Comfort women

Comfort women is a euphemism for women who were forced to work as sex slaves in military brothels in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II. In the Japanese language, ianfu (慰安婦, comfort women) is a term coined by Asahi Shinbun in the 1980s to refer to these wartime prostitutes. jūgun-ianfu (従軍慰安婦, "military comfort women"), those who served in Japanese military brothels during World War II in Japanese colonies and war zones, was also used, but is seen infrequently these days.

The ongoing debate over comfort women

The popular conception of "comfort women" outside Japan is that all comfort women were kidnapped by Japanese soldiers to serve as sex slaves under direct order from the Japanese government. The Japanese who are familiar with the issue believe that there are subtle aspects that are missed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Prostitution and bonded labour were both legal when the events of WWII unfolded. Apologists for the Japanese government assert that if the middlemen were coercing women, then much of the blame, whether legal or moral, can be shifted to them. While there is no dispute that the sexual slaves were acquired at the behest of the Japanese, they argue that many of these middlemen were local Koreans and Chinese, not Japanese, that women were sold to middlemen by their parents out of financial privation, and that many local community leaders used trickery or coercion to provide their own local women to the Japanese. Since forcible procurement by direct action occurred alongside procurement by private middlemen, it is often difficult to separate the two.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Pointing to the complicity of locals allows those who have an incentive to absolve Japan of its war guilt and to defeat compensation claims to deflect the responsibility away from the Japanese military. They claim that Japan had merely taken advantage of an already accepted local practice. The issue is extremely controversial, especially in regard to Korean comfort women. Subsequent research strongly suggests that Japanese soldiers on the frontline did indeed force women into military brothels. However, apologists for the Japanese government suggest that somehow the context in which such acts were carried out changes the nuance of the moral responsibility for the rapes. Moreover, the existence of middlemen makes it difficult for ex-comfort women to pursue compensation claims.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In 1991, Asahi Shimbun, one of the major newspapers of Japan, ran a series on comfort women for a year. This is often regarded as the trigger of a revived controversy over comfort women in Japan, also coinciding with re-examinations of other wartime atrocities such as the Nanking Massacre. In this series the Asahi Shimbun published excerpts of the book published in 1983 by Kiyosada YoshidaWatashino sensou hanzai - Chousenjin Renkou Kousei Kiroku (My War Crime; The Record of the Forced Removal of Koreans), in which the author confesses to forcibly procuring women from Jeju Island in Korea under the direct order of the Japanese military. (The veracity of the events portrayed in the book has been disputed, most notably by Dr. Ikuhiko Hata.)

Related Topics:
Asahi Shimbun - Nanking Massacre - Jeju Island

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In 1992, the paper also published the discovery of the documents in the archives of Japan's National Defense Agency indicating that the military was directly involved in recruitment of comfort women. The article implied that the document proves the Japanese government's complicity in the forcible kidnapping of women. The article was published five days prior to a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa to South Korea (Miyazawa made a formal apology during that visit).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There is debate over how much blame should be placed on the military hierarchy, or for that matter, the Japanese government. Common defenses of the Japanese government at the time are the lack of a document proving that the Japanese military ordered middlemen to procure comfort women by force, that the purpose of military brothel system was to prevent rape, and that the military issued the directive to select agents carefully in order that these agents would not get involved in illegal methods of procurement. Those who wish to deny official responsibility admit that abuse at a local level might have occurred, but this is often blamed on failure of oversight, confused policy in regard to a suspected guerilla force, and a lack of resources at the front line. Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone famously stated in his memoir that he set up a comfort house for his troops of about 3000 when he was a navy lieutenant in charge of accounting. When criticised, he claimed that he was unaware that the women were forced into service.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~