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The South Korean Controversy Over the Comfort Women, Justice and Academic Freedom: The Case of Park Yuha

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Maeda Akira  and
Caroline Norma
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Extract

Introduction

Maeda Akira is a law professor at Tokyo Zokei University. He recently edited a volume of writing on theories of ‘hate speech’, and has been an active participant in the activist and scholarly ‘justice for comfort women’ movement since its inception in Japan in the early 1990s. In December 2015, Maeda published a series of blog posts criticising a public statement issued, initially, by 54 mostly Japanese and American academics in November 2015. This public statement was introduced at a press conference on the 26th, and published in the Asahi Shimbun on the 27th. Among its signatories were Oe Kenzaburo, Kono Yohei, Andrew Gordon, Peter Duus, and Ueno Chizuko. The group maintains a multilingual website as a show of ongoing protest.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , February 2016 , e1
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

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References

Notes

1 Maeda, Akira. (2013). Naze ima heito supīchi nanoka: sabetsu bōryoku kyōhaku hakugai. Tōkyō: Kabushiki Kaisha San'ichi Shobō.

2 These are to be published as an article in the Journal of Japan War Responsibility. See Maeda Akira, ‘Shokuminchi shugi wo fusshoku dekinai Nihon: Park Yuha ‘Teikoku no ianfu’ sotsui mondai wo kangaeru,’ Kikan Sensou Sekinin Kenkyuu, Vol. 86, June 2016.

3 See here.

4 This multilingual website (Japanese, Korean and English) appears to be managed by Kyoto Sangyo University's Togo Kazuhiko, a former foreign ministry official and Ambassador to the Netherlands, as per a recent email-list posting.

5 See here.

6 See, for example, here.

7 See here.

8 See here.

9 Maeda refers here to the writing of Senda Kako, which Park relies on heavily in the narrative of her book.

10 The initial number of signatories was 54, but this has risen to 67 at time of writing.

11 Maeda is, however, a comparative international law specialist, and has written extensively on the legal systems of EU countries.

12 See here.

13 See here.

14 See here.

15 See here.

16 See here.

17 See here.