Criticism grows in academia over Harvard professor's paper on comfort women

A statue symbolizing victims of the Japanese imperial military's sexual slavery before and during World War II, is seen during the 1,476th weekly rally to call for an official apology from the government in Tokyo, in front of former site of the Japan's embassy in Seoul, Jan. 27. Korea Times photo by Lee Han-ho

By Jung Da-min

Criticism is growing over a paper by a professor at Harvard Law School which claims victims of wartime sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army were "voluntary prostitutes."

J. Mark Ramseyer's paper "Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War," set to be published in the International Review of Law and Economics next month, has brought about serious debate in international academia.

While some noted that academic freedom of expression should be protected, many scholars in different countries have criticized the claims Ramseyer made in his paper for lacking academic grounding.

The controversies have mostly been centering on two points among Remseyer's claims, according to The Harvard Crimson, a student-run nonprofit media outlet, which recently covered the issue by interviewing professors and students who have studied the comfort women issue and Japanese Imperialism before and during World War II.

The first controversial claim is that the Japanese military and government were not involved in the recruitment of women to force them to work at military brothels, and the brothel operators were in charge of the process.

Another controversial point is that the comfort women willingly entered brothels by signing contracts which gave them due financial compensation upfront. Remseyer also said that comfort women were able to return home after their one- or two-year contracts, and could even leave early if they generated sufficient revenue.

Critics said Ramseyer's claims seem to be based on narrow research on the issue as they merely echo Japanese right wing group's talking points.

A view of the Charles River and the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is seen in this March 7, 2017, file photo. An academic paper by professor J. Mark Ramseyer at Harvard Law School ,which claims victims of wartime sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army were "voluntary prostitutes," has recently stoked controversy in international academia. AP-Yonhap

"From what I understand about his paper and his article in Japan Forward, a right-wing news site, he is just using Japanese right-wingers' talking points," Miki Dezaki, a Japanese American filmmaker who debuted with an investigative documentary on the comfort women issue titled "Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue," told The Korea Times, Wednesday.

"I believe his view and research on the comfort women issue is very narrow and insufficient, and it should be scrutinized and criticized in the academic world. It is unbelievable that a Harvard professor could publish such poor research like this and that an academic journal would publish it."

Yuji Hosaka, a political science professor at Sejong University, flatly refuted Ramseyer's claims that the Japanese government and military were not responsible for forcing women to work at the brothels, in a recent interview with The Harvard Crimson.

"Ramseyer made the error of completely ignoring the fact that these recruiters were working under Japanese military or government orders," Hosaka was quoted as saying.

Yang Ki-ho, a professor at Sungkonghoe University, said Ramseyer's claim that comfort women willingly entered contracts with brothel operators does not make legal sense, considering that most comfort women were aged from about 14 to 20 years old.

"During the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula, the basic human rights of Korean people were not protected. Ramseyer should have considered the colonial situation of the peninsula at the time and reviewed testimonies from the victims, but failed to do so," Yang told The Korea Times.

Yang also said Ramseyer's issuing such paper when he holds the post of Mitsubishi professor of Japanese Legal Studies at the Harvard school, backed by the Mitsubishi Group's donation to the school, was inappropriate as a scholar, because it could raise controversy over academic objectivity and conflict of interest.

"I believe Ramseyer's issuing the paper was against scholarly conscience," he said.

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