The Comfort Women
Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards

List of Figures and Tables
List of Maps
Prologue: An Anthropological Analysis
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader
Introduction Gender, Class, Sexuality, and Labor under Japanese Colonialism and Imperialist War
PART 1 Gender and Structural Violence
Chapter 1. From Multiple Symbolic Representations to the Paradigmatic Story
Chapter 2. Korean Survivors’ Testimonial Narratives
Chapter 3. Japan’s Military Comfort System as History
PART 2 Public Sex and Women’s Labor
Chapter 4. Postwar/Postcolonial Memories of the Comfort Women
Chapter 5. Private Memories of Public Sex
Chapter 6. Public Sex and the State
Epilogue Truth, Justice, Reconciliation
Appendix: Doing “Expatriate Anthropology”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
“This is a courageous, judicious, and well-written book that refuses to yield to knee-jerk responses or politically correct narratives, but rather insists on setting the comfort women within broader historical and cultural contexts. Sympathetic and sensitive, C. Sarah Soh nevertheless challenges both feminist and ethnic nationalist paradigms in an astonishing display of objectivity. The Comfort Women is a lucid, brave, and important work.”
The Society for East Asian Anthropology: Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize
Honorable Mention
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