Denial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery and Responsibility for Epistemic Amends

ABSTRACT

This article argues that some denialists of Japan’s military sexual slavery are responsible for past epistemic injustices. In the literature on epistemic responsibility, backward- and forward-looking justifications of responsibility are rarely distinguished. Moreover, notions of epistemic responsibility are mostly forward-looking. To fill the gap in the literature, this article offers a notion of backward-looking epistemic responsibility by arguing that some morally responsible agents who committed epistemic injustices are liable to make epistemic amends for past epistemic injustices. The article proceeds as follows. I introduce Japan’s military sexual slavery and how it is denied in two ways (state-led denial and individual-led denial). Both types of denial may involve epistemic injustices. Based on moral responsibility, I argue that some agents are liable to make epistemic amends for past epistemic injustices. I then offer three conditions to discern who is liable, which are conditions of causality, autonomy and epistemic competence. I apply my notion of backward-looking epistemic responsibility to Japan’s military sexual slavery and highlight its limits. Finally, I provide a concept of acknowledgment as a process of making epistemic amends.

KEYWORDS:

• Japan’s military sexual slavery
• denial
• epistemic injustice
• liability
• acknowledgment

Acknowledgments

I thank Melanie Altanian, Jennifer Lackey, Jennifer Page and others for their valuable feedback at the workshop ‘Epistemic Injustice in the Aftermath of Collective Wrongdoing’ (University of Bern, 2019). I thank Lee Na-Young and Kim Jong-gab for their feedback, which I received during a workshop dedicated to an earlier version of this article (Konkuk University, 2019). I am further grateful to the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan for sharing the materials on the ‘comfort women’ movement, as well as Imge Oranli and Christine Bratu, a then anonymous reviewer, for their thorough feedback. Finally, I thank my past and current advisors Helder de Schutter, Eszter Kollar, Johan Olsthoorn, Timothy Waligore, and Lukas Meyer.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘Comfort women’ is a euphemism used by the Japanese Army to refer to the victims of military sexual slavery. Despite the inaccuracy of the term, ‘comfort women’ is commonly used today in scholarly discussions, public debates, activism, etc. This is to accommodate some victims’ desire to be not called former sex-slaves (which carries stigma) and to acknowledge the term’s historic origin. However, to capture the moral gravity of the case, this article does not employ the term ‘comfort women’ and instead uses the phrases Japan’s military sexual slavery and women who underwent Japanese military sexual slavery (in short, women or survivors).

2. The estimated number of women ranges widely for several reasons, which I discuss below (see page 7, where I discuss the reasons why the atrocity was silenced for decades).

3. The idea of ‘comfort stations’ was conceived during the development of modern licensed prostitution in Japan (Kimura 2016, 71).This historical context is relevant. As I will show below, the denials of Japan’s military sexual slavery often misuse this historical context to argue that rape camps were legalized brothels and that the survivors participated in prostitution on a voluntary basis.

4. The testimonies I cite in this article are from the e-Museum of the Victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery (henceforth, e-Museum), organized by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family of South Korea. I acknowledge that there are numerous alternative sources. However, I use the e-Museum because they are easily accessible, allowing anyone to look up the testimonies.

5. A speaker may also face credibility excess. However, Fricker argues that this does not always amount to testimonial injustice. For José Medina’s critique on Fricker’s focus on credibility deficit, see Chapter 2 of The Epistemology of Resistance (2013).

6. I thank Imge Oranli for suggesting this point.

7. I borrow a notion of liability that is mostly based on moral responsibility, although I do not exclude other bases (for strict distinction of three rivalling bases of liability, see McMahan 2005). My aim in this article is to show how new notions of epistemic responsibility may be developed by drawing on debates on moral responsibility and liability. I do not argue that moral responsibility is the only basis for liability. I do not assume either that my notion of backward-looking epistemic responsibility is the best one. In fact, there are serious problems to my view, especially when applied to my case of Japan’s military sexual slavery, which I will discuss below. However, I highlight two appeals: 1) It requires an agent to make amends without being culpable nor blameworthy (hence, offering a relatively comprehensive scope), while 2) allowing a difference in degrees of liability (so that not all liable agents must pay the same amount of amends).

8. It has been argued that a moral agent is only liable when the following three conditions are met (otherwise known as agent-responsibility condition): 1) an agent able to act autonomously, 2) causes an injustice, and 3) while holding the true belief that its action would lead to the outcome it caused (Wündisch 2017, 841). However, this view is a contested one. Some hold that the first two conditions suffice for a moral agent to be liable. In other words, excusable ignorance does not exempt the moral actor from liability. For the purpose of this article, I assume that excusable ignorance may exempt a moral actor from liability. I commit to this particular framework in order to work with the conditions of liability that allow the widest range of exculpation. I show that even with the most lenient conditions where actors can be exculpated for various reasons, the denialists of Japan’s military sexual slavery are still morally liable to make amends.

9. Note that there are notions of liability that does not employ direct causality. I do so for the reason mentioned in footnote 8.

10. I thank Christine Bratu for suggesting this point.

11. The representatives of Japan are complicit – like Hata – in sustaining and contributing to systematic epistemic injustices, by denying evidence and propagating false-knowledge.

12. I thank Jennifer Page for suggesting this.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of research undertaken in the project ‘Should Immigrants have fewer rights than citizens? An Enquiry into the Moral Bases of Immigrants’ Political, Socio-Economic and Linguistic Entitlements’ funded by KU Leuven [3H190224]; and the project ‘Supersession of Historical Injustice and Changed Circumstances’, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under research grant [P 30084]

Notes on contributors

Seunghyun Song

Seunghyun Song is a PhD fellow at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on linguistic in/justice and colonial injustice. Song has published articles in Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy and Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies.