The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 30 | Number 2 | Article ID 4350 | Jul 27, 2015

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'Comfort Women' Denial and the Japanese Right

Julie Higashi, Yoshikata Veki, Norma Field, Tomomi Yamaguchi

Edited and translated by Julie Higashi, Yoshikata Veki, Norma Field, TomomiYamaguchi

Translated by Julie Higashi; introductionby Norma Field and Tomomi Yamaguchi

Introduction

It is a remarkable thing to behold, the extent towhich the issue of "comfort women" galvanizesthe Japanese right more than two decades afterthe first Korean survivor appeared in public.The hopeful moments of the Kono Statement(1993) and the Murayama Statement (1995)s e e m t o b e l o n g t o a r e m o t e p a s t .Circumscribed though they were, those officialstatements by the then chief cabinet secretary(Kono Yohei) and prime minister (MurayamaTomiichi) squarely acknowledged the grievousconsequences of imperial Japan's acts ofaggression not only on the Japanese people buttheir Asian neighbors, and most pertinentlywith respect to "comfort women," theinvolvement of the Japanese military.

That the "comfort woman" system has beendocumented1

as entailing the Japanese military,meaning that it can in no way be written off asan enterprise of private brokers, is one of theseveral interlocking points that exerciserightist revisionists. Another is the use of theterm kyosei renko, or "forced mobilization": thewomen, often young enough to warrantcharacterization as "girls," were recruited,transported, and made to serve against theirwill. The lure of promised employment in thedire circumstances produced by colonial rule-trickery, in other words-was part of thecoerc i ve charac ter o f th i s sys tem.Acknowledging systematic coercion, in turn, isto acknowledge that the system was indeed one

of "military sexual slavery," underscoring thecynical deception of the "comfort woman"euphemism. (The term continues to bemeaningful as historical referent, andspecifically, as verbal coalescence of willful,flagrant deception.)

Denying the historical veracity and consequentinterpretive validity of these points has inspiredrevisionists to place the blame on the shouldersof Korean and Japanese activists, along withthe latters' avatar, the Asahi Shimbun. Were itnot for the deceptions perpetrated byunpatriotic lawyers, scholars, and deludedcitizens, aided and abetted by the Asahi, theyreason, Koreans themselves would not havemade such an issue of the misery experiencedby poor women in the context of a decades-oldwar. Under the Abe regime, foreign ministryofficials have been mobilized to pressureinternational media2 as well as a US textbookpublisher and author3 in an effort to set thehistorical facts straight and restore Japan'shonor.

It is precisely such self-serving deception thatYoshikata Veki's article, translated here,demolishes by tracking coverage of the issue inthe Korean press. The evidence is specific andirrefutable: Korean concern about "comfortwomen," as revealed in the press, antedatescoverage in the Asahi (and for that matter,other Japanese papers) by decades. It is worthsingling out two details in Yoshikata's work thataddress revisionist "talking points": it further(1) demonstrates the insignificance of the roleof Yoshida Seiji, whose controversial testimony

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has been formally repudiated by the Asahi,4 ininciting Korean awareness and (2) attests that"comfort women" and "teishintai" (volunteercorps) were used interchangeably ("confused,"in Yoshida's words).5

In closing, it is important to remind ourselvesthat the "comfort woman" system encompassedfar more than the Korean peninsula, and thatsome of the controversial features in discussionemphasizing the role of the Asahi and Japaneseactivists pertain particularly to the Koreancolony. The variety and extent of the practicecan be grasped from the fine documentary ofthe Women's International War CrimesTribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery(2000), now available for online viewing at theWomen's Active Museum site. The texture of"comfort woman" experience is conveyed in therecollections of survivors from seven countriesand one Japanese soldier in New York-basedKorean artist Chang-jin Lee's video and publicart project, Comfort Women Wanted. NF & TY

"The Asahi Shimbun's Fabrication Theory"Was a Fabrication

In August 2015, Prime MinisterAbe is expected to deliver astatement on the 70th anniversaryof the end of War II, and his plan isto do so without referring to thecoercive nature of the "comfort-woman" system of the Japanesemilitary. The view that the AsahiShimbun report opened thefloodgates to making the "comfortwomen" an issue is prevalent. Ananalysis of reports published inKorean newspapers, however,overturns this view, demonstratingthat the claim that the Asahifabricated the story is itself afabrication, a complete fiction.

By Yoshikata Veki

Translated by Julie Higashi

The far-fetched argument that "the 'comfortwoman' issue is a fabrication by the AsahiShimbun" has gained popularity and is widelyaccepted. Isn't this because the premise that"Before the Asahi Shimbun and Japaneselawyers began making a big fuss, there washardly any discussion of 'comfort women' inSouth Korea" (Watanabe Shoichi, ProfessorEmeritus of Sophia University, WiLL 2007August Special Issue) was accepted withoutanybody checking its validity?

With this question in mind, I spent my daysgathering materials at libraries and resourcerooms in South Korea to investigate how theissue of "comfort women" was actuallyperceived. The discoveries exceeded myexpectations, and I became completelyabsorbed in an excavation-like process ofresearch. Let me introduce part of my findings.

The perception of "forcible mobilization"already existed in Korea by the 1960s

As I looked through the back numbers ofKorean newspapers, not much could be foundbetween the Korean War and the 1950s andearly 1960s, when Park Chung-hee seizedpower through a military coup d'état. After thisperiod, however, Korean articles challengingthe views currently popular in Japan began toappear. First, I found an article written by thewell-known intellectual Song Kon-ho in theAugust 14, 1963 Kyunghyang Shinmun underthe title, "An evil born on the eve of Korea'sliberation from imperial Japan." In this article,the author selects the word, "teishintai," as "aword for remembering on August 15." Let meexcerpt and translate the relevant passage:

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Photo 1: Article (blocked off in red) written by well-known intellectual Song Kon-ho in the August 14,1963 issue of the Kyunghyang Shinmun), under thetitle, "An evil born on the eve of Korea's liberationfrom imperial Japan." The image illustrates theforced mobilization of "comfort women." Imageprovided by Yoshikata Veki.

Teishintai-also referred to as"delivering up the virgins." Womenof marr iageab le age weremob i l i z ed and sen t t o thebattlefront and made into "comfortwomen." They were all sacrificesfor the imperial Japanese soldiers. .. . Nobody knows how many youngwomen were transported to thewar front or what happened tothem.

The caption to the illustration accompanyingthe article reads as follows: "The imperialJapanese army even delivered virgins." Theillustration depicts a soldier-like man carrying abig bag, suggestive of wartime delivery, whoforces a helpless schoolgirl to accompany him.Her family is shown crying in the background,and the picture amply suggests the use ofphysical force. This article alone, published 19years before the first reports of Yoshida Seiji'stestimony6, attests to the groundlessness of thetheory that it was the Asahi's unsubstantiated

reports of Yoshida's testimonies that firstcreated the perception of the forciblem o b i l i z a t i o n ( r e c r u i t m e n t a n d / o rtransportation) of "comfort women."

There is another interesting article datedMarch 23, 1964, which special correspondentOkamura Akihiko of Pan Asia NewspaperAlliance (PANA, now Jiji News) contributed tothe Dong-a Ilbo. Okamura, in a report on themaritime area near the 38th parallel, recountsthe following words from the captain of thef i sh ing boat he boarded dur ing h i sinvestigation:

"During the Greater East AsianWar, young Korean girls from age18 to 20 were taken away in thename of 'teishintai.' In the end,they were all forced to becomeprostitutes for the military." [Whenhe said this,] I could not bringmyself to look him in the face.

Photo 2: March 23, 1964 article with photo in Dong-aIlbo by special correspondent Okamura Akihiko ofPan Asia Newspaper Alliance (PANA, now Jiji News).The article describes Okamura's experience oflistening to a story told by the captain of a fishingvessel about Korean women being made into

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"military prostitutes" under Japan's colonial rule.

An article entitled, "Japan, Respond to Us,"dated February 17, 1965, and submitted by thepresident of the Bereaved Family Associationfor Those Who Died for Their Country (Sun-guk-seon-nyeol) to the Kyunghyang Shinmunalso includes the following: "In the name of theteishintai, unmarried women were kidnappedand forced to become comfort women."All these descriptions appeared earlier thanPark Kyong-Sik's pioneering publication,Chosenjin Kyosei-renko no Kiroku (Miraisha,1965), or "Records of the Forced Mobilizationof Koreans." The argument that "the Japanesehad planted the idea of the 'comfort-woman'issue in the minds of Koreans" no longer holds.

Photo 3: The front page of Kyunghyang Shinmun onFebruary 17, 1965, with articles related to JapaneseForeign Minister Shiina's visit at the height of Japan-Korea negotiations. The marked article, entitled"Japan, Respond to Us," is by the president of theBereaved Family Association for Those Who Died forTheir Country (Sun-guk-seon-nyeol.) The sixth pointin the article refers to the abduction of unmarriedwomen to be turned into "comfort women" as arepresentative atrocity committed by imperial Japan.

Related reports found even before the1990s

Among the six nationwide newspaperspublished from before the 1980s, four provideaccessible databases. I searched thesedatabases for articles related to "comfortwomen" published from the time of Korea'sliberation up to the early 1990s. I summarizemy data collection methodology below.

First, because the term "comfort women" wasalso frequently used to describe sex workersfor the United States military stationed inSouth Korea, it was necessary to look into thecontent of each article and eliminate those thatwere unrelated to the former Japanese military.I also searched for articles that included theterm "teishintai." As is well known, in Korea,the two terms, "teishintai" and "comfortwomen," used to be confused, resulting in manyaccounts in which it is difficult to distinguishwhich function was being emphasized. Itherefore eliminated those cases where theterm could clearly be determined as referringto nonsexual, wartime labor service, which wasthe original meaning of the term "teishintai." Intallying up the total number of relevantarticles, I decided that an article in which bothterms, "comfort women" and "teishintai"appeared, would count as one. The fluctuationin the number of articles using the termsinevitably correlates with the increase in thenumber of publications, and althoughdifferences existed among the newspapers, Ifocused on the number of articles, includingalso the total number of articles for the fournewspapers.

As my table shows, I found 23 articles on the"comfort woman" issue between 1946 and the1960s. In the 1970s and 80s, however, thenumber shoots up to about 300. Given thenumber of articles on this issue appearingbefore the 90s, it may be that we haveentertained a mistaken impression thateverything started in the 90s, a time of rapid

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progress in diplomatic relations between Koreaand Japan. Furthermore, when we look at thenumbers for every five years, the trendbecomes even clearer. Even with slight ups anddowns , the number o f t imes Koreannewspapers take up the 'comfort-woman' issuesteadily rises between the 1960s and 80s.

The content of the articles also changed. Thearticles written on milestone occasions in the1960s refer to "comfort women" as "a tragedythe Korean people should never forget," butafter the 1970s, the focus shifts to theexistence of former "comfort women."Representative of this trend is the emergenceof a former "comfort woman," No Su-bok, whowas "discovered" in Thailand in 1984 and wasfinally able to visit her homeland. Joongang Ilbopublished a series of eleven articles about herlife. Through such focus on the concrete imageof an actual "comfort woman," the issue, whichhad existed only in the recollections of ahandful, began to attract attention as anactually existing problem.

Photo 4: Article in Joongang Ilbo, dated June 23,1983. The sixth article in a series featuring a former"comfort woman," No Su-bok, who was living inThailand in the post-war period. Her visit to herhomeland after forty years received major coveragein the newspaper.

In the meantime, the perception of the coercivenature of the practice went unchallenged in the70s and 80s. The biographical article on No Su-bok, for example, explains the process as onewhereby Japanese policemen "hunted humans

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like they would hunt rabbits," capturing thewomen and taking them away by force.

As for Yoshida Seiji, who is an obsession amongthe conservatives: apart from the 1980translation of a book that nobody seemed tonotice, the first time he appears in Koreannewspapers is as a witness in a detailed reporton the 1982 Sakhalin Koreans lawsuit.Subsequently, through the mediation of theMindan Fujinkai [South Korea Women'sAssociation in Japan] that Yoshida hadapproached, he is introduced in numerouspapers on June 23, 1983 as "a Japanese wishingto build a monument in Korea as an expressionof apology." In other words, the facts show thatit was not the Asahi Shimbun that introducedYoshida's activities.

The absurdi ty and dangers o f aninternationally isolated argument

We have now verified the collapse of theargument that the "comfort woman" issue- its"coercive" and "controversial" nature-was notan issue in Korea before the Asahi andJapanese lawyers made it into one. Over theyears, in the course of which the subjectbecame a diplomatic issue, we have indeedwitnessed the accumulation of information andspread of attention in Korea through Korea'sinteraction with Japan. Distorting the issue andarguing that Korean perception originated froma particular "false report" in Japan, however, isthe explosive expression of a dark desire in thehearts of conservatives to trivialize the matter.

As long as the argument that "the problemoriginated with the Asahi" is withoutfoundation, spreading it will only widen the gapbetween Korea and Japan, which in turn willwiden the gap between Japan and internationalsociety. Revisionists have been activelypromoting their views overseas, requestingcorrections in history textbooks in the UnitedStates. What we need to do now, however, is toface head-on the fabr icated "s tory"conservatives have obsessed over for more than

twenty years.

Long before the 90s: Numerous articles on"comfort women" in the Korean press

(1945-1994)

Choson Ilbo Dong-a Ilbo Joongang Ilbo Kyunghyang Shinmun Totalfromthefourpapers

CW TeishintaiTotal CW TeishintaiTotal CW TeishintaiTotal CW TeishintaiTotal

45-49 0 1 (0) 1(0)

0 1(0)

1(0)

0 1(0)

1 (0) 3(0)

50-54 0 0 0 1(1)

0 1(1)

0 0 0 1(1)

55-59 0 0 0 0 1(0)

1(0)

0 1(0)

1 (0) 2(0)

60-64 0 0 0 0 1(1)

1(1)

4(2)

4(3)

6(5)

7(6)

65-69 0 0 0 1(1)

4(1)

4(1)

0 1(0)

1 (0) 2(2)

5(2)

5(2)

10(3)

70-74 0 0 0 4(1)

11(4)

14 (7) 3(2)

15(5)

16(6)

5(0)

6(4)

11(9)

41(22)

75-79 1(0)

1(0)

2 (1) 4(3)

4(4)

5 (5) 3(1)

6(1)

8(3)

4(1)

12(5)

15 (8) 30(17)

80-84 1(1)

7(6)

7(6)

5(3)

49(14)

51(16)

18(14)

52(31)

56(35)

9(7)

45(17)

47(19)

161(76)

85-89 0 4(3)

4(3)

4(2)

33(8)

35(10)

2(1)

11(8)

12 (9) 2(0)

15(6)

17(8)

68(30)

90-94 328(150)

289(259)

467(437)

566(298)

732(668)

1000(936)

380(228)

492(463)

644(615)

383(205)

536(486)

714(664)

2825(2652)

CW = "Comfort Women" (Created by YoshikataVeki)

Note 1. The figure in parentheses within the"comfort women" column indicates the numberof articles using the term "teishintai" as well.

Note 2. The figure in parentheses within the"teishintai" column indicates the number ofarticles whose use of the term could bedetermined from the context as related to"comfort women" (minimum value).

Note 3. The figure in parentheses within the"total" column indicates the total number ofarticles that fit the definition in Note 2, above.

Note 4. The Joongang Ilbo was launched onSeptember 22, 1965.

Y o s h i k a t a V e k i s p e c i a l i z e s i npsycholinguistics and has been living in Seoulfor the last 17 years. He currently teaches atInduk University, South Korea.

Julie Higashi is a professor at the College ofSocial Sciences, Ritsumeikan University inKyoto, Japan and a contributing editor of TheAsia-Pacific Journal.

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Norma Field retired in 2011 as the Robert S.Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor inJapanese Studies at the University of Chicago.

Tomomi Yamaguchi is an associate professorof Anthropology at Montana State University.

This article was originally published in theApril 10, 2015 issue of Shukan Kinyobi.

Recommended citation:Yoshikata Veki,Translated by Julie Higashi, Introduced byNorma Field and Tomomi Yamaguch, "'ComfortWomen' Denial and the Japanese Right," TheAsia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 30, No. 2,July 27, 2015.

Other relevant Asia-Pacific Journalarticles:

Yoshiko Nozaki, The "Comfort Women"Controversy: History and Testimony

David McNeill and Justin McCurry, Sink theAsahi: The "Comfort Women" Controversy andNeo-nationalist Attack

Gavan McCormack, Striving for Normalization:Japan-Korea Civic Cooperation and the Attemptto Resolve the "Comfort Women" Problem

Uemura Takashi, Labeled "the reporter whofabricated" the comfort woman issue: ARebuttal

Notes

1 Hayashi Hirofumi, Government, the Militaryand Business in Japan's Wartime ComfortWoman System.

2 Jeff Kingston, Testy Team Abe PressuresMedia in Japan.

3 Arudou Debito, Japanese GovernmentPressures American Publisher to DeleteTextbook Treatment of Wartime Military SexualSlavery: An Interview with Herbert Ziegler.4 The Asahi's thoroughgoing repudiation isitself the subject of continuing controversy. See(especially pp. 2-6, in Japanese) of thethoughtful reflection by Uemura Satoshi(currently Secretary General of the Center forDocumentation on Japan's War Responsibility),on the considerations historians need to keep inmind in interpreting the historical record, suchas the "Yoshida Testimony."

5 For the significance of these observations aswell as Yoshikata's research in general, see

Uemura Takashi with an introduction byTomomi Yamaguchi,Labeled "the reporter whofabricated" the comfort woman issue: ARebuttal on this site.

6 O n Y o s h i d a S e i j i ' s r o l e , s e e , f o rinstance, "Reexamining the 'Comfort Women'Issue: An Interview with Yoshimi Yoshiaki" onthis site.