The Comfort Women Hoax

During World War II, the Japanese military extended Japan’s civilian licensing regime for domestic brothels to those next to its overseas bases. It did so for a simple reason: to impose the strenuous health standards necessary to control the venereal disease that had debilitated its troops in earlier wars. In turn, these brothels (dubbed "comfort stations") recruited prostitutes through variations on the standard indenture contracts used by licensed brothels in both Korea and Japan. The party line in Western academia, though, is that these “comfort women” were dragooned into sex slavery at bayonet point by Japanese infantry. But, as the authors of this book show, that narrative originated as a hoax perpetrated by a Japanese communist writer in the 1980s. It was then spread by a South Korean organization with close ties to the Communist North. Ramseyer and Morgan discuss how these women really came to be in Japanese military comfort stations. Some took the jobs because they were tricked by fraudulent recruiters. Some were under pressure from abusive parents. But the rest of the women seem to have been driven by the same motivation as most prostitutes throughout history: want of money. Indeed, the notion that these “comfort women” became prostitutes by any other means has no basis in documentary history. Serious intellectuals of all political perspectives in both South Korea and Japan have understood this for years. Ramseyer and Morgan’s findings caused a firestorm in Japanese Studies academia. For explaining that the women became prostitutes of their own volition, both authors of this book found themselves “cancelled.” In this book, the authors detail both the history of the comfort women and their own persecution by academic peers. Only in the West—and only through brutal stratagems of censorship and ostracism—has the myth of bayonet-point conscription survived.

In an era marked by atrocities perpetrated on a grand scale, the tragedy of the so-called comfort women—mostly Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army—endures as one of the darkest events of World War II. These women have usually been labeled victims of a war crime, a simplistic view that makes it easy to pin blame on the policies of imperial Japan and therefore easier to consign the episode to a war-torn past. In this revelatory study, C. Sarah Soh provocatively disputes this master narrative. Soh reveals that the forces of Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy together shaped the fate of Korean comfort women—a double bind made strikingly apparent in the cases of women cast into sexual slavery after fleeing abuse at home. Other victims were press-ganged into prostitution, sometimes with the help of Korean procurers. Drawing on historical research and interviews with survivors, Soh tells the stories of these women from girlhood through their subjugation and beyond to their efforts to overcome the traumas of their past. Finally, Soh examines the array of factors— from South Korean nationalist politics to the aims of the international women’s human rights movement—that have contributed to the incomplete view of the tragedy that still dominates today.

Planned, instituted and run by the Japanese Imperial Military during the Asia-Pacific War, the ‘comfort women’ system remains hugely controversial. Although political leaders often contest the role of coercion, many argue that the ‘comfort women’ were mobilized forcibly, through processes of abduction and deception. Utilising archival research, court testimonies and eyewitness accounts of both survivors and military and civilian personnel, this book argues its case in three ways. Part I analyses the modalities of coercion employed by the authorities and investigates the historical differences and continuities between licensed peacetime prostitution and wartime sexual slavery. Part II then examines the failures f the Asian Women’s Fund to resolve the ‘comfort women’ issue, whilst Part III explores the removal of ‘comfort women’ content from school history texts after the late 1990s and details Japan’s diplomatic efforts to prevent war victims froms uing the post-war state. Presenting a strong argument in opposition to the revisionist school of thought, this book ultimately concludes that a realistic settlement would see a victim-oriented solution that the survivors can accept. Written by leading Japanese and zainichi Korean scholars, Denying the Comfort Women will be of huge interest to students and scholars of modern Japanese studies, gender studies, women’s studies and Asian history.

The story of the over 100,000 women who were forced to be prostitutes for the Japanese Imperial Forces during World War II.

Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone is an exhaustive examination of the controversial issue of comfort women, who provided sexual services to Japanese soldiers before and during World War II. This book provides extensive documents and narratives by witnesses to shed light on the reality of these women who worked in the battle zone. The book also covers Japan’s political and diplomatic disagreements with neighboring nations, in particular South Korea and China, over this issue, as well as other international reactions, including the U.S. House of Representatives resolution that urged the Japanese government to apologize to former comfort women. The book is an English translation of the Japanese version first published in 1999 and reprinted several times, with additional sections covering recent developments.

The United States and China are locked in a “cold tech war,” and the winner will end up dominating the twenty-first century. Beijing was not considered a tech contender a decade ago. Now, some call it a leader. America is already behind in critical areas. It is no surprise how Chinese leaders made their regime a tech powerhouse. They first developed and then implemented multiyear plans and projects, adopting a determined, methodical, and disciplined approach. As a result, China’s political leaders and their army of technocrats could soon possess the technologies of tomorrow. America can still catch up. Unfortunately, Americans, focused on other matters, are not meeting the challenges China presents. A whole-of-society mobilization will be necessary for the U.S. to regain what it once had: control of cutting-edge technologies. This is how America got to the moon, and this is the key to winning this century. Americans may not like the fact that they’re once again in a Cold War–type struggle, but they will either adjust to that reality or get left behind.

The Japan on show in the 2019 Rugby World Cup was an admirably safe, stable, resilient, and efficient society. However, that appearance disguises crucial vulnerabilities and social ailments, including an ageing and shrinking population, slow productivity growth, a new low-wage, insecure workforce, declining marriage and fertility rates, and an extreme level of gender inequality. Within this gender gap lies the key both to the ailments and the cure. A deterioration in the use of human capital and a decline in family formation have become entrenched thanks to discrimination against the female half of the population. Yet gradual change is occurring, thanks not only to demographic necessity but also to a significant rise in female access to university education since the 1990s and the emergence of a wide range of role models to inspire and empower the next generation. Analysis of trends and policy options, combined with interviews with 21 role models spanning fields from business to the arts, diplomacy to politics, music to e-commerce, provides ample grounds for optimism. Japan is becoming a nation with an increasing number of potential female leaders. If this rise can be accelerated by both public policy and private action, Japan could achieve much greater social justice and sustainable prosperity in the decades to come.

The human rights issues in Japan are multifaceted. Over decades, domestic and international human rights organisations have raised concerns, but government obstinacy has meant there has been little progress. Recommendations of UN human rights bodies are routinely ignored, and statements by the government in the Japanese parliament regarding these recommendations have been dismissive. At the review of Japan’s implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2014, Professor Nigel Rodley, then chair of the UN Human Rights Committee, lamented the lack of true engagement by Japan and the country’s unwillingness to take any action on the conclusions of UN human rights bodies. Equally worrying is the clear trend over recent years of popular publications bashing neighbouring countries and their nationals living in Japan as well as UN human rights bodies. This book explores the issues surrounding human rights in Japan, and what the future might hold for the country.