Yayori Matsui, who also campaigned against sex tourism and the trafficking of Asian women to Japan, died on Dec. 27 in Tokyo. She was 68.
Matsui’s colleagues at the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Asia Pacific announced her death on Dec. 29.
However, Noriko Yoshimoto, a spokesman for the Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Center, which Matsui founded, announced yesterday in Tokyo the passing away of the women’s rights advocate.
Matsui had been visiting women’s groups in Afghanistan in October when she fell ill and was diagnosed with liver cancer after returning to Tokyo, a report by the Associated Press from Tokyo said.
Matsui had spent her final days planning a museum documenting the story of "comfort women" which was schedule to open in 2006, Yoshimoto said, according to the AP report.
"The 20th century has been filled with wars and violence against women. Among them, the sexual slavery committed by the Japanese armed forces was the largest and most heinous form of wartime sex violence," Matsui said in another interview with Japanese media.
"Comfort women" is a euphemism for women forced by the Imperial Japanese Army to provide wartime sex for millions Japanese soldiers posted all over Asia.
Academicians have said "comfort women" number 200,000 and notably came from Korea and the Philippines. A number also came from China, Indonesia, and the Netherlands.
Matsui "will be remembered as one of the prime movers of the Tokyo International War Crimes Tribunal on Military Sexual Slavery of Asian Women held in Tokyo in December 2000," Aurora Javate de Dios, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women in Asia Pacific, said.
Matsui was born to a family of Christian missionaries and was a foreign correspondent for the liberal Asahi Shimbun for more than 30 years. She had reported on violence against women, especially women trafficking, prostitution, and human rights abuses all over the world, particularly in Asia.
"Together with hundreds of activists, lawyers, and victims of Japanese military sexual slavery, she worked tirelessly to make the Tribunal possible resulting in the unprecedented decision of People’s Tribunal declaring the Emperor of Japan as a war criminal," De Dios said in a memoriam.
Although the Tokyo International War Crimes Tribunal on Military Sexual Slavery of Asian Women was a mock court, it collected evidence and questioned witnesses, acting like a real court on wartime abuses and atrocities.
The tribunal’s findings that the Japanese government was "guilty" of systematic sexual slavery of Asian women were not legally binding. However, the findings were a significant and symbolic triumph in the long-drawn battle for compensation of former "comfort women."
It is estimated that Filipino "comfort women" number 174, of which 46 had filed a case against the Japanese government.
In 1992, Rosa Henson and Pacita Suclan Santillan broke their silence and became the first Filipino women to openly admit having been forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The two testified before a Tokyo District Court in September 1997.