Response to ‘Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War’ by J. Mark Ramseyer

Abstract

This paper critically examines J. Mark Ramseyer, “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War” (International Review of Law and Economics, Volume 65, March 2021, 105985). The Ramseyer paper purports to analyze contracts for Japanese military “comfort women” without acknowledging that “comfort women” were victims of abduction, human trafficking and Japanese military sexual slavery. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that Ramseyer committed numerous errors, such as failing to provide evidence for his arguments in some cases and misinterpreting and misquoting evidentiary materials in others. It argues that Ramseyer’s paper lacks credibility, sincerity, and accountability.

This paper was written at the request of the editors of International Review of Law and Economics (IRLE) after it had made J. Mark Ramseyer's "Contracting for sex in the Pacific War" available online in December 2020 prior to its planned official publication in the March 2021 issue. I was informed that IRLE would publish my piece along with Professor Ramseyer's response, but it has yet to do so. In the meantime, Professor Ramseyer published his response to this paper as a John M. Olin Center’s Faculty Discussion Paper of Harvard Law School, even though my paper had not been published anywhere. I am sharing a working version of my paper that has been submitted to IRLE, with the consent of its managing editor, in order to give readers an opportunity to read both my paper and his response to it.

Keywords: comfort women, sexual slavery, historical revisionism, Ramseyer