Statement

"Comfort Women" | "Trostfrauen" | Ramseyer
Akademische Integrität steht auf dem Spiel. Abuse of History.
Quelle: The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 19 | Issue 5 | Number 14 | Article ID 5549 | Mar 01, 2021
Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan Focus.


Statement

Andrew Gordon, Carter Eckert

February 17, 2021

Earlier this month at the request of the editor of the International Review of Law and Economics, we began to write a critical response to the article “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” by Professor J. Mark Ramseyer, at that point released online by the journal with plans for formal publication in March.

As historians of Japan and Korea, what initially appalled us was Ramseyer’s elision of the larger political and economic contexts of colonialism and gender in which the comfort women system was conceived and implemented, and the multiple and brutal ways in which it affected and afflicted the women on a human scale. But as we began to look into the article, its evidence, and its logic, we encountered a different and prior problem of the article’s scholarly integrity. We write to explain that problem.

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