The Comfort Women system set up by the Japanese military during WWII is a hot-button topic that is hotter than most. When I first came to Japan in the early 1970's, there were still Japanese veteran comfort women I could talk to, and there was not yet the international high emotion on the topic. Currently there are very few resources that (1) do not in any way involve denial of what happened, and (2) present it in a way that enables discussion of the topic as a solution to an endemic problem that went very, very wrong.
The author is a woman with her PhD degree in political science from the City University of New York, and currently an associate professor at International University of Japan. The research is thorough and up-to-date: the book first appeared in Japanese in 2014 and in translation in 2016. The topics cover the historical, political, legal and moral perspectives, thoroughly with undeniable resources, plus 13 pages of notes, 10 pages of bibliography (including government document resources), and a good 9-page index.
If you feel there is something between "the most despicable exploitation of human beings ever" and "an attempt to prevent the troops from engaging in wartime rape of the civilian population", please read this book. It does not avoid what was done, nor fail to give voice to the thinking of why it was done. You may even discover the more deeply hidden drivers of the current outrage: local organized crime complicity with the system, the wish to make some money off of international sentiment, and diversion of any relief to the women themselves by various organizing hierarchies.
The author is currently actively writing articles, book chapters, and joint research reports, including "Gender Equality in Japan: Internal Policy Processes and Impact, and Foreign Implications under Prime Minister Abe’s Womenomics", "In Pursuit of Successful Transnational Legal Process---Japan's Acknowledgement of War Crimes and the Internalization of the Norm on Non-Combatant Immunity", and "Japan–India Relations from the Perspectives of Global Governance and International Institutions: Deepening India-Japan Relations in the Asian Century".
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