Harvard Professor’s Paper Claiming ‘Comfort Women’ in Imperial Japan Were Voluntarily Employed Stokes International Controversy
By Ariel H. Kim and Simon J. Levien, Crimson Staff Writers
SEOUL, South Korea — A paper by Harvard Law School Japanese legal studies professor J. Mark Ramseyer that claims sex slaves taken by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II were actually recruited, contracted sex workers generated international controversy, academic criticism, and student petitions at Harvard this week.
The paper, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” made headlines across South Korean media and was met with widespread public anger. Ramseyer’s work is set to be published in the March issue of the International Review of Law and Economics. Korean outlets picked up the news after Ramseyer’s paper was featured in a Jan. 28 press release in Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper.
Well-known worldwide for its conservative, nationalist bent, Sankei shared Ramseyer’s abstract with his permission, while adding that memorials to “comfort women” across Asia have spread a “false image” of Japan.
“Comfort women” — a loose translation of a Japanese euphemism for “prostitute” — refers to women and girls forced into sex slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. Comfort women were held at brothels, or “comfort stations,” adjacent to Japanese military facilities to serve soldiers. The number of women enslaved from Japan’s occupied territories is disputed, but estimates range from the tens of thousands to up to 410,000, with many being of Korean descent.
Since World War II, Japan has propped up and dissolved compensation funds, dealt with lawsuits and investigations, and issued and walked back apologies to comfort women. Of the few surviving comfort women today, many have said they are still waiting for justice.
The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, and many notable scholars in Korea, Japan, the United States, and other countries have published extensive reports documenting the explicit sexual slavery of comfort women.
Ramseyer argues in his paper that comfort women were not coerced, but voluntarily employed under the terms of a contract.
Based on the title of Ramseyer’s professorship — the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies — many Korean media outlets and scholars suspected that he may be sponsored by the Japanese corporation.
Yuji Hosaka — a political science professor at Sejong University in Seoul often cited in Korean press — suggested in an interview the possibility that Mitsubishi donated money to the University to establish the professorship and give Ramseyer this role.
In an interview with The Crimson Friday, Ramseyer said he is not aware of the precise origin of the endowed professorship, but believes that Mitsubishi Group made an approximately $1.5 million donation to Harvard in the 1970s to back the position. He said, however, that there are “no strings” or money from Mitsubishi attached to his professorship today.
Spokespeople for the University and the Law School did not respond to a request for comment.
Hosaka also said he suspected Ramseyer’s work was influenced by his connections with the Japanese government. Ramseyer, who was raised in Japan, was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun in 2018, a Japanese government distinction for those who promote Japanese culture abroad.
Ramseyer acknowledged that he has friends who work for the Japanese government, but “absolutely” denied that those connections or the award had any influence on the paper.
Academics Question Paper’s Reasoning and Sources
Legal scholars and historians from South Korea and the United States said Ramseyer’s paper had several flaws in its reasoning and raised questions about the sources he used to back up those arguments.
Harvard Professor of Korean History Carter J. Eckert ’68 wrote in an emailed statement that Ramseyer’s article is “woefully deficient, empirically, historically, and morally.”
Eckert added that he and fellow Harvard History professor Andrew Gordon ’74 are preparing a critical response to Ramseyer’s article at the request of the journal.
University of Connecticut professor of Japanese and Korean history Alexis Dudden — who said she took a class taught by Ramseyer at the University of Chicago in the 1990s — said she was “shocked” when Ramseyer emailed her the article in December.
“It is a poorly resourced, evidentially fatuous piece of scholarly production,” she said. “It is conceptually misguided, because he’s not understanding not only the context, but what actually happened.”
Dudden said after reading the article, she wrote to Ramseyer, responding to inaccuracies she noticed in his logic.
Among the first things she noticed, she said, was that Ramseyer omitted “an intense body of scholarly archival Government of Japan evidence.”
Pyong Gap Min — a sociology professor at Queens College, City University of New York who has researched comfort women — said that Ramseyer based his claims solely off of Japanese “neo-national arguments.”
“He has the burden to refute previous studies that have demonstrated the comfort women system as sexual slavery,” he said.
Ramseyer said an early version of his paper included “disputes with historians,” but those sections were cut from the final version at the request of the journal in order to focus the article on the contracts.
The journal’s editors did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Several scholars also said they took issue with two of Ramseyer’s main arguments in the article.
The first is his claim that recruiters and brothel operators, rather than the Japanese government or military, were responsible for forcing women to work at the comfort stations.
“Ramseyer made the error of completely ignoring the fact that these recruiters were working under Japanese military or government orders,” Hosaka said in an interview conducted in Korean.
Japanese government documents provide evidence that the Japanese military secretly selected independent recruiters and forced them to operate comfort stations, Hosaka added.
Professor Seo Kyoung-duk, who teaches at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul, said he agreed with Hosaka, citing a 1938 Japanese ministry notice on recruiting women to comfort stations.
Responding to the evidence that Hosaka, Seo, and other scholars have cited in their research, Ramseyer said the notion that there are documents confirming Japanese government involvement is “just wrong.”
“I don’t see anything that indicates that the Japanese government dragooned people into doing it,” he said.
Asked why he did not cite any Korean sources in the paper, Ramseyer said he is “very upfront” about the fact that he does not read Korean.
Several academics also disputed another one of Ramseyer’s claims in the paper: that comfort women willingly entered brothel contracts, from which they financially benefited, and after which they were able to return home.
“The comfort women system that the army was using is essentially an extension of the licensed prostitution system that was in effect in Japan,” Ramseyer said in the interview.
Hosaka argued, however, that the “comfort stations” that accompanied the Japanese military during WWII and the licensed brothels in Japan are entirely different.
Harvard Law School professor Noah R. Feldman ’92, who has studied comfort women and contract theory, also said Ramseyer’s claim is incorrect.
“The economic relationship that was deployed, even according to Ramseyer’s own research, is very close to what we would ordinarily call debt slavery,” Feldman said, comparing it to sharecropping contracts in the Jim Crow American South. “Such arrangements are designed to and do exploit the vast power discrepancy between different actors and institutions.”
Katharine H.S. Moon, a professor of Asian studies and political science at Wellesley College, wrote in an emailed statement that Ramseyer’s claim ignores the context in which women entered into contracts.
“How do we explain whether a 14- or 16-year-old girl knew what she was signing even if she signed it, especially in a Korean society at the time that was not accustomed to contracts and related legalism and didn’t grant such agency to girls and women?” Moon wrote.
Students React with Anger, Petitions
The Korean Association of Harvard Law School, led by law students Gabrielle J. Kim and Kikyung “Kik” Lee, released a statement Thursday condemning Ramseyer’s article as “factually inaccurate and misleading.” As of Saturday morning, the statement garnered more than 800 signatures, many from law students across the U.S.
The Harvard College Korean International Students Association also sent a press release to Korean newspapers Friday morning criticizing Ramseyer’s paper and laying out actions the organization plans to take in protest.
KISA also plans to send out a petition to Harvard affiliates, according to Yumi Lee ’21, one of its co-presidents.
Lee said the petition will contain a list of demands to Ramseyer, University administrators, and the academic journal publishing Ramseyer’s article. It will request that Ramseyer apologize “to comfort women for whom his claims may have reinforced painful trauma” and “to the Harvard University community for injuring the institution’s reputation and standards for academic soundness,” she said.
Lee also said KISA will demand that University President Lawrence S. Bacow and Law School Dean John F. Manning ’85 condemn Ramseyer’s research, and that the journal apologize for not upholding a rigorous peer review process and withdraw the article from its upcoming issue.
In a separate email to members Friday, KISA wrote that the Korean Consulate General in Boston is “aware of the situation” and may use KISA’s statement in an official communication. The consulate did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Several Harvard undergraduates said they reacted with disbelief and disappointment when they first encountered news of the article in South Korean media.
“It was all over the news,” Alyssa Suh ’25, who currently resides in Seoul, said. “I was extremely angry and upset when I first saw that. We were colonized, and they don’t acknowledge that.”
“No one really knows about this piece of history in the States. The amount of Korean history that we learn is literally a paragraph,” Suh added.
Ike Jin Park ’20-’22 said if the history surrounding comfort women was more well-known in the U.S., there would be a greater outcry from students.
“As a Korean citizen myself, I was very uncomfortable,” Park said. “Imagine this was another issue that a lot of people in the West cared about. It simply wouldn’t be okay.”
Park also said he believes the University “needs to make a statement” and that he would like to see the paper taken down.
Esther E. Kim ’23 said she believes the article will damage Harvard’s reputation among Koreans.
“Especially because there is a lot of respect afforded to institutions like Harvard by the Korean community, by the Korean-American community, it is devastating to see that this could be accepted and published by a Harvard Law School professor,” she said.
Responding to student backlash, Ramseyer said he has a “responsibility to the students at the Law School” and is willing to speak with them about the paper.
Ramseyer also said he does not intend to pursue further research on this topic.
Though many scholars said they disagree with Ramseyer’s claims, several noted Ramseyer is protected by academic freedom to promote his opinions.
“His academic freedom entitles him to express whatever views he wishes without any form of university-based sanction,” Feldman said.
Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen wrote in an emailed statement that she was “proud” that HLS student organizations had released the statement “affirming the need to be historically accurate.”
“They have refrained from petitioning for measures that would impair my colleague’s academic freedom, and I would of course disapprove of any such calls,” she wrote.
“He has every right to his opinions and viewpoint, and we all equally have every right to criticize his reasoning and logic,” Gersen added.
The Harvard Crimson 2021.2.7
2021/02/07
ダデンやA・ゴードン、ムンらがラムザイヤー論文に反論
ハーバード大ロースクール韓人学生会声明文（ラムザイヤー教授）
Statements
KAHLS Statement in Response to Professor J. Mark Ramseyer’s Article “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War”
Professor J. Mark Ramseyer, the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, recently published an article (“Contracting for sex in the Pacific War”) and accompanying editorial (“Recovering the Truth about the Comfort Women”), in which he describes the forced sex slavery organized by Japan during World War II as a consenting, contractual process. He claims, without sufficient evidence, that the Japanese military sex slaves were willing prostitutes who were able to “negotiate” for substantial wages in a consensual, contractual relationship. In his editorial, he also makes multiple assertions that the comfort women story is “pure fiction,” a revisionist claim that is recycled time and time again by neonationalist figures.
Professor Ramseyer’s arguments are factually inaccurate and misleading. Without any convincing evidence, Professor Ramseyer argues that no government “forced women into prostitution,” a contention he also makes in his editorial. Decades’ worth of Korean scholarship, primary sources, and third-party reports challenge this characterization. None are mentioned, cited, or considered in his arguments.
Professor Ramseyer’s deficient presentation of the historical record is demonstrated by his bibliography. Korean perspectives and scholarship, both rich sources of material on this topic, are almost completely absent in his work. Scholars studying history understand the possibility of post-hoc revisionism and bias. To counter such effects, they consult a wide-ranging set of materials from a variety of sources. Professor Ramseyer does not.
He also ignores expansive scholarship done by international organizations, such as the United Nations and Amnesty International, which has conclusively found that the “comfort women” were coerced, kidnapped, or forced by the Japanese government. After its independent inquiry, the Japanese government itself acknowledged as part of the Kono Statement that “the then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of comfort stations.”
As students of law and democracy, we are committed to a fair presentation of diverse perspectives. Our professors stress the fundamental importance of bringing multiple perspectives to a discussion. Again, Professor Ramseyer’s article falls short in this regard. He does not engage with the historically validated and important perspectives of scholars who have worked to amplify the testimonies of these women. To ignore this work is to create the false impression of a settled history of an imagined world where Korean comfort women were free to contract for higher wages paid at their preferred schedule.
Analytically, Professor Ramseyer takes these contracts as a given. He suggests comfort women “negotiated” their contractual terms. Such value-neutral language erases important historical context of coercive sexual violence. He assumes away important issues of consent, duress, and power dynamics. As law students, we study the doctrines and equitable principles that have developed to correct for these issues in our first-year curriculum. As future lawyers, we recognize that much is still to be done, that settlements and non-disclosure agreements can do much to obscure latent coercion. As citizens of a world where sexual violence, denialism, and slavery run rampant, we call attention to misleading histories and economic analyses that callously suggest that these women negotiated into their own sexual slavery.
We, and the undersigned, strongly condemn the deliberate erasure of human rights violations and war crimes. Up to 200,000 women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military, from not only Korea, but also China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Netherlands, East Timor, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma. We stand with the victims who have yet to receive full reparations and a proper, official apology from the Japanese government. We strongly condemn all actions that inflict pain and insult to the victims, who bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army.
As students, we have the utmost respect for academic freedom, including that of Professor Ramseyer. But at the same time, we firmly believe that a sincere commitment to academic freedom is inseparable from the obligation of academic integrity as part of a genuine search for truth. Upholding these values requires that we shed light on the failings of misleading narratives that omit important voices and obscure critical histories.
February 4, 2021
2016/12/31
韓国系米国人教授「慰安婦証言は信用出来ない」に学生ら謝罪要求
韓国の漢陽大学の教授が、日本の戦争犯罪（慰安婦システム）を擁護し慰安婦を侮辱したとして学生から公式謝罪を要求されているというニュース。既視感を覚えるニュースである。昨年も、高麗大の教授が慰安婦は多額の報酬を得ていたと講義して学生らに糾弾された。
今回の大学教授は、慰安婦問題を貧困の問題と捉え、日本政府の責任を限定的と考えているようである。脱北女性を例に挙げて学生らに説明しようとしたが、国民的映画『鬼郷』に懐疑的で、現在集団リンチ中のパク・ユハ教授の著書を推奨したのだから、清く正しい学生らの怒りを買ったのも当然と言えようか。この人物は韓国系のアメリカ人で、どうやら生活の基盤はアメリカにあるらしい。受講生の半数は、「慰安婦問題についての背景知識がない外国人学生」だったというが、背景について無知なのは韓国人学生も同じだろう。無知と言うより、見て見ぬ振りをしているだけなのだが。
韓国系アメリカ人が韓国で慰安婦証言の信憑性に疑義を呈し、日本人の学者がアメリカで「日本の右派」が歴史修正すると叩いている。捻じれ現象。
「慰安婦蔑視」「教会行事参加」まで強要した漢陽大教授
学生たちが反発、教授に「公開謝罪」要求
「『慰安婦』の記憶は正確ではないので信頼できない」 「『鬼郷』は慰安婦の一方的な主張にだけ基づく映画なので、調査が必要」
漢陽大学の教授が授業中の（？）「慰安婦蔑視」発言が問題になっている。この教授は学生たちに「慰安婦」が「自発的売春」だったという本を読むように強要し、特定教会の行事に参加（した学生に）加算点を与えて学生たちの反発を買った。
授業で「慰安婦蔑視」発言日常的に行った教授
成績を餌に「宗教の強要」も
23日漢陽大学生たちの話を総合すると、政治外交学科所属のJ教授は授業中に継続的に日本軍慰安婦問題を蔑視する発言を行った。一例としてJ教授は秋学期に開設された「市民社会と社会運動」という授業で「(日本軍慰安婦)被害者の話は無条件に信用できず、当時の日本政府だけの責任とは（？）見ることは出来ない」と述べた。学生たちの異議に、J教授は「脱北女性たちが皿洗いで少ない報酬を得るか、売春でより多くの金を稼ぐか」と述べ学生たちと激論を交わすこともあった。 J教授の「慰安婦蔑視」発言は学生たちが提供した録音にも残って（含んで）いる。
学生たちによると、韓国系アメリカ人であるJ教授はこの授業を2年間行い、40～50人余りの受講生の半分以上が日本軍慰安婦問題について背景知識がない外国人学生だった。J教授は自分の考えに賛同する学生たちと非公式的な出会いを推進し、マスコミなどに日本帝国主義を擁護する文を継続的に寄稿することもあった。
J教授は「慰安婦」被害者の名誉を傷つけた疑惑で懲役3年を求刑されたパク・ユハ教授の『帝国の慰安婦』のような本の購入を強要して点を与えることもあった。
J教授はまた、成績をエサに学生たちに特定宗教の強要行為を行った。この件について情報を提供した学生Aは、「特定教会の行事に参加して報告書を提出した学生に点を与えた。 成績のために学生たちが行事に参加しなければならない雰囲気だった」「これは明白な宗教強要（行為）であり、評価の公正性を妨げる行為」だと指摘した。
学生たちの反発、「公開謝罪」「再発防止」要求
漢陽大の学生たちはJ教授に公式謝罪などを要求してきた。漢陽大学社会科学学生会はJ教授の発言を「戦争犯罪を擁護する発言であり、慰安婦被害者を侮辱する行為」であると規定し、教授に公開謝罪と再発防止の約束を入れた答弁書を要求した。
学校関係者は、「学期を終えた教授が現在のアメリカに戻り連絡が取れない」として「大学でも事実関係を確認してから、適切な措置を取る」と語った。
参考：ニューシス2016.12.22 KBS 2016.12.22
‘위안부 폄훼’, ‘교회 행사 참여’까지 강요한 한양대 교수
학생들 반발, 해당 교수에 ‘공개 사과’ 요구
옥기원 기자 ok@vop.co.kr
발행 2016-12-23 15:57:17
수정 2016-12-23 16:16:13
이 기사는 번 공유됐습니다
“‘위안부’ 기억은 정확하지 않아서 신뢰할 수 없다” “‘귀향’은 위안부의 일방적인 주장에만 근거한 영화여서 조사가 필요하다”
한양대학교의 한 교수가 수업에서 한 ‘위안부 폄훼’ 발언이 논란이 되고 있다. 이 교수는 학생들에게 ‘위안부’가 ‘자발적 성매매’라는 주장이 담긴 저서를 읽도록 강요하고, 특정 교회 행사에 참여하면 가산점을 부여해 학생들의 반발을 샀다.
수업서 ‘위안부 폄훼’ 발언 일삼은 교수
성적 미끼로 ‘종교 강요’까지
23일 한양대 학생들의 말을 종합하면 정치외교학과 소속 J교수는 수업 중에 지속해서 일본군 위안부 문제를 폄훼하는 발언을 했다. 하나의 예로 J교수는 지난 가을학기 개설된 ‘시민사회와 사회운동’이라는 수업에서 “(일본군 위안부) 피해자들의 말을 무조건 신뢰할 수 없고, 당시 일본 정부의 책임만으로 볼 수 없다”고 말했다. 학생들의 이의 제기에 J교수는 “탈북 여성들이 설거지로 적은 시급을 받겠느냐, 아니면 매춘으로 더 많은 돈을 벌겠냐”고 말하며 학생들과 격론을 벌이기도 했다. J교수의 ‘위안부 폄훼’ 발언은 학생들이 제보한 녹취록에도 담겨있다.
학생들에 따르면 한국계미국인인 J교수는 해당 수업을 2년간 진행했고, 40~50여명 수강인원 중 절반 이상이 일본군 위안부 문제에 대한 배경 지식이 없는 외국학생이다. J교수는 자신의 생각에 동의하는 학생들과 비공식적인 만남을 추진했으며, 언론 등에 일본 제국주의를 옹호하는 글을 지속적으로 게재하기도 했다.
J교수는 ‘위안부’ 피해자의 명예를 훼손한 혐의로 징역 3년을 구형받은 박유하 교수의 ‘제국의 위안부’ 같은 책들의 구입을 강요하고, 가산점을 부여하기도 했다.
J교수는 또 성적을 미끼로 학생들에게 특정 종교 강요 행위를 자행했다. 사건을 제보한 A학생은 “특정 교회의 행사에 참석해 보고서를 제출하는 학생들에 한해 가산점을 부여했다. 성적 때문에 학생들이 행사에 참여할 수 밖에 없는 분위기였다”면서 “이는 명백한 종교 강요이고, 평가의 공정성을 방해하는 행위”라고 지적했다.
학생들 반발, ‘공개사과’ ‘재발방지’ 요구
한양대 학생들은 J교수에게 공식사과 등을 요구하고 나섰다. 한양대 사회과학대학 학생회는 J교수의 발언을 “전쟁범죄를 옹호하는 발언이자, 위안부 피해자들을 모욕하는 행위”로 규정하고, 교수에게 공개 사과와 재발 방지 약속을 담은 답변서를 요구했다.
학교 관계자는 “학기를 마친 교수가 현재 미국으로 출국해 연락이 안 되고 있다”면서 “학교 차원에서도 사실관계를 확인한 뒤 적절한 조치하겠다”고 말했다.
2016/07/30
特別法制定求め、イ・ヨンス泣く怒る
＜和解・癒し財団＞の理事長を狙ってカプサイシン・テロを起こすなど日韓合意反対派が猛威を振るう韓国。その先頭に立つのが、ナヌムの家系の「ハルモニ」。この日も、イ・ヨンスが拳を振り上げたり泣いたり大騒ぎしていたようである。自分たちの葬儀費用を出せとか、慰安婦の日を制定しろとか。そもそも、ナヌムの家の慰安婦にはスポンサーがついており、葬儀の面倒は見てもらえるはずである。活動報告書の国会提出とか、本人たちはどこまで理解しているんだか・・・。
慰安婦被害者の不満収まらず 国会で特別法制定求める＝韓国
旧日本軍の慰安婦被害者である韓国人女性らが２１日、生活安定支援や記念事業などを盛りこんだ特別法の制定を促す請願書を韓国国会に提出した。
慰安婦被害者の李容洙（イ・ヨンス）さんと李玉善（イ・オクソン）さん、朴玉善（パク・オクソン）さんは国会で記者会見を開き、「特別法の制定を通じ慰安婦の強制動員問題に対する関心を高め、日本政府の心からの謝罪と法的な賠償を請求する必要がある」と訴えた。
また、韓国と日本の両政府に、慰安婦問題の根本的な解決に向け責任ある姿を示すよう強く求めた。韓国の現政権の慰安婦関連政策も激しい口調で批判した。
この特別法には、大統領の下に「慰安婦被害者の生活安定支援および記念事業の審議委員会」を設置することをはじめ、被害者の葬儀費と追悼施設設置費の支援、関連史料館の建設と教育用資料の刊行、被害者の実態に関する調査・研究の支援、被害者を悼む日の指定、被害者の名誉回復と真相解明に向けた活動報告書の国会提出などが盛りこまれている。
会見には共同請願者である京畿道高陽市の崔星（チェ・ソン）市長、米カリフォルニア大ロサンゼルス校（ＵＣＬＡ）韓国学研究センターのジョン・ダンカン所長、慰安婦被害者が共同生活を送る「ナヌムの家」の安信権（アン・シングォン）所長、最大野党「共に民主党」の兪銀恵（ユ・ウンヘ）国会議員も同席した。
