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A Harvard University professor ignited public uproar in January after claiming that women who were forced into wartime sexual slavery by Japan were not victims of violence or coercion, but rather willingly paid prostitutes.

J. Mark Ramseyer made the controversial assertions about "comfort women," a euphemism for tens of thousands of young women across Asia, mostly Korean, who were forced to work in front-line brothels for Japanese soldiers during World War Two, in an article that has since intensified diplomatic and political disputes between South Korea and Japan.

His questionable views have also led to widespread debates about academic freedom and integrity, and the issue of revisionist history.

To get another perspective on this controversy, TBS eFM's Hyoung-joo Choi spoke to Miki Dezaki, a Japanese American filmmaker who explored the conflicting narratives surrounding the comfort women in "Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue."

His documentary, initially released in 2018, was screened earlier this month at Harvard University.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: What motivated you to make a documentary on the comfort women issue?

Dezaki: I made this film because I was mostly shocked at how Japanese and Korean media outlets were presenting the issue of comfort women so differently. That's probably why they always seem to fight when they talk about historical issues, even though they are very good friends. I thought if I made a film that gave a full context of the issue, then maybe both Korean and Japanese people could have a better conversation, having the same kind of knowledge about it.

Q: Let's talk about Harvard professor Ramseyer. He has sparked global controversy with his paper, "Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War," claiming in it that sex slavery victims were contracted prostitutes. What's your view on this?

Dezaki: I was actually invited to do a Q&A session with the Harvard Law students who wrote a letter protesting against his paper. When I first saw it, I was pretty shocked that [Ramseyer] was using game theory to support the claim that these women were just prostitutes. I didn't really think anything of it until I saw that he also published an article in Japan Forward, the English version of Sankei news in Japan, which is like Fox News of America. That's when I realized he is part of this group of white American males who are trying to speak in support, and for, the Japanese right-wingers.

Q: You talk about these white American males who are promoting Japanese revisionists' perspectives. How many of them are there?

Dezaki: There's a handful of them. You see a couple of them in my film -- Kent Gilbert [a pro-Japanese lawyer] and "Texas Daddy" [a YouTuber who supports Japanese nationalists]. A rising star is this guy named Jason Morgan, who's a historian from the United States. He actually helped Ramseyer write that paper.

Q: Wasn't Jason Morgan named in Ramseyer's acknowledgements?

Dezaki: Yeah. When I saw that, I also got suspicious. So, I was like, okay, this is all sort of connected between all of them and Sankei, and probably the ring-wingers in my film as well. There is another guy, a military officer in the U.S., who, I think, was stationed in Okinawa for a while. They give credibility to the Japanese right-wingers, but not to anybody who knows what's going on. Most scholars, or people who actually understand the issues, would never give any credibility to these white American males who have no degrees in history, except for Jason Morgan. But when average Japanese and American people see these men, they assume that they must know something. That's the kind of mentality, that if he has a high status, then maybe he's credible talking about the comfort women, even though it's totally unrelated to his field. That's the dangerous thing. Ramseyer is not a historian.

Q: So, there are scholars, a lawyer and even a YouTuber among those out there who've basically been recruited to promote Japanese right-wing views. What's the intention behind using these white men?

Dezaki: Respectable historians in the world do not agree with the Japanese right-wing view on history. So, they need to find somebody to support their view, because if it's just them saying it, some people, even in Japan, would question it. But they can say 'Look at these white people behind us, they support us too.' Even though they don't have any degree in history, they look credible. Basically, they are sort of playing into this idea of white supremacy and how people give or have certain status. For them, a white American man has authority and he's respectable. [Japanese right-wing groups] like to use that for their own image to show that they are respectable because these white men support them.

Q: That's a very interesting point you bring up. But why is it that the United States has become such an important battleground for Japanese right-wing extremists?

Dezaki: I wrestled with that idea myself. I don't think they will ever be able to flip the history in the U.S. But I think what they want is to get enough people on their side and make websites. That's one of their things. They make websites in English that look like they're from America, even though they are made by Japanese right-wingers, so that when Japanese people, who speak English or study abroad, see that on the internet some Americans also support Japanese right-wing views, they'll come back to Japan and think '[those views] must be right.' The point is, I don't think that they care much about America, but what they care about is solidifying the history within the Japanese people's minds. Because solidifying this idea, that Japanese people did not make women into sex slaves, is to say that Japanese people never did anything wrong. This whole myth of how the Japanese people and government have been good since Imperial Japan, they want the people to believe in that, especially young people.

Q: Does the right-wing see their strategy of recruiting American scholars as successful?

Dezaki: It's really a challenge for them to find these white American males with some status to speak for them because most historians would never agree with them. So, they're always searching. In my movie, there's a Japanese woman who paid a journalist to write an article. There's also Sakurai Yoshiko [a journalist affiliated with ultranationalist groups], who paid the same journalist some money as well. We're talking about hundreds and thousands of dollars to write an article. It would not surprise me if somebody with Ramseyer's status was getting quite a bit of money.

Q: Your film was recently shown to students at Harvard Law School, and you participated in a discussion there. What was their response?

Dezaki: They had a general knowledge about the comfort women issue. But they told me the film really gave them a full context. Now, they understand that it's not just a Japanese and Korean issue. There are Americans who are involved in this. I think after seeing that, they realized they have to speak up because if they don't protest against Ramseyer, his words will be weaponized by the Japanese right-wing and used to fight against the comfort women in this battle for justice. Ramseyer is much more dangerous than Kent Gilbert, Texas Daddy or even Jason Morgan because Ramseyer is an older and respectable man and he works at Harvard. This gives him so much credibility in the eyes of average people who don't really understand the issue.

Q: How are young Japanese people responding to the latest controversy over Ramseyer's claims about comfort women?

Dezaki: There's not much news about Ramseyer in Japan. Young people still don't know much about the comfort women issue. If they know something about it, it's from local TV news, which tends to lean towards the Japanese right-wing point of view. The young people who have seen my film are totally blown away, because it's a total shock that their whole belief is challenged. One Japanese student told me she had just assumed and believed everything the Japanese government was doing was right and that Koreans must be wrong. The film actually got her to question what her government was doing. That's a huge shock to somebody.

Q: You are Japanese American. How did your family and others in your community react to the documentary?

Dezaki: It's sort of mixed. The first generation of Japanese Americans, the ones who came to the U.S. from Japan, tend to hold the same view as the right-wing. But the second, third, fourth, and fifth generation of Japanese Americans tend to support the comfort women. My mother is a first-generation Japanese American. Before watching the film, she would tell me the right-wing talking points. My mom is not right-wing. She's just an average Japanese person, but her views were leaning toward a right-wing view of the comfort women issue. But when she watched my film, she was like, 'I was totally wrong. I had no idea that Prime Minister Abe was doing all that. I had no idea about Nippon Kaigi [a Japanese ultra-conservative organization].' You can't blame Japanese people for leaning to the right because that's pretty much all the information they are getting. Of course, Japanese people have the responsibility to look for themselves too.