Tai uses the activists’ narratives to show the multifaceted aspects of the movement. By measuring these narratives against scholarly debates, she argues that comfort women activism in Japan could be called a new form of feminism.
“A manuscript of this depth covering such a range of material about the comfort women movement has not previously been available in English. I am deeply impressed by the author’s scholarly commitment and humanitarian compassion. The accounts provided in the book are particularly moving, putting a human face on the transnational comfort women movement that has had a global impact.” —Peipei Qiu, Vassar College
“Eika Tai urges a postcolonial understanding of how activists in Japan came to embrace the issue of ‘comfort women,’ make it their own, and engage on a transnational, multigenerational effort. Her book is an absolutely clear rejection of those who portray this historical topic as activism meant to ‘hate Japan.’ Instead, she claims that this issue is at the heart of a divided Japan.” —Alexis Dudden, University of Connecticut
Eika Tai is a professor at North Carolina State University. Her works on multiethnic Japan and colonial Taiwan have appeared in Social Identities, Museum Anthropology, and Journal of Japanese Studies.