Agreement, unexpectedly signed, had its legitimacy challenged. During his term, Moon invalidated the Comfort Women Agreement and demanded a resolution centered on the demands of the victims, while also advocating for Japanese companies to compensate South Koreans forced to work in its facilities during the colonization. In a different panorama, the conservative government of Yoon Suk-yeol (2022-present) adopted a stance of restructuring the South Korea-Japan relations without criticizing the effects of colonization or seeking Japan's acknowledgment of responsibility. This research analyses how the administrations of Park, Moon, and Yoon have handled the colonial agenda in South Korea's foreign policy, resulting in either friction or rapprochement with Japan. It is argued that Park intensified historical grievances, even after the Comfort Women Agreement, due to its unsatisfactory approach. Moon, focused on healing the colonial wounds, faced diplomatic, economic and security friction amid Japan's unwillingness to revisit the past. Lastly, Yoon, in seeking reconciliation with Japan, achieved rapprochement in a tone of submission, undermining the victims' claims for justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies the history of emotions lens to study the emotions experienced by the 'comfort women' in the Japanese Empire. Emotions have been a long-neglected aspect in the study of military sexual violence. The article examines how a mélange of positive and negative emotions enabled those women to exercise some limited agency in a confined and tightly regulated space and, in some rare cases, a rather fair degree of autonomy outside of the confined space. By unravelling the varied textures of interactions between sexual violence and emotions, I argue that affective attachment and intimate relations developed in the confined sites of sexual exploitation formed a kind of strategic intimacy that enables those individuals to exercise limited forms, and a finite amount, of agency. Further, the article utilises sources produced from the perspectives of the victimised women and imperial regulators. Those angles investigate emotions expressed through, and embedded in, dynamic power relationships. The dual perspectives bring out gendered experiences of emotions and also reveal a disparate set of nuanced emotions due to positionality. The article therefore offers a critical analysis of the interrelationships among sexual violence, state power, and a particular set of emotions as a form of power and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering comfort women as both a contested object of knowledge and a productive figure, this article examines the representational endeavours undertaken by Chinese filmmakers in the past three decades. Specifically, it analyses three fictional films – How Many Levels are Hells (1992), Zhenzhen (2002), and City of Life and Death (2009) – which were produced in disparate socio-political and historical circumstances. Central to this article is a careful examination of women's violated bodies on screen that have aroused nationalistic sentiments and concomitantly unsettled the very nationalism produced under the rubric of an ingrained masculinist public culture. The article highlights how these cinematic representations address the thorny problems of commodification and objectification of women's sexuality, the crisis of survival faced by former comfort women, and the universal suffering of comfort women regardless of their nationalities. In a broader sense, by interrogating the comfort women issue as a purveyor of knowledge, the article contributes to the film studies of female sexuality and the memorialisation of World War II in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Korea, both conservatives and progressives restrict allegedly harmful speech, claiming to protect democracy and individual rights. Conservatives restrict "pro-communist" and pro-LGBT speech, while progressives target racist slurs and especially "far-right" speech supporting Japanese colonial (1910-1945) or anti-communist (1948-1987) regimes. These controversial restrictions contribute to a global debate among proponents of liberal-democratic values ("liberals" or "democrats") about the relationship between procedural and substantive rights and norms (PRN, SRN). Procedural refers to formal-legal rights (e.g., free speech) and non-legal norms (impartial reporting) associated with fair procedures. Substantive refers to rights and norms associated with fair substantive outcomes, such as nondiscrimination and equal dignity. Proponents of a zero-sum perspective, including victim-rights and militantdemocracy advocates, believe illiberal actors exploit PRN to harm vulnerable groups and/or democratic institutions. Therefore, liberal procedural rights (e.g., free speech) and norms (objectivity) should not be equally applied to harmful speakers. Conversely, positive-sum advocates argue that uniformly respecting procedural rights and norms for all persons (including allegedly illiberal ones) better protects everyone's overall rights (procedural and substantive). Despite South Korea's transition to civilian-led democracy, self-identified democrats, both conservative and progressive, continue to restrict PRN for certain speakers. Other democrats oppose such selective, and often arbitrary, restrictions. The ongoing contestation among zero- and positive-sum liberals shapes the meaning and direction of liberal democracy in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have documented the profound effects that democratic backsliding generates on various realms of governance. However, foreign policies remain an exception in this trend despite the notable emergence of non-traditional foreign policy positions backsliding governments around the world took in recent years. To address this gap, this paper examines South Korea's policy toward Japan during its recent period of democratic backsliding, focusing on the making of the Comfort Women Agreement in 2015. The case study reveals that the Park Geun-hye government (2012-2017) pursued a policy position that defied social and institutional constraints. The paper suggests that this case represents how democratic backsliding can destabilize foreign policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay uses a microhistory of Chinese comfort women during the Asia-Pacific War to illuminate the gendered dynamics of violence and the contrasting emotions experienced by both sexually abused women and their Japanese perpetrators, forming a perpetrator-victim dyad. The essay employs the concept of intersectional emotions within a micro-historical framework to demonstrate that this violence against Chinese women, marked by racialization, constitutes one of the many facets of wartime violence. This violence manifests in two contrasting emotional responses that characterize the dyadic interactions against the backdrop of widespread violence during the Asia-Pacific War. This analysis is highly relevant in contexts of power-saturated sites defined by multi-layered violence that is racial, gendered, and imperial. By investigating the dichotomy of emotive dimensions of violence, this essay contributes to a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay among emotions, violence, gender, race, and imperialism. This examination reveals insights into the emotional framework governing the dynamics of violence and challenges the prevailing assumption of uniformity in studies of violence against victim-survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of Japanese women in the migration and expansion efforts of the Japanese empire in South America and Northeast Asia from the 1880s to the end of World War II. It discusses the importance of women in Japan's migration-driven expansion and the ongoing debates surrounding their role. The article also explores the connection between women's migration and settler colonial expansion in other empires, as well as the efforts to educate and transform Japanese female migrants to fit the ideals of white bourgeois families in the United States. It concludes by discussing the Japanese government's involvement in recruiting and training female migrants for expansion in Brazil and Manchuria. The text also touches on the views of Fukuzawa Yukichi, a prominent Japanese intellectual, on Japanese migration to the United States, as well as the efforts of Japanese abolitionists to eliminate overseas prostitution. It highlights the phenomenon of "picture brides" among Japanese immigrants in the United States and the campaigns to educate and discipline these women. The article also mentions the rise of Japanese migration to Brazil as an alternative destination and the government's promotion of family migration with an emphasis on women as wives and mothers. Overall, the article explores the instrumentalization of women in Japanese imperialism and colonialism and the interconnectedness of Japanese migration in different regions. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses a recent legal case in Korea where a court ruled that Japan is not immune from liability for the forced labor and abuse suffered by "comfort women" during World War II. The Seoul High Court found that Japan violated international treaties and Korean law by operating the comfort women system. This decision sets a precedent rejecting a sovereign's defense of immunity in cases of forced labor, but its impact on international labor law remains to be seen. [Extracted from the article]

The heritage of comfort women has always remained on the periphery of authoritative heritage, classified as a “difficult heritage,” facing a predicament of social marginalization, government concealment, and international controversy. This article addresses the negotiations, discussions, and compromises involved in the process of safeguarding the Dai-ichi Saloon, which is on the verge of becoming a museum. It is a priority for the most difficult heritage to be musealized, which is one of the most common methods of “normalizing” to ensure preservation and dissemination. The museumization of Dai-ichi Saloon has involved four stages, through which, scholars, residents, Shanghai citizens, and the government, as the four major stakeholders, have developed different understandings of the Dai-ichi Saloon as a difficult heritage. This article argues that the key reason for this misalignment lies in the misplaced sequence of actions among agencies during the “normalization” process. Through the intricate process of the museum making for Dai-ichi Saloon, this article aims to offer lessons for the museum’s approach to the normalization of difficult heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vietnam has long eluded the geography of comfort women studies, yet its status as the first Southeast Asian territory and the first European colony occupied by Japan makes it a vital missing link in understanding how the comfort women system was adapted to Southeast Asian contexts. Drawing on French and Dutch colonial archival materials, this article presents the first documentary evidence of the comfort women system in Vietnam, using an empirical approach to construct a chronology of the establishment and development of the system there. Providing a detailed chronology outlining how the system developed in Vietnam offers a point of comparison for understanding how the system developed in other territories occupied by the Japanese Empire. Furthermore, this article employs the analytical frames of race and gender, unpacking how the Japanese Empire's racial ideology and gender norms shaped, and were shaped by, the development of the comfort women system in a Southeast Asian context. This investigation of the comfort women system in Vietnam thus provides a framework for better understanding its subsequent implementation and development in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia while calling attention to wartime atrocities in Vietnam that have gone largely unnoticed in historical scholarship and public memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "THE COMFORT WOMEN OF SINGAPORE IN HISTORY AND MEMORY" by Kevin Blackburn explores the history of comfort women in Singapore during World War II. Blackburn delves into the experiences of these women, their silence after the war, and the efforts to discuss and represent their stories. The book highlights the social, cultural, and political barriers that have kept Singapore's former comfort women enigmatic, calling for reflection on the erasure of women's voices in historical narratives. The author's research is based on extensive archival work and oral history collections, making it a valuable resource for those interested in Southeast Asian history and Japanese imperialism in Asia. [Extracted from the article]

"ASIAN POLITICAL CARTOONS" by John A. Lent, published in 2023, is a comprehensive exploration of political cartoons in Asia, covering countries from Japan to Iran. The book includes hundreds of illustrations and photographs, showcasing the diverse platforms and styles of cartoon art in the region. Lent's research highlights the historical and contemporary significance of political cartoons in critiquing, exposing, and satirizing political events and figures, while also addressing challenges such as censorship and persecution faced by cartoonists. [Extracted from the article]

The article "TRIBE AND STATE IN ASIA THROUGH TWENTY-FIVE CENTURIES" by Sumit Guha explores the historical evolution of tribes in Asia over 25 centuries, emphasizing their fluid and dynamic nature in response to state weakness and expanding empires. Guha argues that tribes were decentralized political formations that varied in size and structure, distinct from centralized states. The text also discusses the impact of colonialism on tribal identities and the ongoing challenges faced by Indigenous peoples in the face of resource expropriation and cultural imperialism. [Extracted from the article]

Korea has made significant contributions to international law in various areas, in particular, human rights law. Recently, Korea has evolved significantly over the years, reflecting its growing influence and active engagement on the global stage. Its judiciary has made notable contributions to international law, particularly through landmark rulings on sensitive historical issues in the cases of 'comfort women' against Japan. The involvement of South Korea's judiciary in these cases underscore the judiciary's role in addressing historical injustices and the effectiveness of this judicial stance navigated the complex interplay between national justice and international diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among South Korean state practices, those related to Japan have become particularly flexible in recent years. Although South Korean domestic courts continue to take tough stance on the issue of comfort women and forced labor, which has long been a source of conflict between the two countries, the current government is trying to move forward, for example for forced labor issue, with a solution by establishing a foundation to take responsibility for compensation from the Japanese government and Japanese companies. This kind of Korean state practice is a great opportunity for Japan to strengthen friendly relations with South Korea. On the other hand, the newly emerging issue of the discharge of treated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea has been met with strong protests from Korean civil society, and the current government's intention to show understanding on this issue is not necessarily supported. It will be crucial to pay close attention to whether or not Korea's "flexible" state practice will continue even in face of such current issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the concept of mnemonic reciprocity to examine the dynamics of exchanges between local memory activists and other community members after a Comfort Women statue was installed in 2016 on the grounds of Sydney's Ashfield Uniting Church. Contributing to the scholarship on grassroots memory activism and on the global travels of the Comfort Women statue, we take a feminist, decolonial approach that identifies points of connectivity between the disparate communities that have come together in the semi-public location of the church for selected commemorative events. Based on an analysis of the ways in which mnemonic reciprocity is fostered through exchanges between Korean-Australians and Indigenous Australians, we suggest that the statue's commemorative functions, when activated on the level of the local, are doubly decolonial. The Comfort Women statue activates the memory of Japan's imperialism in South Korea and beyond in the semi-public locality of suburban Sydney. In addition, when articulated critically, the Peace Statue can help to decolonise memory in Australia, contributing to intimate, small-scale acts of a reconciliatory and reparative nature. This case, we argue, demonstrates first that it is crucial to identify the particularities governing the place in which a carrier of memory, such as a statue, is re-territorialised. Second, by showing that localised acts of mnemonic reciprocity can strengthen community relations, it offers an alternative to the nationalist memory wars between South Korea and Japan that have been repeated in many diasporic communities where statues have been erected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This article analyzes the monument‐building and meaning‐making processes in the construction of the Statues of Peace erected to commemorate the Korean "Comfort Women." The tensions surrounding the erection of the Statues of Peace did not stop with their installation, as people then started to place different objects on the statues. This article uses actor‐network theory (ANT) to shed light on the formation that this has involved of a new representational and cultural politics. Methods: First, archival research was conducted to understand current issues involving both ANT and the Statues of Peace. Participant observations and semistructured interviews with NGOs were conducted. Results: I look at the afterlife of the Statues of Peace in cases involving not only destruction or restoration but also smaller acts of support or subversion. New material quality and meanings were formed by these actions. Conclusion: I show that ANT is a useful framework for understanding the representational complexity surrounding public monuments and their reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides a list of contributors to the journal "Positions." The contributors are scholars and professors from various universities around the world, specializing in different fields such as Korean literature, history, Japanese literature, Chinese art, and global history. Each contributor has published books and articles in their respective areas of expertise, and their research interests cover a wide range of topics including gender, labor, sexuality, visual culture, and popular culture. [Extracted from the article]

This essay explores the haunting shadows of coloniality through the lens of shame and grief. Highlighting the graphic novel Grass by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, I trace the diasporic linkages between gendered violence, colonial amnesia, and the patriarchal silencing of the stories of 'comfort women.' I argue that the search for legibility and homecoming trouble shame, grief, and memory. Shame and the female body play a central role in the narrative and visual framework of Gendry-Kim's graphic novel. It challenges us to reconsider our understanding of history by engaging with shame that disrupts history. Such alternative archives of memory are important in that they articulate exclusions that frame history, documenting stories about home, diaspora, displacement, and their aftereffects from the vantage point of women who are relegated to the haunting shadows left by the legacies of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the academic debate surrounding the historical phenomenon of comfort women, who were contracted prostitutes for Japanese military brothels during World War II. Topics include the nature of these contracts, the conditions under which women were recruited and employed, and the scholarly disagreement over whether such arrangements constituted voluntary or coerced prostitution given the context of wartime exploitation.

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article analyses two South Korean feature films representing the traumatic memories of the 'comfort women' – Spirits' Homecoming (2016) and Tuning Fork (2014). While both of these films share some thematic and stylistic similarities as depictions of the sexually enslaved women by Imperial Japan during the Second World War, there is a crucial contrast in their narrative structure. This article analyses Spirits' Homecoming as a fiction whose narrative structure conforms to Amsterdam/Bruner's conservative account, while Tuning Fork illustrates Strejilevich's account of victims' stories that defies traditional narrative conventions. Although both films find creative ways to disseminate the once-silenced stories of the victims and hold different sociocultural meanings, this analysis suggests Tuning Fork highlights a distinctive intergenerational remembrance of the 'comfort women', which eschews dominant nationalistic discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles within the issue on topics including violence against women in politics in Malawi, women's leadership in Timor-Leste, and the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement between Japan and South Korea.

This article critically assesses the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement between Japan and South Korea by employing the lens of gender – an approach that, curiously, has been neglected in making sense of the so-called landmark deal. For this examination, I revisit Connell's conceptualization of the relationship between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities, defined in terms of complicity and marginalization, and propose two interrelated concepts as a way to capture their interactive relationality. I argue that the Agreement cannot be fully understood without careful attention to a global politics of gendered hierarchical relations between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities, anchored in the mutuality of dependence and insecurity in regard to the United States, Japan, and South Korea. This is seamlessly woven into the gendered domestic politics that resonated with the Japanese government's apology and the Agreement's implementation in South Korea. I demonstrate how the allegedly distinct domains of the official/public and the secret/private in fact fundamentally overlap to bolster the artificial domain of masculinity – a critical factor that underpinned the Agreement, in which masculine fears and desires were implicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of war, people need visions that (re)unite them and overcome the psychological wounds they have incurred. The post-war Japanese needed narratives that could help them to rebuild their war-torn self-image. They subscribed to a story of Hiroshima being the first city to be demolished by an atomic bomb. Through this, Hiroshima became a national symbol, and the Japanese regarded themselves as victims of war, which effectively overrode their sense of shame and of responsibility for the war. As this process was aimed internally to serve as the backbone of post-war recovery, it did not turn the Japanese against the United States, and thus Japanese collective victimhood includes the following three anomalies: first, the absence of an enemy; second, a lack of aggressiveness; and third, the irrelevance of recovery. This article, therefore, challenges the existing theory of collective victimhood using the case of post-war Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comfort women were sex slaves forcibly taken and used by the Japanese imperial army during WW2. These women were often poor and uneducated. These women were taken from many places across Asia, however, I specifically will focus on Korean comfort women. Comfort women were women who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese army. This is where the controversy starts. Japan refuses to state they were sex slaves but rather prostitutes. This is the controversy when engaging in discussion about comfort women. I am studying why it is considered a controversy versus a tragedy. Other works focus on the tragedy of comfort women, why it happened or what allowed it to happen. However, it does not focus on why on an international-scale we allowed people and a whole nation, Japan, to deny that these women were sex slaves. Finding translations, government documents, and first hand testimonies were important in understanding the reason why this tragedy is posed as a controversy. After researching, it was discovered that due to colonization, sexism, language, racism, and the historical circumstances around Korea after the second world war ended is what allowed these women’s lives to be contested. The hope is to broaden the understanding of these women’s experiences and how Japan was not the only offender in failing them and hurting them.

This article adds a critical lens to the vicissitudinous public remembrance of the comfort women in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the oscillating representations of comfort women in Chinese documentary films. First, it probes how the violated bodies of comfort women on the screen constantly challenge and disrupt the entrenched gender norms in the interstices of the PRC's official paradigms of "national humiliation" and "national greatness." Then, it examines the distinctive film esthetics and documentary ethics of Chinese director Guo Ke's documentary films Thirty Two (2014) and Twenty Two (2017), given that the latter harvested record-breaking box office sales and incited heated online discussions of the comfort women issue in China. In particular, this article scrutinizes how Guo's esthetically appealing, politically non-confrontational, and ethically provocative approach helps constitute survivors' private, gendered memories and encourages the viewers to contemplate his minimalist narratives. In a broader sense, this article contributes to the discussions of gender, nationalism, war remembrance, and documentary filmmaking in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews four selected major decisions by domestic courts in 2023 by taking a closer look at the changing legal practices and attitudes of the Korean judiciary in applying international law in domestic cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Still Hear the Wound: Toward an Asia, Politics, and Art to Come" is a collection of essays, artwork, and moving images that explore the legacies of colonial violence in East Asia. The volume focuses on the experiences of women, laborers, and islanders under the Japanese empire, highlighting the trans-generational ruptures and ongoing wounds caused by colonialism. The contributors use various art forms, including prose, poetry, photographs, and videos, to disrupt dominant discourses and create new forms of connection and solidarity. The volume emphasizes the importance of remembering and confronting the past while envisioning a future Asia that is inclusive and diverse. [Extracted from the article]

The comfort women issue (also known as the Japanese military sexual slavery issue), which occurred during the Pacific War from the late 1930s to 1945, has continued to negatively impact the present and future of East Asia for more than seven decades. Even today this issue is the source of multiple and serious disagreements between governments, scholars, and citizens from across the region. This article seeks to contribute to research on the comfort women issue by shifting the focus from the relationship between the Japanese authorities and comfort women to that between these authorities and the comfort agents. It uses archival records, and in particular documents from the Japanese military and police, to illustrate that the 'comfort project' was not driven by the choices of the women who were caught in its midst, but rather by a hierarchical structure of wartime militaristic rule, with the Japanese authorities as the principal and the brothel-owners/recruiters as their agents. Further, the article argues that the relationship between the authorities and brothel-owners/recruiters was a tacit contract of agency: both parties had to carry out their commitments because these commitments were so credible, even in the absence of physical contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades after the mobilization of comfort women from the late 1930s to 1945, disagreements over the issue continue to escalate, fueled by limited information and differing perspectives. This article aims to foster an academic consensus by employing a law and economics framework, contrasting with an opposing viewpoint. By examining the bilateral relationship between the Japanese authorities and comfort agents, previously overlooked aspects are brought to light. The analysis reveals varying levels of contractuality in different bilateral relationships, with comfort women lacking basic contractual requirements. However, the relationship between the Japanese authorities and comfort agents demonstrates greater fulfillment, albeit with an inherent imbalance. Notably, credible commitments between the authorities and agents, independent of written contracts, facilitate reciprocal agreements. Historical records shed light on this relationship, providing a basis for logical deduction. Resolving the current disagreements requires considering these perspectives, potentially alleviating longstanding antagonism and reconciling incompatible views surrounding the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Liji Alley Museum as a vantage point, this article examines the politics of remembering "comfort women" in contemporary China. I situate the museum within three contexts: Chinese museums on Japanese aggression, the global initiative to create women's museums, and the trans-Asian movement to found museums dealing exclusively with the comfort women issue. On the one hand, I discuss how the Liji Alley Museum has made important interventions by foregrounding the relevance of gender to discussions of civilian wartime experience and by normalizing critical discussion of violence against women. By examining the museum's physical layout, narrative frameworks, and display techniques, I reveal its use of a combination of survivors' testimonies and affective devices to engage visitors. On the other hand, I analyze its limitations vis-à-vis present-day China's gender politics. The museum's reliance on government funding and its incorporation into the state-sponsored system of patriotic education have constricted its potential to offer a more complex critique of the multilayered causes behind comfort women victims' suffering, and to connect the comfort women issue with contemporary discussions of gender-based violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the US Army footage documenting the Korean victims of wartime sex slavery in the Imperial Japanese Army in China was discovered and released to the public in the summer of 2017, some South Korean academics questioned whether it should be understood as new evidence since it was believed that some of the subjects of the moving image had already been seen and located in photographs discovered previously in the 1990s. This reaction seemed diametrically opposed to that of the mainstream media (and social media), which excitedly praised the discovery of the "brand‐new" evidential document depicting those moving women. This article examines the politics of using film footage excavated from archives long after the original production of the film. Both types of reactions shown toward the "comfort women" footage shared the same attitude, which viewed the footage as a repository containing certain photographic‐mechanical evidence to prove someone's existence in a scientific manner. Such a belief in the scientific nature of camera images bears a striking similarity with positivist historical approaches. Contrastingly, what Kracauer saw in film as a medium was rather the presence of things that are difficult to freeze and solidify. His concept of the "flow of life" describes an affinity with life (in the form of everyday life) that he theorized films possess but photographs do not. This article seeks a visual sociological method to explore film as a medium that embodies the reality of the subalterns and, if circumstances allow, speaks on their behalf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the time Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and President Park Geun-hye took office, Japan-South Korea relations were already experiencing a downturn over history issues and Lee Myung-bak's unprecedented presidential visit to the disputed islets of Dokdo/Takeshima. Park's refusal to hold a bilateral summit became the symbol of strained ties. Then on November 2, 2015 — 980 days after taking office — Park met Abe for bilateral talks in Seoul. On December 28, the two sides declared a rapprochement with an agreement supporting survivors of wartime brothels. Tensions worsened again during President Moon Jae-in's term (2017–2022), contradicting the narrative that leaders had turned relations around in late 2015. Yet the diplomatic relationship was not on a downward spiral. Japanese and Korean policymakers managed to put a floor under their interactions owing to three stabilizing mechanisms that operated during both the Park and Moon administrations. First, political elites practiced mutual restraint to limit vicious cycles of nationalist recriminations. Second, Tokyo and Seoul carefully calibrated policies toward Beijing while avoiding divergence from each other. Third, reassuring the United States about the cost-effectiveness of its alliances involved trilateral cooperation that also helped stabilize Japan-South Korea relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mediterranean Journal of Gender & Women's Studies (KTC) / Akdeniz Kadın Çalışmaları ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi is the property of Mediterranean Journal of Gender & Women's Studies (KTC) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Postcolonial feminist hermeneutics presents many challenges to the traditional interpretation of Bible passages. Recognizing the ethical issues in Old Testament metaphors about unclean and unfaithful women, readers now contemplate how to understand and accept in modern times these texts that reveal disenfranchised and excluded voices. This study deals with the violence inflicted on women under the guise of reasonable punishment and its unavoidable results as these are narrated in cultural contexts. This study uses a postcolonial feminist perspective to examine how the book of Lamentations and the novel Comfort Woman reveal the violence, oppression, and forced silence imposed on women. In addition, through finding the value in both the witness to and resistance to suffering, as well as through exploring participation in suffering, this study probes how to dismantle the structure of colonialism that reduces women to victims and offers an alternative reading of the biblical script that in the past has justified violence against women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of rape as a strategic tool in armed conflicts, focusing on the Bosnian War and the Japanese "comfort women" system during World War II. It explores the factors that lead militaries to adopt systematic rape as a wartime policy, highlighting the intersections of patriarchal hierarchies, gender norms, and militarization. The Bosnian War demonstrated a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide, while the Japanese system aimed to provide sexual services to soldiers. The article emphasizes the need to analyze the sociocultural context and multiple factors involved in wartime rape policies. [Extracted from the article]