Report: Japanese scholars raise objections to 'comfort women' paper

March 10 (UPI) -- Japanese historians and scholars condemned a Harvard Law professor's controversial paper on "comfort women," as protests grow in South Korea and the United States.

Ryuta Itagaki, a professor of sociology at Doshisha University, told South Korean network KBS that the paper by J. Mark Ramseyer, the Mitsubishi professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School, is an example of denial regarding the abuse of women and girls forced to serve in wartime brothels.

Itagaki said he and others request the journal, the International Review of Law and Economics, re-evaluate Ramseyer's work and withdraw the paper, "Contracting for sex in the Pacific War," from publication.

Itagaki is one of 4,400 Japanese academics who have signed a statement requesting a retraction, according to KBS. The journal, published by Netherlands-based Elsevier, is likely to go ahead with plans to make the article available in print.

Scholars in Japan opposed to the paper's publication said there was nothing consensual about the recruitment and retention of comfort women at Japanese military outposts during World War II, a main argument of Ramseyer's paper.

"The fact that women were forcibly subjected to acts against their own intention is itself an involuntary act," said Yoshiaki Yoshimi, professor of Japanese modern history at Chuo University. Yoshimi said Ramseyer's decision to "ignore this simple fact" is the greatest source of controversy.

Protests have taken place in the United States and Korea. On Saturday, about 100 demonstrators assembled outside Harvard to denounce Ramseyer, the Harvard Crimson reported.

Rally participants included representatives of the Korean American Society of Massachusetts and students from across the United States, the report said.

Protesters charged Ramseyer with distorting historical facts and "failing to meet research integrity."

A local official from Suffolk County, Linda Champion, said the paper "hit a nerve" in the Korean community.

"It was important for them to come out to express to Harvard University it was not OK for someone to bear a name as prestigious as Harvard and to write propaganda," Champion said, according to The Crimson.