Séminaire de l’IAO. Debate over “comfort women” and public memories in Taiwan

Mamié Misawa est Professeure à l’université Nihon (Tokyo), historienne du Taiwan colonial et spécialiste d’histoire du cinéma. Actuelle présidente de la Société japonaise des études taiwanaises, elle est professeure invitée à l’ENS de Lyon.

Speaking of the Japanese military’s sexual slavery “comfort women”, discussions have been centered on the Korean victims, although there also have existed Taiwanese victims. Why is it harder to receive the voices from Taiwan? This involves the difficulty of forming public memories among different ethnic groups in the process of pursuing the transitional justice of Taiwan after the democratization. This lecture summarizes the quarter-century debate over “comfort women” issue in Taiwanese newspapers since the emergence of the issue and examines the difference between two documentary films which depicted Taiwanese survivors of former “comfort women” in 1998 and in 2015.