Comfort Women: Book Review

As a piece of historical literature, this book is interesting as an in-depth look at the politics and the chronological suppression and exploitation of the women. I think this book has been the real instrument for the historians, human right activists and general readers. The writer seems to have been very convincing and willing to campaign for the rights of the women. Tanaka Yoshiaki’s outstanding study states that the women were not only wartime prostitutes but also they were victims of the monstrous system which repetitively raped and trapped the women in the big hell of sex slavery.

This book explains the practices of sexual slavery of the Japanese military during World War II. The writer has also tried to make the readers convinced that the Japanese government is responsible for all these atrocities to the women. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousand of women, who were called “Comfort Women” by the army, drew the public attention only after three Koreans filed the suit in a Tokyo District Court against the atrocities. The book also describes how women were rounded up, how they were forced to live and so on. Still some Korean women are fighting for their justice.

According to the writer of this book, the establishment of a system of military prostitutes began with use of Japanese professional prostitutes who would be sent to overseas locations. These women were provided to Japanese military forces beginning in the 1920s, but often had high levels of venereal diseases. It was later decided to use foreign women, who, not being prostitutes to start out with, were relatively free of disease. An estimated 200,000 women from Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Taiwan, and to a lesser degree Myanmar, Malaysia, and Vietnam, as well as some British and Dutch women were used as comfort women.

As the war drew to a close, many of these women were abandoned or killed, or claims were made by the Japanese that they had been nurses. Discussion of forced military prostitution was avoided during the American military occupation of Japan because of cultural sensitivities. Women who had been forced into sexual slavery were unlikely to admit to the experience in the decades following the war, due in part to the psychological pressures which had resulted from the experience. The book also states that the women were kidnapped or tricked by the false promises of the legitimate employment. They were also treated as colonial subjects, members of the rural and urban poor, and women. The writer through this book also has analyzed the background of Japan’s prewar system of licensed prostitution and contemporary sex tourism, where Japanese men exploited the neighboring Asian countries.

It has personalized some of the 'comfort' women. It gives the details the inhumane process of recruitment. This forced the into sexual slavery and the degrading day-to-day treatment by recruiters, managers and soldiers if the women refused to 'comfort' soldiers, became pregnant or were ill. As the same it attempts to establish the figures that helped to implement the 'comfort' women system, including senior Japanese military officers, Ministry of War bureaucrats, brothel owners and their recruiter sand medical staff. In early part of the book the writer carefully documents the historical process that resulted in the establishment of comfort stations as military general policy during World War II, including extensive collaboration between the arms of the Japanese military, government ministries and the prostitution industry in Japan and Japanese-controlled Korea.

As Tanaka shows, while at first the women recruited for comfort station were professional Japanese prostitutes and impoverished Japanese and Korean women, soon local women in China and elsewhere were often forcibly recruited. The methods employed by civilian recruiters included deception, intimidation, violence, and, in extreme cases, even kidnapping. In Shanghai, even as early as 1932, the existence of comfort station was given various rationales, including the need to maintain military discipline by reducing the likelihood of the rape of civilians.

The writer argues convincingly that the existence of comfort station and the methods used to 'recruit' women for them were sanctioned and promoted by the Japanese Ministry of War. While the stations may have been successful at providing soldiers with psychologically-beneficial leisure, the writer says that as a means of preventing rape and the spread of venereal disease, the 'comfort' women system was ineffective. Furthermore, while the 'comfort' women were regularly examined for venereal disease, it was quite difficult for both military authorities and the women alike to persuade soldiers to use the prophylactics and disinfectants that they were provided with to avoid infection. Indeed, soldiers were effectively discouraged from reporting venereal infections to medical officers by the existence of a punitive sanction for the condition, namely demotion by two ranks.

An important part of the ‘comfort’ women discourse, the writer argues, is the effort that has been made over decades by successive Japanese governments to suppress the stories of the ‘comfort’ women, an effort which has been supported in the post-war period by the silence of the Allied nations. Few would dispute that this has been the case. Relevant documentation is difficult to obtain.

The second half of the volume is devoted to explaining why the Allied Occupation failed to prosecute individuals for crimes against the 'comfort' women at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal), despite ample evidence of such crimes being available. Yet in a volume ostensibly based in law, there is a curious omission of nearly all legal discussion. There is no notice taken of how far the international regime of human rights has developed since World War II, rendering the use of terminology such as crimes against humanity. He also does not explore some of the other legal options offered by other authors in this field as to the means by which the Allied nations could have prosecuted individuals for crimes against the comfort women.

The writer merely notes that the Dutch authorities questioned Indonesian, Indo-Dutch and Chinese 'comfort' women about their experiences in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies but that only two cases involving non-Dutch women were ever raised at the Batavia War Crimes Tribunal.

The writer’s primary argument regarding sexual slavery is that the Allied nations' own 'sexual ideology'—their treatment of non-Western women prior to the war, their practice and attempt to cover-up military-controlled prostitution during the war and their complicity in the establishment of a similar 'comfort' system for Allied personnel during the Occupation in Japan. During the war itself, the writer clarifies that the Allied 'sexual ideology' made it 'quite natural that the Allies were completely unable to discern the criminal nature of the comfort women system.

While the women were professional prostitutes, he contends that it was still a breach of international law, although which aspect of customary international law he does not make clear, that in at least one case a sixteen-year-old girl was approved and used as a prostitute by the Australian Army. The writer’s overall argument in the middle of the book is that that the engagement of the Allied forces in prostitution was similar to the 'comfort' women system perpetrated by the Japanese and this weakened the Allied nation’s ability to perceive any criminality in the 'comfort' women system.

To further make the connection between the Allied nations' sexual ideology and the failure to consider the 'comfort' women system as a war crime, Tanaka raises the issue of sexual violence committed by soldiers of the Allied Occupation against Japanese women. Such atrocities were widely feared in Japan, not only by the populace which had been indoctrinated by wartime propaganda to believe that mass rape was a usual characteristic of the immoral 'barbarians', but also by political and bureaucratic leaders. Even before the Occupation began, a vastly similar 'comfort' women system was established in Japan for use by Allied soldiers, staffed by professional Japanese prostitutes and recruited 'volunteers'. In juxtaposing the 'sexual ideologies' of Japan and the Allied nations in this manner, the writer underscores that he is not attempting to rationalize the crimes that Japanese men committed during the war by referring to similar or related crimes committed by the Allied soldiers immediately after the war.

The writer’s remark regarding the allied nations’ sexual ideologies leaves the readers contemplate the ruthlessness of so called powerful nations. This is an interesting volume on this most delicate of subject matters. Yet, it should be read with some caution. It could be more convincing and reliable if the writer had posted many photographs that exposes the lives women were forced to live and how they were mistreated – but one can assume that the writer might not have succeeded to obtain such evidences.

Yet even if these minor failings are discounted, this volume remains a distinctly unmeasured analysis of the why the Allied nations failed to prosecute the 'comfort' women system. It does, however, pose some interesting questions to further researchers in this field.

As a famous researcher and the professor of one of the Universities in Japan, Yoshimi has really attracted the intellectuals as well as general public’s attentions raising the very controversial and critical issues through this book, to which any one, who is interested in human rights issues, must be very much drawn into.

Despite his failure to let the readers know more the actual historical background regarding the case, the writer has really been successful in explaining the discriminatory attitudes and manners towards the women, characteristics of the Japanese society, prostitution system and its atrocities, various forms of human rights violations and the indifference showed to the voice of the victims by respective governments.

I highly recommend people to read this book, which will give you the insights into why East Asia shared antagonistic past, and what it means at present relationship among acountries in that reason; and even it will help you understand the inhuman treatment women received by their counterparts. It will also make us rethink our views on war, geopolitical interests, security issues and how countries neglect human rights issues in the name of war