Short Report of Open Seminar (12/23/2016):

Speaker: Dr. Shogo Suzuki, Senior Lecturer, the Department of Politics, the University of Manchester. UK.

This seminar highlighted the politics of history regarding comfort women. As what the country should remember and forget is a political issue, this seminar discussed the dynamics of the Taiwan ‘Comfort Women’ Case, focused especially on the competition to attain justice for the past wrongs in Taiwan. 

Departing from the arguments that identity politics in Taiwan have overshadowed the campaign to achieve justice for the comfort women, the comfort women issue gets rejected as the drive to construct the Taiwanese's identity separate from China has led to the crime committed by mainlander Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT). In conclusion, the comfort women issue turned into inward-looking debates over national identity, distracting the political momentum necessary to bring about justice successfully. National politicians in Taiwan, in fact, tend to politize the comfort woman issue in the national political game rather than attaining the justice for the victims.

This seminar was held in Ritsumeikan University - Kinugasa Campus, on December 23, 2016, hosted by College of International Relations Ritsumeikan University and Ritsumeikan Global Innovation Research Organization (R-GIRO). Approximately 30 participants attended the seminar.