Hirofumi Hayashi (林 博史, Hayashi Hirofumi, born April 6, 1955) is a historian, an authority on modern Japanese history, and is a professor of politics at the Kanto Gakuin University. He has been conducting research on the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, Japanese war crimes, and war crimes trials including the subject of comfort women.
Education and career
Hayashi graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1979, and then obtained master's degree from Hitotsubashi University. In 1985, he was accepted as a full-time lecturer in the College of Economics at the Kanto Gakuin University, became an assistant professor, and was granted his current position as professor in 1999.
Historical research
Over the course of his career Hayashi has researched Japanese history during World War II. He has researched the Sook Ching massacres in Singapore, discovered that US war crimes trials began on Guam before the Japanese surrender in 1945.
When consulted on school textbooks, he criticised the Textbook Authorization Council for distorting passages from his 2001 book The Battle of Okinawa. He argued that Okinawa residents' mass suicides were effectively under the control of the Japanese military, even if no direct orders were given.
Hayashi has discovered documentary proof of Japanese military's wide and common involvement in the forced sexual slavery of the comfort women on Java in Indonesia, in Lansong Province in Vietnam, and in Guilin City in China.
On Feb 25, 2014 Hayashi said, "The claims to inspect the credibility of the testimony made by these comfort women are intended to deny the whole existence of the comfort women itself".
On April 7, 2014, Hayashi found evidence of the forced sexual slavery on Bali in Indonesia.
References
- Yoneyama, Shiro Masayoshi Tsuji: engineer of genocide or peace? July 27, 2000 Japan Times Retrieved December 16, 2015
- War-crimes trials began on Guam before surrender: archive June 14, 2003 Japan Times Retrieved December 16, 2015
- Military ‘forced’ Okinawa mass suicides November 28, 2007 Japan Times Retrieved December 16, 2015
- 「慰安婦」問題 強制性示す新資料 研究者ら公表 東京裁判で証拠採用 Shimbun Akahata Retrieved December 16, 2015 (in Japanese)
- 極東国際軍事裁判に各国が提出した日本軍の「慰安婦」強制動員示す資料 Shimbun Akahata Retrieved December 16, 2015 (in Japanese)
- 林博史氏「談話検証は慰安婦の存在自体を否定するため」2014年2月27日 Chosun Online (in Japanese) Archived March 7, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
- しんぶん赤旗 2014年4月7日(月) Shimbun Akahata Retrieved December 16, 2015 (in Japanese)
External links
- Hayashi Hirofumi's Homepage on Modern History and Japan's War Responsibility
- Kanto Gakuin University Homepage
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- 20th-century Japanese historians
- Japanese military historians
- Historians of Japan
- Battle of Okinawa
- Comfort women
- University of Tokyo alumni
- Hitotsubashi University alumni
- People from Kobe
- 1955 births
- Living people
- Kanto Gakuin University
- 21st-century Japanese historians
- Japanese academic biography stubs
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