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Erecting the “Comfort Women” Memorials

From Seoul to San Francisco

Bibliographic Data

ID8364375
AuthorsRangsook Yoon (0000-0002-8385-2238, Yahoo (United Kingdom), corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume53
Issue2-3
Pages70-85
Publication date2018-09-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
Venuede arte (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0004-3389 • E-ISSN: 2471-4100
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00043389.2018.1481913
OpenAlexW2905407080
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited7

This article outlines the history of the “comfort woman” statue from its emergence in Seoul to its incarnations in the United States up to the present moment. Its aim is to explore the debates regarding its installations and to account for shifting discursive fields with its changing localities from South Korea to the United States. Particular attention is paid to the controversies concerning “comfort woman” statues erected in Glendale, California; Southfield, Michigan; Brookhaven, Georgia; and San Francisco, California. In all cases, the cities encountered enormous pressures from the Japanese government, ultra-right-wing politicians and citizen groups. Resistance on the part of the Japanese government suggests ongoing efforts to systematically deny the wartime atrocities performed on women by its imperial predecessor and to silence the victim-survivors. The installations of the ‘comfort woman’ statues in the United States offer an opportunity for Asian diasporic communities with entangled World War II histories to resist such silencing and weave their own interstitial narratives

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Comfort women · Government (linguistics) · Narrative · Political science · Resistance (ecology) · Silence · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Statue · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

  • Negotiating the (Im)Possibility of Contested Memory

    Open Access•Ah-Hyun Angela Lee•Japan focus•2026

  • Comfort women must fall’? Japanese governmental responses to ‘comfort women’ statues around the world

    Open Access•Rin Ushiyama•Memory Studies•2021

  • The Geopolitics of Public Memory

    Majia Nadesan, Linda Kim•Women s Studies in Communication•2021

  • The U.S. Empire Remembers Violence Against Asian Women

    Jin R Choi•Women s Studies in Communication•2025

  • You Are Not Alone

    Phoebe Martins, Phoebe Martin et al.•Signs: Journal of Women in…•2025

  • The Comfort Women

    C Sarah Soh•The Comfort Women•2008

  • The Comfort Women Controversy

    Open Access•Thomas J Ward, William D Lay•East Asia•2016

  • History and Memory

    Hyun Sook Kim•positions asia critique•1997

  • Disputes in Japan over the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” System and Its Perception in History

    Open Access•Hayashi Hirofumi, Hirofumi Hayashi•The Annals of the American…•2008

  • The Competition to Attain Justice for Past Wrongs

    Shogo Suzuki•Pacific Affairs•2011

Unique citing works5
Citations per year1
Citation span2021 - 2026 (6)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 4

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