ABSTRACT
Imperial Japan forced a large number of young women to work as military prostitutes during World War II. These so-called “comfort women” 1 endured tremendous agonies under inhumane conditions, and their suffering continued even long after the end of the war. Despite its traumatic features, this comfort women issue remained largely unacknowledged for more than four decades following Japan's defeat in 1945. This long-overlooked issue eventually created political and social controversies in the early 1990s. The Japanese government made apologies, and helped establish a nongovernmental fund, Asian Women's Fund (AWF), to compensate the surviving comfort women in the early and mid-1990s. Since then, however, the Japanese state has often retreated from its previous apologetic attitudes. Why did the comfort women issue remain unaddressed for such a long time? What motivated Japan to exhibit an apologetic, though not a full-fledged, stance on the past wrongs in the early and mid-1990s? Why did the Japanese state frequently roll back from its former apologetic postures?
