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Margaret Stetz and Bonnie B. C. Oh, ed. Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II, Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, Inc. 2001. 230 pages. ISBN: 0-7656-0543-0.

Reviewed by Thomas Clark Tufts
University of Leeds

 

Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II, a book of essays, was inspired by an international conference on "Comfort Women" held at Georgetown University in Washington, D. C. in 1996. The collection is a must read for scholars, activists, and Asianists interested not only in historical detail, but also in understanding the persisting, unresolved issues of World War II that cloud Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors and many of its former Allied enemies. The essence of the book is conveyed in the title, which emphasizes the 'legacies' of the comfort women, rather than their 'stories', some of which can be found in the existing literature by many of the authors of individual chapters. The book reflects the activist tone of the conference and the positive results that such activism has played in the international arena in the past decade.

Since the end of World War II and the subsequent War Crimes Trials of the late 1940s, many of the war crimes of the Imperial Japanese army have been suppressed, for personal as well as political reasons, by both victims and victimizers. The essays in this book both explain and help the reader understand the reasons for such suppression. Each essay, from a differing perspective, presents an argument for the need for justice for the comfort women. Collectively, the essays compel the conclusion that restitution, in the form of monetary reparations, formal state apology, and official recognition by Japan of its responsibility for the systematic exploitation of women as sex slaves, is thoroughly justified and long overdue.

The essays examine the institution of prostitution and attitudes toward sex generally prevalent in Japan and Asia but also provide evidence that such institutions and attitudes have not been exclusively Asian. However, Japanese apologists, and those Japanese in complete denial that these institutions constitute'war crimes' claim, and thus excuse, them as part of the culture of the East. The honest scholarship of the authors and their even-handed presentation of the facts, perhaps ironically, exposes the basis for such misguided interpretations; more importantly, though, the collective work of the book clearly articulates and condemns the Japanese government's outrageous denial of responsibility and its obstinate refusal to tackle the issue forthrightly.

The book is divided into three sections: "Historical and Cultural Contexts,""Academic and Activist Responses," and "Artistic Responses." In "The Japanese Imperial System and the Korean'Comfort Women' of World War II", Bonnie B. C. Oh, describes the historical basis of the Imperial system and develops the issue of the Korean comfort women to its present-day status. " 'Comfort Women' and the Cultural Tradition of Prostitution in Japanese Erotic Art," by Linda Gertner Zatlin is a fascinating essay about the history of the art and culture of the "floating world" (Ukiyo-e). According to Zatlin, "the formalized system of prostitution, as much as the erotic visual art to which it gave birth, can be viewed as significant elements of the Japanese cultural preparation for its exportation of the brothel system and the conscription of 'comfort women' " (36). " 'Comfort Women' in the Dutch East Indies" by Yuki Tanaka describes sexual violence against women in what is now Indonesia. Importantly, Tanaka examines the exploitation of the existing prostitutes by Japanese troops, a fact that has helped to reinforce ultra-right-wing Japanese denials of 'war crimes', while revealing the Dutch military authorities' indifference to Indonesian "comfort women" during the post-war investigations into war crimes. Chunghee Sarah Soh's "Prostitutes Versus Sex Slaves: The Politics of Representing the 'Comfort Women'," illuminates the tensions resulting from contrasting perspectives--humanitarians versus nationalists who are committed to the notion that the women were just 'prostitutes'. She concludes that "[t]he resolution of the redress movement appears to hinge much on the definition of 'comfort women' as either prostitutes or sex slaves, because of the importance of its symbolism for Japan's national identity and for the social meaning of the sufferings endured by the survivors." (84)

Margaret Stetz's "Wartime Sexual Violence Against Women: A Feminist Response," is the first essay in the section on academic and activist responses. The author argues strongly for the use of the term "legacy" in the title of this volume in noting, for example, that "[m]ost recently, feminist pressure world wide has resulted in a changed legal concept of rape as a war crime ­ a development that, for the first time ever, holds out hope for the prosecution and punishment by international tribunals of those who commit sexual violence, or order it to occur" (92). Stetz credits feminists in particular with placing the comfort women issue on the global stage: "Through feminist efforts, the stories of women raped during war are being broadcast globally, and are becoming the stuff of international legal action and of historical narratives, forcing the rewriting of war to highlight crimes based on gender." (95)

In " ' Such an Unthinkable Thing': Asian American Transnational Feminism and the 'Comfort Women' of World War II Conference," Pamela Thoma both describes the conference structure and focuses on its role in ensuring "that those attending...would have a certain amount of shared information and be familiar with the discourse of Asian American transnational feminist coalition politics." (120) Thoma has an occasional tendency to lapse into jargon, which can make her piece difficult reading at times. Specialized terminology used in the essay, however, is defined in the extensive endnotes.

"Urgent Matters: Redress for the Surviving 'Comfort Women'" by Dongwoo Lee Hahm, draws attention to the rapidly decreasing number of living comfort women, and therefore the urgency for action. Grant K. Goodman, who served with the Allied Translation and Interpreter Section (ATIS) at MacArthur's headquarters in the Philippines contributes "My Own Gaiatsu: A Document from 1945 Provides Proof." In this piece he describes how publicity about Chuo University's Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki's finding of documents in the Defense Agency archives that demonstrated the Japanese military's direct involvement in the organization and utilization of brothels led him to recall his own translation work on captured documents in 1945. Professor Goodman discovered he still had a copy of his own Research Report No. 120, and turned it over to Miura Junji of Kyodo News Agency's Washington bureau, who used the report as the basis of many articles in the Japanese press in the early 1990s. The final piece, John Y. Lee's "Placing Japanese War Criminals on the U.S. Justice Department's 'Watch List' of 3 December 1996: the Legal and Political Background" focuses on "[t]he various legal determinations arising from the 'International Commission of Jurists Mission Report on 'Comfort Women' and the 'UN Special Rapporteur's Report on Violence against Women' " (166). Lee shows how these determinations have provided the Justice Department with solid legal support for the Watch List," which specifically excludes "those Japanese who aided in the operation and sexual slavery system from entering the United States."

Chapters 10 thru 14, which treat "artistic responses," offer an interesting culmination to the book and further explain the choice of the term "legacy" in the volume's title. Dai Sil Kim-Gibson's account of her making of a documentary film about the Korean comfort women, which was shown on PBS, and Christine Choy's account of filming "In the Name of the Emperor" each reveal much about the present conditions of the Korean comfort women, as well as national attitudes about resurrecting the past. Choy, for example, was denied access to film in Nanjing by the government of the PRC, and was prohibited from doing research or interviewing Chinese citizens who were actual witnesses to, or were victims of, the Nanjing incident in 1937. The government feared instigating "bad relations" with Japan at a time when they were encouraging Japanese business investment. As a result, Choy interviewed former Japanese soldiers, now old men living in Japan, who had participated in the "Rape of Nanking" and other atrocities in China.

The editors introduce the Japanese artist Tomiyama Taeko, a 'living treasure of Japan' and describe a collection of her works entitled "A Memory of the Sea," that uses three illustrations to connect the 'legacy' theme of the book to her work. Jill Medvedow describes an abstract exhibit of Mona Higuchi's dedicated to the comfort women and displayed at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in which a bamboo frame with glittering golden squares was suspended in cages. Finally, "To Give a Voice" is Therese Park's description of the events and research that inspired her to write A Gift from the Emperor (Spinsters' Ink, 1997), a novel about a fictional Korean girl's travails as a war time sex slave.

The legacy of the comfort women of World War II is currently much in evidence as international legal action against gender-based war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda proceeds. Their struggle for justice, as delineated in this volume, encourages hope of a better outlook for women in the historical narratives of future wars yet to be written.

 

Citation:
Tufts, Thomas Clark 2002
Review of Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II, ed. by Margaret Stetz and Bonnie B. C. Oh
Korean Studies Review
2002, no. 8
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr02-08.htm


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