ABSTRACT
In March 2007, Japan・s ：national atonement project； for survivors of military sexual slavery was officially concluded. The atonement project that was implemented by a Japanese government-established nongovernmental organization--the Asian Women・s Fund--distributed its fund to a number of survivors in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and the Netherlands since its inception in 1995. Over the years, intense politicization around the project has made it extremely difficult for most observers to assess whether the project was successful or not. Several prominent scholars in Japan and South Korea have called for a more compassionate and positive assessment of the project・s good intentions, while feminist activists continue to critique the project・s negative interventions in the process of redress and reconciliation in Asia. This essay is an attempt to open up a space to rethink the felicitousness of the atonement project by focusing on the ways in which the project told its own story of war, violence, and gender. By juxtaposing stories told by Filipina survivors of the ：comfort women； system with one that has been told by the atonement project implemented by the Asian Women・s Fund, it seeks to find a way to reassess whether the project acknowledged the survivors・ claims for justice and compensation.
KEYWORDS: war crimes, sexual violence, redress and reconciliation, activism and politics
Author・s biography
Hideko Mitsui is a lecturer in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. She recently received her Ph.D. in Cultural and Social Anthropology from Stanford University, California.
Contact address: Department of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds, West Yorkshire, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom. |
