During World War II, the Japanese military extended Japan’s civilian licensing regime for domestic brothels to those next to its overseas bases. It did so for a simple reason: to impose the strenuous health standards necessary to control the venereal disease that had debilitated its troops in earlier wars. In turn, these brothels (dubbed "comfort stations") recruited prostitutes through variations on the standard indenture contracts used by licensed brothels in both Korea and Japan. The party line in Western academia, though, is that these “comfort women” were dragooned into sex slavery at bayonet point by Japanese infantry. But, as the authors of this book show, that narrative originated as a hoax perpetrated by a Japanese communist writer in the 1980s. It was then spread by a South Korean organization with close ties to the Communist North. Ramseyer and Morgan discuss how these women really came to be in Japanese military comfort stations. Some took the jobs because they were tricked by fraudulent recruiters. Some were under pressure from abusive parents. But the rest of the women seem to have been driven by the same motivation as most prostitutes throughout history: want of money. Indeed, the notion that these “comfort women” became prostitutes by any other means has no basis in documentary history. Serious intellectuals of all political perspectives in both South Korea and Japan have understood this for years. Ramseyer and Morgan’s findings caused a firestorm in Japanese Studies academia. For explaining that the women became prostitutes of their own volition, both authors of this book found themselves “cancelled.” In this book, the authors detail both the history of the comfort women and their own persecution by academic peers. Only in the West—and only through brutal stratagems of censorship and ostracism—has the myth of bayonet-point conscription survived.

In an era marked by atrocities perpetrated on a grand scale, the tragedy of the so-called comfort women—mostly Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army—endures as one of the darkest events of World War II. These women have usually been labeled victims of a war crime, a simplistic view that makes it easy to pin blame on the policies of imperial Japan and therefore easier to consign the episode to a war-torn past. In this revelatory study, C. Sarah Soh provocatively disputes this master narrative. Soh reveals that the forces of Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy together shaped the fate of Korean comfort women—a double bind made strikingly apparent in the cases of women cast into sexual slavery after fleeing abuse at home. Other victims were press-ganged into prostitution, sometimes with the help of Korean procurers. Drawing on historical research and interviews with survivors, Soh tells the stories of these women from girlhood through their subjugation and beyond to their efforts to overcome the traumas of their past. Finally, Soh examines the array of factors— from South Korean nationalist politics to the aims of the international women’s human rights movement—that have contributed to the incomplete view of the tragedy that still dominates today.

John cannot explain how or why Mary Toft, the wife of a local journeyman, has managed to give birth to a dead rabbit. John and Zachary realize that nothing in their experience as rural physicians has prepared them to deal with a situation like this. When King George I learns of Mary's plight, she and her doctors are summoned to London

The human rights issues in Japan are multifaceted. Over decades, domestic and international human rights organisations have raised concerns, but government obstinacy has meant there has been little progress. Recommendations of UN human rights bodies are routinely ignored, and statements by the government in the Japanese parliament regarding these recommendations have been dismissive. At the review of Japan’s implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2014, Professor Nigel Rodley, then chair of the UN Human Rights Committee, lamented the lack of true engagement by Japan and the country’s unwillingness to take any action on the conclusions of UN human rights bodies. Equally worrying is the clear trend over recent years of popular publications bashing neighbouring countries and their nationals living in Japan as well as UN human rights bodies. This book explores the issues surrounding human rights in Japan, and what the future might hold for the country.

Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone is an exhaustive examination of the controversial issue of comfort women, who provided sexual services to Japanese soldiers before and during World War II. This book provides extensive documents and narratives by witnesses to shed light on the reality of these women who worked in the battle zone. The book also covers Japan’s political and diplomatic disagreements with neighboring nations, in particular South Korea and China, over this issue, as well as other international reactions, including the U.S. House of Representatives resolution that urged the Japanese government to apologize to former comfort women. The book is an English translation of the Japanese version first published in 1999 and reprinted several times, with additional sections covering recent developments.

In pre-modern religions in the geographical context of Asia we encounter unique scripts, number systems, calendars, and naming conventions. These can make Western-built technologies – even tools specifically developed for digital humanities – an ill fit to our needs. The present volume explores this struggle and the limitations and potential opportunities of applying a digital humanities approach to pre-modern Asian religions. The authors cover Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism and Shintoism with chapters categorized according to their focus on: 1) temples, 2) manuscripts, 3) texts, and 4) social media. Thus, the volume guides readers through specific methodologies and practical examples while also providing a critical reflection on the state of the field, pushing the interface between digital humanities and pre-modern Asian religions into new territory.

In “a lively debut…[with] plenty of enthusiastic ‘can-do’ advice” (Publishers Weekly), a Homeland Security advisor and a Pulitzer Prize–nominated columnist—and mother of three—delivers a timely message about American security: it begins at home. Soccer Moms are so last decade. Juliette Kayyem is a “Security Mom.” At once a national security expert who worked at the highest levels of government, and also a mom of three, she’s lived it all—from anthrax to lice to the BP oil spill—and now she tells it all with her unique voice of reason, experience, and humility. Weaving her personal story of marriage and motherhood into a fast-paced account of managing the nation’s most perilous disasters, Juliette recounts the milestones that mark the path of her unpredictable, daring, funny, and ultimately relatable life. Security Mom is modern tale about the highs and lows of having-it-all parenthood and a candid, sometimes shocking, behind-the-scenes look inside the high-stakes world of national security. In her signature refreshing style, Juliette reveals how she came to learn that homeland security is not simply about tragedy and terror; it is about us as parents and neighbors, and what we can do every day to keep each other strong and safe. From stocking up on coloring books to stashing duplicate copies of valuable papers out of state, Juliette’s wisdom does more than just prepare us to survive in an age of mayhem—it empowers us to thrive. “You got this,” Juliette tells her readers, providing accessible advice about how we all can better prepare ourselves for a world of risks.