Key Articles and Critical Essays

Below is a curated selection of peer-reviewed articles analyzing the "comfort women" issue through historical, legal, and sociological lenses. These shorter texts are vital for researchers looking to understand specific debates, such as the efficacy of the Asian Women’s Fund, the politics of memorial statues, and the evolving definition of sexual slavery in international law.

Note: Articles are listed alphabetically by author. For full legal reports and government documents, please see the "Primary Legal Documents" section.

• Ahmed, Afreen R. "The Shame of Hwang V. Japan: How the International Community Has Failed Asia's 'Comfort Women'." Texas Journal of Women & the Law 14, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 121-149.
   
• Arakawa, Maki. "A New Forum for Comfort Women: Fighting Japan in United States Federal Court." Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, vol. 16 (2001): 174-200.
   
• Argibay, Carmen M. "Sexual Slavery and the "Comfort Women" of World War II." Berkeley Journal of International Law 21, no. 2 (2003): 375-389.
   
• Asian Women's Fund, "The "Comfort Women" Issue and the Asian Women's Fund." Tokyo: Asian Women’s Fund, 2004.
   
• Askin, Kelly D. "Comfort Women: Shifting Shame and Stigma from Victims to Victimizers." International Criminal Law Review 1, no. 1/2 (January 2001): 5-32.
   
• Barkan, Elazar. "Sex Slaves: Comfort Women and Japanese Guilt." The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, (2000). 
   
• Berndt, Caroline M. "Popular Culture as Political Protest: Writing the Reality of Sexual Slavery." Journal of Popular Culture 31, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 177-187.
   
• Boling, David Alan. "Mass Rape, Enforced Prostitution and the Japanese Military army: Japan Eschews International Legal Responsibility?" Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 32, no. 3 (1995): 533-589.
   
• Chang, Mina. "The Politics of an Apology: Japan and Resolving the 'Comfort Women' Issue."  Harvard International Law Review 31, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 34-37.
   
• Chinkin, Christine. "The Tokyo Tribunal 2000: Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery." American Journal of International Law 95, no. 2 (2001): 335–41. Summary: Writing for the most prestigious international law journal, Chinkin (a world-renowned legal scholar) analyzes the 2000 "People’s Tribunal" in Tokyo. She explains how this non-governmental tribunal successfully applied international law to fill the "justice gap" left by the 1946 Tokyo Trials, providing a model for how civil society can prosecute gender-based war crimes when states refuse to do so.
   
• Chou, Chih-Chieh. "An Emerging Transnational Movement in Women's Human Rights: Campaign of Nongovernmental Organizations on "Comfort Women" Issue in East Asia." Journal of Economic & Social Research5, no. 1 (2003): 153-181.
   
• Chuh, Kandice. "Discomforting Knowledge: Or, Korean "Comfort Women" and Asian Americanist Critical Practice." Journal of Asian American Studies 6, no. 1 (February 2003): 5-23.
   
• Chung, Chin Sung. "The Origin and Development of the Military Sexual Slavery Problem in Imperial Japan." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 5, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 219-253.
   
• Cumings, Bruce. "Why Memory Lingers in East Asia." Current History 107, no. 701 (September 2007): 257-262.
   
• Dolgopol, Ustinia. "Women’s Voices, Women’s Pain: Voices Out of Silence." Human Rights Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1995): 127–54. Summary: This is one of the earliest and most influential legal articles on the subject. Dolgopol, who conducted the ICJ's initial investigation, argues that the "comfort women" system was a clear violation of the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1926 Slavery Convention. It is a foundational text for anyone researching the transition of the issue from a moral grievance to a formal human rights claim.
   
• Cumings, Bruce. "Why Memory Lingers in East Asia." Current History 107, no. 701 (September 2007): 257-262.
   
• Dolgopol, Ustinia. "Women's Voices, Women's Pain." Human Rights Quarterly 17, no. 1 (February 1995): 127-155.
   
• Dudden, Alexis. "We Came to Tell the Truth." Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (December 2001): 591-602.
   
• Fisher, Barry A. “Japan’s Wartime Sex Slavery: Unresolved Atrocity, Asia Unifier, Portal to Regional Peace.” Diplomacy (외교), no. 155 (October 2025): 315–16. Korean Council on Foreign Relations. Summary: In this article, Fisher contrasts the successful reconciliation in Europe with the "unresolved atrocity" in Asia, blaming Japan’s continued refusal to accept state liability for the regional instability. The essay details the landmark Hwang Geum Joo v. Japan class action and the "shocking" opposition Fisher encountered from the U.S. government, which intervened on behalf of Japan by arguing that the 1951 Peace Treaty had already extinguished such claims . Fisher ultimately frames the "comfort women" issue as a unique "unifier" for Asian nations and a necessary "portal to regional peace" and Korean reunification .
   
• Frühstück, Sabine. "Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II." Feminist Review, no. 82 (2006): 137-138.
   
• Gormley, Daniel J. "The 'Comfort Women' Case: Hwang v. Japan and the Question of Sovereign Immunity." Georgetown Journal of International Law 33 (2002): 515. Summary: This article is essential for understanding why survivors failed to get justice in U.S. courts. Gormley analyzes the 2001 lawsuit filed in Washington D.C. (Hwang v. Japan) and explains the "Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act." He details the legal brick wall—Sovereign Immunity—that prevents Japanese state liability from being adjudicated in foreign domestic courts.
   
• Gustafsson, Karl. "Transnational Civil Society and the Politics of Memory in Sino-Japanese Relations: Exhibiting the 'Comfort Women' in China." Working Papers in Contemporary Asian Studies, no. 41 (2014). Lund University Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies.
   
• Hata, Ikuhiko. "The Flawed U.N. Report on Comfort Women." Japan Echo 23, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 66-73.
   
• Hata, Ikuhiko. "No Organized or Forced Recruitment: Misconceptions about Comfort Women and the Japanese Military." Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact (2007). Available at: http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/31_S4.pdf
   
• Hayashi, Hirofumi. "Government, the Military and Business in Japan’s 'Comfort Woman' System." Social Science Japan Journal 11, no. 1 (2008): 71–84. Summary: Hayashi, a leading Japanese historian, uses this article to expose the "Iron Triangle" of Japanese wartime power. He provides archival evidence showing how the Japanese government, the military, and private businessmen collaborated to run the comfort stations, effectively debunking the claim that it was purely a private enterprise.
   
• Hayashi, Hirofumi. "Structure of Japanese Imperial Government involved in Military Comfort Women System." Nature People Society: Science and the Humanities 33 (July 2002).
   
• Hayashi, Hirofumi. "The Japanese Movement to Protest Wartime Sexual Violence." Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (December 2001): 572-580.
   
• Hayashi, Hirofumi. "Survey of the Japanese Movement against Wartime Sexual Violence." Peace Studies Bulletin 20 (June 2000).
   
• Hayashi, Hirofumi. "Japanese Comfort Women in Southeast Asia." Japan Forum 10, no. 2 (September 1998): 211-219.
   
• Hein, Laura. "Savage Irony: The Imaginative Power of the Military Comfort Women in the 1990s." Gender and History 11, no. 2 (July 1999): 336-72. 
   
• Hsu, Yvonne Park. "'Comfort Women' from Korea: Japan's World War II Sex Slaves and the Legitimacy of their Claims to Reparations." Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal 2, no. 1 (Winter 1993):  97-129. 
   
• Kang, Laura Hyun Yi. "Conjuring "Comfort Women": Mediated Affiliations and Disciplined Subjects in Korean/American Transnationality." Journal of Asian American Studies 6, no. 1 (February 2003): 25-55.
   
• Kang, Laura Hyun Yi. "The Making of Testimony: The 'Comfort Women' of the Japanese Imperial Army and the Politics of Difference." Feminist Studies 29, no. 1 (2003): 149–74. Summary: Kang examines the "life of a testimony." She looks at how the stories of the Halmoni (grandmothers) are translated, edited, and sometimes "packaged" by activists and scholars to fit certain political narratives. It is a vital read for researchers who want to use survivor testimonies ethically and critically.
   
• Kim, Chin and Stanley S. Kim. “Delayed Justice: The Case of the Japanese Imperial Military Sex Slaves.” Pacific Basin Law Journal, vol. 16 (2), (1998): 263–280.
   
• Kim, Hyun Sook. "History and Memory: The 'Comfort Women' Controversy." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 5, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 73-106.
   
• Kim-Gibson, Dai Sil. "They Are Our Grandmas." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 5, no.1 (Spring 1997): 255-274.
   
• Ladino, James. “Ianfu: No Comfort Yet For Korean Comfort Women And The Impact Of House Resolution 121.” 15 Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender, 333 (2009). Available at: http://cardozolawandgender.com/uploads/2/7/7/6/2776881/15-2_ladino.pdf
   
• Ling, Cheah Wui. “Walking the Long Road in Solidarity and Hope: A Case Study of the 'Comfort Women' Movement's Deployment of Human Rights Discourse,” 22 Harvard Human Rights Journal 63 (2009).
   
• Matsui, Yayori. "Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery: Memory, Identity, and Society." East Asia: An International Quarterly 19, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 119-142.
   
• Mendoza, Katharina R. "Freeing the 'Slaves of Destiny': The Lolas of the Filipino Comfort Women Movement." Cultural Dynamics 15, no. 3 (November 2003): 247-266.
   
• Min, Pyong Gap. "Korean 'Comfort Women':  The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender, and Class." Gender and Society 17, no. 6 (December 2003):  938-957.
   
• Morris-Suzuki, Tessa and Peter Rimmer. "Virtual Memories: Japanese History Debates in Manga and Cyberspace." Asian Studies Review 26, no. 2 (June 2002): 147-164.
   
• Nakahara, Michiko. "'Comfort Women' In Malaysia." Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (December 2001): 581-589.
   
• Nozaki, Yoshiko. "Feminism, Nationalism, and the Japanese Textbook Controversy over 'Comfort Women'."  In Feminism and Antiracism:  International Struggles for Justice, eds. France Winddance Twine and Kathleen M. Blee. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Summary: Nozaki focuses on the "Textbook Wars" in Japan. She tracks how the "comfort women" were briefly included in Japanese middle school textbooks in the 1990s and the fierce right-wing backlash that led to their subsequent removal. This is the best article for understanding how the issue is taught (or not taught) to Japanese youth.
   
• Nozaki, Yoshiko. "The 'Comfort Women' Controversy: History and Testimony." The Asia-Pacific Journal  3, no. 7 (July 6, 2005).   
   
• Park, Won Soon. "Japanese Reparations Policies and the 'Comfort Women' Question."  Positions:  East Asia Cultures Critique 5, no. 1 (Spring 1997:  107-134.  
   
• Park, You-me. "Comforting the Nation: 'Comfort Women,' the Politics of Apology and the Workings of Gender."  Interventions 2, no. 2 (July 2000): 199-211. Summary: This essay provides a sharp critique of how both Japanese and Korean nationalisms "use" the comfort women. Park argues that while Japan denies the crime to protect national pride, Korea often uses the women as symbols of national "purity" and "victimhood," which can paradoxically end up silencing the women’s individual agency once again.
   
• Piper, Nicola. "Transnational Women's Activism in Japan and Korea: The Unresolved Issue of Military Sexual Slavery." Global Networks 1, no. 2 (April 2001): 155-170.
   
• Sancho, Nelia. "The 'Comfort Women' System during World War II:  Asian Women as Targets of Mass Rape and Sexual Slavery by Japan." In Gender and Catastrophe, ed. Ronit Lentin. London: Zed Books, 1997. 
   
• Sand, Jordan. "Historians and Public Memory in Japan." History & Memory 11, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1999): 116-128.
   
• Seaton, Philip. "Reporting the 'Comfort Women' Issue, 1991-1992: Japan's Contested War Memories in the National Press." Japanese Studies 26, no. 1 (May 2006): 99-112.
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "The Comfort Women: Past and Present." Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 28, no. 1 (1996): 1–13. Summary: In this early article, anthropologist Sarah Soh introduces the concept of "public memory" versus "private memory." She explores why it took nearly 50 years for the survivors to speak out, pointing to the intense social stigma and Confucian gender norms in post-war Korea that forced the survivors into a "second silence."
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "In/fertility among Korea's "Comfort Women" Survivors: A Comparative Perspective." Women’s Studies International Forum 29, no. 1 (January 2006): 67-80.
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "Women's Sexual Labor and State in Korean History." Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 4 (Winter 2004):  170-177. 
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "Aspiring to Craft Modern Gendered Selves: 'Comfort Women' and Chôngsindae in Late Colonial Korea." Critical Asian Studies 36, no. 2 (June 2004): 175-198.
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "Japan's National/Asian Women's Fund for 'Comfort Women'."  Pacific Affairs 76, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 209-233.
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "Japan's Responsibility toward Comfort Women Survivors." Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper 77 (May 2001).  Available at: http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp77.html
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "Prostitutes versus Sex Slaves: The Politics of Representing the 'Comfort Women'." In The Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II, eds. Margaret Stetz and Bonnie Oh. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2001: 69-87.
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "Centering the Korean "Comfort Women" Survivors." Critical Asian Studies 33, no.4 (2001): 603-608.
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "Human Rights and the 'Comfort Women'." Peace Review 12, no. 1 (March 2000): 123-129.
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "From Imperial Gifts to Sex Slaves: Theorizing Symbolic Representations of the 'Comfort Women'." Social Science Japan Journal 3, no.1 (2000): 59-76.
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "The Problem of "Comfort Women": The Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, Class, Ethnicity, and the State." In Cross-Cultural Communication East and West in the 90s. eds., Bates L. Hoffer and John H. Koo. San Antonio, TX: Institute for Cross-Cultural Research, 1998: 83-87
   
• Soh, C. Sarah. "The Korean "Comfort Women": Movement for Redress." Asian Survey 36, no. 12 (December 1996): 1227-1240.
   
• Song, Youn-ok and Melissa L. Wender. "Japanese Colonial Rule and State-Managed Prostitution: Korea's Licensed Prostitutes." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 5, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 171-217.
   
• Thoma, Pamela. "Cultural Autobiography, Testimonial, and Asian American Transnational Feminist Coalition in the "Comfort Womenof World War II" Conference." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 21, no. 1/2 (2000): 29-54.
   
• Totsuka, Etsuro. "Commentary of a Victory for "Comfort Women": Japan's Judicial Recognition of Military Sexual Slavery."  Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, 1999.
   
• Ueno, Chizuko. "The Politics of Memory." History & Memory 11, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1999): 129-152.
   
• Ueno, Chizuko. "The Japanese Responsibility for Military Rape During World War II." Asian Studies Review 17, no. 3 (1994): 102-107. 
   
• Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi. "Comfort Women: Beyond Litigious Feminism."  Monumenta Nipponica 58, no. 2 (summer 2003): 223-258.
   
• Watanabe, Kazuko. "Trafficking in Women's Bodies, Then and Now: The Issue of Military 'Comfort Women'." Women's Studies Quarterly 27, no. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1999): 19-31. Summary: Watanabe links the historical "comfort women" system to modern-day sex trafficking and "military sex tourism." By bridging the gap between WWII and the present, she argues that the failure to resolve the "comfort women" issue allows a culture of impunity for sexual violence to persist in the modern Asia-Pacific region.
   
• Watanabe, Kazuko. "Trafficking in Women's Bodies, Then and Now." Peace & Change 20, no. 4 (October 1995): 501-514.
   
• Watanabe, Kazuko. "Militarism, Colonialism, and the Trafficking of Women: 'Comfort Women' Forced into Sexual Labor for Japanese Soldiers." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 26, no. 4 (October-December 1994): 2-17.
   
• Wit, Katherine J. "Comfort Women: The 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes Trial and Historical Blindness." The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History, vol. 4, no.1 (September 2016): 17-34.
   
• Yang, Hyunah. "Revisiting the Issue of Korean 'Comfort Women': The Question of Truth and Postcolonial Condition." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 5, no. 1 (1997): 51–71. Summary: Yang offers a sophisticated post-colonial analysis. She argues that the "comfort women" cannot be understood solely through Western legal frameworks. Instead, she examines the unique "double burden" of these women: they were victims of Japanese colonial militarism and victims of a Korean society that devalued them after the war because they were no longer "pure.