Japanese Comfort Women
Comfort women, also called military comfort women, Japanese jūgun ianfu, a euphemism for women who provided sexual services to Japanese Imperial Army troops during Japan’s militaristic period that ended with World War II and who generally lived under conditions of sexual slavery.
Comfort women and comfort stations (brothels) were created to protect Japan’s image. The need arose out of the Rape of Nanking, where 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women were raped by Japanese troops during their attempt to take over the Republic of China. To pacify the men, the emperor established these comfort stations be built.
“‘Recruiting’” women for the brothels amounted to kidnapping or coercing them. Women were rounded up on the streets of Japanese-occupied territories, convinced to travel to what they thought were nursing units or jobs, or purchased from their parents as indentured servants.” The women were mainly from Japan, but also came from other Japanese territories like China and Taiwan. It is estimated that 80,000 to 200,000 women were “recruited”, though it is likely higher.
Conditions were inhumane, where women were continuously raped (instances increased before battles) and were beaten or murdered if they resisted. Women were raped by men at most 70 times a day. By the end of World War II, 90% of the comfort women were dead. Even after the war ended, comfort stations remained, allowed by U.S. occupying forces where “tens of thousands” of women had sex with American soldiers until the practice was ended in 1946.
Japan denied that comfort stations ever existed and that Japan forcefully removed women and placed them in sexual servitude. The movement to recognize the plight of comfort women arose in the 1980’s after South Korea became a liberal democracy and women finally began telling their story, which caused Japan to adamantly deny the events.
In 2015, Japan bowed before pressure and finally admitted to procuring women for soldiers during World War II and “agreed to set up a fund of one billion yen (about $9 million) to benefit the 46 South Korean comfort women alive at the time”.
Japan has rejected calls to included the history of comfort women in school textbooks. Japan refers to them as “comfort women” and not “sexual slaves” because it sounds better and when they are taught in school, students do not learn that the women were kidnapped and raped. For the most part, Japan paints a picture that relations were mostly consensual, if not completely consensual.
Statues commemorating the plight of comfort women and calling attention to Japan’s injustices have sprung up throughout the world, from South Korea to Japan to San Francisco. These statues have increased tensions between relations.
