This study offers a fresh perspective on the 'comfort women' debates. It argues that the system can be understood as the mechanism of the intersectional oppression of gender, race, class and colonialism, while illuminating the importance of testimonies of victim-survivors as the site where women recover and gain their voices and agencies.

Maki Kimura is Teaching Fellow at the Departmentof Political Science, University College London, and Associate Lecturer at theOpen University, UK. She has previously been involved in various projects onracial and gender equalities and has researched and taught wide-ranging issuesin gender and politics.

1. A Question of History.- 2. The Struggle Against Ultra-Nationalism and the Entrapment OfOrientalism.- 3. Modernity, Evil and Violence.- 4. The Origin of the Comfort Women System.- 5. Reading the Testimonies.- 6. Listening to Womens Voices.- 7. Representation and its Limits.- 8. Womens Agency: From Social Stigma to Survivor-Activists.- 9. Bearing Witness to Unshareable Pain.- Bibliography