Harvard and former sex slaves

By Mark Peterson

Again, I really dislike this topic, but I dislike Harvard being besmirched in this situation even more. Thus, I feel compelled to enter the fray one more time with this article.

This opinion piece is in regard to the Harvard Law School professor who has written a paper that has been accepted for publication at the International Review of Law and Economics. He has written on the subject before ― three years ago he gave a presentation at Harvard that had limited distribution.

But now, writing on the same topic, he has submitted the paper to an academic journal. In that setting, the fact that the paper will be published has hit the media in Korea and Japan. A large sector of the Japanese population, and it appears the government, too, have praised the paper. Much of the Korean population, on the other hand, feels they are opening up old and deep wounds.

One problem is that this paper is the work of one person, but that one person sits under the umbrella of a famous and respected university ― Harvard. The opinions of that one person coincide with the large sector of Japan's population that can be called "conservative" or "right wing," in other words, those in favor of a revision of their history ― to deny the ugliest parts of Japan's behavior during World War II.

The segment of Japan's population that wants to gloss over the atrocities committed by Japan and by Japanese soldiers is apparently large and growing, unfortunately. This phenomenon is quite different from that of Germany ― the other major perpetrator of World War II.

Germany, too, committed massive war crimes, but the difference is that Germany "owns" its war crimes and has renounced them for all the world to see. Throughout Germany, there are monuments to its mistakes ― in the hope and pledge that they will never allow that again.

Not so in Japan.

Japan is slipping more and more into denialism, trying to ―Koreans have a good word for it: "mihwa" ― "to make beautiful" their ugly history. "Mihwa" literally means, "to turn into beauty," but the term is also glossed as, "to glorify" and "to embellish." It's the right word for what Japan is doing, thanks to the assistance of a HARVARD professor.

I've been dragged into the melee because several people have suggested that, as a Harvard Ph.D., I should respond. I don't think I would have if the intellectual apparatus of the paper had been well constructed. But upon reading the paper, I found so many flaws, that putting on my history professor's hat was adequate to critique it. I didn't even have to be a specialist in the Twentieth Century or the Japan Occupational Period to do so.

So, I've stepped into the fray to defend my alma mater, but Harvard should not in any way be blamed for this debacle. The blame should be on the heads of the professor, the journal and the reviewing process. They may have had only law school professors read the article, leaving it devoid of an evaluation of the historical or political context of the paper.

The "law school professor" aspect of the paper appears good. Good eyewash. But as a former journal editor, I know that when a paper is interdisciplinary, you need to have eyes from the concerned additional disciplines. Any historian would have reacted the way I did ― no context, no use of Korean sources, shoddy research, biased presentation, flawed logic, and dishonest use of footnotes. That's a pretty heavy condemnation.

And that is what others are writing about. My good Korean history colleague at Harvard, Carter Eckert, has written that the paper is flawed in one major way ― it is a paper arguing the use and applications of legal contracts in establishing services, prostitution. Yet not one contract is presented as evidence. Only the theory or the proclaimed law is cited. To claim a social practice on the basis of a written law is incredibly and obviously foolish. The speed limit on a highway is 75 mph, therefore no one ever drives over 75. Right?

Contracts were supposedly entered into by women over the age of 21. That was the law. However, if you believe that was the actual practice, be careful buying your next car or answering an email from a Nigerian prince who has money to give you ― you will believe anything.

The other academic critiques of the paper are thorough in their condemnation of Ramseyer's sloppy and biased scholarship. Five "transnational" scholars who have all worked on Japanese history have written a 33-page indictment of the paper. The original paper was only 16 pages! A group of economists has also called for the journal to rescind publication of the paper.

It's unfortunate that the good name of Harvard is associated with this mess. Harvard holds to the principle of academic freedom, and in such a situation, it is the peers of the scholar who must critically acclaim or condemn the work of a scholar. It's not the school's job. Condemnation of this paper is rolling in from all quarters, and it seems that Harvard's name will ultimately remain untarnished. (But perhaps I am being a little too optimistic?)

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.