Reporting the ‘comfort women’ issue, 1991–1992: Japan's contested war memories in the national press

Abstract

This paper analyses the nature of war-related reporting in Japanese newspapers through a survey of how the quality national newspapers reported the eruption of the ‘comfort women’ issue in 1991–1992. It challenges the widespread assumption about the ‘homogeneity’ of the Japanese press, which is based in critiques of press clubs, and illustrates how Japanese newspapers have developed distinct ideological positions in war-related reporting. The paper also clarifies the contested nature of Japanese war memories, some of the key features of that contestation and the pivotal role that the ‘comfort women’ and gender issues have assumed in contemporary Japanese war discourses.