Yuha, Park (2024). Comfort Women of the Japanese Empire: Colonial Rule and the Battle Over Memory.

In Central Europe, the Asia-Pacific War is seldom acknowledged as a major theatre of the Second World War.In recent years, however, discussions around memory politics have brought one particular issue to the forefront: the so-called "comfort women issue".This euphemistic term refers to women who were drafted, forced, or deceived into providing sexual services and "comfort" to the Japanese Imperial Army.A large proportion of these women came from Japan's former colony, Korea.As Yuha Park demonstrates, the "comfort women issue" extends far beyond a conflict of memory politics-it illuminates imperial, colonial, gender, and warrelated dimensions, intertwining sexual violence, armed conflict, and international relations.It remains a major point of contention between Japan and South Korea, as well as within both societies.Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, Park's seminal and controversial book, originally published in Japan in 2014, has finally been translated and made accessible to English-speaking audiences.The Korean scholar's work has sparked intense debate and even legal action against her in Korea.It is therefore somehow confusing and simultaneously fitting that the English edition is introduced with a preface by a former German ambassador, followed by reflections by the author herself, and also commentary from the translators, highlighting differences between the Japanese and English versions, as well as the history behind the work and the comfort women issue generally.Park's work seeks to address the topic beyond narrow national narratives and political instrumentalization.She calls for listening to the silenced voices, those