Aradhya Jain

S173DHS13

MA History 4th Semester

Women used as a Weapon of War: Japan’s Comfort Women

During World War 2, hundreds of thousands of women, about 80% of whom were
from Korea, but also from other parts of Asia, were forced into sexual slavery by
the Japanese army to “serve” soldiers on the front line. Generally known as
“comfort women”, these victims were stationed in “comfort stations” throughout
Asia and the South Pacific. Virtual prisoners in these stations, they were subjected
to such daily degradations as physical and verbal abuse, repeated rapes, hard
labor, and sometimes they were even murdered. This paper is about how sex is
used and abused to maintain military organization and discipline and ultimately, it
is about control. It investigates mass rape under the control of the military forces
and the half century effort to suppress information about the system and its role
in sustaining the Japanese military in World War 2. It also examines the lives of
the women whom the system abused. The attempt here is to understand the
origins, uses, and abuses of the system, and to tell the stories of those who
ordered and implemented the system, as well as those of the many Asian women
victims.

The existence of “Comfort Women” only became widely acknowledged in the

1990s, when these women started to testify their ordeals. The existence of these
women attracted the attention of feminists not only in Japan, Korea and other
Asian countries, but also beyond such geographical boundaries. This is mainly
because the system of “Comfort Women” was understood to be one of the worst
examples of “universal” sexual violence against women by men. The United
Nations, as well as community-based activist organisations around the world, has
taken up the cause to win official apologies and reparation from the Japanese
government. But that doesn’t mean that such practices were unique to Japan.
Wartime sexual violence against women is as long and widespread as it could be.
No period in human history and no race or nation has been exempt from it.
Sexual violence against women in wartime is such an extensive and common
phenomenon that until recently it has not been considered a crime, but has been
systematically disguised as “prostitution”. Nonetheless, there are at least two
points that render the Japanese system of “comfort women” unique: firstly, the
“official” governmental initiative in establishing the mechanism and apparatus
that the government authorities systematically and methodically carried out and
secondly, the extreme brutality and inhumane treatment inflicted on the
“comfort women”.

The two ideological bases that underlie the “comfort women” issue are firstly,
xenophobia, which is closely related to the Japanese emperor ideology and
secondly, the contempt with which women have been held in Japanese society
and the exploitation of their sexuality by Japanese men. Yuki Tanaka raises the
question of the abuse of the comfort women which must be examined ultimately
within the parameters of the intertwined ideologies of masculinity and militarism
rather than exclusively within those of the Japanese military structure. It is
imperative to closely analyse the symbolic parallel between the violation of a
woman’s body and the domination over others (enemies) on the battlefield or
through colonial institutions. The ideology of masculinity is intrinsically
interrelated with racism and nationalism. The conquest of another race and
colonization if its people often produce the de-masculinization and feminization
of the colonized. Sexual abuse of the bodies of women belonging to the
conquered nation symbolizes the dominance of the conquerors. This helps to
understand why the majority of comfort women were from Korea- Japan’s colony
at the time.

The idea of traveling military prostitution was not new for the Japanese. In the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japanese prostitutes traveling with the military
were called ‘karayuki’ and were found in many regions of Asia that later became a
part of the Japanese empire. The Tokugawa regime (1603-1868) also dealt with
prostitution with openness and enacted laws that regulated it. After the
establishment of the modern Meiji government in 1868, a series of laws and
ordinances of the 1870s prohibited bondage and restricted prostitution to a
voluntary contract system. But, in reality, much of the system of organized
prostitution lingered on well into the 20th century. Given such an open acceptance
of systematized and legalized prostitution, it is not surprising that there should
have been an organized brothel system in the Japanese military. War is a
patriarchal game and is a problem associated with a male-dominated, militaristic
society. Wartime is when values of patriarchal order are pushed to the extreme,
when brutal force and physical strength are admired and rewarded, and when
those men who are in uniform and engaged either in combat or in confined,
regimented situations become preoccupied with sex. Wartime is also a time when
men regard women as real hindrances to carrying out warfare act to remove
them. Failing that, they resort to punishing them- inflicting sexual violence on
them, which to women is the ultimate shame and defilement, while to men, it is a
source of conquest and even satisfaction. Women of Japan and in the colonies
and occupied areas at this time were subject to twin patriarchal commands of
“providing comfort” to fighting men and producing male children to replace
soldiers killed in battle. On top of that, Japan was convinced of the superiority of
its race and the absolute moral correctness of its mission in the military conquest
of other parts of Asia. But the process of assimilation or Japanization was
particularly intense on the Korean peninsula. Japanese survival depended on the
success or failure of these pursuits, and whenever these policies failed, the
Japanese did not hesitate to use whatever means necessary to achieve their aim.
Armed with these multilayered beliefs and dire determination, Japanese soldiers,
especially those outside their homeland, displayed utter disdain toward non-
Japanese, whom they considered sub-human. Thus, they felt no compunction
about committing numerous inhuman brutalities. The rape of women of the
conquered areas, such as in the cities of Shanghai and Nanking, was one of these
assorted activities.

What actually prompted Japanese military authorities to establish the “comfort

houses” in China was the fierce and angry reaction from the local population
against the Japanese rape of women of Shanghai in 1932. As the Japanese military
moved across mainland Asia, its soldiers and officers committed widespread
atrocities. In 1937, for example, the Japanese military invaded and destroyed the
city of Nanking, an incident which became known as "The Rape of Nanking." The
atrocities that the Japanese forces committed there-especially the large scale
rape of young women and girls, and the barbaric treatment of the general
population-created an outcry in the international press. The press reports of the
Rape of Nanking reached Emperor Hirohito, who was appalled by the negative
image of the Imperial Army that the incident had created. According to Japanese
historians, the Emperor asked his Ministers, Counselors and Military Chiefs to
devise ways to restore the "honor of Japan" and stop the condemnation by the
international press. The Emperor's aides proposed two ideas. The first was a
reform of the Military Code, a task in which the Emperor as well as his Army and
Navy Commanders, and his Ministers were involved. The second was the creation
and systematic extension of what the Japanese military euphemistically called
"comfort stations." Following the rape of Nanking in the winter of 1937, the
Japanese military authority established “comfort houses”.

The official institutionalization of the “comfort women” structure demonstrates

the licentious male attitude toward sex, which in itself is not a peculiar
characteristic of Japan. But it became a Japanese military man’s unique obsession
when it was combined with Japanese superstition and with quasi-psychological
rationalizations. On a personal level, Japanese soldiers about to embark on a
battle believed that having sex shortly before fighting protected them from injury
and death. On the other hand, the military hierarchy believed that allowing sex to
soldiers boosted their morale, promoted their discipline, and aroused courage, as
well as relieved stress from combat. Another practical consideration was to curtail
the spread of venereal diseases by providing soldiers with safe sex partners.

Eighty percent of an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 “comfort women” of World

War 2 were Korean women. In addition to the obvious fact that there were
plenty of poor Korean young women, especially in impoverished rural areas under
Japanese colonialism, who could be “recruited”, enticed and deceived with the
promise of well-paying jobs, kidnapped, conscripted, and even sold, there were
also hidden and complex reasons for choosing them. One of them was to bring in
new girls who could be medically tested against venereal diseases for safe sex.
Secondly, Korean girls were chosen based on a notion of racial hierarchy, which
was determined by the skin color and by the geographical proximity of their
native land to Japan.

The recruiting method of “comfort women” progressively deteriorated as in the

case of Korean laborers. In the early to mid 1930s, most young women were
recruited with the enticements of travelling abroad, of high-paying jobs and even
of educational opportunities. In some destitute rural families, young women, out
of filial piety, volunteered to earn a good salary to help their poor parents and to
send their brothers to school. After the outbreak of war with China in 1937, the
Japanese authorities employed unscrupulous Koreans to recruit Korean young
women. Low-ranking local police, village authorities and paid recruiters
participated in the recruitment of young Korean girls. They all deceived young
women, made them sign up, and ordered them to show up at the police stations
or government offices. If women who had signed up did not appear, local
authorities would resort to “slave raids”, searching houses, interrogating parents
and relatives, rounding them up and shipping them out. In the final phase of the
war in 1940s, with the National General Mobilization Ordinance, parents were
duped and many young school girls were literally taken from classrooms or picked
up from the streets. Even in the treatment of the Korean “comfort women”,
racism preference was pretty evident. The Japanese “comfort women” or those
Korean women who could speak good Japanese were sent to more secure areas
and made available for higher-ranking officers, whereas other Korean girls were
sent to the front lines and housed in makeshift shacks. In addition to the Koreans,
women were also recruited from Taiwan, China, Philippines and Indonesia. Some
Dutch women in Indonesia were also forced into servitude.

The women drafted as “comfort women” had a regimented schedule. Each

woman had to serve 20-40 men a day, at a rate of a man every thirty minutes. In
the morning, rank-and-file soldiers would queue up outside a women’s room.
Afternoon would be reserved for middle-ranking officers and the evening hours
for high-ranking officers. Commanders of a military unit or the camp where the
“comfort stations” existed monopolized the overnight stay privileges. Women
were frequently moved about with the troops, but were not allowed outside the
barbed-wire-fenced military compound. When the war ended, most “comfort
women” were simply abandoned. In the jungles of Java and Sumatra, some
women simply never came out. Nobody knows how many perished, many never
attempted to return home as they did not know how to do so.

The “comfort women” have been hidden victims for over a half a century. Having
been victims of sexual violence, a taboo in Confucian cultures where women’s
chastity is upheld as more important than life, many of these women have
blamed themselves and kept their sufferings even from family members and from
the community, fearing the tainting of the family name and ostracism from
society. Feminist scholarship, independent scholars’ research in South Korea,
Japan and other Asian nation, and the work of numerous NGOs and of the UN
Commission on Human Rights have resulted in accomplishing what only a decade
or so ago was unimaginable- a raised consciousness of “women’s rights as human
rights” and a changed atmosphere in the world at large, as well as in the native
countries of former “comfort women”, both of which have encouraged these
women to speak out about the unspeakable horror they experienced. But the
“comfort women” ordeal has not ended yet. They continue their isolated
existences in poverty and poor health. They have neither regained their honor nor
had their pains eased, for the Japanese government continues to delay issuing its
official apologies or to compensate them from the government treasury. The
courage of the former “comfort women” in “coming out”, however has gained
them more than compensation. They have commanded world-wide respect for
themselves and have helped to raise the world’s consciousness about wartime
violence against women and to categorize it as a crime against humanity.

References:

1) Japan’s Comfort Women- Sexual slavery and prostitution during World War 2
and the US occupation by Yuki Tanaka. Published by Routledge, 2002.
2) Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War 2 by Margaret D. Stetz and
Bonnie B.C Oh. Published by M.E Sharpe, 2001.

3) Sexual Slavery and the "Comfort Women" of World War II by Carmen M.

Argibay.

4) Listening To Voices: Testimonies of “Comfort Women” of the Second World

War by Maki Kimura