Challenging 'Comfort Women' Discourse : Rethinking Intersections of Historical Justice and History Education

• As ‘comfort women’ are omitted from history textbooks, the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo remains the only permanent educational venue about the ‘comfort system’ in Japan. Meanwhile, the influential Yasukuni Shrine with its adjacent Yūshūkan War Memorial Museum, also in Tokyo, continues to deny ‘comfort system’ history. While ‘comfort women’ discourse organises these two museums as competitors over history, this chapter scrutinises the claims that are made in each museum and concludes by suggesting that ‘comfort system’ history can co-exist with official mourning in one history if mourning is disentangled from bereavement, since bereavement, but not mourning, enables the ideological appropriation of the war-dead that forms the core of the militarism advocacy that denies ‘comfort system’ history.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Sociology

Sociologi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)