Comfort Women Research Articles

Spatializing collective memory: The idea of home and the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum

Focusing on the idea of home, this article investigates collective memory embodied in the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul, South Korea. Centering ‘comfort women’s’ trauma and resistance, it analyzes the museum’s memory narrative and spatial strategy, which guide visitors through an empathic journey from past to present, memory to action. I first define the museum’s site-specificity, examining how the idea of home emerged from its construction history. Thereafter, I analyze the museum’s spatial paradigm of collective memorialization through the lens of Gaston Bachelard’s interpretation of a house. Exploring visitors’ spatial awareness of ‘comfort woman’ victims, I argue that the museum, combining a metaphor of home with the victims’ memory, builds a strong emotional connection to the victims and thereby encourages visitors to act on their behalf.

Emotions of perpetrators and victim-survivors: multi-layered violence against Chinese women during the Asia-Pacific War

ABSTRACT This essay uses a microhistory of Chinese comfort women during the Asia-Pacific War to illuminate the gendered dynamics of violence and the contrasting emotions experienced by both sexually abused women and their Japanese perpetrators, forming a perpetrator-victim dyad. The essay employs the concept of intersectional emotions within a micro-historical framework to demonstrate that this violence against Chinese women, marked by racialization, constitutes one of the many facets of wartime violence. This violence manifests in two contrasting emotional responses that characterize the dyadic interactions against the backdrop of widespread violence during the Asia-Pacific War. This analysis is highly relevant in contexts of power-saturated sites defined by multi-layered violence that is racial, gendered, and imperial. By investigating the dichotomy of emotive dimensions of violence, this essay contributes to a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay among emotions, violence, gender, race, and imperialism. This examination reveals insights into the emotional framework governing the dynamics of violence and challenges the prevailing assumption of uniformity in studies of violence against victim-survivors.

Negotiating difficult (in)tangible heritage: the intricate journey of museum making for the “Dai-ichi Saloon” comfort station in Shanghai

ABSTRACT The heritage of comfort women has always remained on the periphery of authoritative heritage, classified as a “difficult heritage,” facing a predicament of social marginalization, government concealment, and international controversy. This article addresses the negotiations, discussions, and compromises involved in the process of safeguarding the Dai-ichi Saloon, which is on the verge of becoming a museum. It is a priority for the most difficult heritage to be musealized, which is one of the most common methods of “normalizing” to ensure preservation and dissemination. The museumization of Dai-ichi Saloon has involved four stages, through which, scholars, residents, Shanghai citizens, and the government, as the four major stakeholders, have developed different understandings of the Dai-ichi Saloon as a difficult heritage. This article argues that the key reason for this misalignment lies in the misplaced sequence of actions among agencies during the “normalization” process. Through the intricate process of the museum making for Dai-ichi Saloon, this article aims to offer lessons for the museum’s approach to the normalization of difficult heritage.

Coloniality and decoloniality in ‘comfort women’ memory activism: Transnational and transgenerational truth-telling practices in Australia

Coloniality and decoloniality in ‘comfort women’ memory activism: Transnational and transgenerational truth-telling practices in Australia

Covert Mode of Sexual Crimes in the Tourism Sector in Indonesia

The phenomenon of sexual activity in tourism is still an unresolved problem, with every development the practice of prostitution can be found openly or covertly. These conditions cause the phenomenon of female commercial sex workers to continue to grow rapidly, as evidenced by the increasing number of comfort women or sex workers every year. Another problem caused by the existence of activities in the form of sex tourism which accommodate commercial sex workers is considered to be an act of immorality, in other words, this act is classified as something that violates and is contrary to moral norms, especially the practice of trafficking in persons in the tourism industry. Therefore, the research aims to analyze the forms and methods of sex crimes in the tourism sector and also how law enforcement related to sex crimes in the tourism sector in Indonesia is enforced. This research uses normative legal research with a statutory and conceptual approach. The data sources used are primary and secondary data sources. The data analysis used is classifying similar materials and processing them comprehensively so that this step is expected to make the flow of discussions on the completion of this research easier. The research results show that: first, forms of sexual crime in the tourism sector include commercial sexual exploitation, sexual harassment and sexual violence. Second, the law enforcement process against human trafficking, such as sex crimes in the tourism sector, does not only adhere to legal provisions, but must be linked to the social environment of society. The operation of law in society is not only emphasized by applicable regulations, but is also influenced by the social environment of the community. Likewise, preventing and enforcing the law against human trafficking is not only sufficient by making legal regulations that prohibit it, but also requires the participation of the community and government.

In Search of Vietnam's Comfort Women

Vietnam has long eluded the geography of comfort women studies, yet its status as the first Southeast Asian territory and the first European colony occupied by Japan makes it a vital missing link in understanding how the comfort women system was adapted to Southeast Asian contexts. Drawing on French and Dutch colonial archival materials, this article presents the first documentary evidence of the comfort women system in Vietnam, using an empirical approach to construct a chronology of the establishment and development of the system there. Providing a detailed chronology outlining how the system developed in Vietnam offers a point of comparison for understanding how the system developed in other territories occupied by the Japanese Empire. Furthermore, this article employs the analytical frames of race and gender, unpacking how the Japanese Empire's racial ideology and gender norms shaped, and were shaped by, the development of the comfort women system in a Southeast Asian context. This investigation of the comfort women system in Vietnam thus provides a framework for better understanding its subsequent implementation and development in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia while calling attention to wartime atrocities in Vietnam that have gone largely unnoticed in historical scholarship and public memory.

The Filipino comfort women on YouTube: Emotions, advocacy, and war memories in a transnational digital space

In this article, we examine the representation and contestation of Filipino comfort women’s memories on YouTube and assess the platform’s role in public discourse and transnational activism. Our content analysis of visual and narrative elements, alongside user commentary on selected videos, reveals that YouTube acts as a crucial transnational medium, linking advocacy networks and contextualizing historical narratives. However, the videos often sensationalize the victims’ experiences, undermining the seriousness of sexual violence, which could potentially weaken advocacy efforts. Moreover, user commentary on the videos can promote counter-narratives, rumors, and hostile comments. Despite these challenges, we underscore YouTube’s significance in fostering public discourse on war memories and justice in the Philippines in light of the government’s efforts to suppress the history of Filipino comfort women. The platform encourages the sharing of corroborative postmemory, enhancing war memorialization and audience engagement, and supporting the women’s claims of abuse. Ultimately, YouTube’s role as an open forum for discussion is vital in fostering dialogues for peace and justice and countering propaganda and hate.

A Turbid River of History and Law: The Procurement of Women in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea

Abstract Japanese military brothels during the Pacific War, known as comfort stations, and the predicaments of women confined there still reverberate in public memory. Of late a growing number of scholars have called for approaching the comfort women issue from a broader historical context, linking it to Japan’s prewar state-regulated prostitution, later transplanted into its colonies, and human trafficking. This article discusses the legal frameworks of indentured contracts and criminal prosecution surrounding the procurement of women in imperial Japan and colonial Korea. Most women entered prostitution impressed by poverty when the law fully recognized their agency as independent contractors. The age-old machinery of advanced loan agreements, signed or guaranteed in many cases by destitute parents, revealed how the ill-guided idea of filial piety muddled the boundaries between the exercise of legal rights and their abuses. The judicial process dealing with prostitution contracts and also the crimes of abduction and kidnapping helps understand how law and state institutions operated in the Japanese colonial empire. The recent historiographical debate on the comfort women raises critical questions about the conditions under which the past is assessed.

「무라야마 담화(1994. 8. 31)」와 일본군 ‘위안부’ 피해자 · 일본 지원단체의 비판 · 대응과 그 한계 - 일본군 ‘위안부’ 문제를 중심으로 -

「무라야마 담화(1994. 8. 31)」와 일본군 ‘위안부’ 피해자 · 일본 지원단체의 비판 · 대응과 그 한계 - 일본군 ‘위안부’ 문제를 중심으로 -

A Study on the Popular Narrative of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” Before and After the Testimonies

A Study on the Popular Narrative of Japanese Military “Comfort Women” Before and After the Testimonies

THE HEALTH IMPACT OF TOURISM ON THE PSYCHOPHYSICAL STATE OF ELDERLY INDIVIDUALS

The purpose of our research is to ascertain the impact of tourism activities on the psychophysical state of elderly individuals. Materials and methods. 221 people took part in the transformative experiment aged 60-65, who attend the University of the Third Age (152 women and 69 men). It is worth mentioning that the frequency of classes at the University of the Third Age was 3 classes per week, lasting 40-60 minutes. The program is designed for 6 months and consists of preparatory (adaptation), main (improvement) and supporting periods. Each of the periods was aimed at achieving a set of tasks. To assess the quality of life SF-36 was used. To assess the satisfaction of the participants' lives, the Life Satisfaction Index (LSIA). Physical activity was evaluated using the PWC150 test. The level of success in psychosocial adaptation was assessed using a modified Rogers and Diamond questionnaire. Mind performance was assessed using Bourdon's correction test. The Wilcoxon test was used to analyze the statistical significance of the differences between the data. In each case, the hypothesis was tested, and the p-value was calculated. Conclusions regarding the significance of testing were made at the 0.05 significance level. In the conditions of the University of the Third Age, during the implementation of the concept, positive dynamics of indicators of motor activity, quality and satisfaction with life, mental and physical working capacity, rates of aging, socio-psychological adaptation, cognitive functions, psycho-emotional state were fixed. However, we note significant changes in integral indicators of socio-psychological adaptation at the end of the study, namely, in the indicators of self-perception (women – 68.8 ± 0.7 points; men – 78.8 ± 4.1 points) and emotional comfort (women 63.3 ± 1.7 points ; men 69.2 ± 1.2 points) (p=0.05). As was anticipated, for elderly individuals who continue self-education in their later years, the tourism program had a positive impact on cognitive functioning indicators. Conclusion. Involvement in health tourism has a positive impact on the psychophysical state of elderly individuals. The combination of physical activity, social interaction and the acquisition of new experiences contributes to the improvement of emotional, physical and cognitive health.

Erecting monuments and making meanings: Analysis of the Statue of Peace using actor‐network theory

AbstractObjectiveThis article analyzes the monument‐building and meaning‐making processes in the construction of the Statues of Peace erected to commemorate the Korean “Comfort Women.” The tensions surrounding the erection of the Statues of Peace did not stop with their installation, as people then started to place different objects on the statues. This article uses actor‐network theory (ANT) to shed light on the formation that this has involved of a new representational and cultural politics.MethodsFirst, archival research was conducted to understand current issues involving both ANT and the Statues of Peace. Participant observations and semistructured interviews with NGOs were conducted.ResultsI look at the afterlife of the Statues of Peace in cases involving not only destruction or restoration but also smaller acts of support or subversion. New material quality and meanings were formed by these actions.ConclusionI show that ANT is a useful framework for understanding the representational complexity surrounding public monuments and their reception.

(Re)Animating “Comfort Women” Memories: Fantastical Abstractions and Metaphorical Violence

This project explores the intersection of public memory, violence, and the relationship between new media representations and the viewer in the context of Sujin Kim’s (2021) animated short film, Unforgotten. To expand on current discussions of “comfort women” activism and the intersection of public memory and animation studies, I use a close reading method to identify four main representations: “comfort women” as metaphorical objects; “comfort women” as surreal alternative bodies; “comfort women” as the physical land; and “comfort women” as unseen and implied bodily forms. I explore the affordances and the limitations of the animation form and investigate the nuances of the film’s relationship with the viewer. This documentary demonstrates the powerful potential of animation as a site for exploring sensitive subjects with metaphorical and fantastical elements to create disjointed narratives that replicate the traumatic, fragmented memories of “comfort women”. Throughout history there have been efforts to render their narratives unintelligible through silencing and discrediting the survivors; but they and others have continually attempted to tell their stories. Despite their stories’ suppression and the film’s limitations, Kim’s film provides an alternative mode of representing and witnessing stories of the past.

Emotions in the making: sexual violence in the Japanese empire, 1937–1945

ABSTRACT This article applies the history of emotions lens to study the emotions experienced by the ‘comfort women’ in the Japanese Empire. Emotions have been a long-neglected aspect in the study of military sexual violence. The article examines how a mélange of positive and negative emotions enabled those women to exercise some limited agency in a confined and tightly regulated space and, in some rare cases, a rather fair degree of autonomy outside of the confined space. By unravelling the varied textures of interactions between sexual violence and emotions, I argue that affective attachment and intimate relations developed in the confined sites of sexual exploitation formed a kind of strategic intimacy that enables those individuals to exercise limited forms, and a finite amount, of agency. Further, the article utilises sources produced from the perspectives of the victimised women and imperial regulators. Those angles investigate emotions expressed through, and embedded in, dynamic power relationships. The dual perspectives bring out gendered experiences of emotions and also reveal a disparate set of nuanced emotions due to positionality. The article therefore offers a critical analysis of the interrelationships among sexual violence, state power, and a particular set of emotions as a form of power and resistance.

From Comfort Woman to Comfort Child

From Comfort Woman to Comfort Child

‘We resolve our own sorrows’: screening comfort women in Chinese documentary films

This article adds a critical lens to the vicissitudinous public remembrance of the comfort women in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the oscillating representations of comfort women in Chinese documentary films. First, it probes how the violated bodies of comfort women on the screen constantly challenge and disrupt the entrenched gender norms in the interstices of the PRC’s official paradigms of “national humiliation” and “national greatness.” Then, it examines the distinctive film esthetics and documentary ethics of Chinese director Guo Ke’s documentary films Thirty Two (2014) and Twenty Two (2017), given that the latter harvested record-breaking box office sales and incited heated online discussions of the comfort women issue in China. In particular, this article scrutinizes how Guo’s esthetically appealing, politically non-confrontational, and ethically provocative approach helps constitute survivors’ private, gendered memories and encourages the viewers to contemplate his minimalist narratives. In a broader sense, this article contributes to the discussions of gender, nationalism, war remembrance, and documentary filmmaking in contemporary China.

Haunting Memory of Forgotten History: A Case Study of WWII “Comfort Stations” in the Philippines as a Tourism Resource Featured in Selected Filipino Films

Summary The focus of this case study is the World War II “comfort stations” in the Philippines where the war victims during the Japanese occupation were held. For this case study, the scope is centralized on two main sites in the Philippines. Characters, settings, and the narratives of “comfort women” and “comfort gays” were analyzed from the two full-length Filipino films entitled “Bahay na Pula” and “Markova: Comfort Gay”. Within this context, the study assesses the potential of the featured “comfort stations” and other war-related sites in the films as a tourism resource that will educate tourists about war. The concepts of remembering and forgetting are essential when understanding critical areas of history. Analyzing what specific events, persons, or memories people choose to retain or erase, reveals different factors and motivations that push them to do so. This case study argues that it is necessary to remember important historical sites in the Philippines, particularly the markers that have been commonly taken for granted and are slowly deteriorating. It uncovers forgotten sites, restores the memory, and transforms the historical significance of the “comfort stations” featured in Filipino films by analyzing the story being told, the kind of place being depicted, and the relevance of preserving them. Information © The Author 2024

The 2015 South Korea – Japan “Comfort Women” Agreement: Acknowledging wartime sexual slavery or denying it?

The 2015 South Korea – Japan “Comfort Women” Agreement: Acknowledging wartime sexual slavery or denying it?

문화적 외상의 극복과 기억의 윤리

This study attempted to examine the reproduction of the Japanese military 'Japanese Military Sexual Slavery' in “Red Poem” through Jeffrey Alexander's theory of cultural trauma, and to examine the meaning of the process of overcoming cultural trauma and the ethics of memory embodied in the work. “Red Poem” of understanding 'connects' the scars of the Japanese military 'Japanese Military Sexual Slavery' in the context of the present level, not the past. Through this process, it reveals that the scars of the history of the Japanese military 'Japanese Military Sexual Slavery' are a contemporary common trauma, that is, a 'cultural trauma' and awakens a shared sense. This play implicitly shows the historical process from the long-silence, concealment, and denial of the Japanese military 'Japanese Military Sexual Slavery' to breaking silence and being accepted and recognized as cultural trauma and social pain. “Red Poem”, which makes us reflect on the ethics and responsibilities of memory beyond the empathy of pain, does not remain as a connection between the past and the present traumatic events, but moves toward the politics of relationships and affections seeking overcoming and healing by actively connecting with the memory of suffering beings.

Konstruksi Predominant Leader dalam Kebijakan Moon Jae In terhadap Jepang dalam isu Comfort Women pada Tahun 2017-2022

Comfort Women refers to the practice of forced sexual services on thousands of women by Japanese soldiers during World War II. This issue has been a source of tension in relations between South Korea and Japan for several years. In this research, the concept of "predominant leader" is used as a lens for analyzing the role played by President Moon Jae-in in making various policies related to this issue. The method used is descriptive-qualitative with literature study techniques, and the data used is secondary data originating from books, journals, and official websites. This research includes an analysis of several of Moon Jae In's foreign policies towards Japan, such as efforts to register the history of comfort women at UNESCO, demands for compensation against Japanese companies, withdrawal from GSOMIA, and the dissolution of the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation. The results of this research illustrate the complexity of the comfort women issue, with emphasis on ‘goal-driven’ and ‘situationally responsive’ aspects when it comes to policies issued in his effort to seek justice for the victims