On the Issue of Comfort Women
Historian Yoshiaki YOSHIMI details the issue of “comfort women” (or 従軍慰安婦) in his article as a criticism against the conduct of the Japanese government and its officers during the stage of its so-called “imperialism” in East Asia. The following are the claims he makes against the Japanese government in his report:
- The Japanese government authorized the use and employment of “comfort women” in the Japanese military during the war.
- These “comfort women” were primarily recruited out of its imperial colonies, with a clear majority of them being Korean and Taiwanese.
- Trafficking of women and children was a breach of International Law (International Arrangement and Conventions for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children) and the laws of war (rape was a committable war crime) to which Japan was a clear signatory of.
- It was necessary for Japanese military to employ “comfort women” for the sake of sustaining the war.
- The issue of “comfort women” was passively buried under wraps by the Japanese government after the war.
Prostitution is not an uncommon element to war, in fact one could even say that they go together hand in hand; there are many documented examples of history regarding government and/or military sanctioned-prostitution, with the Cavour Law of 1860 in Italy[1] after the Resurgence wars[2] being a notable example. Military prostitution, in fact, was not considered a war crime or a human rights violation prior to recent years (and developments in global human rights) and there have been many reports and accusations of military prostitution against the United States army in Korea, the Philippines, Okinawa, etc.
Setting the legality of military prostitution aside, the issue at stake for Japan has never been against the employment of prostitutes by the government, but rather of whether such actions taken by the Japanese government were consistent with the contemporary laws of war and international human rights regulations at the time. The biggest of the accused violations in contention is that the Japanese recruitment of “comfort women” constituted a form of slavery (as per 1926 Slavery Convention of the League of Nations) and/or forced labor (as per the Forced Labor Convention of the ILO). The Japanese government, given that the accusations against it listed in the article are all in bona fide, would also be guilty of trafficking women and children if the accounts of under-21 year old women in the army were to be believed.
Yoshimi however, is not overly disdainful on the general policy of military prostitution; Yoshimi clearly identifies that the Japanese government at the time clearly felt a need to provide “relief” to soldiers during the course of the their long “war of aggression” and even lauds the government’s systemization of the process in its “type two” comfort houses through which wide spread of venereal disease throughout the ranks were effectively put into check. Yoshimi also comments on the fact that the Japanese government saw the recruitment of “comfort nurses” from its then imperial colonies preferable over recruiting those from its forty-seven prefectures, since the government was not restricted to the recruitment of prostitutes in the then-colonies of Korea and Taiwan due to the exclusionary clause in the convention against trafficking women and children—recruiting women who weren’t prostitutes as “comfort women” into the military, at least in the minds of the Japanese government at the time, would serve as an efficient way of providing “relief” to its soldiers without “weakening their fighting spirit” through contracting sexually transmitted diseases.
Yoshimi concludes his report by stating that the Japanese government did issue a formal apology for its policies regarding “comfort women” during the war and acknowledged the fact that the war-government was indeed involved in recruiting, funding, and managing the “comfort women” effort, as detailed by Prime Minister Miyazawa during his 1992 visit to Korea. Prime Minister Murayama apologized again in 1995[3], but echoed Miyazawa’s statements, alleging that the government merely sanctioned and regulated the comfort houses and did not play an active role in their creation and proliferation. Most recently in 2007, a much-lauded attempt by Prime Minister Abe in apologizing for the human rights violation once again curtailed that the government did not intend or sanction the forceful recruitment of women as “comfort women”, and also correctly identified that the term i’anfu was not one officially coined during the war, but one popularized by the media and the press, most notoriously by one Senda Kakou in his book Ju’gun I’anfu published in 1973.
In conclusion, the case of the “comfort women” can be seen as yet another government-sanctioned mass-breach of international law/human rights processed under the guise of a euphemism; although it should be noted on a personal note that when compared to others which have adorned the halls of atrocities caused under the guise of euphemisms such as “ethnic cleansings” or torture of “illegal enemy combatants,” the sanctioning of “comfort women” doesn’t seem to be as unnatural or unforgivable as contemporary media and historians have made it out to be.
[1] See Gibson, “Prostitution and the state in Italy, 1860-1915”, Ohio State University Press, 1999
[2] 1814 – 1861
[3] See Murayama’s statement given on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war’s end