ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, or “the era of testimony” (shDgen no jidai),1 marked by Kim Hak-Sun’s coming forward and speaking of her experience as a “comfort woman,” previously silenced voices of former “comfort women” in Korea and other parts of Asia became audible belatedly to the majority of ordinary citizens in post-Cold War Asia. The 1990s then witnessed numerous civil lawsuits filed by Asian survivors of forced labor and sexual slavery against the Japanese government and major Japanese corporations, and are aptly referred to as “the litigious 1990s.”2 Recently, such lawsuits have also been brought before US courts.3 The government of Japan has repeatedly stated that the issue had already been resolved, and that reparations had been made in the form of compensation for the losses suffered by the states fighting Japan, as stipulated by multinational (San Francisco) and bilateral (various state-to-state) treaties in the early postwar period. The courts have accepted these arguments, and all cases have been dismissed so far.4
