On the contrary, these scholars actively support anti-Japanese activists and organizations by engaging in subterfuge such as expansively redefining the terms, "sex slave" and "coercive recruitment". Their hypocrisy has undermined any solution. As a consequence, the dispute seems destined simply to continue on forever.
Selective Acknowledgement of the Facts
By the way, Yoshiaki Yoshimi, the main advocate of the viewpoint that comfort women were sex slaves, once wrote:
In Korea or Taiwan, there was no evidence that government authorities forcibly took the women away. Also there seemed to be no cases in which women were gathered and forced to be comfort women in the name of the Women's Volunteer Corps. […]
But in the other occupied areas, such as China, Southeast Asia and the South Sea Islands, there were cases that government authorities forcibly took the women away." Thirty Truths and Falsehoods about the 'Comfort Women, by Yoshiaki Yoshimi, (Otsuki Shoten, 1997, in Japanese.)
That is to say, in Korea and Taiwan where the laws were effectively applied and people were well-governed, there was no forcible recruitment of women. However, some disorder and crime was recorded in other areas.
Nevertheless, if people without any knowledge of the issue read the inscription on the comfort women statue mentioned above, they would imagine the Japanese military systematically barged into houses at will and forcibly took the women away to be sex slaves. The inscriptions are far from Yoshimi's theory and complete falsehoods which merit rebuttal.
A disgusting routine began in the film. First, activists like Dezaki appeared and derided those who raised objections to the "sex slave" theory, using labels such as "revisionist" or "denialist". Then academics like Yoshimi and Hayashi put forth endorsements supporting the activists.
Both Yoshimi and Hayashi acknowledge the comfort women system on the Korean peninsula was created against the backdrop of a traditional Korean Confucian feudal system in which men were absolutely superior to women and there were no women's rights. Certainly, it was not a situation created by the Japanese military alone.
