Yayori Matsui
Yayori Matsui was an outstanding activist who led the earliest campaign against sex tourism and the trafficking of Asian women to Japan. She was also one of the first to draw attention to the issue of Asian "comfort women" and to bring justice to them internationally.
She 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. 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 a People's Tribunal declaring the Emperor of Japan as a war criminal.
Among many of her achievements was being one of the most admired journalists in Asahi Shimbun for more than 30 years, covering such subjects as violence against women (especially trafficking and prostitution) and human rights abuses all over the world and in Asia in particular. She died in December 2002, and at her memorial service it was announced that she chose to give all her money to build a new Women's Resource Center of War and Peace.
Yayori Matsui
Translated by Noriko Toyokaw & Carolyn Francis
This remarkable book charts the effects of the economic boom on women across Asia. Yayori Matsui, one of Japan’s leading journalists, demonstrates how Asian women are confronting rapid economic development which is accompanied by widespread infringement of human rights. Matsui explores the impact of globalization and trafficking of women, sexual violence and so-called ‘development projects’ resulting in deforestation and displacement of communities. But she also discovers the hope of women’s credit co-ops, women-organized anti-logging blockades and campaigns against trafficking. She unearths the resistances to the dictatorship of development and ways of alleviating women’s poverty.
1999 | ISBN 9781875559862 | Paperback | 215 x 135 mm | 194 pp