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Asian-Japanese: State Apology, National

Ethos, and the “Comfort Women”
Reparations Debate in Japan
a
Mariko Izumi
a
Department of Communication , Columbus State University
Published online: 20 Oct 2011.

To cite this article: Mariko Izumi (2011) Asian-Japanese: State Apology, National Ethos, and the
“Comfort Women” Reparations Debate in Japan, Communication Studies, 62:5, 473-490, DOI:
10.1080/10510974.2011.588299

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 Communication Studies
Vol. 62, No. 5, November–December 2011, pp. 473–490

Asian-Japanese: State Apology,

National Ethos, and the ‘‘Comfort
Women’’ Reparations Debate in Japan
Mariko Izumi
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Recent scholarship on apology has shifted its critical emphasis from the juridical use of apol-
ogy as a means of self-defense to the moral value of apology as integral to specific reconcili-
ation processes. This article examines the ‘‘comfort women’’ reparations debate in Japan in
the 1990s as symptomatic of this change in how we think about apology and reparations. It
illustrates how ‘‘comfort women’’ reparation lawsuits disrupted the symbolic economy of
political apology in an inter-Asian political context and, thus, transformed the rhetorical
force of apology from a past-oriented to a future-oriented technology of care.

Keywords: Apology; Comfort Women; Ethos; Reconciliation; Reparations Debate;

Rhetoric of Responsibility

Beginning in 1991, the victims of sexual atrocities during the Asia-Pacific War (1930–
1945) began coming forward to the Japanese public and filed class action lawsuits
against the Japanese government.1 These former ‘‘military comfort women’’ were
subjected to sexual servitude in order to maintain the soldiers’ morale and, thus,
make the process of occupying local areas smooth and efficient for the Imperial
Japanese Military.2 As a part of the logistics of war and colonialism, they were often
treated like military equipment, shipped from various Asian countries to the battle-
fields and systematically administered as an essential part of the so-called ‘‘comfort
system.’’3 The number of victims has been estimated between 50,000 and 200,000.4
Their ordeals, however, were hardly considered as a war crime during the

Mariko Izumi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Columbus State University.
The author wishes to thank Dr. Ronald Walter Greene, Dr. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, and Dr. Kent A. Ono for
their critical feedback on the earlier draft of this article. Correspondence to: Mariko Izumi, Department of
Communication, Columbus State University, 4225 University Avenue, Columbus, GA 31907, U.S.A. E-mail:
izumi_mariko@columbusstate.edu

ISSN 1051-0974 (print)/ISSN 1745-1035 (online) # 2011 Central States Communication Association
DOI: 10.1080/10510974.2011.588299
 474 M. Izumi
International Military Tribunal for the Far East (a.k.a. Tokyo Tribunal) conducted by
the Allied Forces in 1946. Accordingly, Japan’s responsibility for this war atrocity has
never been raised as a legal matter until the 1990s, when these victims began coming
forward to the Japanese public and demanded state apologies and legal reparations.
The reparation lawsuits in the 1990s problematized Japan’s wartime and colonial
past in new ways. Previously, the victims’ experiences had constituted a part of
cultural=historical knowledge that was familiar, if not fully transparent, to the
Japanese public. As many historians have pointed out, Japan’s postwar national
identity was structured around the experience of two atomic bombs, animating a
discourse of pacifism and an ethos of ‘‘victimhood.’’5 In this ideology-laden context
of postwar Japan, the ordeals of the former ‘‘comfort women’’ circulated through war
memories, nonfiction writings, novels, theatre performances, and textbooks as a story
of ‘‘war miseries,’’ which were part of the collective suffering experienced by the
Japanese people during the wartime.6 The reparation lawsuits, however, challenged
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this sense of mnemonic familiarity by bringing to the fore the question of responsi-
bility. The victims’ ordeals could no longer be considered a general problem or conse-
quence of war per se but came into view as a war crime that called upon the Japanese
public to engage new modes of self-recognition as victimizer, rather than victim.
Interestingly, while the victims urged the Japanese government to take legal
responsibility by issuing an official state apology and pay reparations, the Japanese
government responded with a moral remedy. While denying its legal responsibility,
the Japanese government established the Asian Women’s Fund (AWF) in 1995, the
50th anniversary of the end of the Asia-Pacific War, ‘‘from [a] moral standpoint
[. . .] to fulfill its responsibility for the wartime ‘comfort women.’ ’’7 Imagined as a
concrete moral initiative to express the nation’s ‘‘atonement’’ for the victims’ suffer-
ing, the central mission of the AWF was to carry out the ‘‘atonement project’’ by deli-
vering a letter of apology from the incumbent Japanese Prime Minister, along with
the ‘‘atonement money’’ contributed by the Japanese citizens, and ‘‘medical=welfare
support’’ funded by the Japanese government’s official budget.
This essay explores the rhetorical shift in the ‘‘comfort women’’ reparations debate
marked by the emergence of the AWF, which can be seen as symptomatic of a new
way of thinking about apology and reparations for a nation’s past atrocities. I argue
that the victims’ demand for a state apology within a legal context transformed the
temporality of political apology from past oriented to future oriented. This trans-
formation, in turn, catalyzed a shift in the Japanese government’s basic stance toward
apology and reparations for the victims of wartime sexual slavery. In the following, I
will first provide a brief overview of the current scholarship on apology to situate my
own inquiry focused on the case of Japan. Second, I will discuss the first reparations
debate in 1991 in conjunction with ‘‘apology diplomacy’’ as the Japanese govern-
ment’s central rhetorical strategy of international politics. This section will illustrate
how apology in the inter-Asian political context rhetorically worked according to the
tort model of reparations as a guide for people’s understanding of reparations. Third,
I will examine how the second reparation lawsuit in 1992 disrupted the tort model’s
capacity to account for the functioning of apology in an inter-Asian political context
 Asian-Japanese: Reparations Debate in Japan 475

and thereby gave rise to a new rhetoric of responsibility. To this end, I will illustrate
how state apology became an important means for the Japanese government to
rehabilitate its postwar national ethos. With the objective to harness the workings
of state apology as a technology that connects Japan’s future to the Asia-Pacific
region, the Asian Women’s Fund thus emerges as a new state apparatus designed
to improve the life of the victims.

Apology: From Self-Defense to Reconciliation

As the historian Elazar Barkan observes, we have come to witness ‘‘the willingness of
the perpetrators to engage and accommodate the victims’ demands’’ more than ever
in the post-Cold War era.8 From Bill Clinton to Tony Blair, from Jacque Chirac to
Gerhard Schröder, proliferating restitution cases for historical injustices, according
to Barkan, suggests an emergence of a new ‘‘international moralism.’’ Political
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negotiations among nation-states come to increasingly pay attention to moral values

in order to occupy a new position or to gain a new status in a global context where
the Cold War constellation no longer provides the essential cues for political
alliances. In this context, the development of state apology constitutes a crucial
moment for the historical transformation of a nation-state: the process through
which the state comes to have new values, that is, a new ethos.
Within the field of rhetorical studies, scholars of apology have explained and
developed this critical emphasis on moral value as generated by apologetic discourse.
Citing Ware and Linkugel, Sharon Downey writes, ‘‘apologetic discourse may be
defined as a ‘speech of self defense . . . not so much on an individual’s politics or ideas,’
but on her=his character or ‘worth as a human being.’ ’’9 Invested with the ‘‘perpetra-
tors’ desire to reclaim his humanity,’’ and, one may add, the desire to reconstitute the
victims’ humanity, apologetic discourse has come to be explored as a vital part of rec-
onciliation processes.10 As Emil B. Towner catalogued, this new critical emphasis
constitutes a new trend in the rhetorical scholarship of apologetic discourse, moving
away from the study of apologia as an act of traditional self-defense and image resto-
ration.11 John Hatch, for example, argues that ‘‘when one focuses on apologies pur-
porting to reconcile parties divided by gross human rights violations, the principal
generic lens should not be apologia (. . . strategic recovery from an accusation or loss
of public esteem), but reconciliation (a dialogic rhetorical process of healing between
parties).’’12 As it moved from the ‘‘juridical use of apologia’’ to apology as a dialogic
device for reconciliation, the study of apology begins to broaden the genre of apologia,
shifting its focus onto the evolving relationship between perpetrators and victims as
the primary object of its analysis.13
Reflecting this shift in critical emphasis, several scholars have analyzed the Japanese
Prime Ministers’ apologies for the wartime ‘‘comfort women.’’ Jane Yamazaki
broaches apology as ‘‘a mechanism for affirming public moral standards and, indeed,
for establishing new standards of morality.’’ She goes on to suggest that the series of
apologies leading up to the emergence of the AWF are the expression of changing
moral standards, informed in particular by women’s liberation movements.14 Jason
 476 M. Izumi
A. Edwards has analyzed Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama’s apology and
argues that moral apologies are different from traditional apologia in that the former
kind is a ‘‘community-focused apologia,’’ aimed at paving a way toward healing
among communities.15 Analyzing the same text, Hiroko Okuda illustrates how
political, cultural, and historical conditions rhetorically constrained Murayama’s
effort to ‘‘establish a ‘we’ who could effectively apologize’’ for Japan’s colonial past,
so that his delivery failed to be an effective apology.16
In part, such focus on community along with various impulses to promote soli-
darity may be connected to certain currents in international politics such as growing
awareness of violence against women and, especially in the context of Asia-Pacific, a
rise of anti-Japanese sentiment among neighboring Asian countries. Yet, these devel-
opments underscore rather than answer the following set of questions, which animate
contemporary inquiries into apologetic discourse: How is the perpetrators’ willing-
ness to directly engage with the victims’ life generated, and in what ways does such
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willingness change the rhetorical relationship of apology and reconciliation? In the

context of the reparations debate in Japan concerning the former ‘‘comfort women,’’
what does the emergence of the AWF tell us about the ways in which apology works
as a genre?
As Jacquelyn Bacon has demonstrated through her reading of the reparations
debate about slavery in the United States, such public debates articulate themes that
guide and frame the ways in which we think about reparations for past atrocities.17
This essay extends her work by focusing on a specific communicative practice of
apology as a way to read the unfolding reparations debate and the discourse of
postwar responsibility. As I bring the aforementioned set of questions to bear on
the ‘‘comfort women’’ reparations debate in Japan, I will trace apologies as they were
practiced at different social, political, and historical junctures. Instead of offering a
close textual analysis of a particular apology and examining how it succeeded or
failed in effectively achieving reconciliation, this approach is tailored to explicate
how apologies work as a mechanism that animates the reparations debate and articu-
lates a specific rhetoric of responsibility. As Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs
Campbell have demonstrated, apology is a flexible genre, working across different
spheres of rhetorical practice.18 Its transgressive nature makes apology a particularly
unique ‘‘synthesis of material that exists objectively in the rhetorical act and of
perceptions in the mind of a critic, a member of the audience, or a future rhetor.’’19
Tracing apology practices enables one to illustrate genre as the ‘‘interplay of rep-
etition and difference and their organization and interpretation by [rhetors], audi-
ences and critics.’’20 It helps account for how apology as a genre undergoes
transformation by adopting new qualities from diverse rhetorical spheres and, in
turn, influences the discursive practices in these spheres.

The Tort Model of Reparations and Apology Diplomacy

Shortly after a 79-year-old Korean woman, Kim Hak-sun, came forward to the
Japanese public in 1991 to give testimony to Imperial Japan’s wartime sexual atrocity,
 Asian-Japanese: Reparations Debate in Japan 477

the lawsuit that came to be known as the first ‘‘comfort women’’ case was filed in the
Tokyo District Court against the Japanese government. Sponsored by the Korean
Association of Pacific War Victims and Bereaved Families, this class action lawsuit
involved three ‘‘comfort women’’ victims, Kim Hak-sun, Pak Pok-sun, and Sim
Mi-ja, and 32 other plaintiffs from South Korea.21 As colonial subjects, these Korean
victims were considered Japanese at the time of the Tokyo Tribunal, which prose-
cuted Imperial Japan’s war crimes committed against the Allied Forces. As a result,
they were not treated as ‘‘victims’’ of Japan’s wartime conduct so as to receive any
reparations.22 By way of decolonization, these individuals were liberated but also
excluded from Japan’s postwar reparation measures. Not only did they not belong
to the Allied nations but the Japanese government devised its domestic laws to limit
its postwar relief measures to only Japanese citizens.23 As ‘‘Japanese’’ under coloni-
alism, they were disqualified from claims for reparations; as Korean after decoloniza-
tion, they were excluded because they were no longer Japanese. Settling the issue of
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reparations for wartime harms among nation-states, the international treaties and
peace settlements had left these individual women’s ordeals unaccounted. The
plaintiffs argued that the Japanese government had violated the international laws
and conventions on human rights, that it had failed to domestically investigate
and prosecute such violations, and so they demanded what they deemed long
overdue reparations.24
The Japanese government does acknowledge its guilt, recognizing the active role
the Imperial Military played in operating the comfort stations.25 However, as a
defendant in court, it denies its legal responsibility for the ordeals of the individual
victims. Following the tort model of reparations, a litigation approach that seeks to
establish the equivalence of damage and compensation, the Japanese government
argues that The Treaty of Peace with Japan (San Francisco Peace Treaty) in 1951
and additional bilateral treaties instituted between Japan and other countries relin-
quished each country’s right to demand legal reparations from Japan. The Peace
Treaty mandated the Japanese government to provide an appropriate amount of
reparations to the Allied Nations. With regard to those nations that did not or could
not ratify the peace treaty and, therefore, did not have a claim to war reparations, the
Japanese government individually negotiated the terms of settlement and ratified
bilateral treaties.26 For example, the Japanese government insists that it provided
economic support to the nation of South Korea according to the 1965 bilateral treaty.
Therefore, it concludes that ‘‘all issues of reparations have been completed’’ and that
no further legal obligations to the individual ‘‘comfort women’’ victims apply.27
As the Japanese government’s argument illustrates, the tort model of reparations
works in a linear fashion, retrospectively establishing an equivalence of wrongdoings
and compensation. Construing reparations as a remedy channeled through civil
lawsuits, this model lets two parties confront each other, processes their emotions
and tensions through a set of rituals such as testimonies and cross-examinations
and establishes the appropriate balance between the two. Each party pays for the
damage it has caused, or it otherwise replaces the damaged goods. The Japanese
government’s approach toward the ‘‘comfort women’’ lawsuits follows this standard
 478 M. Izumi
implied by the tort model of reparations, treating the ‘‘comfort women’’ lawsuits as a
question of historical debt.
From the standpoint of the Japanese government, if all matters of reparations were
resolved by the international treaties, then there should be no possible future
obligation to pay. In fact, as the Japanese lawyer Etsuro Totsuka commented, ‘‘the
nation of Japan has never before lost a case to a foreign plaintiff on postwar compen-
sation issues in the courts of Japan.’’28 Like many other postwar compensation cases,
the 1992 ‘‘comfort women’’ reparation lawsuit was dismissed in 2001. Nevertheless,
as Yoneyama anticipated, ‘‘the very process of pursuing redress within judicial
channels may very well incite public discourse much broader and more radical than
could be contained within the immediate legal framing of the individual cases.’’29 For
the first time in Japan’s postwar history, the 1991 ‘‘comfort women’’ lawsuit made the
Japanese government an active participant in the unfolding public debate over the
nation’s responsibility for the ordeals of the ‘‘comfort women’’ victims.
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The demands for reparation by the ‘‘comfort women’’ victims pressured the
Japanese government to respond not only legally in court but also politically in
the context of international relations. Just a few days before Prime Minister Kiichi
Miyazawa’s official visit to South Korea, the Asahi Newspaper released an archival
finding of the military lieutenants’ journals that detailed the operation of the comfort
stations. Having denied its involvement in the operation of the comfort stations up to
that point, this news release made it inevitable for the Japanese government to
acknowledge its complicity in the atrocity of the ‘‘comfort system.’’30 This new
development created a diplomatic challenge for Miyazawa, who had been known
for pacifism and friendliness toward other Asian nations in his approaches to politics.
Miyazawa delivered his first apology before leaving Japan to visit South Korea and
repeated his apologies on several occasions during the Japan-Republic of Korea
summit in 1992. On one hand, it is peculiar that the Japanese government responded
to the legal demands of the ‘‘comfort women’’ survivors with an apology. As I will
elaborate later, apologizing is not usually viewed as an aspect of normal legal practice.
On the other hand, Japan’s offering an apology to Asian countries is a common
political practice. Often called ‘‘apology diplomacy’’ in Japan, delivering an apology
is a frequent political strategy used by the Japanese government to deal with ‘‘issues
of the past,’’ especially the unresolved tensions and problems stemming from its his-
tory of war and colonialism. For instance, in 1982 when the controversy over Japan’s
history textbook became a political concern, Miyazawa issued a statement that is
often considered as an apology of sorts. In 1984, Emperor Hirohito welcomed the
South Korean President and spoke in ways that were also viewed as approximating
an apology, in Japan.31 During a session of the Japanese Diet in 1990, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs Taro Nakayama apologized to those who were first forced into ser-
vitude in Sakalin, a former occupied territory of Imperial Japan, and later left there
when the Asia-Pacific war ended. In varying contexts, then, the Japanese government
has offered and repeated its apologies for the wartime behavior of Imperial Japan.
Apology diplomacy usually follows a certain pattern. A Japanese politician makes
inappropriate and often offensive remarks about Japan’s wartime history. Political
 Asian-Japanese: Reparations Debate in Japan 479

representatives or public spokespersons of the Asian countries concerned react by

criticizing Japan for its lack of historical sensitivity. This criticism usually results in
an immediate apology from the politician or the Japanese government. This kind
of apology often serves merely to pacify the growing criticism from Asian countries
rather than express heartfelt regret. At the same time, it provokes criticism from the
Japanese public to the effect that the Japanese government is ‘‘too soft’’ in the face of
such historical accusations. This domestic criticism usually incites nationalistic
utterances, which, again, appear as historically problematic and upset other nations
in the Asia-Pacific region.32 A journalist in Japan characterized this rhetorical pattern
of Japanese leaders as something akin to a ‘‘hansei-zaru,’’ a trained monkey that
repeatedly performs a posture of self-reflection and regret at another’s demand
without knowing the actual meaning of this performance.33
The ‘‘comfort women’’ reparations debate was no exception to this pattern of
diplomacy. Initially, the Japanese government rejected the role of the Imperial
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Military in the operation of the comfort stations and provoked strong criticisms from
South Korea. Writing on Miyazawa’s stay in Seoul for the Japan-Republic of Korea
(J-ROK) summit, the Yomiuri Newspaper recited eight different expressions of apol-
ogy Miyazawa used during his visit and reported how these apologies were received in
South Korea. It also quoted a statement from a South Korean citizen: ‘‘We [South
Koreans] received words of apology from two generations of emperors [. . .] and
Miyazawa is simply repeating the same phrases from his predecessors . . . . The Korean
nation’s accumulated sentiments cannot be dissolved’’ by such apologies.34
Generally, this apology diplomacy of the Japanese government functions in ways
that maintain and reinforce the tort model of reparations. The legal scholar Roy Brooks
argues that the tort model of reparations does not aim at reconciliation. Writing in the
context of the U.S. black redress movement for slavery, he states: ‘‘The tort model, like
all litigation, is too contentious, too confrontational to provide the kind of radical
reconciliation and accord that is needed for future race relations.’’35 The tort model
may establish an equivalence of damages and compensations, but it does not necessarily
aim at cultivating and establishing a community for coexistence. Indeed, the Japanese
government’s apology is not intended to mend the conflictual past in any fundamental
way. Instead, it keeps the wartime past from entering into the political present. Like
compensations in litigations, the Japanese government apologizes as if the apology pays
off its historical debts. The historian Norma Field observes that the effect of the vari-
ously expressed apologies by the Japanese government and their repetitions were to
‘‘forestall, preferably forever, the loss of value in the form of monetary payment. The
words, therefore, had to carry a disproportionate weight— the heaviness of truth value.
Their calibration, however, had the effect of debasing the words as currency.’’36 As
David W. Houck writes, rhetoric operates ‘‘as parable currency: thoughts, beliefs,
and emotions constitute our [symbolic] realities.’’37 Be it the history textbook contro-
versy, the Yasukuni shrine controversy, or the ‘‘comfort women’’ issue, each flaring of
the ‘‘issues of the past’’ is like an individual lawsuit to which the apology is offered in
lieu of financial reparations. Yet, each apology confirms and reinforces the legal
authority of international treaties, maintaining that Japan has met its legal obligations.
 480 M. Izumi
Embodying the tort model of reparations, the Japanese government’s apology does
not transform the conflictual past into a ‘‘common ground’’ for reconciliation. It
does not connect victimizers and victims but merely maintains an equilibrium
between Japan and Asia in the immediate political present. Against this background,
in 1991, South Korean President Roh Tae-woo characterized the relationship between
Japan and South Korea in terms of two countries that are ‘‘near but far,’’ as a
concrete reference to their poor cultural and emotional interactions despite their
geographical proximity.38 Apology diplomacy articulates the victim-victimizer
relationship as a national relationship and coordinates the political present as a
constellation governed by international treaties. Instead of actively engaging and
resolving the ‘‘issues of the past,’’ apology diplomacy deflects the wartime past from
becoming a political problem in the present and creates a perception of cultural and
historical distance between Japan and Asia.
This distancing from Asia has been central to the ways in which Japan reconstructed
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its national ethos in the aftermath of the Asia-Pacific war. The San Francisco Peace
Treaty offered Japan a chance to clean the slate, so to speak, to reenter the international
political sphere. The monetary and nonmonetary compensations fulfilled Japan’s legal
responsibility, and the Japanese government regained equal footing with other nations,
at least to some extent. Yet, this procedure did not necessarily level the political playing
field all the way. As political scientist Jyunichiro Masumi notes, the peace settlement
established postwar Japan’s international position as a member of the U.S.-led liberal
camp vis-à-vis the Soviet-led left-camp.39 According to this ‘‘San Francisco System’’ of
international political constellation, Japan secured its position in subordination to the
United States.40 While Japan gained equal status compared to other countries through
the Peace Treaty, the Security Treaty with the United States signed at the same time as
the Peace Treaty made Japan dependent on, and subordinate to, the United States.
Japanese sociologist Masachi Osawa writes, ‘‘the protest against the renewal of the
Security Treaty in the 1970s made most visible Japan’s relationship with the U.S. as
one of ‘periphery’ and ‘center,’ ’’ and the popular protest against the Security Treaty
marked a resistance toward Japan’s subordinate role to the United States.41
The distancing from Asia has helped Japan imagine itself closer to the West in a
way that valorizes its subordinate relationship to the United States (or the West).
The U.S. occupation in the aftermath of WWII posited the United States as the ideal
model for a postwar democratic way of life in Japan, and Japan’s postwar reconstruc-
tion and economic recovery strove to achieve the ‘‘Western’’ way of life.42 For
example, Japan’s postwar investment in technology was ideologically motivated by
this desire toward Westernization. Advertisements in the 1970s portrayed American
homes as the ideal image of family life, promoting electronics ‘‘made in U.S.A.’’ Since
this period, Japan called itself ‘‘Japan’’ rather than ‘‘Nippon’’ and began to adopt a
‘‘Western’’ perspective from which to organize various spheres of Japanese life.43
As these examples show, Japan sought to valorize its postwar national ethos through
its proximity to the West. In this atmosphere, apology diplomacy was instrumental in
creating a distance from Asia and thereby helped Japan imagine the world in terms of
a value hierarchy: West (U.S.), Japan, and Asia, ordered from top to bottom.
 Asian-Japanese: Reparations Debate in Japan 481

Apology as a Mode of Reparation and the New Ethos of Asian-Japanese

On one hand, Westernization enabled Japan to build its postwar national ethos in
ways that distinguished it from other Asian nations. On the other hand, the end of
the Cold War gave Japan the opportunity to adopt a new national ethos and to
acquire new political mobility. In 1989, the book Japan That Can Say No, which took
a critical look at how postwar Japan’s way of life modeled itself after the United
States, became a bestseller in Japan. The popularity of this book represents a growing
general public sentiment in Japan after becoming an economic superpower. It articu-
lates a new challenge to the sway of U.S. influence over Japanese self-perception.44
Against this background, the ‘‘comfort women’’ reparation lawsuits can be seen as
a special opportunity to adjust the international political hierarchy that made Japan
dependent on the United States.
A second ‘‘comfort women’’ reparation lawsuit was filed in 1992 in the Yamaguchi
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District Court in Japan. Commonly known as ‘‘Kampu Trial,’’ this lawsuit consisted of
10 plaintiffs, three ‘‘comfort women’’ survivors and seven South Korean women who
were subjected to servitude after being conscripted by the Women’s Labor Service
Corps. The plaintiffs argued that the Japanese government had failed to fulfill its obli-
gation to legislate appropriate measures to remedy the harms inflicted on the victims
and, thus, prolonged their physical and psychological suffering. Such a lack of legis-
lation violated the preamble of the Japanese constitution and Article Nine, which sti-
pulates Japan as a moral nation-state and obliges the government to take moral action.
What is significant about this Kampu Trial is that it brought the practice of state
apology under the scrutiny of legal discourse. In addition to monetary compensation,
the victims demanded that the Japanese government issue its official apology in the
Japanese Diet as well as in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Introducing
state apology as an element of reparations, the Kampu Trial changed the ways in which
we start thinking about reparatory measures. Following this case, Song Sin-do, a
zainichi Korean victim, filed a lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court in April 1993, and
she demanded only an official state apology. Song expressed her stance as follows: ‘‘I
want to be apologized to. Apology is enough. I want them to understand that it’s
not about money.’’45 However, ‘‘the judges of the district court repeatedly advised
her that she cannot make a legal case by demanding an apology alone, without mon-
etary compensation.’’46 As the case of Ms. Song illustrates, the compensations that con-
stituted the primary element in the tort model for reparations became secondary to the
apology. Five out of seven subsequent ‘‘comfort women’’ lawsuits demanded that the
Japanese government’s official apology be expressed in various forms. For example,
Taiwanese ‘‘comfort women’’ survivors demanded an apology in the form of a letter;
Chinese ‘‘comfort women’’ survivors demanded that the apology be published in major
Japanese national newspapers; others submitted that the apology had to be stated at the
Japanese Diet and=or the U.N. General Assembly. The forms and sites of apology thus
became the way to measure the gravity of the Japanese nation-state’s responsibility.
Foregrounding the state apology as the primary means of remedy for historical
injustices, the Kampu Trial rearticulated apology as a new rhetoric of responsibility.
 482 M. Izumi
The plaintiffs in this trial demanded an apology for the failure of the current Japanese
government to pass appropriate legislation and, thus, prolonging the victims’ suffer-
ings. From this vantage, one apologizes not only for the occurrence of a particular
wrongdoing but also for prolonging the victims’ pain and affecting their lives. For
the kind of personal life history the Imperial Military initiated for each victim, the
Japanese government now owes an apology. Within this new frame, state apology
is no longer imagined as a symbolic currency offered as remuneration for historical
debt. It does not relate to an event, that is, to a one-time violation of legal standards,
but speaks to the current government’s responsibility for the trajectory of the victims’
lives. Shifting its orientation from one-time payment for a past injustice to a contin-
ual process, apology has become a mode of recognizing one’s responsibility for
creating the kind of life the ‘‘comfort women’’ victims lived long after the initial harm
was inflicted during the war. By articulating the victims’ ‘‘quality of life’’ as its central
objective, the reparation lawsuits have animated a new rhetoric of responsibility that
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guides the practice of apology beyond the legal sphere.

As discussed earlier, apology is a flexible genre, working across different spheres of rhe-
torical practice.47 When Morihiro Hosokawa became the Japanese Prime Minister, the
transformation of apology within a legal context also changed the efficacy of the Japanese
government’s apology diplomacy in the political sphere. Prime Minister Hosokawa
expressed his apology during the Japan-Republic of Korea summit in 1993. The President
of South Korea, Kim Young-sum, was the first democratically elected President of South
Korea, and Hosokawa was also newly elected as the first national leader from a
non-Liberal Democratic Party since 1955, representing the beginning of a new era in
Japanese politics. As the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri stated, ‘‘We hope this Gyeongju
conference will appear as the starting point for new Japan-South Korea relationships,
when we will look back on it in the future.’’48 As the first official meeting of these newly
elected political leaders, the summit carried with it hopes for envisioning a new future of
Japan-South Korea partnership in the post-Cold War political constellation.
The recognition of the ‘‘comfort women’’ as victims of Japan’s wartime atrocities
came to be rearticulated in the context of Japan’s postwar national identity. Traditionally,
the Japan-ROK summit has been held in the capital city of South Korea, Seoul. However,
Hosokawa purposely selected the city of Gyeongju for the international summit and its
orchestration to become ‘‘one that is not prepossessed by formalities.’’49 And, it was in
this city where Hosokawa apologized for the history of Japan’s colonial domination,
explicitly referring to the military ‘‘comfort women.’’ The city of Gyeongju was the capi-
tal of the ancient kingdom of Silla, the historical origin of Korea. Seoul, on the other
hand, is the modern capital of the South Korea as a nation-state. It became the capital
in 1948 when the nation gained its independence, not from Imperial Japan, but from
the control of the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea.50 To several commentators,
the gesture of relocating the summit embodies a new perspective from which to
imagine the future ties between Japan and South Korea. Commenting on this new sum-
mit practice the Nikkei Newspaper, for instance, expressed the wish that this will create a
new relationship between Japan and South Korea where ‘‘the ‘issues of the past’ [were] to
become the real past.’’51
 Asian-Japanese: Reparations Debate in Japan 483

Moving from Seoul to Gyeongju, the 1993 summit sidestepped the history of
Korea’s occupation by the U.S. as the starting point for the future of Japan’s relation-
ship with South Korea. Consider the following editorial by the Nikkei Newspaper:

Japan survived the violent challenge of Western civilization through self-

reformation called the Meiji Restoration; however, in the end, Japan held down
the weaker by twisting their arms for Japan’s own benefits, doing the same thing
as the West did. In this regard, Japan had fallen into the trap of Columbus.52

The reflection of Imperial Japan’s wartime past from the historical origin of Korea
articulates Japan’s modern history as an experience of Westernization. It connects
Japan’s wartime atrocities to Christopher Columbus, whose figure is imagined to
symbolize the historical beginning of the United States. This reflection turned South
Korea into the victim of Japan’s Westernization rather than Japanese colonialism and
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its war against the West. It problematized ‘‘Japan’’ as a way of being. As a historical
site where Japanese and Korean history reaches back long before the Asia-Pacific
War, the city of Gyeongju offered a new vista for thinking about Imperial Japan’s
wartime past and, at the same time, for imagining Japan’s future differently. It
allowed Japan to reflect not on the West per se but on Japan’s historical self-
understanding, the process by which it had become the pursuer of self-interest at
the expense of Asian others.
From this new perspective, the demands of the ‘‘comfort women’’ for an apology
became a new signpost for Japan’s reflection on its violent history. An editorial of
Nikkei Newspaper suggested:

Japan blindly strove to reconstruct itself from the devastation of the war [and]
achieved rapid growth and became the world’s top class economic power. In the
meantime, we were absorbed in our busy daily lives and have become insensitive
to the tragedies of the war and many of the victims left behind.53

The unresolved ‘‘comfort women’’ issue became an index of a continuing process of

Japan’s Westernization. Japan was ‘‘born anew’’ after the defeat in the Asia-Pacific
War, and its economic success through material and cultural investment in tech-
nology marked its postwar national ethos. Also, as a result of this military defeat,
Japan renounced war in the Constitution (Article Nine) and promoted pacifism as
the core principle of its postwar Japanese identity. However, this complication of
gaining economic power abjuring military force was not without tensions.
Together with the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the aforementioned constitutional
commitment fixed the role of Japan in international politics as one of the defeated
countries of WWII. By way of international recognition, this status regulated the
development of Japan’s postwar self-understanding. Using psychoanalytic language,
the Japanese sociologist Masachi Osawa observed that the experience of the U.S.
occupation following defeat constituted a deep trauma for postwar Japan. Closely
associated with the memories of the atomic bombs, this trauma had oriented the
development of Japan’s national self-understanding toward victimhood. Such
 484 M. Izumi
structuring of Japan’s account of itself tended to evacuate the memories of its own atro-
cities in the Asia-Pacific region. An article in the Japan edition of the Economist states:
‘‘Japanese people seem to think that their war responsibilities [for the Asia-Pacific
countries] were cancelled off by the two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’’54
However, these circumstances also precluded Japan’s sense of victimhood to take
an anti-Western form (and in particular, anti-American form).55 For example, the
historian Yoshikuni Igarashi illustrates how the postwar narratives ‘‘cast Japan’s
defeat as a drama of rescue and conversion: The United States rescued Japan from
the menace of its militarists, and Japan was converted into a peaceful, democratic
country under U.S. tutelage.’’56 Through the tropes of rescue and tutelage, the popu-
lar discourses circumvented the guilt of the United States. The harm of atomic viol-
ence was the ‘‘price’’ Japan paid to rehabilitate itself and, likewise, the U.S.’s rescue
and tutelage paid off its guilt for the atomic injury. This is not to say that the experi-
ence of the atomic bombs itself dissolved. Instead of forging anti-West sentiments,
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Japan sublimated the abstract collectivity of humanity into Japan’s national unique-
ness by casting itself as ‘‘humanity’s first named victim of the atomic warfare.’’ It
thereby ‘‘deploy[ed] the universalized ‘we’ as the subject of memorialization.’’57
The new inter-Asian perspective opened up by the symbolic relocation of the 1993
Japan-ROK summit, however, challenged this postwar vision of Japan. While Japan’s
political role as circumscribed by international law brought a sense of victimhood as
the prevailing mode for its historical self-understanding, the ‘‘comfort women’’ sur-
vivors’ demand for a state apology and reparations defined Japan as victimizer. So
how could the Japanese public reconcile being both the victim and the victimizer
of the Asia-Pacific War? At first sight, these two identities seem mutually exclusive
and irreconcilable; however, both of these national roles are regulated by Japan’s
associative link to the West. Japan’s invasion and colonization of the Asia-Pacific
region was carried out under the egalitarian banner of ‘‘liberating Asia from Western
oppression.’’ As the editorial of the Yomiuri Newspaper noted:

It is true that the Asia-Pacific War, as a result, lead to the liberation of the
colonies . . . . It is also true that Japan followed the West’s imperialistic advance-
ment, such as the colonization of Asia and the division of the Chinese continent,
and so the conflict became a war between imperial powers. Therefore, it is histori-
cally unreasonable to say that Japan’s invasion had nothing to do with Western
imperial aggression.58

The charges of victimization by various Asian countries tie Japan back to the West,
historically and politically. Instead of directly contradicting Japan’s victim identity,
the role of aggressor reinforces international recognition of Japan as the loser of
WWII. Put differently, the role of aggressor does not necessarily replace Japan’s his-
torical self-understanding as the victim. Sometimes called ‘‘a-bomb nationalism,’’
victimhood as Japan’s mode of nationhood is often invigorated, rather than deflated,
by challenges that raise ‘‘issues of the past’’ on behalf of other Asian countries.59 To
the extent that Japan’s imperial history is remembered as part of its Westernization,
Japan can still imagine itself as a victim.
 Asian-Japanese: Reparations Debate in Japan 485

Prime Minister Hosokawa’s apology for the ordeals of the ‘‘comfort women’’
is now read by the Japanese public as a way to problematize ‘‘Japan’’ by making
Westernization visible as the basis on which Japan’s political present stands. As it
inscribes the history of Western influence in the history of Japan’s economic success,
Japanese national reflection reconstitutes the political present as a problem of
Westernization. That is, the ‘‘comfort women’’ issue was recast as a problem of
Japan’s historical vision of self, namely as a nation trying to emulate a paradigm
of Western nationality. As such, Japan’s economic affluence now embodies the prob-
lem of Westernization. The 1993 J-ROK summit offered Japan a discursive platform
from which to posit Westernization as the object of Japan’s self-criticism; it thereby
reconstituted the resolution of the ‘‘comfort women’’ issue as Japan’s future commit-
ment to initiate a different, non-Western way of being. Departing from the historical
register of Westernization, Japan thus began to re-envision itself in terms of inter-
Asian accountability among neighboring countries in Asia-Pacific. Viewed from
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Japan’s perspective, this new sense of inter-Asian accountability emerges as a

summons to a responsible Asian-Japanese way of life.
The turn toward a rhetoric of responsibility created a new opportunity for the
Japanese government. In February of 1993, the South Korean President Kim
Young-sum announced that ‘‘the South Korean government will not demand
material compensation from Japan, but will take measure to indemnify the ‘comfort
women.’ ’’60 According to the old apology diplomacy based on the tort model for
reparations, such statement following the Japanese government’s apology would indi-
cate an official closure to the public controversy and thereby dissipate the ‘‘issue of
the past.’’ However, apology diplomacy appeared no longer able to retrospectively
establish an equivalence of past wrongdoing (debt) and compensation (payment),
which could keep the ‘‘issue of [the] past’’ from entering into the political present.
Consider, for example, the commentary that accompanied the above announcement
by President Kim: ‘‘Such [a] decision means that the South Korean government
accepts Japan’s legal position [of its legal immunity], but our country should not
think at all that the ‘comfort women’ issue has [been] resolved.’’61 Interestingly,
apology now opens, rather than closes, the reparations debate in the political present.
The juridical use of apologia strategies does not put an end to the kind of life the
victims of the comfort system had to lead after their sexual enslavement had ended.
It does not, for example, enable the victims to bear children, to stop having night-
mares, to remove painful memories, and=or to reclaim their youth. In this regard,
postwar responsibility is an ongoing, open-ended commitment that stretches into
the future of Japan. The editorial of the Yomiuri Newspaper thus concludes, ‘‘We
cannot resolve the ‘comfort women’ issue as a sheer legal dispute.’’62
As it articulates the question of how to define anew Japan’s postwar ethos in the
post-Cold War international political context, apologizing to the former military
‘‘comfort women’’ became more than a question of paying historical debts. Generally,
the ‘‘comfort women’’ reparation lawsuits have the potential to open Japan’s wartime
past to criticism from Western countries. If the legal judgment were made in favor of
the victims, it would not only reinforce Japan’s burden as a defeated nation within the
 486 M. Izumi
international community but also reinscribe the marker of defeat as a sign-post for
national self-perception. Such a result would foreclose the possibility for Japan to
realize an alternative ethos of Asian-Japanese by seizing the moment for a ‘‘new begin-
ning’’ in the post-Cold War constellation. In this context, state apology became an
important rhetorical mechanism with the capacity to connect Japan’s future to the
Asia-Pacific region. The initial reparation lawsuits in 1991 moved past nation-to-
nation diplomacy and created a nation-to-individual model for reparations. And
the Kampu Trial in 1992 introduced apology as a primary form of remedy. It consti-
tuted the ‘‘comfort women’’ survivors as the injured parties and did not focus exclus-
ively on nations harmed by the war. As such the victims now have the authority to
accept or reject Japan’s apology. From the perspective of the Japanese government,
it can achieve the new ethos of Asian-Japanese only with the victims’ approval. Deeply
intertwined with the morally charged transformation of Japan’s national ethos, the
Japanese government took the initiative by establishing the Asian Women’s Fund.
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Conclusion: The AWF as a New Moral Initiative

By tracing how Japan’s political apologies on various occasions have generated
moments of public discussion, this essay set out to illustrate how the ‘‘comfort
women’’ reparations debate shifted from a legal to a moral discourse of responsibility.
While the Japanese government sought to pacify the growing reparations debate both
in domestic and inter-Asian public spheres through its ‘‘apology diplomacy,’’ the
victims’ demand for a state apology in a legal setting disrupted the symbolic economy
of apology as political practice. The 1992 Kampu lawsuit articulated a new rhetoric of
responsibility, opening new vistas for the Japanese government to rehabilitate its sub-
ordinate postwar ethos vis-à-vis the United States. Specifically, this lawsuit redirected
the focus of the reparations debate from war responsibility to postwar responsibility,
as it focused on the Japanese government’s failure to properly address the victims in
the course of postwar reconstruction and the pursuit of reconciliation policies. By
shifting the rhetorical temporality of apologetic discourse from one-time payment
for a past injury to a continual process, apology now became a way of recognizing
one’s responsibility for creating the kind of life the wartime ‘‘comfort women’’ were
leading long after the initial harm was done during the Asia-Pacific War. In other
words, apology emerges as a new form of commitment to attend to the present and
future lives of these victims. In the postwar constellation of international politics,
apologies thus serve as a new moral mechanism for the Japanese government to rear-
ticulate its national ethos of Asian-Japanese.
By accounting for the ways in which the delivery of apologies productively
interlocks with (re)shaping moral values, rhetorical scholars can gain more insights
into the dynamic relation between particular policies and newly emerging institutions,
on one hand, and alternative conception of apology and reconciliation, on the other.
In the case of the ‘‘comfort women’’ reparations debate, the AWF emerged as a new
governing apparatus aimed at harnessing apology as ‘‘human technology,’’ to borrow
Foucault’s term, which could satisfy two urgent demands at the same time: improving
 Asian-Japanese: Reparations Debate in Japan 487

the welfare of the ‘‘comfort women’’ victims and thereby reinventing Japan’s postwar
national ethos. As an effect of the new rhetoric of responsibility keyed to improving
human welfare, the AWF’s initiative signals, in the case of Japan, how apology as
rhetorical mechanism acquired a new temporality. Unlike traditional instances of
reparations, like those linked to the Japanese internment case in the United States,
the AWF’s atonement project does not end once an official apology is issued and
financial reparations have been provided to the victims. As a novel route for facilitat-
ing long-term commitment, delivering the apology together with donation money
allows for an engagement with the victims’ lives as a site, where the efficacy of state
apology is recognized and gauged concretely.
By attending to the evolving temporality of apologetic practices, scholars in com-
munication studies can better grasp the extent to which such practices shape our
experience of what is political and, thus, available for civic deliberation. My analysis
demonstrated how the individual victims’ ‘‘quality of life’’ became available as a site
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of national self-refection for the Japanese government to rehabilitate its national

ethos. As Jason A. Edwards correctly suggests, ‘‘longitudinal rhetorical studies should
be conducted as to how these apologies contribute to rebuilding relationships
between communities.’’63 Emphasizing the temporality of apology invites us to
question traditional notions about how success or failure in apologetic discourse is
determined by preconceived standards for achieving reconciliation, which are put
in place before any apology is delivered. It is a question of ethics, since future-
oriented apology, in effect, serves as a mechanism that opens the victims’ lives for
further scrutiny and evaluation, regardless how well-intended such exposure may
be. In addition, the emphasis on temporality encourages us to closely examine parti-
cular policies and newly emerging institutions, which are designed to govern the new
relationship between perpetrators and victims, and thereby prompts us to interrogate
the very standards that guide our conception of reconciliation.

Notes
[1] The ‘‘comfort system’’ had been in practice since early 1930s, when Japan began its invasion
into China. In order to include these victims during this period prior to WWII, I use
Asia-Pacific War to segment the historical period.
[2] The term ‘‘comfort women’’ has been contested by many. Following Trinh T. Minh-ha’s
idea of quotation as textual displacement that challenges the system of subordination
and creates a new space for creative production, I use the term ‘‘comfort women’’ with
quotation marks in this essay. Trinh T. Minh-ha, ‘‘Kyoukai deno=o meguru taiwa,’’ an
interview by Choeng Jung and Mari Oka, Imago, December, 1996.
[3] Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World
War II, trans. Suzanne O’Brien (New York: Columbia University Press; Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1995); C. Sarah Soh, The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory
in Korea and Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
[4] Scholars disagree about the overall estimate of the number of the victims. The estimate here
is based on Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Comfort Women, pp. 77–81 (in Japanese original).
[5] Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1999); Yoshikuni Igarashi, Narratives of War in Postwar
 488 M. Izumi
Japanese Culture, 1945–1970 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); James J.
Orr, Victims as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu,
HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2001).
[6] Hyunah Yang, ‘‘Revisiting the Issue of Korean ‘Military Comfort Women’: The Question of
Truth and Positionality,’’ positions, 5, no. 1 (1997): 51–71.
[7] The Asian Women’s Fund, Events Leading up to Establishment of the AWF (English orig-
inal), accessed July 1, 2009, www.AWF.or.jp/english/about/leading/html. Unless otherwise
indicated, the Japanese texts are my translation.
[8] Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), ix.
[9] Sharon D. Downey, ‘‘The Evolution of the Rhetorical Genre of Apologia,’’ Western Journal
of Communication, 57, no. 1 (1993): 42.
[10] Elazar Barkan and Alexander Karn, eds., Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconcili-
ation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 5.
[11] Emil B. Towner, ‘‘Apologia, Image Repair, and Reconciliation: The Application, Limitations,
and Future Directions of Apologetic Rhetoric,’’ Communication Yearbook, 33 (2009):
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431–468.
[12] John Hatch, ‘‘Beyond Apologia: Racial Reconciliation and Apologies for Slavery,’’ Western
Journal of Communication, 70, no. 3 (2006): 187.
[13] Jane W. Yamazaki, Japanese Apologies for World War II: A Rhetorical Study (New York:
Routledge, 2006), 15. Outside of the field of communication studies, Mark Gibney and Erik
Roxstorm also make a similar case about the role of state apology as an investment in devel-
oping new norms and standards in transnational state relations. Mark Gibney and Erik
Roxstorm, ‘‘The State of State Apologies,’’ Human Rights Quarterly, 23 (2001): 911–939.
This shift in the analysis of apology from self-defense and image restoration to reconcili-
ation has moved the scholarship on apology toward more audience-centered analysis.
Aaron Lazare, On Apology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). In contrast to Lazare
who is writing from within the field of psychology, the political scientist Jennifer Lind offers
an interesting empirical study of political apology, arguing that the audience-centered
approach is not always an adequate way to make judgments about political apologies.
Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2008). For the audience-centered study of apology in the field of communication, see
Lynn M. Harter, Ronald J. Stephens, and Phyllis M. Japp, ‘‘President Clinton’s Apology for
the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: A Narrative of Remembrance, Redefinition, and
Reconciliation,’’ The Howard Journal of Communications, 11 (2000): 19–34.
[14] Yamazaki, Japanese Apologies, 58.
[15] Jason A. Edwards, ‘‘Community-Focused Apologia in International Affairs: Japanese Prime
Minister Tomiichi Murayama’s Apology,’’ The Howard Journal of Communications, 16
(2005): 318.
[16] Hiroko Okuda, ‘‘Murayama’s Political Challenge to Japan’s Public Apology,’’ International
& Intercultural Communication Annual, 28 (2005): 14–42.
[17] Jacqueline Bacon, ‘‘Reading the Reparations Debate,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech, 89
(2003): 171–195.
[18] Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, ‘‘Rhetorical hybrids: Fusion of generic
elements,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech, 68 (1982): 146–157.
[19] Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, ‘‘Form and Genre in Rhetorical
Criticism: An Introduction,’’ in Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action, ed. Karlyn
Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Falls Church, VA: Speech Communication
Association, 1978), 9–32.
[20] Toby Miller, Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and Popular Media, (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 4.
 Asian-Japanese: Reparations Debate in Japan 489

[21] Hiroko Tsubokawa, ‘‘Nihon no saibansho ga ninteishita nihongun ‘ianfu’ no higai jijitsu
(jyo),’’ Senso Sekinin Kenkyu, 56 (2007).
[22] The exceptions are the Dutch and British ‘‘comfort women’’ victims, who were immediately
compensated after the tribunal. See Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery
and Prostitution during World War II and US Occupation (New York, NY: Routledge).
[23] Such as the Relief Law for the War Wounded and the Bereaved Family. The ‘‘nationality
clause’’ in this law excludes non-Japanese to receive any relief and compensations. Won
Soon Park, ‘‘Japanese Reparations Policies and the ‘Comfort Women’ Question,’’ positions,
5, no. 1 (1997): 107–134.
[24] Tong Yu, ‘‘Reparations for Former Comfort Women of World War II,’’ Harvard
International Law Journal, 36, no. 2 (1995): 528–540.
[25] Initially, the Japanese government rejected the victims’ claim, arguing that no official
documents existed that would indicate the Imperial Military’s direct involvement in the
atrocities of the ‘‘comfort system.’’ Tong Yu, ‘‘Reparations for Former Comfort Women
of World War II,’’ Harvard International Law Journal, 36, no. 2 (1995): 528–540; Sue R.
Lee, ‘‘Comforting the Comfort Women: Who Can Make Japan Pay?,’’ University of
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Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law, 24, no. 2 (2003):533.

[26] Many legal scholars dispute the Japanese government’s position regarding the individual’s
right to claim under international laws. Radhika Coomarswamy, Report on the Mission to
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the Issue of
Military Sexual Slavery in Wartime, U.N. ESCOR, 52nd Sess., Provisional Agendas Item
9(a), U.N. Doc. E=CN.4.1996=53=Add.1 (1996); Gay J. McDougall, Contemporary Forms
of Slavery: Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-like Practices During Armed Conflict,
U.N. ESCOR, 50th Sess., Provisional Agenda Item 6, U.N. Doc. E=CN.4=Sub.2=1998=13
(1998).
[27] Yomiuri Shinbun, ‘‘Takamaru ‘ianfu’ hoshou seikyuu no koe,’’ January 27, 1992, Sec. 2.
[28] Etsuro Totsuka, ‘‘Commentary on a Victory for ‘Comfort Women’: Japan’s Judicial Recog-
nition of Military Sexual Slavery,’’ Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, 47 (1999): 49.
[29] Lisa Yoneyama, ‘‘Traveling Memories, Contagious Justice: Americanization of Japanese
War Crimes at the End of the Post-Cold War,’’ Journal of Asian American Studies, 6,
no. 1 (2003): 74.
[30] Curiously, after this finding of the historical documents, the Japanese government closed
the National Self-Defense Military Archive for the ‘‘purpose of protecting privacy.’’ Yang,
‘‘Revisiting the Issue,’’ 55.
[31] Yamazaki, Japanese Apologies, p. 35–38.
[32] Gwen Robinson, ‘‘WWII Apology Debate Rattles Japan’s Leaders,’’ San Francisco Examiner,
February 27, 1995, Sec. A9.
[33] Lee Jooick, ‘‘Jyu-gun ianfu mondai de atsui kenka o shimasenka,’’ Asahi Journal, March 6,
1992, 41.
[34] Yomiuri Shinbun, ‘‘Socchokuna taiwa ga katameru nikkan shinjidai,’’ January 18, 1992,
Sec. 2.
[35] Roy Brooks, When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for
Human Injustice (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 98.
[36] Norma Field, ‘‘War and Apology: Japan, Asia, the Fiftieth, and After.’’ positions, 5, no. 1
(1997): 12 (my italics).
[37] David W. Houck, Rhetoric as Currency: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Great Depression (Texas,
Texas A&M University Press, 2001), 4.
[38] Mainichi Shinbun, April 19, 1993, Sec. 2.
[39] Jyunnosuke Masumi, Postwar Politics in Japan, 1945–1955, trans. Lonny E. Carlie (Barkley,
CA: Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California,
1985).
 490 M. Izumi
[40] John W. Dower, ‘‘Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal
Conflict,’’ in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1993).
[41] Masachi Osawa, Sengo no Siso Kukan (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998).
[42] Ibid., 55–72.
[43] Shunya Yoshimi, ‘‘ ‘Made in Japan’: The cultural politics of ‘home electrification’’ in
postwar Japan,’ ’’ Media, Culture & Society, 21 (1999): 149–171.
[44] John Nathan, Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation’s Quest for Pride and Purpose (Boston &
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004).
[45] Zainichi no ianfu o sasaeru-kai, ‘‘Zainichi moto ‘ianfu’ saiban no nagare (chisai-hen),’’
http://www.geocities.co.jp/WallStreet/7486/saiban/keika.html#seikyu.
[46] Ibid.
[47] Jamieson & Campbell, ‘‘Rhetorical hybrids,’’ 146–157.
[48] Yomiuri Shinbun, ‘‘Nikkan Keishu kaidan ni kitai surukoto,’’ November 6, 1993, Sec. 3.
[49] Nikkei Shinbun, ‘‘Koto no socchoku na shunoutaiwa de nikkan yuukou o,’’ November 6,
1993, Sec. 2.
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[50] South Korea was liberated from the imperial Japan in August 15, 1945, but it did not gain
its sovereignty immediately. The U.S. Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK)
governed South Korea (below the 38 degree line) from September 8, 1945 to August 15,
1948.
[51] Nikkei Shinbun, ‘‘Koto no socchoku na shunoutaiwa de nikkan yuukou o,’’ November 6,
1993, Sec. 2.
[52] Nikkei Shinbun, ‘‘Korombusu gohyaku shunen no sekai to nihon,’’ August 3, 1992, Sec. 2.
[53] Nikkei Shinbun, ‘‘Funo isan’ sengo sedai ga hikitsugou,’’ August 14, 1994, Sec. 2.
[54] Kazuo Nagasaki, ‘‘Nichidoku sengo hoshou-jyugun ianfu mondai ha shouchou teki na
wakai o motarasu,’’ The Economist (Japanese edition), May 16, 1995, 45.
[55] Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces, pp. 13–18.
[56] Igarashi, Bodies of Memories, 13.
[57] Ibid., 17–18.
[58] Yomiuri Shinbun, ‘‘House no mondai hatsugen, tekkai ha touzenda,’’ May 7, 1994, Sec. 3.
[59] On the ‘‘a-bomb nationalism,’’ see Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces, 168–170.
[60] Nikkei Shimbun, ‘‘Kankoku no shisei to nihon no sekinin’ chosa,’’ March 16, 1993, Sec. 2.
[61] Nikkei Shimbun, March 16, 1993, Sec. 2.
[62] Yomiuri Shinbun, ‘‘Kyouseisei’ mitometa ‘ianfu’ chosa,’’ August 5, 1993, Sec. 3.
[63] Edwards, ‘‘Community-Focused,’’ 331.