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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how historical justice norms surrounding "comfort women" are localized and contested in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Drawing on fieldwork with advocacy and counter-mobilizing actors, it shows how women’s-rights frameworks, #MeToo, and geopolitics shape notions of redress, producing reinterpretation over normative convergence.

Paper long abstract

The “comfort women” issue is central to debates over women’s human rights, wartime sexual violence, and historical justice. Yet these normative frameworks have not produced a common understanding of responsibility or redress in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This paper asks how norms of historical justice are localized through “comfort women” memory politics and why this process takes different, contested forms across these cases.

Drawing on constructivist IR and norm localization theory, the paper treats localization as an ongoing process of political interpretation rather than straightforward domestic adoption. Advocacy actors selectively connect the issue to frameworks of women’s rights, sexual violence, and colonial injustice. Contemporary movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter provide new discursive resources, while revisionist actors advance competing interpretations in response. These dynamics unfold within distinct domestic political environments and regional geopolitical relationships.

Based on fieldwork and interviews with advocacy groups, memory institutions, and counter-mobilizing actors, including the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (Tokyo), the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum (Seoul), and the Ama Museum (Taipei), the paper identifies distinct patterns of localization. In South Korea, advocacy connects memory to international human rights, moving beyond an exclusively bilateral dispute with Japan. In Japan, activists link historical violence to contemporary struggles under strong state-level contestation. In Taiwan, survivor recognition coexists with positive views of Japan and complex geopolitical positioning.

The comparison demonstrates that localization does not produce distinct, static national norms. Instead, actors within each context compete over how historical justice is defined, utilizing broader social movements and domestic political currents as resources. Historical memory thus shapes both responses to international norms and the meanings those norms acquire in domestic struggles.

The paper argues that localization of historical justice norms is an ongoing process rather than a one-time adaptation. By synthesizing localization with memory politics, the study also shows how embedded conflicts, social movements, and geopolitics shape which interpretations gain legitimacy or encounter resistance. Ultimately, the internationalization of historical-justice norms generates pluralization and continued contestation rather than normative convergence.