Comfort Women of the Japanese Empire

This is an important and controversial book, hitherto available only in Korean, Japanese and Chinese. The author reconsiders the issue of the "comfort women", that is the Korean women who were compelled to provide sexual comfort to Japanese troops during the Asia-Pacific War.

This is an important and controversial work, hitherto available only in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, a book which has been subject to court cases attempting to have some parts deleted. The author reconsiders the issue of the "comfort women," that is the Korean women who were compelled to provide sexual comfort to Japanese troops during the Asia-Pacific War. She explores the human complexity of the experiences of these women, who despite terrible exploitation, she feels, cannot and should not only be considered as passive victims. She sets the issue in context, revealing how Korean society played a role, with patriarchy and middlemen being significant factors in the procurement of comfort women, and how alongside the comfort women there were volunteer labor corps of Korean young women supporting the Japanese war effort. The author highlights Korea's colonial status, different from the territories Japan invaded and conquered, discusses how relations between colonizers and colonized in an empire are not straightforward, and argues that people should work to understand more fully the mindset of those at the time, and refrain from forcing values from the present to resolve indignities of the past. Aiming to find a way to pursue reconciliation while looking more closely at the history, the book provides substantial consideration of key issues to do with empire, memorialization, and censorship. It is an uncomfortable read for those seeking simplistic interpretations and easy solutions.

Autorentext

Park Yuha is a Professor Emeritus at the College of International Studies, Sejong University, Korea

Inhalt

List of Figures

Prologue from Volker Stanzel, former German Ambassador to China and Japan

Author's Preface to the English Translation

Translators' Introduction

Author's Introduction to the Japanese version

Part I: Who were the comfort women? State control of the body, civilian engagement

Chapter 1: Forced transport or national mobilization

Chapter 2: The erosion of memory at the comfort station

Chapter 3: Immediately after defeat - Return of the Korean comfort women

Part 2: "Colony" and the Korean Comfort Women

Chapter 4: Korean perceptions of the comfort women

Chapter 5: The battle over memory: the South Korean side

Chapter 6: Thinking About South Korean support groups

Chapter 7: Reading the Korean Constitutional Court ruling

Chapter 8: Examining "what the world thinks"

Part 3: The conflict of memory: the collapse of the Cold War order and the comfort women issue

Chapter 9: The colonial consciousness that supports the thinking of deniers

Chapter 10: Considering Japan's apology and compensation actions in the 1990s

Chapter 11: Expectations placed on the Japanese government once again

Chapter 12: Facing the supporters' potential

Part 4: Beyond the empire and the Cold War

Chapter 13: Comfort women and the nation-state

Chapter 14: For a new Asia: Seventy years since defeat, seventy years since liberation

In place of an afterword: why we must reconsider the comfort women issue

Index