Chapter 8 The Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace
Pedagogies of Possibility of Social and Historical Justice for “Comfort Women”
In: Feminist Critique and the MuseumSearch for other papers by Sachiyo Tsukamoto in
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Abstract
Since its opening in 2000, the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM) in Japan has challenged the patriarcal state’s control of collective war memory and national history through archiving and disseminating the silenced voices of the victim-survivors of the sexual slavery system for the Japanese Imperial Military (so-called “comfort women”) during the Asia-Pacific War. This chapter conceptualises WAM as a site of both public pedagogy and critical feminist activism in the perpetrator country which aims to rewrite its hegemonic masculine history. As a form of pedagogies of possibility, WAM provides the visitor-audiences with a place to be-with, witness and recognise their individual suffering, resistance, courage and dignity. Ultimately, WAM asks of audiences that they/we face a society of perpetrators and consider what it means for us to be both part of the perpetrator county and potentially act as change-agents.