Post by Admin on Apr 28, 2014 1:21:50 GMT
At the legal level, the Japanese government seems to regard it in its national interest to ward off the possible domino effect that accepting the claims of comfort women survivors to state compensation could have on other types of non-Japanese war victims. Such a concern by a state is not unique to Japan. It is mirrored, for example, in the U.S. government's refusal, in its report of January 2001, to characterize the Korean massacre at No Gun Ri by the American military during the Korean War as a war crime.
The U.S. admitted the massacre of civilian Koreans by American servicemen. President Clinton expressed his deep regret to President Kim Dae Jung over the telephone, but he did not apologize. There are many more incidents (at least sixty-one according to an Associated Press report) involving multiple killings of civilians by the U.S. military in 1950-51, but the U.S. is not willing to investigate further. The Korean victims and their bereaved families plan to file a lawsuit, and their demand for a U.S. apology and compensation is reminiscent of the demands made by the comfort women movement.
Contemporary Japan is deeply divided over the comfort women issue. In a 1997 opinion survey, a slim majority (50.7 %) replied that Japan should apologize properly to Asian countries and the victims. Some progressive lawyers and grassroots activists are campaigning for legislation that would authorize an investigation into the comfort women issue, an apology, and compensation. In contrast, conservative neo-nationalists, who feel neither a moral nor a legal responsibility for the comfort women survivors, believe that Japanese supporters of the international redress movement display an egregious lack of "awareness of national interests" (kokueki ishiki). Some conservatives have actively engaged in the project to write history textbooks with a view to fostering self-confidence and pride in being Japanese among school children. As a result, five of the eight middle-school history textbooks approved for use from the year 2002 do not mention military comfort women.
Some Japanese perceive the comfort system as having been a necessary evil, placing them at odds with feminist and anti-Japanese critics who regard the comfort system as a form of sexual slavery. In opinion surveys conducted in 1998 and 1999, more than two-thirds of Japanese military veterans replied that Japan should neither apologize nor compensate comfort women survivors because they had been paid money for their services. It is in this social context that prominent politicians and cabinet secretaries in Japan have asserted that comfort women were nothing more than licensed prostitutes engaged in business, causing outraged responses among movement activists and survivors alike. To be fair, one of the official aims of the comfort system was to prevent soldiers from randomly raping the women of occupied territories. Survivors' testimony reveals, however, that some comfort stations degenerated into "rape centers" (to use Gay McDougall's term) in the final years of the war.
Twenty-five files revealed conditions at some "comfort stations", including ratios between Japanese soldiers and "comfort women". The files also showed that the Japanese troops used "public money" when setting up "comfort stations".
Nonetheless, one must distinguish between rape used as a genocidal weapon of war (such as in Bosnia and Kosovo) and the comfort system with its official, intended purpose of regulating prostitution and providing R& R. Beyond this lies the problem of ascertaining operational details of the comfort system, such as the issue of forced recruitment, payment, and working conditions, which varied widely depending on the particular locale and period. There is, moreover, the problem of how one defines being "forced," which is one of the major bones of contention in the compensation issue, even after the Japanese government's admission that some comfort women were forcibly recruited. Apparently, the only evidence that anti-comfort women conservatives in Japan will acknowledge as an exceptional case of forced recruitment is that of Dutch women from civilian internment camps. By contrast, some feminist and human rights activists argue that not only military comfort women in the colonies and occupied territories but also women sex workers in Japan's licensed prostitution system were victims of sexual slavery.
If one accepts the latter view, one interesting question becomes the meaning of the total absence of Japanese former comfort women in the redress movement. As Christa Paul suggests in her preface to the Japanese translation of her book on forced prostitution in wartime Nazi Germany (Nazizumu to kyoseibaishun, Tokyo: Akaishi, 1996), ethnic nationalism, steeped in a strong antipathy toward Japan, has played a pivotal role in launching and sustaining the Asian women's redress movement for comfort women survivors. Thus it is no accident that Japanese ex-comfort women are conspicuously absent in the redress movement. Despite the borderless, globalizing capitalist economy, nation-state interests and identity politics deriving from a colonial history still constitute major barriers to discovering what the South African reconciliation tribunal has called "healing and restorative truth."
During Japan's fifteen-year war in the Asia Pacific theater, the comfort system evolved as a complex social, sexual-cultural, and historical institution for the military, from urban centers of sexual entertainment provided mostly by Japanese women into facilities of authorized gang rape and sexual enslavement of women of the colonies and occupied territories. The uncompromising search for gender justice in terms of state compensation and a proper apology clashes with a humanitarian desire to take some concrete action on behalf of the aging survivors during their lifetime. It is a difficult choice for sympathetic supporters of the redress movement.
The U.S. admitted the massacre of civilian Koreans by American servicemen. President Clinton expressed his deep regret to President Kim Dae Jung over the telephone, but he did not apologize. There are many more incidents (at least sixty-one according to an Associated Press report) involving multiple killings of civilians by the U.S. military in 1950-51, but the U.S. is not willing to investigate further. The Korean victims and their bereaved families plan to file a lawsuit, and their demand for a U.S. apology and compensation is reminiscent of the demands made by the comfort women movement.
Contemporary Japan is deeply divided over the comfort women issue. In a 1997 opinion survey, a slim majority (50.7 %) replied that Japan should apologize properly to Asian countries and the victims. Some progressive lawyers and grassroots activists are campaigning for legislation that would authorize an investigation into the comfort women issue, an apology, and compensation. In contrast, conservative neo-nationalists, who feel neither a moral nor a legal responsibility for the comfort women survivors, believe that Japanese supporters of the international redress movement display an egregious lack of "awareness of national interests" (kokueki ishiki). Some conservatives have actively engaged in the project to write history textbooks with a view to fostering self-confidence and pride in being Japanese among school children. As a result, five of the eight middle-school history textbooks approved for use from the year 2002 do not mention military comfort women.
Some Japanese perceive the comfort system as having been a necessary evil, placing them at odds with feminist and anti-Japanese critics who regard the comfort system as a form of sexual slavery. In opinion surveys conducted in 1998 and 1999, more than two-thirds of Japanese military veterans replied that Japan should neither apologize nor compensate comfort women survivors because they had been paid money for their services. It is in this social context that prominent politicians and cabinet secretaries in Japan have asserted that comfort women were nothing more than licensed prostitutes engaged in business, causing outraged responses among movement activists and survivors alike. To be fair, one of the official aims of the comfort system was to prevent soldiers from randomly raping the women of occupied territories. Survivors' testimony reveals, however, that some comfort stations degenerated into "rape centers" (to use Gay McDougall's term) in the final years of the war.
Twenty-five files revealed conditions at some "comfort stations", including ratios between Japanese soldiers and "comfort women". The files also showed that the Japanese troops used "public money" when setting up "comfort stations".
Nonetheless, one must distinguish between rape used as a genocidal weapon of war (such as in Bosnia and Kosovo) and the comfort system with its official, intended purpose of regulating prostitution and providing R& R. Beyond this lies the problem of ascertaining operational details of the comfort system, such as the issue of forced recruitment, payment, and working conditions, which varied widely depending on the particular locale and period. There is, moreover, the problem of how one defines being "forced," which is one of the major bones of contention in the compensation issue, even after the Japanese government's admission that some comfort women were forcibly recruited. Apparently, the only evidence that anti-comfort women conservatives in Japan will acknowledge as an exceptional case of forced recruitment is that of Dutch women from civilian internment camps. By contrast, some feminist and human rights activists argue that not only military comfort women in the colonies and occupied territories but also women sex workers in Japan's licensed prostitution system were victims of sexual slavery.
If one accepts the latter view, one interesting question becomes the meaning of the total absence of Japanese former comfort women in the redress movement. As Christa Paul suggests in her preface to the Japanese translation of her book on forced prostitution in wartime Nazi Germany (Nazizumu to kyoseibaishun, Tokyo: Akaishi, 1996), ethnic nationalism, steeped in a strong antipathy toward Japan, has played a pivotal role in launching and sustaining the Asian women's redress movement for comfort women survivors. Thus it is no accident that Japanese ex-comfort women are conspicuously absent in the redress movement. Despite the borderless, globalizing capitalist economy, nation-state interests and identity politics deriving from a colonial history still constitute major barriers to discovering what the South African reconciliation tribunal has called "healing and restorative truth."
During Japan's fifteen-year war in the Asia Pacific theater, the comfort system evolved as a complex social, sexual-cultural, and historical institution for the military, from urban centers of sexual entertainment provided mostly by Japanese women into facilities of authorized gang rape and sexual enslavement of women of the colonies and occupied territories. The uncompromising search for gender justice in terms of state compensation and a proper apology clashes with a humanitarian desire to take some concrete action on behalf of the aging survivors during their lifetime. It is a difficult choice for sympathetic supporters of the redress movement.