by Lisa Go
Lee Ok-bun of Pusan remembers that day 54 years ago as if it were yesterday. On that day, a stranger approached her as she was playing with school friends, and told her that her father had sent him to take her to him. Lee never saw her father again.
The man was working for the Japanese colonial police, and his job was to induce or kidnap young Korean girls for the Japanese imperial Army's needs. Lee, then 12 years old, was first sent to a camp in Ulsan, southeastern Korea. After three months there, she, together with two or three hundred girls, were shipped off to the port of Shimonoseki in Japan. Some were given intensive military training and education about Japanese history and the emperor, then packed off to the arms and munitions factories. Lee had only two weeks of Japanese language training and then she was sent to Taiwan. There she was assigned to a "consolation center" for Japanese soldiers in southern Taiwan. Hundreds of soldiers would line up at the center each day, and she had to take 20 to 30 men everyday. Lee estimates there were about 10,000 of them, and that only a thousand survived.(1)
Lee is one of the few women survivors of Japan's military brothels who have broken their silence and let their stories be heard. In December 1991, three Korean women filed suit with the Tokyo District Court, seeking reparations for having been used by the Japanese Imperial Army to sexually service its officers and troops during the war. Among the women's other demands are: .
*an official apology from the Japanese government;
* full disclosure of facts and figures;
*that the truth be told especially in history books;
* establishment of a memorial.
The Japanese government at first denied the existence of the women and the Imperial Armyorganized brothels. Testimonies from both the women who survived and from the men who used them, public outrage, and unearthed wartime documents later forced an apology from Prime Minister Keichi Miyazawa.
The historical reality
In its quest for a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," Japan expanded its military, mobilizing millions for the battlefields during WW II. For example, the Japanese military force in China alone was expanded to 700,000 in 1941. At the warfront, the Japanese soldiers would gang rape women of the territories they occupied, thus inflaming the local population and provoking anti Japanese sentiment. To counter this, unmarried women between ages 17 to 20 were pressed into the service of the Imperial Army. 20,000 Korean women were sent to the 700,000 soldiers in China.
Japanese military prostitution started during the Russo Japanese War. After the Nanjing [Massacre in 1938, Japanese military prostitution was expanded and systematized, with the first military brothel set up in Shanghai. Of the hundred women stationed there, 80 were Korean; the rest were Japanese. "We were full of patriotic feeling. Everything we could give for Japan, and for the Tenno," wrote a Japanese woman in a journal she left behind. During this time, the army directly managed the military brothels under its recreation division. Later, Japanese private business fronted for the army when public criticism of the brothels arose.
An estimated 200,000 300,000 women were dragooned by the Japanese Imperial Army to cater to its sexual needs at the battlefront during WW II. Majority of the women came from Japanese colonies such as Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria - with 80 percent of the women coming from Korea. Other women came from Japanese-occupied territories in the Philippines, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries. Japanese women from the poorer classes were also recruited, but they were reserved for officers and high-ranking civilian officials. In his report "Methods of Preventing Venereal Disease," a Japanese army doctor named Aso reveals that the women were a "royal gift" from the Tenno to the Imperial Army.(2)
The women were shipped to various Japanese camps across Asia and the Pacific. "Comfort houses," "houses of relaxation" and "consolation stations" - military brothels - had been set up by the Imperial Army in Taiwan, Sakhalin, Burma, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. The Imperial Army also maintained brothels in Japan, which the soldiers referred to as "public lavatories" and "warehouses".
The women were euphemistically called "jugun ianfu san" (military comfort girls), "teishintai" (women volunteers), "niku-itchi" (twenty-nine to one; apparently the number of men one woman was expected to service each day) by the Japanese military that used and abused them. The Koreans called them "jungshindae" self-sacrifice units willing to do everything for the emperor.
The Tenno as procurer
Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 until 1945. Various drafting and conscription orders were issued by the colonial government from 1938 to 1945. As a result, an estimated 2 million workers from the Korean Peninsula labored in the Japanese weapons and munitions plants from 1938. An additional 110,000 served in the Imperial Army and Navy; another 120,000 worked for the military as civilian employees.
Women's drafting reached its peak during the years 1943-45. On 23 August 1944, the Tenno Hirohito issued a directive for the recruitment of Korean women for the military brothels. The Women's Voluntary Labor Law paved the way for a more systematic procurement of larger numbers of Korean women for the military brothels. These various state/ imperial interventions clearly served as the foundation for slave labor and the traffic in women.
The Korean women were young, from 14 to 20 years old. Old school registers confirmed that the youngest were of primary school age, from 11 to 12. Most of them were daughters of farmers who had been ruined by colonial exploitation. Some of them had left home to work in Japan or Manchuria and ended up in the brothels.
The women had gone into military prostitution by conscription, or brute force, or through the promise of a job, wages, and a chance at higher education.
Ikeda Masao, a Japanese woman who taught in Seoul during the war said recently that school teachers in Korea were expected to send as many Korean girls as possible to Japan, upon "irresistible order from the emperor." The teachers visited students' homes to persuade their parents to allow the girls to join the "teishintai." She also said that the heads of schools which produced high numbers of "teishintai" received special promotions.(3)
In 1942, Yoshida Seiji was the mobilization chief of the Shimonoseki branch of the Yamaguchi Prefectural Patriotic Labour Association. Yoshida and 10 to 15 men under his charge went to Korea to conscript men and women for work. Yoshida likened this trip to a "slave hunt." Escorted by 50-100 policemen, Yoshida and his crew would swoop down on villages, forcing every man, woman and child out. He estimates they captured at least 950 women in this manner.(4)
The women were also manipulated with promises of eating white rice at every meal and earning lots of money. They were told they would be serving the Imperial Army as cooks, domestic helpers and nurses' assistants. Some did work these jobs before being brought to the brothels.
About a fourth of the women were casualties of war. Those who tried to escape and failed were killed, as were those who contracted venereal disease. In an attempt to cover up this particular atrocity, the army massacred many of the women as it retreated. Others were merely abandoned, and not told about Japan's defeat. Some of them were bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, the women who survived were shipped to Shimonoseki and Okinawa, where they were left to fend for themselves. Some were offered up to the allied occupational forces as "pan pan girls". Those who went back to their homeland had to bury their past; many of those who didn't were shunned by their own families. A lot of them changed their names, their birth registers and life stories. Some committed suicide, jumping off the boat, rather than face a homecoming of shame and humiliation.
Ties that bind sisters under the skin
When the jugun ianfu san broke into the headlines, many Japanese were caught in a web of conflicting emotions. Many were shocked and outraged; men who used the women apologized and gave their testimonies; right-wing elements threatened those who publicly spoke up about their complicity in procurement. But then there are also those who dismiss the jugun ianfu san as an isolated incident, an aberration caused by the darkness of war. This attitude fosters Japan's collective amnesia regarding war responsibility, and conveniently obliterates the thread of continuity in Japan's systematic commodi-fication of women's bodies for profit.
For even before the jugun ianfu san was the Karayuki san and at present, the Japayuki san. Asian women's sexual slavery in Japan continues to thrive. Although the times and circumstances differ, a clear line connecting the jugun ianfu san to the Karayuki san and the Japayuki san can be drawn.
The Karayuki san (China bound woman) were daughters of Japanese peasants who, during the early Meiji Period through the Taisho (from the mid-19th century to the end of WW I), were driven into prostitution overseas. Propelled by poverty and a sense of duty to their families and their country, the Karayuki san journeyed as far as China and Siberia to the north. Southeast Asia, and also to India and Africa, to work in Japanese-run brothels.
They contributed much to realize the national goal of "Enrich the nation; Strengthen the Army." Muraoka Iheji, a procurer, wrote in his autobiography that the
Karayuki san sent their earnings back home to Japan, and that the government immediately extracted taxes from it. Among the other benefits reaped through the Karayuki san was the setting up of outposts in Asia and the Pacific for eventual Japanese colonization.(5)
In an ironic twist, young daughters of women who fled from the Japanese Imperial Army during WW li are pouring into Japan by the hundred of thousands over the last decade. Widely known by the derogatory term "Japayuki san" (Japanbound woman; derived from the term Karayuki san), these young women are almost exclusively employed as entertainers and prostitutes in Japan's flourishing sex industry. The women come from Asian neighbours like Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia; some come from as far as Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Chile.
Many parallels exist between the Karayuki san, the jugun ianfu san and the present-day Japayuki san. In the global economic structure, the jugun ianfu san and the Japayuki san come from the marginalized countries of the world that were occupied, colonized and/or still maintain neo-colonial relations. The Karayuki san came from impoverished regions of Japan. The women share the commonality of being young and poor. The Karayuki san and jugun ianfu san were daughters of peasants. The Japayuki san are also daughters of peasants, with some coming from the lower and middle sections of the middle class.
The direction in the traffic was, and continues to be, outbound. The Karayuki san went out of Japan to various brothels in China and Southeast Asia. The jugun ianfu san was scattered throughout various Japanese military outposts in Asia and the Pacific. The Japayuki san is Japan-bound. Because of this, all of the women catered to and \ continue to take in foreigners. The ' Karayuki san took local men in the overseas brothels. The jugun ianfu san serviced the soldiers of the Imperial Army, while the Japayuki san services Japan's new army of corporate soldiers.
The everyday living and working conditions of the women remain the same, even taking into consideration the context of their times. The wages are low, the hours long, there are no medical or welfare benefits, days off are rare. Extra work, such as doing laundry, cleaning is added to the regular sex work. The jugun ianfu was even made to carry ammunition boxes in the midst of battle. For Japayuki san prostitutes, the daily quota of men to be serviced has gone up to 25 to 35 men per day. The living quarters for the women remain small and crowded.
It is easy to say that things remain the same, the exploitation goes on, as indeed it does. To understand the specific character of the Karayuki san, jugun ianfu san and Japayuki san, it is necessary to reflect upon the development of Japanese imperialism and militarism, how this system undercuts other peoples, the lower classes and the women. It is also important to see how the patterns of plunder and colonization parallel the patterns of procurement and subsequent enslavement of women in the sex industry. For herein lies the thread that binds the Karayuki san, the jugun ianfu san and the Japayuki san together in sexual slavery. Herein lies the basis for Japanese and other Asian, Third World women's true sisterhood and solidarity.
The Tenno sei (6) is central to Japanese imperialism and militarism. The Tenno was worshipped as a deity and livinggod, thus infallible and all powerful. The people were taught that the Tenno was the master of the State, not merely its head. Japan belonged to the Tenno, and the Japanese were the Tenno's children. During the Meiji period, the ruling classes used this imperial myth to hasten the unification of the people in order to modernize Japan and advance into Asia.
The Tenno sei is organized into a very rigid hierarchy, with a male as the central governing figure. The Tenno sei does not allow for diversity, its hallmark is homogeneity. Therefore, other peoples and women are to be assimilated and colonized. This same structure and its complementary patriarchal, chauvinist mindset was replicated in social structures - from corporations to families, even to brothels and the sex industry.
In the sex industry, the Pimp is the Tenno, and he rules over the women, the sex workers. But even among the ruled, there are finer stratifications according to race. In the military brothels for example, the Japanese jugun ianfu were reserved for the elite corps, and the Korean jugun ianfu were paid more (¥3) than the Chinese jugun ianfu (¥2.5). In this day of the Japayuki, a similar ranking is followed, with the Japanese sex workers on top, followed closely by the white sex workers from the US and Europe. The bottom rung is inhabited by the Japayuki, the women who primarily come from Asia and the Third World. There is a significant 75% - 85% drop in wages as one goes down the sex industry ladder. The Japanese sex worker gets ¥350,000 per 25 days, an American woman is paid ¥250,000 per month. The Japayuki usually receives at least ¥40,000 per month.
A significant feature in the traffic of the Karayuki, jugun ianfu, and the Japayuki would be the organization of the patriarchy and the State as the dominant structure for procurement. The procurers are men (pimping being the oldest profession); the sex industry (the business sector) cooperates with the State and benefits from State intervention. In the case of the jugun ianfu san, the State/Tenno itself was the primary procurer. It utilized the power and resources at its command to the fullest, such as legislation and paramilitary brigades, to systematically, methodically line up women for military brothels.
In the case of the present day Japayuki san, we witness a more "democratic" symbiosis. The States of Japan and the Third World countries exporting the women for Japan's sex trade provide the legal bases - the rules of conduct in the traffic in women. These legal bases include consular agreements, the regulation of wages, imposition of taxes, and so on. The sex industry, through the brokers and promoters - then steps in to recruit and dispatch the women.
During the time of the Karayuki, Japan was an emerging imperialist power hungry for colonies. It needed to save up capital and develop technology to enable it to raid other territories. All kinds of enterprise, including the flesh trade, were encouraged. The money sent back by the Karayuki is a cornerstone of Japanese capitalism. In 1921, when Japanese capitalism had established itself firmly, the 44th Diet Assembly adopted the Bill to Regulate Overseas Prostitutes. The bill was lobbied by a group from the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The overseas brothels were shut down, the Karayuki san were shipped back home and dumped off Nagasaki. It was very difficult for the women to re-enter society and many committed suicide.(7)
Asian women as 'bad girls': Carrying the load off Japanese women's backs
After Korea was colonized, Japan's daughters were freed from the primary burden of sexually servicing the Imperial Army soldiers. That burden was taken up from them by the women of the Colony (and the occupied Territories), the jugun ianfu san. The jugun ianfu san were conscripted and organized within the framework of the Japanese Imperial Army. This conscription of Korean and other Asian women
into the military brothels constitutes a state crime instigated by the Tenno and the State, fed by Japanese militarism and the persisting attitude that women are sexual objects for commodification.
With Japan's defeat in the Second World War, the US decided to keep the Tenno as a rallying point for the people, but not without asking the Tenno to renounce his divinity. Today, of course, the Tenno is without any real power. He remains as a symbol of national unity, and the Tenno sei continues as the structure for social organization. After the war, Japan prohibited prostitution in a piece of legislation called the Prostitution Prevention Law, pushing the women in the sex industry further down the substrata of Japanese society. The Law takes a punitive approach towards the women caught up in the sex industry - the victims are targeted and accused as criminals under this law, while the brokers, pimps and customers get away easily.
In the golden age of imperialism, the colonizer had a monopoly of ownership and rule over a specific territory. Most conflicts were between the colonizer and the colonized; world war was resorted to as a means of redistributing power and wealth among the colonizers. After the Second World War, to counter nationalist aspirations in the colonies, token political power was bestowed upon the local ruling classes. These "independent" regimes backed up by the colonizer churned out neo-colonial policies and directives that perpetuated exploitation and the extraction of profit for the colonizer. This method of indirect rule failed to pacify the people in the neo-colonies. The world was gradually being split into two distinct groups - the rich, industrialized nations and the poor, undeveloped countries.
"The "new economic order" has efficiently trapped Third World women into submitting to a system that churns out a steady supply of women's bodies for profit."
Japan busied itself with reconstruction and rebuilding its economy after the war. It pursued a policy of rapid economic development from the 1960s, and now Japan finally stands as a major economic force in the world today, capable of shaping and influencing events, state leaders and wars. The "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" it sought to establish has finally been created in such global breadth and dimensions even Tenno Hirohito never thought possible. Japan's economic power has enabled it to break into and join the hitherto exclusive club of western imperialists - US, Germany, Great Britain, France in molding and dictating the flow of capital, technology, products, services and profits to all points of the world. In the face of people's liberation movements and national revolutions however, it has become crucial for these economic giants' survival to realign and consolidate themselves anew - what US President Bush rails the "new economic order" - to collectively plunder and profit.
"New economic order"?
The polarization of the world into the First World and the Third World has been completed. The First World continues to provide capital and continues to dump its goods upon the Third World market. The Third World continues to provide raw materials, cheap labor and a ready market for goods. This basic economic orientation has arrested any profound economic development in the Third World, spawning massive poverty and unemployment.
This situation in turn has spurred people to vote with their feet - an unprecedented exodus of migrant labor from all over the Third World. However, the international division of labor assigns to the Third World the menial, backbreaking, unskilled work for the men; domestic as well as sex work for the women. Thus we find Asian and other Third World migrants all over the richer countries of the world, laboring as farm hands, dock workers, construction workers, road and railway builders; with the women pigeonholed as maids, sex workers and mail-order brides. Alongside the ore, timber, coconuts, sugar, bananas, cheap labor from their countries, Third World women have themselves become the ultimate export product. The "new economic order" has efficiently trapped Third World women into submitting to a system that churns out a steady supply of women's bodies for profit.
At last, women no longer need to be hunted down or kidnapped or induced with honeyed promises for Japan's brothels the way the jugun ianfu san was. Today, it would seem that the Japayuki san participate in their exploitation quite willingly; for there is little show of brute force on the part of the procurers. One can see Japayuki san shopping, or going to church, or walking on the street, or at Narita airport loaded with electronic goods and stuffed dolls. So unlike the jugun ianfu san who were not even allowed to walk outside the military brothels.
References:
1. "Former 'comfort girls' continue telling bitter experiences" News article. Yonhap, the Korea Herald. 17 January 1992.
2. Jungshindae ("Military Comfort Women:). Speech draft '*
3. "Primary school pupils drafted as comfort girls " News article. The Korea Herald 15 January 1992.
4. "Military Comfort Girls", Newspaper feature. The Asahi Evening News. 31 January 1992.
5. Yamazaki Tomoko. Sandakan No. 8 Brothel: Introduction to the History of Women in the Lowest Part of Society. Tokyo, Chikuma Shobo, 1972. -
6. Tenno sei roughly translates to "emperor system." I prefer to use the term "Tenno" to emphasize the unique power of the Japanese monarch.
7. Yamazaki Tomoko, op.cit.
Lisa Go works with migrant Filipino women in Japan.
Japan has truly come of age.