TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN'S BODIES, THEN AND NOW The Issue of Military “Comfort Women”

Abstract

The military “comfort women” of the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II offer an extreme case of institutionalized sexual violence against women. Trafficking in women is a form of sexual slavery in which women are transported across national borders and marketed for prostitution. In this way, their bodies are displaced and commodified by other powers. This practice has been expanded in times of peace to “sex workers,” either as entertainers or prostitutes. Japan is now the most notorious country in the world for recruiting such women. Sex tourism to other Asian countries by Japanese men is a contemporary version of comfort women. Unless sexual violence and the commodification of women's bodies are eliminated, there will always be comfort women. War justifies violence against women; to stop war, we have to recognize the fact of this violence and understand the casualties.