The Influence Of “Comfort Women” Issue To The US-japan Relationship

The historical problem is one of the reasons which make cracks in the relationship between America and Japan. Human rights and feminism, which are involved by the “comfort women” issue, are significant differences between the US and Japan in terms of value orientation. Thus, when faced with the rise of China, and DPRK conducting nuclear tests, the United States and Japan will give priority to calm the situation in East Asia, or still be desperate to solve historical problems? This article will analyze in-depthly how the “comfort women” issue affects US-Japan relations from the values, feminism and realistic perspective of interests, and tries to predict where the US-Japan relations going. Therefore, Chinese government will be able to have better understanding about the United States or Japan’s future attitudes towards the historical problem and the practices they may take, and it is helpful for Chinese government to propose appropriate countermeasures.As we all know, Japan is an important factor in the US strategic interests. The bilateral relation remains a close state since the end of the Second World War. However, in recent years because the Japanese government moves to the right seriously, especially in the “comfort women” issue, the Japanese refused to accept historic responsibility, resulting in South Korea and Japan, Sino-Japanese relations go into a state of tension, which makes the United States’ strategy of “going back to Asia” carry out very unsmoothly. Meanwhile, the “comfort women” issue itself is urgent. Among the issues left over from history, because the particularity of “comfort women” experiences have brought more serious physical and psychological trauma to those women, so the survivals are ashamed to mention the experience. Coupled with external factors interfering, the “comfort women” in World War II was not concealed until the Korean “comfort women” survivors sue the Japanese government in nineties of last century. However, the “comfort women” survivors were at the advanced age, and the former “comfort women” experience made them sick, so most of the survivors had died. Therefore, the “comfort women” not only are the contradictions between Japan and Korea are very acute, but also complicated US-Japan alliance relationship. The source formation and influence of “comfort women” issue are introduced briefly at the beginning of the essay. Then the influence of “comfort women” issues to the US-Japan relations is analyzed deeply from the human right perspective, feminism perspective and the realistic interest perspective in the second part. In addition, there will be the US presidential election this year, as the presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton has paid more attention on the “comfort women” issue. The result of election will affect the US-Japan relations. Therefore, the conclusion of the article can be divided into two situations: First, if Hillary Clinton lost the election, despite the historical issues is the unavoidable problem in the harmonious relationship between the US and Japan, when their the realistic of interests are threatened, the US and Japan may set aside historical issues, and settle the situation in East Asia firstly. Second, if the Hillary campaign would win, according to the early attitude of Hillary towards “comfort women” issue, it will be possible to promote the “comfort women” in the settlement process.