Unfolding the 'Comfort Women' Debates

Modernity, Violence, Women's Voices

Maki Kimura

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137392497
• eBook ISBN: 9781137392510
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This study offers a fresh perspective on the 'comfort women' debates. It argues that the system can be understood as the mechanism of the intersectional oppression of gender, race, class and colonialism, while illuminating the importance of testimonies of victim-survivors as the site where women recover and gain their voices and agencies.

Part 1

Modernity and the System of ‘Comfort Women’

2

The Struggle Against Ultra-Nationalism and the Entrapment of Orientalism

2.1 The prevailing power of Orientalist discourse

Discussions surrounding the ‘comfort women’ system have instigated fundamental questions about history. To fully comprehend these diverse and complex discussions that have developed in Japan (and beyond), which have been referred to as ‘the eruption of’ the ‘comfort women’ issue (Seaton, 2007: 55), we need to connect them with existing and broader debates on the history, culture and society of Japan within a particular political formation. The international community, influenced mainly by English-speaking media, popularly believes that war memories have been ‘inadequately addressed’ in Japan and that the Japanese people lack knowledge about the Second World War. However, diverse cultural and social narratives of the war have existed in Japan since the war (Seaton, 2007: 4). While the Japanese government has often attempted, through the textbook approval system, to obscure the devastation that the war caused and Japanese war atrocities, more progressive public opinions and groups have always existed, raising awareness of the catastrophe of the war and of Japanese war responsibility (Obinata, 2004: 18–22; Yoshida, 2005: 101). As it evolved, therefore, the discourse on ‘comfort women’ in Japan was affected by these diverse narratives of the war.

It is crucial, however, to understand how these narratives, including those on ‘comfort women’, emerged in the 1990s, and have been mediated and circulated under the influence of dominant narratives of the English-speaking Allied nations. A ‘good war’ of the Allied nations is juxtaposed with the atrocities of fascism in Japan (Seaton, 2007: 6). It is equally important to stress that the discussion surrounding ‘comfort women’ emerged in the context of intense reformation/transformation of the global social and political order. Revisiting and re/constructing the collective memory of previous international wars and other national and international conflicts became an urgent mission in developing the sense of belonging and shared community as well as in formulating a new world order.

As addressed in the previous chapter, one of the major problems presented in the early discussion of the ‘comfort women’ system is that the system has often been associated with Japanese uniqueness, or its pre-modern culture; there has been a failure to situate it within a wider context of the history of modernity. Such a view reflects an implicit faith in Enlightenment and modernity, considering it a progression, moving away from pre-modern barbarism, while ‘othering’ non-Western cultures. Traditionally, (Western) modern thought has barely developed any discussion on the centrality of evil and violence in modernity. At the same time it has created the ‘Other’, often in the form of ‘uncivilized’, ‘pre-modern’ people of the non-West, who are frequently associated with the dark or evil element present in modern society. As Tanaka (1996) points out, such a view of the dichotomous nexus of West/modern/progress and non-West/pre-modern/barbaric has been influential on studies of Japanese atrocities during the Second World War. Until quite recently at least, these atrocities were treated as unique and Japan as a special case, and such a perspective was also reflected, particularly during the 1990s, in the discussion surrounding the ‘comfort women’ system. It needs to be highlighted that this perception has been common in studies of Japan and the Second World War conducted not only outside Japan but also within Japan.

This is the very reason why the discussion on the ‘comfort women’ system (in Japan) has become extremely complicated, and also why Said’s Orientalism becomes particularly relevant to the analysis of this discussion. In Orientalism Said introduced a new concept, highlighting cultural and political power in representing the Other, which is a constituent feature of colonialism and post-colonialism. Said’s work on Orientalism has provided a great insight into how cultures of the non-West, namely the Other, have been and can still be represented by the West, but it also offers another vision that is helpful in examining the discussion surrounding ‘comfort women’.

This relates to the question of how the Orient, or the Other actually represents itself; in addition to Said, the work of Franz Fanon further explores this issue. With the demise of the so-called grand narratives, the dominant voices of the West over the non-West also started to be contested. In an attempt to present the ‘counter-narratives’ of those who had been dominated (and silenced), Said himself turns to Fanon in his later writing and illuminates the emergence of ‘counter-hegemonic agency’ (Gates, 1991: 458–9). However, the issue is that these ‘counter-narratives’ themselves may not be completely independent of grand narratives. As Fanon himself suggested, even the colonized Other can internalize the Western gaze towards the Other. Fanon argued that having been strongly influenced by ‘colonialist subjugation’, the colonized people experience self-alienation (Childs and Williams, 1997: 50). This implies that instead of removing himself/herself away from the white master, the black slave, namely the colonized or the Other, looks up to the master with desire and envy (Gandhi, 1998: 20; Loomba, 1998: 145). While blackness is indispensable for the construction of the white Self, or, say, the Orient and Asia for the West and Europe, whiteness causes the black Other to be unacknowledged and disappear. The black slave, it is argued, cannot accept blackness him/herself, as they have internalized the negative image of blackness, which is so deeply ingrained in the racist and colonial structure (Loomba, 1998: 144; 24). In the now famous passage, Fanon described the moment a black person discovers his blackness and feels ashamed of himself:

‘Mama, see the Negro! I’m frightened!’ ... I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. I subjected myself to an objective examination, I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics; and I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects, slave-ships, and above all else, above all: ‘Sho’ good eatin’. (Fanon, 1970: 112)

This complexity of internalizing negative and derogatory views associated with the blackness and racialized Other was also the concern of W.E.B. Du Bois, who explained this through the concept of ‘double consciousness’ (Rawls, 2000: 243). He described how black people are deprived of their own self-consciousness, and can only perceive themselves through ‘the eyes of the others [masters]’ (Rawls, 2000: 244). While his concept of ‘double consciousness’ illustrates a particular experience of African-Americans, it can also apply to those who are commonly in ‘post-slave’ conditions (Gilroy, 1993: 126). This implies that those who were colonized or are from cultures that have been defined as non-Western cannot understand or write about themselves without a certain influence of Orientalist perspectives.

What the work of Fanon and Du Bois indicates is that the idea of Orientalism is much more complex than Said had initially suggested. A cultural imperialist representation of the Orient may be ‘distorted’ and ‘inaccurate’ and demonstrate the power relations between the West and the Orient as Said claims. However, the self-representation by the Orient or the Other also takes place within the same (post-) colonial discourse and power relations, which often undermine the experience of the non-Western Other. Therefore, while self-representation can be the opportunity for the Orient/Other to reclaim its cultural power of representation, it does not necessarily guarantee any ‘better’ or ‘truer’ representation of the Other (Childs and Williams, 1997: 103–7).

The constellation of debates surrounding the ‘comfort women’ system is a complex one, partly because it often operates within the above paradigm (of the West/modern/progress vs. non-West/pre-modern/barbaric/stagnation), but also because of the very fact that Japan itself was a colonizer. The study of the culture, history and society of Japan has always been entangled with the question of modernity and the modernization of Japan, which was marked by two moments in its modern history: the Meiji Restoration of the late nineteenth century, and the post-Second World War democratization. This chapter, thus, attempts to offer an analysis of the discussion surrounding the ‘comfort women’ system generated mainly in Japan over past twenty years, drawing on the concept of Orientalism and cultural imperialism, and the hierarchical power relations between the West and non-West. The revisionists/ultra-nationalists have ignored the anguish of ‘comfort women’ survivors and have tried to construct a narrative of national history that erases their experience. On the other hand, feminists and left-wing critics take the sufferings of these women and Japanese war responsibility seriously and have challenged the ultra-nationalist argument.

The dilemma posed is that in an attempt to contest the revisionist claim and to highlight the extraordinary operation of the ‘comfort women’ system, the early feminist discussion presented a picture of the ‘comfort women’ system as entirely unique to Japan. This has paradoxically led to the reproduction of a nationalistic and essentialist discourse of Japanese culture and history. Although the specificity of the ‘comfort women’ system needs to be illuminated to acknowledge the pain of ‘comfort women’ victims, this claim for the recognition of injustice suffered by survivor-victims seems to have been appropriated for some time by an Orientalist, cultural essentialist discourse. This seems in turn to have prevented feminists from offering a constructive historical and social analysis of the ‘comfort women’ system that can effectively challenge both the ultra-nationalist discourse and cultural imperialism, at the same time as appealing to the wider public in Japan.

The atrocity of the ‘comfort women’ system was elucidated as the result of pre-modern social structure and of being removed from the context of modernity without much comparative analysis with similar, if any, cases. The dearth of broader discussions on the tangled relationship between modernity and the ‘comfort women’ system during the 1990s could partly explain why the ultra-nationalist discourse became more poplar and widely accepted by the general public in Japan.

2.2 Feminist discourses on sexually oppressive Japanese culture

As explained above, the tendency to attribute the cause of wartime atrocities to the peculiar uniqueness of the Japanese people and culture is not only observed among the scholars of Japanese studies outside Japan, but also widely identified in both academic discussion and popular culture in Japan. Tanaka points out that many people in Japan see that Japanese people and culture are distinctive, and that this self-image is often employed to explain and to reconcile Japanese war crimes during the Second World War (1996: 3–4). In referring to the proliferation of narratives that form a collective memory of the Second World War in Japan, marking the fiftieth years after its conclusion, Harry Harootunian also argues that Japanese people were reminded that ‘they are not really modern but Japanese’ (2000a: 716).

In the discussion of contemporary gender discrimination and sexual violence in Japan, feminists in Japan have often attributed its cause to Japanese tradition and pre-modernity, described as a Japanese particularity. Since the ‘comfort women’ system has been regarded as a historically unprecedented practice of sexual exploitation and violence, many early research studies on this topic looked into the socio-cultural conditions in Japan that may have led to the construction of the ‘comfort women’ system. Diverse discussions were presented and feminists have provided different reasoning for the development of the ‘comfort women’ system. However, some emerging patterns are noticeable. Critical of the work of well-known Japanese feminists, such as Yamashita Akiko and Minamoto Atsuko, another feminist scholar, Ehara Yumiko, illustrates how they claim that a particular sexual attitude in Japan expresses pre-modern characteristics. They see the system of licensed prostitution as the most obvious example of such pre-modernity, and argue that this peculiar sexual culture provided the social and political background to the rise of the ‘comfort women’ system (2005, 58–9: 1994, 209–10).

In an attempt to offer an explanation of why such a historically unprecedented system was developed in Japan, other feminists also look into Japanese ‘tradition’ or ‘culture’ and identify them as its causes. For example, Suzuki is one of the few feminists in Japan who underscored the nature of colonial and class oppression as well as gender oppression in the ‘comfort women’ system from the early 1990s. At the same time she, too, claimed that the regulation of sexuality – both human reproduction and sexual desire – in Japan, which was organized and controlled by the Japanese government and the Japanese military, laid the ground for the ‘comfort woman’ system (1992: 36–8). These complex and systematic policies of regulating sexuality in Japan were part of a public health system and consisted of two different sets of technologies of ‘bodily discipline’ and ‘mass regulation’ (Frühstück, 2003: 2). Sabine Frühstück calls these regulations ‘colonizing sex’, and, as will also be explored in Chapter 4, such regulation of sexuality was not unique to Japan; it has been observed throughout modern nation-states, and was indispensable to their statecraft. Japan, in fact, developed its policies following Western examples and scientific knowledge borrowed from the West (Frühstück, 2003: 6). However, Suzuki’s arguments and her reference to Japan as the ‘state of obscenity’ somehow sound as if Japan was a special case (1996: 57).

Another feminist scholar in Japan, Ogoshi Aiko, who has been actively participating in the discussion on ‘comfort women’ and the redress movement, identified the traditional oppression of women in Japan in Buddhism, in particular the Jyodokyo sect of Buddhism that developed in twelfth-century Japan (1994: 81–2; 1996: 129; 1997a: 111). She saw this as the origin of a unique culture of (licensed) prostitution in Japan, where women became the object of sexual desire. Ogoshi argued that this attitude to sex has also been common and widespread in Japan throughout modern times, and this led to the creation of the ‘comfort women’ system (1997a: 116–17).¹ Ogoshi’s extended range of work shows her strong commitment to reflecting the dark legacy of Japan during the war, her deep concern for ‘comfort women’ victims who experienced such an ordeal, and her efforts to counter the revisionist claim, and it is not my intention to deny its significance. My argument is that her explanation, in particular in the 1990s, of how and why such a system was developed, highlighting its uniqueness in order to challenge the revisionist argument, could have been entrapped by the Orientalist discourse. The extended reference to her work below is not because it is the most problematic, but because her wide-ranging writings have been influential in feminism and on the wider audience in Japan (and beyond).

In one of her pieces of writing, Ogoshi described the ‘comfort women’ system as ‘an unprecedented state-approved rape system’ and argued that it is embedded in a Japanese (sub)culture that glamourizes sex and sexual culture, and that this was most evident in legalized and licensed quarters for prostitution (1997a: 117). This culture of sex, she claimed, reflects a particular ‘ideology’ or norm that views women only as sexualized beings, namely as objects of male desire (Ogoshi, 1996: 196–200; 1997a:116–17).² Ogoshi also suggested that no strict sexual morality or taboo existed in Japan, and that the absence of rigorous regulation around sexuality and a rather relaxed attitude to sexual conduct has also been legitimized by various religious and traditional practices in Japan, in particular those of (Japanese) Buddhism (1996: 197).

Ogoshi explained that the development of Buddhism in Japan has been influenced by Shintoism, a synthetic form of traditional beliefs and other native and local beliefs, and is distinct from Buddhism in other cultures (1996: 155). In general, abstinence is required in Buddhism and sexual liaisons (with women) are first and foremost what should be avoided. Women are considered unclean and wicked, and will infect men with impurity and corrupt them through sexual relationships. Ogoshi argued that by disapproving of men’s sexual relationships with women, Jyodokyo Buddhism of Japan developed a unique teaching. In this sect of Buddhism, she argued, even when men committed the sin of having (sexual) relationships with women, they would eventually be saved by the Buddha (Ogoshi, 1996: 155–6). The original idea that having sexual relationships with women was a sin and men needed to stay away from them, was twisted and transformed. It came to be understood that because of their very sins of sexual desire, men are even more deserving of salvation. Men’s sexual liaison with women therefore became tolerated. In this context, providing comfort to these men and assisting them to their salvation with their bodies was the only option that women had for their own salvation (Ogoshi, 1996: 197–9).

Ogoshi argued that such Jyodokyo teaching resulted in the devaluing of the lives of women, as they were treated as mere objects of male sexual desire and not as equal partners to men. The female body as impure and the negative image of the life as a woman was exploited to control male sexual desire. Ogoshi maintained that this sexual objectification of women justified by Buddhism has underpinned gender and sexual relationship and practices in Japan. Such a sexual attitude, it was suggested, has also been prevalent in Japan throughout the modern period since Japan opened itself to Western countries in the mid-nineteenth century. She further argued that this structural exploitation of women also introduced division between women; some were treated merely as sexual objects, while the purity of others was protected. This resulted in the culture of extensive licensed prostitution, which was to be organized by the central government, and which became the foundation of the ‘comfort woman’ system (Ogoshi, 1997a: 115–17).

Exploring the social and historical conditions that brought about the ‘comfort women’ system is crucial, and Ogoshi’s argument may provide an insight into why the ‘comfort women’ system was particularly developed in Japan. At the same time however, in her endeavour to underscore the distinctiveness of the system in order to acknowledge the injustice suffered by ‘comfort women’ victims, gender relations and religious culture in Japan were presented as if they were unchangeable.³ This is hugely problematic as such an argument could end up reproducing a notion of traditional and static Japanese culture, an Orientalist discourse, which is the basis of both cultural essentialism and cultural particularism.

Not only Buddhist teaching, but also gender values and relations, such as the family structure and the practice of prostitution, have been constructed through the interaction with various other social and economic relations and structures of the time. This point was not addressed explicitly in Ogoshi’s discussion. Designated quarters for licensed prostitution existed since the Edo Era, before licensed prostitution was more expansively implemented in the Meiji Era (1868–1912). However, as will be examined in Chapter 4, modern licensed prostitution in Japan differed significantly from its pre-modern counterpart; it was organized following the Western model of the regulation of prostitution (Fujime, 1998: 90).⁴ Such an analysis supported by works of Fujime and others, thus, defies the claim of the culture-specific roots of the ‘comfort women’ system. These studies challenge what Ogoshi referred to as a distinctive traditional ‘sexual ideology (norm)’ in Japan which, it is claimed, was exploited in developing the ‘comfort women’ system (Ogoshi, 1996: 206–7).

Another drawback of fem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part 1  Modernity and the System of Comfort Women
• Part 2  Probing Historical Truth
• Part 3  The Limits of Representation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index