The postwar compensation movement in Taiwan is not an isolated case. The movement should be placed within the context of the broader Asian compensation movement, or to a certain extent, the worldwide compensation movement today. This sudden "return to the past" simultaneously occurred in many countries. What indeed does the term "postwar reparations" (sengo hoshō; as opposed to sengso baishō, postwar repayments) mean? To what extent does Japan's current policy toward war victims reflect the government's acknowledgement of responsibility for initi- ating the war? Moreover, what is the nature of the Japanese government's historical un- derstanding of these issues? The case of Taiwan poses a unique question regarding the issue of war compensa- tion, precisely because it was outside the system of postwar compensation. In 1972, Ja- pan normalized diplomatic ties with China, thus recognizing the PRC as the sole legiti- mate government of China. Meanwhile, it moved to unilaterally end the 1952 Sino- Japanese Peace Treaty with Taiwan. Accordingly, Taiwanese were denied their right to government-to-government "dialogue." Ironically, the cutting of official ties paved the way for civilian negotiations in Taiwan, which were no longer bound by Article Three of the 1952 peace treaty. The 1980s witnessed a resurgence of interest from Southeast and East Asia in Ja- pan's war responsibilities. The key to this changed situation, symbolic of Asia's wariness toward Japan, lies in the issue of history textbook revision (kyōkasho mondai) which emerged in August 1982. The issue of Japan's conduct during the war remains an open wound between Japan and its Asian neighbors. In particular, Japan's failure to follow Germany's example in admitting wartime guilt has long been a source of friction. For Asian people, the textbook issue served as a "warning bell." It was during the 1991 Gulf War, when Japan's international role was under close examination, that the issue of postwar compensation was reinvoked, which inevitably generated discourse over Japan's war responsibilities. Korea's invocation of the issue of "military comfort women" (jugun ianfu), however, was the key to the postwar compensa- tion campaign in Asia as a whole. The "comfort women" lawsuit opened a Pandora's Box of demands to re-examine Japan's war responsibilities in the 1990s. Within the next two years, roughly twenty cases were filed by Koreans seeking war compensation from Japan. The term, "war com- pensation," which had never fully entered into public consciousness during the postwar decades, now became a catch-word, appearing again and again in journals and newspa- pers throughout Korea and many parts of Asia. Legislative solutions were thus necessary. With the end of the Showa era (1926-1988), the flood of lawsuits for war compensation began. Given the politicized nature of the movement, this paper will inevitably put forth more questions than answers and hopefully will suggest some areas for future research.