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

1. Introduction

The term ‘comfort women’¹ refers to military sexual slavery institutionalized by imperial Japan, where 50,000 to 200,000² women were forcibly taken to rape camps called ‘comfort stations’ to be used as sex slaves by the Japanese soldiers (Han’guk 2000; Yoshimi 2002, 77–81). This atrocity occurred throughout the period of Japan’s colonial expansion, especially during the Asia-Pacific War (1930–1945). Rape camps were installed in places where the Japanese army was stationed, such as China, South Asia, and other countries that were occupied by imperial Japan.

In this article, I argue that some moral agents who deny Japan’s military sexual slavery are liable to make epistemic amends for past epistemic injustices. I argue this based on the agents’ moral responsibility (although these agents may be culpable and blameworthy). This is an original contribution to the literature, as there are few works that develop a notion of epistemic responsibility that is mainly backward-looking. The article proceeds as follows. Section 1 introduces Japan’s military sexual slavery. I particularly focus on two types of evidence, historical documents and survivors’ testimonies, as well as historical, anthropological, and legal analyses of Japan’s military sexual slavery. Section 2 introduces concrete cases where Japanese military sexual slavery is denied. Based on my definition of denial – as any attempts that deliberately minimize, trivialize, justify, or negate well-established facts and accounts about an injustice – I distinguish two ways Japan’s military sexual slavery is denied: State-led denial and individual-led denial. I argue that both types of denial may involve epistemic injustices. Section 3 argues that some denialists have backward-looking epistemic responsibility to make amends for past epistemic injustices. More specifically, I argue that some are liable to make epistemic amends based on moral responsibility and offer three conditions of liability to discern who is liable and who is not. I apply this notion of epistemic responsibility to the denials of Japan’s military sexual slavery and highlight its limits (especially how liability based on moral responsibility may be misused by culpable and blameworthy denialists to dodge legal responsibility). The final section develops a novel concept of acknowledgment as a practice of making epistemic amends.

2. Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery

This section introduces Japan’s military sexual slavery by taking into account historical documents and survivors’ testimonies. The historical documents explain the context and the nature of rape camps. They also prove that the Japanese government was clearly involved in human trafficking in order to establish the rape camps (which supports the Japanese government’s culpability and legal responsibility for the military sexual slavery). The survivors’ testimonies describe numerous non-epistemic wrongs women underwent at the rape camps. I include them in my analysis in order to bear witness to the atrocity and to the survivors’ experiences.

Japan’s military sexual slavery has been called the ‘largest and most elaborate system of trafficking of women in the history’ of Japan (Tanaka 2002, 167). It was a sexual atrocity that systematically targeted vulnerable women who faced the intersections of colonial, classist, and patriarchal oppression (Min 2003, 954). Most were in their teens or twenties, many being children (Kimura 2016, 113). Many were taken from Korea, a then-colony of Japan, the rest being Filipino, Chinese, Taiwanese and other South East Asians. Often, those who were suffering from pre-existing conditions were targeted, such as women facing poverty, denial of education, lack of work opportunities, or unwanted marriages (Soh 2008). The ‘recruiters’ of military sexual slavery capitalized on their desires to escape these conditions by falsely promising them opportunities to work abroad, to earn money and receive education (Tanaka 2002, 38–44), luring them into rape camps.

There are multiple pieces of evidence that prove that the Japanese government implemented military sexual slavery. For example, a document called ‘Educational material’ drafted and disseminated by the Ministry of War in 19 September 1940, proves the Japanese government’s involvement. This document also illustrates that rape camps were established to offer ‘sex as an essential recreational activity [to the soldiers] to help maintain morale of the troops’ (Soh 2006, 69). The document, issued by the Ministry, commends the usage of the ‘comfort stations’ by stating that they offer ‘the enhancement of troop morale, maintenance of discipline, and prevention of crimes and VD [(i.e., venereal diseases)]’ (as quoted in Tanaka 2002, 24). This supports the Japanese government’s involvement with rape camps.

While it is often argued that Japan’s military sexual slavery was a form of legalized prostitution,³ another historical document clearly proves the forced nature of rape camps. The historical document named ‘Matters related to the recruitment of female and other employees for military comfort stations’, drafted by the Military Administration Section of the Military Administration Bureau on 4 March 1938, addresses trafficking and kidnapping of unwilling women and children for the implementation of rape camps (Yoshimi 2002). The document states: ‘In recruiting women domestically to work in the military comfort stations … [there has been a] selection of inappropriate people to round up women, people who kidnap women and are arrested by the police’ (as quoted in Lee 2003, 514). This document, which admits kidnapping of women and children, carries the seal of Japan’s Vice-Minister of War. It thus attests that the Japanese government was actively overseeing the process of establishing and organizing rape camps (Tanaka 2002, 23–24), and that they were not ignorant of the kidnappings that took place.

It is important to note that this document does censure future kidnappings of women, but it does not prohibit any gender violence. Rather, it states that the recruiters should ‘carry out [the task of rounding up women] with the utmost regard for preserving the honor of the army and for avoiding social problems’ (as quoted in Lee 2003, 514, emphasis added). As the survivors’ testimonies show, the kidnapping continued well after 1938. Based on this information, it has been convincingly argued that the Japanese government and its Ministry of War were aware of the kidnappings, but remained wilfully negligent (Lee 2003, 515).

Alongside these historical documents, the survivors’ testimonies provide further evidence of Japan’s military sexual slavery. I share the testimonies here to bear witness to the survivors’ experiences. I start with Park Doori, who describes how she was fraudulently lured out of her village and taken to rape camps under false promises. As mentioned above, this was a common strategy that lured the survivors away from home:

He [the recruiter] said he could give me a job in a factory in Japan. I said I wanted to earn money in Japan and send it to my parents. My parents didn’t suspect him, so they didn’t stop me. I really thought I was going to Japan to make money. (e-Museum, 2014)⁴

The survivors’ hopes of improving their future by seeking work abroad was cruelly taken advantage of, as they were taken to rape camps and were imprisoned and abused physically and psychologically. These acts of violence caused long-lasting impairments such as chronic pain, physical deformity, deafness, and post-traumatic stress disorder. For instance, Kwang Kumju testifies how

The comfort women in the military unit were not treated like human beings. We were beaten almost every day. … We were told to behave as if we didn’t see anything or hear anything. So we walked about with our hands covering our eyes. If we tried to take a walk outside the barracks we were kicked back inside. So we had no opportunity to look around where we were. I don’t know what the name of the unit was, nor can I remember the names, the faces or the ranks of the soldiers. (e-Museum, 2014)

Furthermore, the survivors were raped daily. Kim Soonduk testifies

from about 9 o’clock the soldiers began to arrive and form orderly lines. From 6 o’clock in the evening high-ranking officers came, some of whom stayed overnight. Each of us had to serve an average of 30 to 40 men each, and often had no time to sleep. (e-Museum, 2014)

As a consequence of mass rape, the survivors often suffered from venereal diseases (Soh 2006, 72). Not only that, the survivors were forced to get an injection of a medication called ‘606ʹ as means of contraception and medication against sexually transmitted diseases, which often led to infertility (Kang 2003). As Lee Oksun testifies:

Once I got syphilis. I couldn’t serve soldiers, so I went to the military hospital. I was injected with No. 606, but I didn’t get better. The doctor gave the manager mercury for my treatment. … The syphilis was cured after a while, but I became barren because of the treatment. I still feel grudge and frustration. I couldn’t bear children because of the Japanese. (e-Museum, 2014)

Alongside these innumerable physical and psychological violations, there is yet another layer of violence that the survivors underwent. The women’s trust in the very possibility of fair pursuit was violated, resulting in their loss of faith – for lack of a better word – in the world at large. While the term ‘world’ is unforgivingly vague, the survivors’ trust in the world was damaged; the world wherein they could envisage their pursuit of interest in ways that non-victims could.

After the war, Japan’s military sexual slavery was silenced for decades for several reasons (which is why the estimated numbers of women ranges widely). For one, the Japanese military confiscated the evidence after the war (Chou 2003, 158–59). Two, Japan’s military sexual slavery was excluded from post-war tribunal courts, despite the Allied forces’ awareness. This exclusion is due to the fact that survivors were mostly colonized women, which meant that their fate fell under the category of domestic issues rather than of war crimes (Lu 2017, 121). Three, as the testimonies show, the survivors did not speak out to demand justice for decades due to the shame that they experienced as victims of sexual slavery. It was only in the 1980s, more than 30 years later, that a transnational activism called the ‘comfort women’ movement began, which attempted to redress Japan’s military sexual slavery. Moreover, it was only after a Korean survivor Kim Hak-Sun gave a public testimony in 1991 that many other survivors began to speak out and testify.

In the next section, I analyse with a normative framework how Japan’s institutionalization of military sexual slavery was, and still is, denied.

3. Denial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery and Epistemic Injustice

I start this section by introducing what I mean by denial. For the purpose of this article, I draw from the literature on genocide denial and employ a stipulative definition of denial as any attempts that deliberately minimize, trivialize, justify, or negate well-established facts and accounts about an injustice (Behrens, Terry, and Jensen 2017, 6). On this basis, I identify two types of denial of Japan’s military sexual slavery: State-led denial and individual-led denial. Later, I argue that some of these denials involve epistemic injustices.

3.1. Denial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery

Like many genocides and massacres, Japan’s military sexual slavery is often denied. The two types, state-led denial and individual-led denial, differ in motivation and involved actors. Israel Charny calls state-led denial ‘malevolent bigotry’, where the perpetrator government attempts to cover up, erase, or rewrite the historical record (Charny 2003). This type of denial is often aimed at bringing about an incentive. For instance, culpable states deny their crimes to avoid legal responsibility and to erase the nation’s moral taint to increase its diplomatic or economic success.

Japan’s military sexual slavery faces many state-led denials. The Japanese government has committed several forms of public speech, announcements, propaganda, where well-established facts and accounts about Japan’s military sexual slavery were minimized, justified, or negated. For instance, the Japanese government denied that there was sexual slavery by arguing that slavery is an inaccurate term to describe what happened (Coomaraswamy 1996, 4). This statement is an example of state-led denial. It attempts to rewrite the historical record of the sexual atrocity. The Japanese government’s denial may be motivated to minimize their responsibility. They have made many attempts to minimize legal responsibility: For example, based on the anti-slavery agreements which Japan ratified in 1904, 1910 and 1921, which exempted Korea from legal protection as Japan’s colony, the Japanese government argued that they are not liable to make reparations for Korean survivors (Coomaraswamy 1996, 24).

Alongside state-led denial, individuals may also deny injustices. Charny argues that individuals deny injustices as those who have no direct relation to the injustices (e.g., as non-perpetrators). These individuals have several motivations. They may deny an occurrence of historical injustice in order to uphold their political worldviews, to maintain a positive view of their society as ‘not evil’, or to gain material or immaterial incentives (Charny 2003, 16–18). In contrast, individuals may naïvely deny an injustice by negating, trivializing, or justifying an occurrence of historical injustice out of habit or routine in everyday communication, without a particular conviction nor malintent.

There are many individual-led denials of Japan’s military sexual slavery. In fact, with the growth of the ‘comfort women’ movement after the 1970s, many public figures began to openly deny military sexual slavery. Among numerous denialists, I introduce one salient example: A renowned Japanese historian Hata Ikuhiko who authored a book named Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone. In this book, which is dedicated to the issue of Japan’s military sexual slavery, Hata argues that ‘the system of comfort women for the military [was] the wartime version of the system of licensed prostitution from prewar Japan’ (2018, 23). By arguing this way, Hata negates Japan’s military sexual slavery and justifies its existence as an unfortunate, but commonplace, practice. I consider Hata’s book a clear example of individual-led denial.

3.2. Denial and Epistemic Injustice

Now I connect my discussion on denial to the debate on epistemic injustice. The concept of epistemic injustice illustrates how people can be wronged and harmed as knowers. By bridging these two debates, I illustrate how denials of injustices may harm people as knowers. I also show that state- and individual-led denials may work in tandem, as state-led denial may enable individual-led denial. While not all denials involve epistemic injustices, I argue that the Japanese government’s and Hata’s involve testimonial and hermeneutical injustices, thereby harming the survivors, their kin, and the third-party.

Miranda Fricker distinguishes two forms of epistemic injustices: testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when a Speaker (S) is wronged and harmed in her capacity to participate in the social act of testimony, especially as a giver of knowledge, due to a Hearer (H) who attributes less credibility than S warrants in virtue of S’s perceived social group membership (Fricker 2007, 20).⁵ H, who holds S either as a trustworthy or not trustworthy source of knowledge, commits testimonial injustice when H distrusts S’s testimony based on S’s social identity. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when an individual is wronged and harmed in her capacity to make sense of her social experiences to herself, to another person, or to both. If abovementioned S is excluded from accessing and contributing to the collective forms of social understanding due to her social identity, she faces hermeneutical injustice (Fricker 2007, 148). Victims of hermeneutical injustice end up not being able to fully understand their own experiences due to the shared insensitivity towards the experience as such, or due to the shared insensitivity towards the way certain experiences are expressed (Fricker 2007, 154).

Denials of historical injustice, either state- or individual-led, often involve epistemic injustices. Oranli (2018) shows, for instance, that Armenian genocide denials involve testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, and unjust distribution of epistemic resources. For instance, genocide denialists attribute deflated credibility to the survivors (and their kin), thereby silencing the survivors and preventing knowledge about the injustice (Oranli 2018, 50). As a result, fellow citizens develop a shared insensitivity toward the survivors’ experiences, resulting in collective ignorance or false-knowledge about the genocide.

The two examples I mentioned above, denials by the Japanese government and Hata, involve epistemic injustices. On the one hand, the Japanese government’s state-led denial contributes and sustains hermeneutical injustice. By announcing that the term slavery does not accurately describe the ‘comfort women’ system, the Japanese government publicly propagates false-knowledge. Furthermore, state-led denials have symbolic power, which may bring about catastrophic consequences. For instance, the Japanese government’s state-led denial may enable numerous individuals to further deny Japan’s military sexual slavery based on Japan’s official stance. Hata’s book may be one example, which contributes and sustains hermeneutical injustice by defending Japan’s official position.⁶

On the other hand, individual-led denials may involve testimonial injustices. In his book, Hata ‘declare[s] definitively there was no procurement of comfort women on the Korean Peninsula by means of forced abduction by the Japanese authorities’, thereby denying Japan’s military sexual slavery (Hata 2018, 156). In order to make his argument, he commits several testimonial injustices. For example, he quotes the following fragment of the testimony provided by a Korean survivor Yi Du-yi:

On my way home from working at a factory managed by a Japanese person, I was halted by a policeman (it is unclear whether the policeman was Japanese or Korean) on sentry duty in front of a police station on the south side of Pusan. I was taken inside the station. Then two military members put me in a truck and took me to a comfort station. (As quoted in Hata 2018, 148)

Hata argues further that Yi’s testimony is ‘so erratic that it verges on the unbelievable’ and ‘[t]he credibility of [Yi’s] testimonial should be considered to be very low, considering the woman who made it is said to have worked in the U.S. dollar black market after the war and also engaged in opium smuggling’ (Hata 2018, 155). This passage illustrates Hata’s reluctance to attribute credibility to Yi partly because of his prejudice toward Yi’s past actions and what they may indicate qua her social identity: Hata finds Yi’s testimony to be untrustworthy because she was a woman who took part in criminal activities.

These denials cause serious epistemic harms. Epistemic harms are distinguished into two types: 1) Denial of the status of the subject (primary harm), and 2) negative epistemic and practical consequences (secondary harm). The primary harm is caused by unjust exclusion: victims are excluded from the social processes of knowledge-building. This exclusion is a process of objectification where the victims are seen to lack ‘a capacity essential to human value’, i.e., to reason (Fricker 2007, 44), or as ‘derivatized’ subjects who retain a sense of subjectivity albeit in impoverished forms (Pohlhaus 2014). Although Fricker does not use the notion of dignity for her concept of primary harm, I argue that the process of objectification is dehumanization that violates individuals’ sense of dignity. When Hata attributes deflated credibility to the survivors’ testimonies, he causes primary harm to the survivors by denying them the dignity they should enjoy as a human subject, i.e., by denying the recognition that they have the basic human capacity to reason. In short, the survivors undergo indignity due to Hata’s testimonial injustice.

Moreover, the survivors, their kin, and the third-party face secondary epistemic and practical harms. The secondary harms refer to the wide-ranging negative consequences (Fricker 2007, 46). For instance, hermeneutical injustices cause, as mentioned above, false-knowledge and collective ignorance, which result in ‘masking of the truth’ that harms numerous people. Furthermore, the survivors and their kin, as those who face denial and testimonial injustice, bear extra practical costs when they try to express their ideas in social interactions, suffer from loss of confidence in their own beliefs or loss of general intellectual capacities, or suffer from distrust or bad-informant status (Fricker 2007, 47–50). I argue that the survivors of Japan’s military sexual slavery specifically suffer from distrust and bad-informant status due to testimonial injustice.

In what follows, I offer a novel, backward-looking notion of epistemic responsibility and argue that some denialists are morally responsible for the epistemic injustices identified here, hence, liable to make epistemic amends.

4. The Conditions of Liability

The debate on epistemic responsibility rarely distinguishes backward- and forward-looking justifications of responsibility. In contrast, the literature on historical injustice points out the difference between backward-looking and forward-looking justifications of responsibility (e.g. Butt 2008; Young 2011; Lu 2017). Backward-looking justifications focus on restoring, mending, or repairing a certain status ex ante injustice, while forward-looking justifications look at how to better the world from now onwards (Wenar 2006). Difference of justifications translates into different notions of responsibility: backward-looking responsibility usually covers accountability, blameworthiness, and liability, while forward-looking responsibility refers to obligation or virtue (Van de Poel 2011).

The debate on epistemic responsibility is often forward-looking, conceptualized as individual virtues or political responsibility (see Fricker 2007; Medina 2013). The idea of backward-looking epistemic responsibility has not yet been properly developed. Indeed, Ben Almassi (2018) is the only author who looks back on past epistemic injustices and how to restore them by developing a concept of remedial epistemic responsibility that is shared by perpetrators, victims, and a third-party. This article, by contrast, looks back on past epistemic injustices and develops a backward-looking epistemic responsibility that only some agents bear. I focus on backward-looking epistemic responsibility because it is important to amend past epistemic injustices to achieve genuine epistemic justice. Furthermore, epistemic amends should come from specific moral agents for them to have genuine restorative effect.

While there are multiple ways to argue for a backward-looking notion of epistemic responsibility, I argue that morally responsible agents are liable to make epistemic amends for past epistemic injustices. This distinction between liable and non-liable agents is important because it identifies which agents should make epistemic amends for the amends to be effective. This means that my notion of epistemic responsibility assumes that 1) (some) past epistemic injustices require epistemic amends, and 2) only those who satisfy the conditions of liability should make epistemic amends (not all agents).

Drawing from the debate on moral responsibility and excusable ignorance, I provide three conditions that may be used to discern who are liable to make epistemic amends (Smith 1983; Rosen 2003, 2008).⁷ The three independently necessary conditions of moral liability are: 1) causality, 2) autonomy and 3) epistemic competence.⁸ If moral agents do not fulfil all three conditions, they are not liable to make epistemic amends. If they do, then they must pay their dues. For the sake of space, I dedicate my focus on identifying the liable party and assume that the beneficiaries of epistemic amends are clearly identified (as the survivors, their kin, and the third-party who are harmed by testimonial and hermeneutical injustices).

The first condition of causality assumes that for an agent to be liable, he must directly cause epistemic harms.⁹ In the aftermath of an injustice, the direct causal link between the injury, the injurer and the injured justifies specific rights and duties that arise between the injurer and the injured (Lazar 2008, 356). The injurer’s specific responsibility to the injured is justified because the injurer caused the injustice. He has the responsibility to correct its effects. On this basis, the injurer is required to annul the effect of the injury (Coleman 1994) or to amend the irrevocable wronging by doing as much as possible to recover a certain baseline (Weinrib 2012, 16). Third-party or innocent bystanders bear no such responsibility (though they might have other remedial responsibilities in case the injurer remains derelict in their duty to make amends).

The second condition requires a moral agent to be autonomous. If a moral agent does not satisfy the condition of autonomy, he may be exempted from bearing the burden of liability for actions that he may have committed non-voluntarily. I argue that a moral agent is autonomous, epistemically speaking, if he is in a position to widen his perspective despite having adopted a certain worldview.¹⁰ For instance, one may be socialized to hold patriarchal ideology; nevertheless, he is autonomous if he enjoys the position to reflect, contest, and revise his patriarchal worldview. Albeit counterintuitive, now imagine that an individual is coerced or manipulated into committing epistemic injustices because he was not placed in the position of autonomy. Thus, he will be exempted from being liable to make epistemic amends for past epistemic injustices.

The third condition requires a moral agent to be epistemically competent. By epistemic competence, I mean two things: the moral agent is reasonably expected to have access to 1) epistemic resources and 2) crucial evidences for epistemic judgement. I argue this, as these two are necessary for the agent’s capacity to make critical epistemic judgements. There are many ways to judge the reasonableness of the expectations we have toward moral agents, which I will not engage with here due to space. However, I point to a relational approach to measure reasonableness, as illustrated by Goldberg (2017), which convincingly argues that the legitimacy of expectations may be shaped by practices that structure the roles of institution, profession or relation.

Now, recall Hata and the Japanese government. Both seem to satisfy the three conditions. Hata satisfies the first condition of causality, as the sole author of a book expressing testimonial injustices. As a highly-trained historian, Hata satisfies the second and the third conditions. Given Hata’s liberal academic training, we may assume that he enjoyed a position of autonomy and reasonably expect him to exercise a high level of academic professionalism (to be aware of the state of the art, historical evidences, testimonies, and to be critical of how prejudices may play a role when exercising epistemic judgement). Similarly, the Japanese government, and its representatives as proxies, also satisfy the three conditions. First, the government and its representatives caused the denial.¹¹ Second, it seems plausible to claim that the Japanese government acts autonomously when drafting its public speeches. Lastly, it seems reasonable to expect from the Japanese government and its representatives to be aware of the historical evidence and the women’s testimonies. Therefore, the Japanese government and Hata are liable agents who must make epistemic amends for past epistemic injustices.

In the next section, I discuss acknowledgment as one salient way to make epistemic amends. Before doing so, however, I want to address some issues of my view. First, my notion of epistemic responsibility may be highly problematic when it is wrongly applied. Because my notion of epistemic responsibility is based on moral responsibility, it may be misused to intentionally avoid culpability and blameworthiness altogether. Consider the Japanese government and Hata, who are not only morally responsible, but also culpable and blameworthy. Basing their epistemic responsibility solely on moral responsibility, not on culpability and blameworthiness, may be a way to avoid legal responsibility. Indeed, the Japanese government has misused the notion of moral responsibility in such a way: By stressing their moral responsibility for military sexual slavery, the Japanese government has been avoiding legal responsibility (the ‘comfort women’ movement criticizes this explicitly, which I mention below). A wrong application of moral responsibility may result in a failure to achieve genuine epistemic justice, as attempts to make amends end up being disingenuous lip-services. An intentional misuse of moral responsibility may also result in additional injustices. In order to avoid this misuse, I argue that epistemic responsibility based on moral responsibility should not stand alone. To achieve genuine epistemic justice, other accounts of backward-looking epistemic responsibility should be developed, such as epistemic responsibilities that draw on culpability and blameworthiness (which I cannot pursue here due to space). Moreover, I argue acknowledgment is a good way to make epistemic amends (see section 5, where I conceptualize acknowledgment in a way that disallows any lip-services).

Second, Lu (2011) highlights the importance of going beyond the issue of liability for Japan’s military sexual slavery. Drawing attention to objectionable social structures that enabled the sexual atrocity, Lu (2017) argues that moral agents other than the Japanese government also have the political responsibility to provide structural remedy. Lu criticizes the nationalist framework that has crowded the debate on Japan’s military sexual slavery, and points out that atrocities of such structural nature give rise to forward-looking responsibilities. My backward-looking epistemic responsibility faces this critique, as it focuses on specific moral actors such as the Japanese government. While I agree with Lu that it is important to redress the unjust social structures that enabled Japan’s military sexual slavery, I think that the focus on unjust social structures should not eclipse the importance of liable moral agents having to make amends.¹² I acknowledge the importance of structural remedy, but I also want to stress the importance of liability. The current state of affairs suggests that the Japanese government will continue to dodge reparative obligations, which includes epistemic amends. I fear an undesirable loss of attention on agents’ liability. Therefore, I argue that there is a sufficient reason to pay specific attention to liability.

5. Acknowledgment as Epistemic Amends

In this section, I argue that acknowledgment is one way to make effective epistemic amends. Acknowledgment is a recurring concept in the debate on epistemic injustice. For instance, McConkey (2004) argues how a failure to acknowledge marginalized people as credible sources of knowledge causes serious harms. Pohlhaus (2017) shows how failing to acknowledge epistemic labour of some groups of people may lead to epistemic exploitation. Doan (2017) points out that a theory of epistemic justice should practice acknowledgement and highlight the agency of victims in abusive epistemic relations. Almassi (2018) argues that acknowledgment is the first stage of epistemic repair. Despite the recurrence of the term, there is no work that gives a detailed account of acknowledgment in relation to epistemic injustice.

For the purpose of this article, I draw again from the literature on historical injustice and conceptualize acknowledgment as a process of epistemic amends. I argue that acknowledgment has three steps: a responsible agent’s thorough recognition of 1) what the injustice entailed for the victims, 2) that the injustice should not have occurred, followed by his or her 3) genuine commitment to not repeat the injustice.

My concept of acknowledgment draws on two views. First, acknowledgment is considered to be a social act of an individual, which constitutes a step that precedes an apology (Van Ness and Strong 2010). It entails an act where an individual recognizes that her act was wrong, that she should not have done it, and that she is responsible for it. This view treats the core component of acknowledgment to be personal accountability, where the responsible moral agent admits moral responsibility for the wrongdoing (‘it was wrong and I did it, so I am responsible for it’). Therefore, acknowledgment can only be performed by a specific moral agent. It is different from other acts of recognition, where a third-party (neither directly nor indirectly involved in a wrongdoing) may recognize the wrongdoing as a regrettable misfortune that should not have occurred. This is not acknowledgment, but detached recognition (‘I am sorry to hear that you were wronged’).

An alternative view argues that acknowledgment is a distinct process that brings about a change. Spinner-Halev (2012, 107) defines acknowledgement as a process that recognizes an occurrence of injustice, directly followed by specific attempts to ‘live up to an ideal’ of treating the victims of injustice with respect. By defining acknowledgment as a process of change, Spinner-Halev attempts to erase the possibility of dubious or insincere acknowledgment (such as lip-services) that would end up in a non-performance (see further Ahmed 2006). Spinner-Halev’s definition of acknowledgment is thicker than that of van Ness and Strong. Instead of acknowledgment being a social act of announcing that ‘it was wrong and I did it’, it is a lengthy enactment of a promise of ‘I will never do that again’.

Both views highlight crucial aspects of acknowledgment. The first view illustrates that acknowledgment entails a responsible agent explicitly admitting his wrongdoing, which means admitting both a thorough understanding of the wrongs he caused and his responsibility for them. The second view argues that acknowledgment should not stop at admitting the wrong, but further commit to restoration and realization of a better future. Combining these two views, I argue that acknowledgment is a process where responsible agents admit their wrongdoing as something that should not have occurred, admit their responsibility, establish a thorough recognition of what wrongdoing entailed, and commit to a concrete change to prevent wrongdoings from happening again.

Acknowledgment, conceptualized this way, is one important way to make epistemic amends. I argue this based on the official demands of the ‘comfort women’ movement, which also discuss acknowledgment. During weekly Wednesday demonstrations, which started in 8 January 1992 and continues to this day, survivors, civilians and politicians gather in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and chant the seven official demands:

1) that the Japanese government admit the crime of the compulsory drafting of Korean women as “Comfort Women”; 2) that all the barbarities be fully investigated; 3) that an official apology be made through a resolution of the Japanese Diet; 4) that legal compensations be made for the survivors and their bereaved families; 5) that all the facts and truth about the military sexual slavery by Japan be recorded in the Japanese history textbooks; 6) that a memorial and a museum be built; and 7) that those responsible for the crime be punished. (Kim 2015, 1, emphasis added)

The first, second, fifth, and sixth demands are specifically epistemic in nature in that they involve acknowledgment. These demands illustrate how epistemic amends should entail acknowledgment from specific agents that the victims’ experiences are ‘the historical truth’. Based on this, I argue that responsible agents are required to practice acknowledgment, which entails admitting the victims’ experiences as ‘the historical truth’ by recanting their past denials, paying appropriate credibility to the victims’ testimonies, and committing to no longer contributing and sustaining false-knowledge and collective ignorance. Acknowledgment, understood in this way, is an important step to repair epistemic harms.

To understand how acknowledgment repairs epistemic harms, I will apply my concept of acknowledgment (as a process of epistemic amends) to Hata’s and the Japanese government’s denials. I argue that their acknowledgment may ‘unmask the truth’ and repair the bad-informant status that the survivors underwent. However, it is important to note that acknowledgment only repairs certain types of epistemic harms. It will not heal the indignities the survivors faced.

The first and second demands require the following from the Japanese government: 1) Acknowledge that the ‘comfort women’ issue was military sexual slavery organized by the state, 2) acknowledge that it was a wrongdoing that should not have occurred, and 3) commit to never denying the atrocity in the future. This means that the Japanese government is required to explicitly recant their past denials by admitting that the ‘comfort women’ issue was indeed military sexual slavery. Moreover, it involves the Japanese government explicitly admitting their legal responsibility for the atrocity. Lastly, it involves the Japanese government to never commit future denials. This practice of acknowledgment has the effect of ‘unmasking the truth’, by correcting the false-knowledge and collective ignorance about Japan’s military sexual slavery.

Acknowledgment also plays a crucial role to fulfil the fifth and the sixth demand. I argue that these demands require liable agents like Hata to practice acknowledgment. Hata is one of the figures who shape the debate on Japan’s military sexual slavery. Academic works, such as his, influence the content of textbooks and museums. To fulfil these two demands, individual denialists such as Hata may practice acknowledgment. Hata may recant his past denials by acknowledging the survivors’ testimonies as credible sources and admitting that they underwent military sexual slavery. Furthermore, Hata may explicitly reference the survivors’ testimonies when building a general framework of analytic concepts, critical tools, debates, and normative inquiries. By doing so, Hata may correct false-knowledge he propagated in the past. Not only that, this form of acknowledgment may be a beginning step to repair bad-informant status that the survivors face.

It is important to note that acknowledgment does not amend all epistemic harms. Indignity, for instance, remains an issue. Also, acknowledgment does not provide any compensation that may be required in addition to epistemic amends.

6. Conclusion

Based on Japan’s military sexual slavery, this article offered a backward-looking account of epistemic responsibility, where morally responsible agents are liable to make epistemic amends. I argued that state-led and individual-led denials of Japan’s military sexual slavery involve epistemic injustices, which caused indignity (by denying recognition of their basic human capacity to reason), distrust and assigned bad-informant status to the survivors. Also, the denials had the effect of ‘masking the truth’ by propagating false-knowledge and collective ignorance about Japan’s military sexual slavery. I argued that moral agents who satisfy the three conditions of liability should make epistemic amends. Based on the ‘comfort women’ movement and their seven official demands, I offered acknowledgment as one salient, but limited, way liable agents could make epistemic amends.

I conclude by stressing that epistemic injustices are a fraction of violence caused by Japan’s military sexual slavery. Redressing the atrocity requires other reparation, compensation and apology.

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).

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.

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.