Ikuhiko Hata is a Japanese historian. He earned his PhD at the University of Tokyo and has taught history at several universities. He is the author of a number of influential and well-received scholarly works, particularly on topics related to Japan's role in the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), which literally means "comforting, consoling woman". During World War II, Japanese troops forced hundreds of thousands of women from Australia, Burma, China, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and other countries into sexual enslavement for Japanese troops; however, the majority of the women were from Korea. Many women died or committed suicide due to brutal mistreatment and sustained physical and emotional distress. After the war, Japan's acknowledgment of the comfort women's plight was minimal, lacking a full apology and appropriate restitution, which damaged Japan's reputation in Asia for decades. Only in the 1990s did the Japanese government begin to officially apologize and offer compensation.