Twenty years have passed since ‘the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in 2000 on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery’ (hereinafter, ‘2000 Women’s Tribunal’) was held in Tokyo, Japan. It was an unprecedented tribunal, initiated and organized by citizens’ NGOs, survivors, and legal professionals from more than 10 countries in Asia and beyond. This incredible tribunal was possible mostly owing to the courageous victim-survivors’ and women’s efforts after more than half a century since the atrocities took place. For the first time, the judgment clearly sentenced that Japanese Military Sexual Slavery (JMSS), as a system of rape and sexual slavery, including other human rights violations, had both constituted and led to crimes against humanity, for which Japanese highest officials at that time and the State were accountable.

Despite these achievements, it has been pointed out that colonialism (殖民主義) or coloniality (殖民地性) in the patterns of the crimes and damages was addressed only insufficiently, as if it were the special condition of Korea and Taiwan. Since Koreans who were under Japanese colonial rule have been counted as the largest ethnic group of the victims, the aspect of colonialism or coloniality in Asia was crucial in clarifying the system of JMSS, let alone explaining the situations of Korean and Taiwanese victims. This article is an attempt to view the ‘2000 women’s tribunal’ as well as JMSS from the perspective of colonialism.

For this purpose, this study analyses wartime sexual violence more recent cases, such as those of Akeyasu held by ICTR and Frundžija and Kunarac held by ICTY, since ‘2000 Women’s Tribunal’ was held in a very close legal context. It also examines the Special Rapporteur’s Reports on Systematic Rape and Sexual Slavery submitted to the UN. Based on the reasons offered, I move to investigate historical facts of sexual violence and other human rights violations committed against the Korean victims, and propose a new construction of legal reasoning. From forcible mobilization, transportation to foreign soil, being (dis)placed at the numerous Japanese military stations virtually all over the place where the Japanese Military fought, we can find how pervasively colonial ruling system had been operated. To accommodate these specificities, we need to develop the legal reasoning of ‘because of colonialism’ rather than ‘despite colonialism,’ the latter was the logic employed in the ‘2000 Women’s Tribunal’ in Tokyo; and how the colonial rule of law (administrative forces, police, and military, etc.) has built the multiple systems of “coercive circumstances” that much beyond the “force against one’s own will.” Furthermore, the relationality of Koran women and Japanese soldiers was neither in the relation of enemy nor that of ally, as in the usual binary code of wartime sexual violence reasoning. The fact that “colonial relationality” between the two subjects has been notoriously unexplored signals the state of knowledge in the postcolonial feminist legal studies. In conclusion, this article proposes the concepts of ‘wartime sexual violence based on colonialism’ and ‘gender violence based on colonialism,’ and in the lexicon of wartime sexual violence jurisprudence. Those notions are crucial not only for illuminating the JMSS in Asia, but also for much more. They will be broadly applicable to the people all over the world who have gone through human rights violations in the midst of colonial rule and war.

Domesticating Foreign Law: Legal Transplant and its Methodology in Taiwan (Forthcoming, Vol.20, June 2025)

Yi-Chen Lo (download)

This paper examines the role of foreign law as an interpretive method in domestic legal reasoning. It begins with a critique of the thesis that the integration process can be reduced to one single method, such as teleological interpretation, and argues for a context-dependent view on the complex argumentative process. Theories of legal transplant emphasize that legal rules cannot be abstracted from their systems and generalized into one single operative rule; instead, legal systems are shaped by diverse and even contradictory legal formants, and legal actors operate with competing individual agendas. As such, the agency of local legal professionals plays a decisive role in how foreign norms are received, adapted, or transformed into local contexts. In Taiwan, legal scholars demonstrate theoretical innovation by constructing a methodological framework that facilitates legal transplant. This framework also reflects how jurists use foreign law to assert authority over foreign-trained scholars, practitioners, and the legislature. These methodological innovations also show the bigger picture of how foreign laws are made useful for local reforms to take place in Taiwan.