THE COMFORT WOMEN ISSUE, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, AND ACADEMIC
INTEGRITY:
A STUDY AID

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

THE ISSUE
On 1 December 2020, an article by Professor J. Mark Ramseyer was published online
in the International Review of Law and Economics. The article, Contracting for Sex
in the Pacific War , was scheduled for inclusion in the March 2021 edition of thejournal but, following expressions of concern from scholars, the article was taken
down from the journal s website for further examination. These events caused a major
controvers amongst scholars. A cop of the article as it appeared on the journal s
website is attached (Appendix 1).
The main contentions of this article are: (i) that wartime comfort stations were run
b private entrepreneurs, the Japanese militar s onl direct role being themaintenance of h giene in the establishments; (ii) that comfort women freel
negotiated contracts with the comfort station owners, reflecting their personal
interests and following the basic game theoretic principles of credible commitments(p. 7).
The article was strongly criticised by a number of student and other groups linked to
Harvard Law School (https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/kahls/statements/) and by othergroups and individuals (for example,
https://sites.google.com/view/feministsonramseyer/home)
On the other hand, some groups have responded with criticisms of Ramse er s critics,
arguing that they are threatening freedom of speech by denying Professor Ramseyer
the right to controversial opinions. The attached letter from a group of conservative
Korean public figures, for example, has been widely circulated to various university
groups and individuals in the US. It praises Professor Ramse er s article, insisting thatthe article should be published in the journal, and argues that anyone who questions
the journal s decision to publish is trampling on free speech (Appendix 2).
Professor Ramsa er s article provides a really important opportunity for a free andopen debate. But that debate must begin by examining the ground-rules and1understandings of academic knowledge and research integrity that underpin debates
between contending opinions. Are the participants in a debate are following the same
fundamental principles of research integrity and ethics? If there are no ground rules,
then academic journals would have no basis for rejecting any paper submitted to them,and any statement of opinion however lacking in logic or factual evidence would
have to be treated as equal to any other. We could then very easily end up spending
much of the rest of our lives debating conspiracy theories or fake news which have no
intellectual foundation whatever. To put it at its simplest and crudest, if there are no
research standards, then we may as well all pack up and go home, because anything
goes and any truth claim is just as good as any other.
So I welcome the opportunity for debate, and embrace the opportunity for academics,
students and the broader community to have a thorough and frank discussion about
crucial questions of free speech and academic integrity. This short document provides
a few suggestions and questions as a starting point for such a debate, accompanied byillustrative materials from Professor Ramse er s article and other writings on the
comfort women issue. The fundamental principles, it should be emphasised, apply
not just to this article or historical issue, but across the board of research andscholarship.
FREE SPEECH AND RESEARCH INTEGRITY
We live in an age when the online and other media are flooded with conspiracy
theories, pseudo-science, fake research findings etc. But it is also an age when freespeech faces as many challenges as ever, if not more. The issue, then, is how wedefend and uphold free speech, while also learning (and teaching others) how toassess the quality of information. How do we distinguish well-founded research andknowledge from research that lacks integrity? How do we identify knowledge claims
that lack proper foundations? How do we protect free debate while preventing theabuse of academic credentials to disseminate misleading information? These are vital

problems of our age.
SINCERITY AND INTEGRITY IN RESEARCH
Universities have developed a range of rules and principles about proper research
practices and ethics. These are always a work in progress, and are an important topic
for debate and improvement. You can find some helpful thoughts on the subject in arange of documents such as the US government Office of Research Integrit s
guidelines on responsible publication: https://ori.hhs.gov/content/Chapter-92

Authorship-and-Publication-Responsible-publication or the European Code of
Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA 2017), which can be downloaded athttps://allea.org/code-of-conduct/
Below, I suggest some key principles that, I think, have come to underpin the notionof research integrity. This is my list, which I offer to you also for debate andimprovement. In each case, I illustrate the principle by referring to issues arising fromresearch on the comfort women issue and from the debate about the Ramse er
article.
The European Federation of Academies of Humanities and Sciences (ALLEA 2017, p.
4) defines the underlying principles of research integrity as being reliability, honesty,
respect and accountability. This means that researchers should genuinely want to findthe answers to research questions, be as honest as possible about their own research
motives, and be prepared to report unexpected findings if they discover that the data
they are looking at contains information which they had not anticipated. They should
try their best (within the human limitations that we all have) to convey their findings
truthfully to others, and should certainly not consciously invent or misrepresent
information about the data they have collected (e.g. by falsifying the results ofexperiments or stating that source material contains facts which it does not contain).
Below I try to flesh this out in a bit more detail. The principles set out are the aims.
No researcher is perfect and no one piece of research fulfils all the principles listed
below perfectly. The issue is whether a piece of research falls so far below all (ornearly all) of these principles that it fails to meet fundamental standards of research
integrity.

SOME KEY PRINICPLES FOR DISCUSSION
1. Defining the boundaries of the research topic. Research integrity begins bytelling yourself and others what topic you are researching, and defining thescope of the topic. Many topics are very large, so researchers will only lookat one small corner of them. This can be very valuable a single humanbeing s life history can tell us a lot about a whole historical era, forexample. But a historian who writes about a single life should try to saysomething to readers about the extent to which this one person s experiencecan be generalised to the wider history of their day.

3

In relation to the comfort women histor What is the comfort womenissue? So-called comfort stations were places where members of the Japanesemilitary had sex with women during the Asia-Pacific War. The Japanese
government s 1993 report On the Issue of Wartime Comfort Women statesthat comfort stations were established in various locations in response to therequest of the militar authorities at the time , and adds: the countries or areas
where it has been possible as a result of the study to confirm that comfort
stations existed are: Japan; China; the Philippines; Indonesia; the then Malaya;
Thailand; the then Burma; the then New Guinea; Hong Kong; Macao; and thethen French Indochina . (In this context, Japan means the pre-war Japanese
empire, including Okinawa, Korea, Taiwan and Karafuto [Southern Sakhalin]).
It defines the comfort women's known places of origin as Japan; the Korean
Peninsula; China; Taiwan; the Philippines; Indonesia; and the Netherlands.
Apart from Japanese, many of the comfort women transferred to the war areas
were from the Korean Peninsula.
The report notes that the earliest comfort stations appear to date from 1932,
and that many comfort stations were run by private operators, although insome areas there were cases in which the then Japanese military directly
operated comfort stations.
(for full document, see https://www.awf.or.jp/e6/statement-03.html)
Substantial further research has since extended our knowledge of the problem,
but this provides a starting point.
During the war, the Japanese government and militar used the term comfort
station (ianjo) or comfort facilit (ian shisetsu), but typically used terms
such as bar maids (shakufu) or special women (tokushu fujo) to describe thewomen in these facilities . Allied service-people who encountered the women
during the war sometimes referred to them as comfort women or comfort
girls , and after the war the euphemism comfort women became widel usedin debates. From the 1990s a number of researchers began to use the term sex
slaves , drawing on the internationall understood definition of slaver as anumbrella term covering practices such as forced labour, debt bondage, forced
marriage, and human trafficking and referring to situations of exploitationthat a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion,
deception, and/or abuse of power (seehttps://www.un.org/en/observances/slavery-abolition-day).

4

Questions for discussion How well do the boundaries of the problem
presented in Ramse er s research match the Japanese government s 1993
definition of the comfort women problem, or the definitions used by otherkey reports and documents on the issue?
Wh does Ramse er s research make no mention of women from China, thePhilippines, Indonesia or the Netherlands (nor of women from Malaya, East
Timor and other places who are now also known to have been recruited into thesystem?
Why does he largely cite pre-1932 sources to analyse a post-1932 problem, andwhat is the basis for his claim that information about the 1920s to early 1930s
applies to the period of the Asia-Pacific War?
Given that the 1993 Japanese government report, like many other sources, saysthat the Japanese military directly operated some comfort stations, why does
Professor Ramseyer state that the Japanese arm encouraged private
entrepreneurs to establish semi-official brothels next to its bases (Ramse er
2020 p. 1) but remain entirely silent about bases run by the military themselves(including the navy see, for example,
http://ajwrc.org/jp/modules/bulletin/index.php?page=article&storyid=682)?
2. Defining your own position in relation to your research. Most researchers
approach their work with some pre-existing belief and ideology, and many
have political objectives, such as the wish to influence policy, support thework of social movements etc. It is important that researchers are open
about their own positions. It can be argued that, if a piece of research is
being done specifically to advance a policy position or movement etc., theauthor should make this clear to readers.
In relation to the comfort women histor Immediately after publishing thearticle Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War , Professor Ramseyer went on to
publish a media piece, Recovering the Truth about the Comfort Women
https://japan-forward.com/recovering-the-truth-about-the-comfort-women/ in
the online journal Japan Forward. Here, repeating sentences from his
International Review of Law and Economics article, he shifted from hisacademically-worded conclusion about the application of game theory to
wartime comfort stations to the much more aggressively political statementthat the comfort-women-sex-slave stor is pure fiction , that testimonies

5from former comfort women about forcible recruitment are lies, and thewhole story has been driven by a left-wing South Korean lobby group bent on
sabotaging Japan-South Korea relations in order to promote a ke North
Korean political goal . Japan Forward is a news/opinion site established by the
neo-nationalist Japanese Sankei Media group to propagate its views and thoseof likeminded people to an English-speaking audience (see Nakai 2018, p. 3).
The site is currently running a very energetic campaign on the comfort
women histor , aimed at denying that an comfort women at all wererecruited by force or deception and denouncing women who testify to forcible
recruitment as liars see https://japan-forward.com/?s=comfort+women
Questions for Discussion Should Professor Ramse er s have provided hisreaders and peer reviewers with more frank information about his personal
position on the comfort women issue and his aims in conducting thisresearch?
3. Demonstrating awareness of the existing research done by others in yourfield - Good research needs to be based on a knowledge of the work that has
been done already in the field of study. Researchers have very rarely readeverything in their field, but they should have read a fair share of existing
research, and it is helpful to readers if they start by mentioning some of theexisting works that have informed their own research. Where they arestrongly disagreeing with existing work in the field, they should provide
some explanation of the reasons why they are doing so.
In relation to the comfort women histor Appendix 3 (from a reading list
published by Columbia University), contains one list of many existing works on
the comfort women issue in English (representing various viewpoints); there
are many other lists, including https://remembercomfortwomen.org/reading-list/(please note that this list is from a former comfort women support group, andlists works sympathetic to their cause); https://www.awf.or.jp/1/reference.html(a somewhat older list from Japan s Asian Women s Fund, including ke works
in Japanese). You can doubtless find more lists online.
Questions for Discussion
See if ou can find further lists of resources on the comfort women issue.

6Can you identify the position on comfort women issues of the creators of thelists, or their openness to presenting conflicting positions on a subject that isnotable for controversy?
How many of the key existing research works on the comfort women issue
does Professor Ramseyer refer to in his article?
Does he explain his selection?
Does he indicate why his work disregards the conclusions of most otherresearchers of the topic?
4. Providing evidence for your research claims The key findings of researchneed to be supported by verifiable evidence, which might include
documents, oral testimony, material objects, combinations of all of theseetc.
In relation to the comfort women histor
Contracting for Sex in the
Pacific War offers an anal sis of the contracts signed between comfort
women and the owners or managers of comfort stations during the AsiaPacific War. Surprisingly, though, Professor Ramseyer does not provide any
references to or quotations from an contract actuall signed b a comfort
woman and her emplo er . He provides no evidence that he has ever seensuch a contract, and no oral or written testimony from anyone who had eversigned one of these contracts or witnessed one being signed.
Source material which he has read and cited (though without acknowledging
this part of its content) describes a situation where contracts were signed b
women who had been recruited by deception (see 5.iii below), with a loan
payment going to their debt-burdened families. Ramseyer assumes that all
women signed contracts on the basis of informed consent while providing noevidence to support this assumption, and remaining silent about evidence
which contradicts this assumption.
His article also ignores testimony of cases where women clearly did not sign
contracts of an sort (for example, O Herne 1998; McGregor and Mackie
2018)

Question for Discussion Does Ramseyer provide convincing evidence for the
existence of comfort women contracts founded on basic game theoretic
principles of credible commitments ?

7

What percentage of the wartime comfort women do you think might havesigned such contracts?
5. Using sources with honesty and respect Debates about historical, socialand political issues rely on a range of resources, including official
documents, private records, oral testimony etc. It is a basic principle ofresearch that scholars should not deliberately misrepresent the content of
the sources that they cite. It is also important that they think carefully about
the nature of the sources and the context in which they were produced. In
the case both of oral and written sources, we need to ask ourselves thequestions: who produced the information in this document or interview etc.
and why? Using multiple sources carefully and honestly is central toresearch integrity.
In relation to the comfort women histor Here are just a couple ofillustrative examples of the sources used by Professor Ramseyer, and of theway in which he has cited them.
(i)On p. 6 of the article, Professor Ramseyer quotes from the memoirs offormer comfort women Mun Ok-Ju, as published in the Korea
Institute of Histor , 2016 . Despite the impressive-looking institutional
title, the Korea Institute of Histor is actually an anonymous neonationalist online blogger whose site is dedicated to denying the forced
recruitment of comfort women . The blog provides no information
about the person who runs it or its source of funding (seehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04924969566554966189). The sitedoes not contain Mun s memoirs. Rather, it contains one page of
selected extracts from her memoirs, carefully chosen to try to persuade
readers that her experiences were pleasurable and well-paid.
Incidentally, it also mis-spells her name (seehttp://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.com/2014/10/former-korean-comfortwoman-mun-oku.html ) University of Toronto scholar Joshua Pilzer,
who has studied testimony given by Mun in detail, writes that she
described being forcibly abducted by Japanese military personnel in1940 at the age of 16 and forced to provide sexual services to twenty tothirty Japanese soldiers a day (Pilzer 2014, p. 2). He quotes Mun, acourageous and resourceful woman, as saying that on the rare occasions

8

(ii)

when we had something to laugh about in our torturous life, and when
we felt lonesome or miserable, we would sing in unison or hum together
quietl (Pilzer 2014, p. 18)
Professor Ramse er writes that the Japanese militar encouraged
private entrepreneurs to establish semi-official brothels next to its bases(Ramse er 2020, p.1), but that the Japanese militar did not needadditional prostitutes; it had plenty. Prostitutes have followed armies
ever where, and the followed the Japanese arm in Asia (Ramse er
2020, p. 5). Thus he tells his readers that women and private brothel
owners flocked to the war zones, with the role of the military in the
comfort station s stem being limited to its regular checks of theh giene of women in the semi-official brothels . This is at odds withthe contents of the sources cited by Ramseyer himself, such as his
reference Naimusho 1938 , in Su uki et al 2006, vol. 1, pp. 124-138(incorrectly referenced by Ramseyer as Suzuki et al 2006, vol. 1, p.
124.) The information in that document shows that in late 1937-early
1938 private recruiters in various parts of Japan reported being urgently
requested by the military command in Shanghai to help dispatch 25003000 Japanese women for work in comfort stations (in fact brothels)
being set up within the Shanghai Expeditionar Arm (Su uki et al.
vol. 1, pp. 130 and 134). Reports of this request and of the fact that the
women were to be transported from Japan in military vessels under thesupervision Japanese military police (kempei) clearly caused concern
and even disbelief amongst some officials in Japan, one of whom
expressed his anxiet that it was hard to maintain that this was not incontravention of the terms of international treaties on the trafficking of
women ( 婦女売
保し

に

する国

の

旨にも悖ること きをき’- Suzuki et al. vol. 1 p. 125). But enquiries made by local

authorities to the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai confirmed theessence of the reports, including the central involvement of the Japanesemilitar police and the Consulate s own militar bureau in the scheme,
and the recruitment of the women continued (Suzuki et al 2006 vol. 1, p.
136). In short, these documents provide compelling official testimony of
the role of the Japanese military and other government agencies ininitiating and overseeing the recruitment of Japanese women to serve in9

(iii)

comfort stations in China, but Ramseyer makes no mention of this
aspect of the document s content.
On p. 6 of his article, Ramseyer gives a detailed account of the contract
terms in comfort stations in Mala a, and provides two sources for thisinformation. One of these is the document US Office of War
Interrogation (1944), Interrogation Report no. 49 . You can find a copyof this document here:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Japanese_Prisoner_of_War_Interrogation_Report_49
As was common in Allied militar reports on encounters with comfort
women on the battlefield, the tone of this report is derogatory towards
the women, but the report still contains important information and is
widely known to researchers. Interrogation Report No. 49 does containfigures for the pay received by the women, but the figures are different
from the ones cited in Ramse er s text, which are for Mala a, while thisdocument is about Burma.
Significantly, this document does refer to contracts signed by the
women, which might seem to support the core contention of Ramse er s
article. But it states the following: Early in May of 1942 Japanese
agents arrived in Korea for the purpose of enlisting Korean girls for"comfort service" in newly conquered Japanese territories in Southeast
Asia. The nature of this "service" was not specified but it was assumed
to be work connected with visiting the wounded in hospitals, rollingbandages, and generally making the soldiers happy. The inducement
used by these agents was plenty of money, an opportunity to pay off thefamily debts, easy work, and the prospect of a new life in a new land,
Singapore. On the basis of these false representations many girls
enlisted for overseas duty and were rewarded with an advance of a few
hundred yen. The majority of the girls were ignorant and uneducated,
although a few had been connected with "oldest profession on earth"
before. The contract they signed bound them to Army regulations and towork for the "house master " for a period of from six months to a year
depending on the family debt for which they were advanced
Approximately 800 of these girls were recruited in this manner and theylanded with their Japanese "house master " at Rangoon around August
20th, 1942 . In other words, the report shows that the signing of wartime
contracts did not mean that these women had freely chosen to work in
comfort stations . Contracts , in this case at least, were signed eventhough women were recruited by trickery and transported to places from
where they had no possibility of returning until they had paid off their
10

debt (and in many cases probably even after paying off their debt).
Contrary to statements made by Ramseyer in his article (see particularly
Ramseyer 2020, p. 5), only a few had previously worked as prostitutes,
while most had not. Having read and cited this important document,
Ramsayer fails to acknowledge or address this crucial part of its content
directly at odds with his claims.

Question for Discussion See if you (with help from Japanese or
Korean speaking friends if necessary) can check more of the sources
used in the Ramseyer article.
Consider possible reasons why Professor Ramseyer may have failed tomention the information about contracts contained in Interrogation
Report no. 49.
Do you think he use his sources in a scholarly, honest and balanced way
which genuinely conveys the content of the sources to his readers?
6. Treating readers with honesty and respect The Office of Integrit s
Responsible Publication guidelines, like other statements on researchstandards, remind us that footnotes and bibliographies need to be fair andaccurate, so that other researchers can verif a scholar s conclusions andfollow up sources for their own further research. It s eas to makeoccasional mistakes with a page number or a date in a reference, but asystematic mismatch between the information in a book or article and thesource material that it claims to be citing is cause for real concern.

In relation to the comfort women histor Here are a few more instances ofthe sources used by Professor Ramseyer, and of the way in which he has cited
them.
(i)
One basic rule of academic referencing is that you should cite page
number/s that point readers to the information you are citing. A large
proportion of the wartime primary sources quoted by Professor
Ramseyer come from a two-volume collection of archival documents
edited b Su uki Y ko and others; but in the case of these documents,
Professor Ramseyer simply provides the number of the first page of the
document concerned and some of these documents run to a dozen or
more pages. In most cases, therefore, the information on the page cited

11

(ii)

(iii)

by Ramseyer bears no correspondence to the information he is supposed
to be citing.
He gives figures of 12 Korean comfort women and 527 Korean
unlicensed prostitutes in Shanghai in 1938, and attributes these to a
document reproduced on p. 118 of vol. 1 of the Suzuki et al. collection(actually pp. 118-120) and to Table 6 of a 2012 article by Takei
Yoshikazu (Ramseyer 2020, p. 5, footnote 5). In an earlier 2019 article,
he gave the same figures and said that they were for 1940 (Ramseyer
2019, p. 10), oddly citing pre-1940 official data as a source for 1940
statistics. He seems subsequently to have spotted the problem, because
his 2020 article now tells us that these are 1938 figures. The figures hecites appear nowhere in either of the sources referenced. Takei(http://iccs.aichi-u.ac.jp/archives/010/201205/4fc4385498c26.pdf)
contains no Table 6 and no figures for comfort women or unlicensed
prostitutes. The document from Suzuki et al. does not give a figure of527 (nor any precise figure for the number of Korean unlicensed
prostitutes in Shanghai), and gives a figure of 20 Korean comfort
women in the comfort stations that it lists. (see Appendix 4).
Ramseyer also writes that, in one month of 1938, 90 Korean women
petitioned the colonial government for permission to go to the Chinese
cit of Jinan to work as unlicensed prostitutes (Ramseyer 2020, p. 5).
The document he cites as his source (Suzuki et al. 2006 vol. 1, p. 143;
Appendix 5) does not contain any mention of a petition or a requestfrom any women, Korean or otherwise. What it contains is a letter fromthe colonial government of Korea reporting that 907 people (including
105 Korean women) had been issued with official documents for ajourne to Jinan. There is no mention of unlicensed prostitutes in the
document. It speaks of special women (tokushu fujin), a term used in

documents of the time to refer to militar comfort women as well as
women working in private brothels. The document also notes the issuingof documents to an unspecified number of others by the Japanesemilitary police. In other words, Ramseyer converts a government
document about the mass transportation of women to sexual service in
Jinan into a petition from women pleading to be permitted to beunlicensed prostitutes.

12

(iv)

(v)

Professor Ramse er states that Some Korean comfort women in Burma
worked on contracts as short as six months to a ear , and references
this to a nineteen-page document in another five-volume archival
collection (Josei no tame no Ajia Heiwa Kokumin Kikin ed. 1997), The
document is confusingly referenced, but the reference appears to be to p.
19 of volume 1 of this collection. That page (attached, Appendix 6)
contains no reference to Korean comfort women, Burma or six-months
contracts. It is about the setting up of comfort stations in North China
in the 1930s. Interrogation Report no. 49, cited in 5(iii) above, doesrefer to contracts of six months to a year, but, as we have seen, statesthat these contracts were fraudulent.
Professor Ramsa er s statement that karayuki-san earned generall
higher wages [overseas] than they could earn within Japan (Ramse er2020) is referenced to p. 451 of Park Yuha s 2014 book Teikoku no
Ianfu. Since the book only has 324 pages, it is impossible to identify thesource of the information.

Question for Discussion As above, see if you (with help from Japanese or
Korean speaking friends if necessary) can check more of the sources used in
the Ramseyer article.
Does Professor Ramseyer provide full and correct references which confirm his
conclusions and allow other researchers to verify them and follow up sources
for their own further research?

GENERAL QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How would rate the article Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War in terms ofyour own standards of research integrity?
Do you think this article should be accepted for publication in an academic
journal?
What systems exist in your university to protect research integrity?
Who implements them, and how?
What sanctions do they impose on researchers who whose work fails
fundamental tests of research integrity?
Could these systems and their implementation be improved?
What do you consider to be the best ways of maintaining research integrity andpreventing research misconduct while also supporting the right to free speech?

13References:
McGregor, Katherine E. and Mackie, V, Transcultural Memory and theTroostmeisjes/Comfort Women Photographic Project , History and Memory:
Studies in Representation of the Past, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 116-150.
Nakai, Daisuke, Mass Media in Japan, Fake News in the World , Reexamining
Japan in Global Context, Suntory Foundation Research Project Forum Report13, 2018. Pp. 1-5
O Herne, Jan Ruff, 50 Years of Silence, Watson s Ba NSW, Editons Tom
Thompson, 1997.
Pil er, Joshua D., Music and Dance in the Japanese Militar Comfort
Woman S stem: A Case Stud in Performing Arts, War, and Sexual
Violence , Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, vol. 18, 2014,
pp. 1-23.

14

International Review of Law and Economics 65 (2021) 105971

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Review of Law and Economics

Contracting for sex in the Paciﬁc War
J. Mark Ramseyer 1
Harvard University, United Statesa r t i c l e

i n f oArticle history:
Received 29 August 2020
Received in revised form 28 October 2020
Accepted 28 November 2020
Available online 1 December 2020
Keywords:
Prostitution
Indentured servitudea b s t r a c t
The protracted political dispute between South Korea and Japan over the wartime brothels called c̈omfort
stationsöbscures the contractual dynamics involved. These dynamics reﬂected the straightforward logicof the c̈redible commitmentss̈o basic to elementary game theory. The brothel owners and potential prostitutes faced a problem: the brothel needed credibly to commit to a contractual structure (i) generous
enough to offset the dangers and reputational damage to the prostitute that the job entailed, while(ii) giving the prostitute an incentive to exert effort while working at a harsh job in an unobservable
environment.
Realizing that the brothel owners had an incentive to exaggerate their future earnings, the womendemanded a large portion of their pay upfront. Realizing that they were headed to the war zone, they
demanded a relatively short maximum term. And realizing that the women had an incentive to shirk, thebrothel owners demanded a contractual structure that gave women incentives to work hard. To satisfy
these superﬁcially contradictory demands, the women and brothels concluded indenture contracts that
coupled (i) a large advance with one- or two-year maximum terms, with (ii) an ability for the women toleave early if they generated sufﬁcient revenue.
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
As the Japanese army advanced and retreated across East Asia in
the 1930s and 40 s, it encouraged private entrepreneurs to establish semi-ofﬁcial brothels next to its bases. Venereal disease had
wreaked havoc on its Siberian expedition in 1918, and it neededthat risk under control. From the cooperating brothel owners, itdemanded that the prostitutes undergo regular medical examinations. In exchange, it promised to forbid its men from patronizing
brothels anywhere else.
To staff their brothels, the cooperating entrepreneurs hired
women primarily from Japan and Korea. All else equal, the soldiers
preferred Japanese women. Among the non-Japanese staff, they
preferred the Koreans. Korea was part of the Japanese nation, afterall (Japan had annexed the peninsula in 1910), and most Korean
women spoke at least some Japanese. The army called the coop-

E-mail address: ramseyer@law.harvard.edu
Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard University. I gratefully
acknowledge the generous and helpful comments and suggestions of Elizabeth
Berry, Yoshitaka Fukui, Il-Young Jung, Mitsuhiko Kimura, Yoshiro Miwa, Jason
Morgan, Minoru Nakazato, Gregory Noble, Geoffrey Ramseyer, Jennifer Ramseyer,
Frances Rosenbluth, Richard Samuels, Henry Smith, Frank Upham, and the referees
and editors of this journal.
1

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irle.2020.105971
0144-8188/© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

¨
erating brothels c̈omfort stations(ianjo).
It called the prostitutes¨
c̈omfort women(ianfu).
Consider the contracting problem. To staff these brothels,
entrepreneurs needed to recruit young women. They obviously
needed to promise the women extremely high pay. Even in thebest of circumstances, prostitution is harsh and dangerous workand exacts a major reputational penalty. Women will take the job
only if they expect to earn income both high enough to offset thesecosts, and signiﬁcantly higher than their next-best alternative.
For work in distant wartime locations, the entrepreneurs needed
to promise pay substantially higher even than in the Tokyo or Seoul
brothels. To the standard travails of prostitution, the comfort stations added the risk of warfare. They added the cost of living in
a foreign environment. The women would be away from friends,
allies, people to whom they could turn for help should the brothel
try to cheat them. And they raised the difﬁculty of absconding
should the brothel try to cheat, and the price of returning home
if they stayed their term and retired at the end.
Although they needed to promise the women high pay, theentrepreneurs could not just offer a high monthly wage. They
were hiring women to perform unpleasant work in impossible-tomonitor surroundings. If they promised a ﬁxed monthly wage, theygave each woman an incentive to be sufﬁciently unpleasant that noone asked for her at the front desk. Necessarily, they needed a wage
contract that rewarded effort.

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Somehow, the entrepreneurs needed to make their promisesof high pay from this incentive-based wage contract credible. To
entice a woman to take this contract, an entrepreneur needed toconvince her that she would earn high wages. Yet she knew that
he had every incentive to exaggerate her potential earnings, andhe knew that she knew. Some women would have doubted theirown capacity to generate high earnings. In some jobs, a woman
might have experimented for a short period to learn how much
revenue she could earn. Given the reputational hit she took simply
for entering the occupation, she could not do that here.
To recruit women to brothels on the military front, theentrepreneurs and women faced contractual problems harder byorders of magnitude. Most obviously, the women faced all the dangers of war – ﬁghting, bombing, and rampant disease. The women
also faced far more serious risks of brothel non-performance.
Should a brothel owner in Tokyo try to cheat on the contract, aprostitute could complain to the police. They would not all be sympathetic, but some would. She could sue the brothel owner in court
for nonperformance. Some did exactly that, and won. She could
walk out of the brothel, and disappear into the anonymity of theTokyo metropolis. In a distant foreign country, she faced the riskthat she might not be able to do any of this.
The entrepreneurs and the women addressed these problems
with a multi-year indenture agreement that bundled an up-front
advance, additional cash compensation, a maximum term, andthe right to quit early if a woman generated enough revenue. In
the article that follows, I detail the economic logic to these contracts. I compare the sexual service contracts the entrepreneurs andwomen negotiated (i) for the comfort stations, with the contracts
they negotiated (ii) for domestic Japanese brothels, (iii) for domestic Korean brothels, and (iv) for the non-comfort-station war-timebrothels across Japanese-governed East Asia.
I begin by outlining the contracts used in domestic Japanesebrothels (Sec. 2.2). I compare them to the contracts used in Korea,
and to the contracts used in the unofﬁcial (non-comfort-station)
brothels elsewhere within the Japanese empire (Secs. 2.3, 2.4).
Finally, I turn to the contracts used by the comfort stations themselves (Sec. 3).

nities because they believed prostitution offered them a better
outcome. Recruiters could lie. Brothels owners could cheat. Parents could abuse their children and steal the advance payment thatthe women earned. But the contracts suggest that the women knewthat recruiters could lie, knew that brothel owners could cheat, anddid not quietly defer to abusive parents.
2.2. Japan
1. Licensed prostitutes. – (a) The contracts as stated. Prostitution had been a licensed industry in pre-war Japan (see generally
Ramseyer, 1991). In 1924, 50,100 licensed prostitutes (shogi)
worked out of 11,500 licensed brothels in Japan (Fukumi 1928:
50–56, 178; Kusama, 1930: 14–26). Most commonly, the licensed
prostitutes worked under multi-year indenture contracts.2(a) The brothel paid the woman (or her parents) a given amountupfront, and in exchange she agreed to work for the shorterof (i) the time it took her to pay off the loan or (ii) the statedcontractual term(b) The mean upfront amount in the mid-1920s ranged from about1000 to 1200 yen. The brothel did not charge interest.
(c) The most common (70–80 percent of the contracts) term was
six years.
(d) Under the typical contract, the brothel took the ﬁrst 2/3 to 3/4 ofthe revenue a prostitute generated. It applied 60 percent of theremainder toward the loan repayment, and let the prostitutekeep the rest.
I know of no source detailing how often the upfront payment
went to the woman herself, how often it went to her parents who
kept it on her behalf, and how often it went to abusive parents who
kept it for themselves. Note, however, that prostitutes were notprisoners. In cities like Tokyo, they could easily leave their brothels and disappear into the anonymous urban environment. If theydid, the brothel would then sue their parents on the cash advance(a prostitute’s father typically signed the contract as guarantor).
That this only happened occasionally suggests (obviously does notprove) that most prostitutes probably chose the job themselves;
they probably did so because – in their minds – it made the best ofa bad situation.
(b) The contracts as applied. In practice, the prostitutes repaid
their loans in about three years and quit. Surely, historians sometimes insist, the brothels must have manipulated the charges forfood and clothing to keep prostitutes mired in perpetual debt. At
least on a large scale, however, they did not do this. Probably,
the brothels – established institutions with a large capital investment – realized that cheating on their initial contract would raise
their future recruitment costs. Not only did the brothels speciﬁcallypromise a woman she could quit debt-free at the end of six years
regardless of the revenue she generated, they generally kept theirpromise.
If brothels manipulated charges or otherwise cheated on theirterms to keep prostitutes locked in debt, the number of licensed
prostitutes should have stayed reasonably constant at least up to
age 30. The minimum age for licensed prostitutes was 18. In 1925,
there were 737 licensed Tokyo prostitutes aged 21, and 632 aged
22. There were only 515 aged 24, however, 423 age 25, and 254 age
27 (Fukumi, 1928: 58–59).
Similarly, if brothels were keeping prostitutes locked in d̈ebt
slavery,ẗhe number of years in the industry should have stayed
constant beyond six. Yet of 42,400 licensed prostitutes surveyed,

2. Prostitution in Prewar Japan and Korea
2.1. Introduction
The comfort stations operated as the overseas military analogue
to the private brothels in Japan and Korea. Whether in Japan or in
Korea, brothels hired, and women looked for work. The work at
stake in these transactions involved sexual services, but the economic logic to the arrangements that the two parties – brotheland prostitute – negotiated reﬂected the resources and alternative opportunities that both sides understood each other to hold.
Recruiters and brothels could lie, but prostitutes could shirk or takethe money and run. The women understood that the recruiters andbrothels could lie, and understood too that they could shirk or disappear. The brothels could replace them with other women, but
the women could ﬁnd other work too, however low-paying. Yes
indeed, parents did sometimes sell their daughters and brothels did
sometimes trap women or keep them virtually imprisoned. But theeconomic logic (detailed below) to the contractual arrangements
reﬂects the fact that brothels could not – and did not – trap or
imprison all or even most of the women.
The contracts themselves reﬂect the intelligence and resourcefulness of the women involved. They were people with few
attractive alternative economic opportunities, but they had some– and the terms of the contracts suggest they knew they had
some. They chose prostitution over those alternative opportu-

2
For the details of these contracts, see Fukumi (1928: 70, 97-99, 115-16, 220),
Kusama 1930: 206, 211, 283), Okubo (1906), Ito (1931: 229), Chuo (1926: 412-15).

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38 percent were in their second or third year, 25 percent were in
their fourth or ﬁfth, and only 7 percent were in their sixth or seventh (Ito, 1931: 208–11; Kusama, 1930: 281). On a workforce ofabout 50,000 licensed prostitutes, 18,800 women registered as new
licensed prostitutes in 1922 and 18,300 de-registered (Yamamoto,
1983: 388; Ito, 1931: 211–13). Consistent with a general tenureof about three years, in other words, one third of the work force
replaced itself every year (Keishi, 1933: 96–98; Kusama, 1930:
227–28).
(c) An example. Consider some simple calculations (Keishi, 1933:
96–98; Kusama, 1930: 227–28). In 1925, customers made 3.74 million visits to the 4,159 licensed prostitutes in Tokyo. Aside frompayments for food and drink, they spent 11.1 million yen. Of thisamount, prostitutes kept 31 percent, or 3.4 million yen – 655 yen
per prostitute. Under the standard arrangement, the prostitutewould have applied 60 percent of this amount (393 yen) toward
the repayment of her loan, and kept the rest (262 yen). She would
have repaid her initial loan of 1200 yen in about 3 years. The average adult factory wage (both sexes; room and board not provided)in 1925 was 1.75 yen per day, and in 1935 was 1.88 yen per day(Shakai, 1936: 53; Ohsato, 1966: 68). To earn their income, theprostitutes in 1924 served a mean 2.54 customers per night (Keishi,
1933: 96; Kusama, 1930: 220–21; Uemura, 1929: 492–501). They
worked about 28 nights per month (Keishi, 1933: 96–98).
2. The contractual logic. – (a) Credible commitments. This indenture contract in the licensed sector reﬂected the straightforward¨
game theoretic logic of c̈redible commitments(Ramseyer,1991).
Young women understood that prostitution was dangerous andharsh, and imposed a large upfront hit to their reputations. What ismore, they understood that they incurred that reputational hit even
if they quit after a very short period. Recruiters promised them very
high wages, but they understood that recruiters had every incentive to exaggerate. Wholly apart from the recruiters’ incentives to
exaggerate, some women would simply have doubted their own
ability to generate high revenue levels.
As a result, before a young woman agreed to work at a brothel
she needed credible assurance that she would earn wages highenough to compensate her for the negative characteristics associated with the job. Were there no reputational hit to entering theindustry, she could try the job for a few months to see how much she
could earn. Given that she incurred the reputational cost even froma short stint, however, she could not readily verify the recruiters’
claims.
The women forced recruiters to overcome this problem ofpromissory credibility by paying each prostitute a large fraction ofher earnings upfront, and capping the number of years she would
have to work. If the brothel paid her 1000 yen in advance and set
the maximum term to six years, she knew the minimum she would
earn. She also knew that if she repaid it earlier (as most prostitutes
did), she would earn even higher effective monthly wages.
In turn, the brothel needed a way to create an incentive forits prostitutes to please their customers. The women performed
harsh work in impossible-to-monitor environments. If brothels
paid them a ﬁxed wage (like an initial 1000-yen payment on aﬁxed six-year term), they had little incentive to try to please theircustomers. If a prostitute were sufﬁciently unpleasant that guests
seldom requested her by name, so much the better.
By coupling a maximum six-year term with the ability to quit
early, the brothel gave a prostitute an incentive to please her customers. The more customers requested her, the more revenue she
generated. The more she generated, the sooner she could quit.
(b) Loans. Obviously, through these contracts the brothel
extended to the woman or her parents a loan. If she or her parents needed that cash advance, the employment contract offeredit. Young European men in the 19th century needed cash to pay
their passage to North America; redemptioner contracts (a varia-

tion on indentures) offered that advance. So too here: the woman’s
promise to work facilitated a credit extension.
Two aspects of this labor market, however, suggest that thedemand for a loans does not explain the use of these contracts inthe sexual services market. First, very few other labor contracts
included a loan with the contract. Suppose parents needed a cash
advance. If a daughter could obtain a cash loan from a brothel, a
son could have obtained a cash loan from a factory. Yet sons anddaughters rarely took large cash advances upon signing employment contracts. Although some other employers did sometimes
lend money to new hires, they did so only haphazardly, and only
for relatively small amounts.
Second, the licensed brothels paid the cash advance to all newhires. Although some prospective prostitutes and some parents
would have wanted 1200-yen cash loans, many would not. The
money did not come free. The brothels did not charge a stated interest, but they obviously discounted the woman’s earnings to present
value. Were the brothels paying the large cash advances only inresponse to a demand in the credit market, they would have paid
the indentures to some of their hires and not paid to others. The
fact that they coupled the massive cash advances with all of theirlabor contracts suggests that some other contractual dynamic wasat play.
3. Unlicensed prostitutes. – Below the licensed prostitutes in thissexual services market worked the independent, unlicensed prostitutes. Given the choice between the two sectors, most prostitutes
preferred the licensed. From 1920 to 1927, of all the women who
applied for work as licensed prostitutes in Tokyo, only 62 percent
obtained jobs (Chuo, 1926: 381–82; Kusama 1930: 27–30, 36). Far
from being job that no one wanted, positions in the licensed brothels were jobs with half again as many applicants as the brothels
wanted to hire. Many of the unlicensed prostitutes were those
women whom the licensed brothels had refused to hire (Kusama,
1930: 37). Historical records contain no reliable censuses of theunlicensed workers, but otherwise trustworthy observers put their
number at about 50,000 in the mid-1920s (Fukumi 1928: 26–28,
32, 50–56, 178).
Because the unlicensed prostitutes nominally violated the law,they lacked the option of working for an established brothel. Brothels developed reputations. Given that illegal unlicensed prostitutes
could not work for a brothel with a reputation for high quality service, the unlicensed prostitutes earned less money. Among female
workers from the northern Akita prefecture in 1934, licensed prostitutes earned room & board plus 884 yen per year. Bar maids(shakufu; the general euphemism in this literature for unlicensed
prostitutes) made 518 yen, waitresses made 210 yen, and other
women workers made 130 yen (Shakai, 1935: 160–61).
The unlicensed sector also presented clients with higher risks.
By law, licensed prostitutes underwent weekly medical examinations for venereal disease, and infected women could not return towork until they recovered. In 1932, 3.2 percent of licensed prostitutes in Tokyo had venereal or other infectious disease. The same
study found a 9.7 percent rate among unlicensed prostitutes. Other
studies conﬁrm a 1–3 percent infection rate among licensed prostitutes, but ﬁnd rates much higher than 10 percent among theunlicensed.3
4. Karayuki. – As Japanese businessmen moved abroad forwork, young women followed. There in the foreign countries, thewomen worked as prostitutes for the Japanese clientele. K̈arayuki¨san,J̈apanese called them: ẅomen heading abroad(Nihon,
1920).
Given the usual preference among expatriate Japanese men forJapanese women, they earned substantially higher wages than their3
Keishi (1933: 143–44), Uemura (1918), Kusama (1930: 288, 291), Fukumi (1928:
93, 168-69), Chuo (1926: 433-35).

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local competitors. Given the cost of relocating abroad, they earned
generally higher wages than they could earn within Japan (Park,
2014: 451).
The expatriate prostitutes tended to come from two discrete
communities on or near the southern island of Kyushu: Shimabara
and Amakusa. That most of them came from a few small communities is crucial: it makes implausible any notion that they had been
tricked by duplicitous recruiters. Trickery works when the target
audience does not know what is at stake. When young women (orgirls) from small, closed communities leave for several years andthen return, they report what happened. Word travels, and othersin the community learn what the trip entails.
Author Tomoko Yamazaki (1972) traveled to Amakusa to
explore this history. There, she befriended an elderly emigrant
prostitute named Osaki. Osaki had indeed worked many years
abroad, but hers was not a story either of paternal oppression orof sexual slavery. Osaki had been born in a small village to a family
who already had a boy and a girl. A few years after her birth, herfather died. Her mother then found a new lover. As he had no interest in her very small children, she abandoned them and married
him anyway. The three children survived together in a tiny shack,and scrapped together what they could to eat. Other women in thecommunity had worked as prostitutes abroad, and had returned
with substantial sums of money. In time, her older sister left towork abroad as a prostitute herself.
When Osaki turned ten, a recruiter stopped by and offered her
300 yen upfront if she would agree to go abroad. The recruiter did
not try to trick her; even at age 10, she knew what the job entailed.
She discussed it with her brother, and decided to take the work to
help him establish himself in farming. She travelled to Malaysia,
and worked as a maid for three years. She was happy, she recalled.
Her family fed her white rice and ﬁsh every day, which was morethan the three abandoned children had been able to scavenge inAmakusa.
At age 13, she began working for the family as a prostitute.
Because of the cost of passage and three years of room and board,
she now owed 2000 yen. Under the new terms, customers paid 2
yen for a short stay and 10 yen for an overnight visit. The brothel
owner kept half the amount, and provided room and board. Outof the remaining half, she paid down her outstanding balance andbought cosmetics and clothing. If she worked hard, she found that
she could repay about 100 yen a month.
Before Osaki had ﬁnished repaying her loan, her owner died andshe found herself transferred to a brothel in Singapore. She disliked her new owner, so one day she and some of the others went
down to the harbor and bought a ticket back to Malaysia. The point
is important: even overseas, women who disliked their jobs at abrothel could – and did – simply disappear.
Osaki found a new brothel. She liked the couple who owned
it (and they negotiated her release from the earlier brothel), andin time took to calling the wife m̈other.T̈here she stayed until an
expatriate Britisher made her his mistress. Later in life, she returned
to her home in Amakusa.

1,789 Japanese licensed prostitutes worked in Korea but only 1,262
Koreans. The Japanese prostitutes entertained 450,300 guests,
where the Koreans entertained 110,700 (252 guests per year for
the Japanese prostitute, 88 for the Korean). By 1935 the number ofJapanese licensed prostitutes had fallen to 1,778 but the numberof Koreans still had risen only to 1,330 (Kim and Kim 2018: 18, 21;
Fujinaga, 2004).
Plenty of Korean women worked as prostitutes, but they simply
did not work within the licensing structure. In 1935 Korea, government records report that 414 Japanese women worked as bar
maids and 4,320 as cabaret workers (both euphemisms for unlicensed prostitutes). Of Korean women, 1,290 worked as barmaids
and 6,553 as cabaret workers.4
2. The contracts. – (a) Prices. To recruit their licensed prostitutes, Korean brothels used indenture contracts much like thosein Japan. Prices, however, reﬂected the lower standard of living in
Korea. Over the economy as a whole, from 1910 to 1940 the ratioof Japanese to Korean wages varied from about 2.5 to 1.5. Korean
men in the 1930s earned about 1–2 yen per day (Odaka 1975: 150,
153).
Within this Korean market, Japanese prostitutes charged morethan Korean prostitutes. Japanese customers were generally
wealthier than Korean customers, after all, and Japanese customers
tended to prefer Japanese women. By one account, in 1926 Korean
prostitutes charged 3 yen for an assignation; Japanese prostitutes
in Korea charged 6–7 yen. Customers spent an average 3.9 yen on
a visit to a Korean licensed prostitute; they spent an average of 8
yen on a visit to a Japanese licensed prostitute in Korea (Kim andKim 2018: 26, 89, 96; Nihon yuran, 1932: 461). In one (apparently
poorer) Korean community in 1929, Japanese licensed prostitutes
generated annual revenues of 1,052 yen; Korean licensed prostitutes generated 361 yen (Nihon, 1994).
The higher Japanese revenues resulted in higher upfront cash
payments to the Japanese prostitutes working in Korea than to
the Korean prostitutes. One source (see Kim and Kim, 2018:96) described Korean licensed prostitutes receiving advances of
250–300 yen (and occasionally 400–500 yen) on three year contracts; Japanese licensed prostitutes received 1,000–3,000 yen(note the higher amounts than in Japan). Another source calculated the average upfront payment to Korean licensed prostitutes
at 420 yen, while the Japanese licensed prostitute received 1,730
yen (Nihon, 1994: 63).
(b) Contractual term. Consistent with the experience of prostitutes in Japan quitting within six years, Korean licensed prostitutes
left the industry by their mid-20s. In one study, 61 percent of Koreanlicensed prostitutes were 20–25 years old; only 16 percent wereover 25 (Kim and Kim, 2018: 97; see Ito, 1931: 172-94). In another,
680 of the 1,101 licensed prostitutes in the Seoul area were age
20–24, but only 273 were 25−29. Of that group of 1,101, 294 werein their ﬁfth year of service; 65 were in their sixth, and 17 in theirseventh. On the base population of 1,101, 317 entered in 1924, and407 quit (Michiya, 1928).
2. Korean prostitution abroad. – Like the Japanese karayuki,
young Korean women too travelled abroad. Crucially, Korean
women went abroad to work as prostitutes long before several
Shanghai brothels became the ﬁrst licensed “comfort stations” in
1932. The comfort stations, in other words, did not begin the practice of Korean young women working abroad as prostitutes. The
young women had been working abroad as prostitutes for decades
before.
Already by the 1920s, Korean women were travelling to
Manchuria to work as prostitutes (Fujinaga, 1998). In 1929, 196

2.3. Prostitution in Korea
1. The phenomenon. – As Japanese emigrants began to move to
Korea, they established in their communities structures akin to
the licensed brothels at home. Japan formally annexed Korea in
1910, and the new government imposed uniform licensing rules
for brothels across all Korea in 1916. It set the minimum age forprostitution at 17 (not 18 as on the Japanese islands), and required
regular medical examinations (Fujinaga, 1998, 2004; Kim and Kim
2018: 18, 21).
Although both Koreans and Japanese could use the new licensing system, the Japanese did so more readily. By 1929, for example,

44, Chosen (1906-42), Nihongun (2020).

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Korean women worked in Taiwan as licensed or unlicensed prostitutes (Fujinaga, 2001; Taiwan, 1932), and in 1924 67 Korean women
worked in Dailin (Fujinaga, 2000: 219). Presumably, some served aJapanese clientele, some served a Korean clientele, and some serveda Chinese clientele.
And long after those ﬁrst comfort stations, Korean women continued to travel abroad to work as unlicensed prostitutes as well
– again, for a wide variety of customers. In 1937, for example,
the Tianjin immigrants association reported 81 unlicensed prostitutes from Korea. During one month in 1938, 90 Korean women
petitioned the (Japanese-controlled) Korean government for permission to travel to the Chinese city of Jinan to work as unlicensed
prostitutes (Kitashina, 1938). And while 12 Korean women worked
in comfort stations in Shanghai in 1940, 527 worked as unlicensed
prostitutes.5

2. Korea. – Korea had a problem distinct from any in Japan. It hada large corps of professional labor recruiters, and those recruiters
had a history of deceptive tactics. In 1935, Korean police records
counted 247 Japanese and 2,720 Korean recruiters. To be sure,these men and women (and they included both men and women)
recruited workers for factories as well as brothels (Nihon, 1994:
51; Yamashita, 2006: 675). But throughout the prewar decades,
newspapers reported recruiter fraud related to the sex industry.
Back in 1918, the Japanese language daily in Seoul (Keijo nippo,
1918; Senda, 1973: 89) complained of ä massive increase in thenumber of cases where a delinquent entices a woman to Seoul and,after playing all sorts of tricks on her, sells her off to one of the ’dubious restaurants.’Ïn the late 1930s, Korean newspapers reported aring of 11 recruiters who attracted over 50 young women into prostitution (Toa, 1937). They reported one astonishingly skillful couple
who had deceived over 100. Apparently, the couple promised parents that they would ﬁnd a job for their daughters in Seoul factories,
paid the parents 10 or 20 yen, and then forwarded the daughters tooverseas brothels for 100 to 1,300 yen each (Toa, 1939; Yamashita,
2006: 675).
Note, however, what this problem was not. It was not thatthe government – either the Korean or the Japanese government– forced women into prostitution. It was not that the Japanesearmy worked with fraudulent recruiters. It was not even that
recruiters focused on the army’s comfort stations. Instead, the problem involved domestic Korean recruiters who had been tricking
young women into working at brothels for decades.

2.4. Recruitment in Japan and Korea
1. Japan. – Many reformers sought to ban prostitution in prewar
Japan, but virtually none complained about recruiters abducting
young women into brothels. Young women from poor communities
routinely left town to work as prostitutes, but they rarely claimed
that any recruiter or brothel had forced them to take the job. Neither
did many reformers complain that recruiters tricked young women
into working for brothels (Senda, 1973: 89). Instead, when Japanesereformers complained about how women had become prostitutes,
they complained about the parents: that parents had effectivelys̈oldẗheir daughters into prostitution. They had not wanted to go,some women reported. But their parents had induced them to agree
in order to collect the indenture advance.
For the network of overseas comfort stations, the Japanese government drafted recruiting regulations designed to select only
prostitutes already in the industry (Gun’ianjo, 1938; Shina, 1938).
The government – the regulations imply – realized the politicalrisks it was running. Reformers within Japan had been ﬁghting for
decades to ban prostitution. The last thing it needed were accountsof naive young girls duped by mercenary and dishonest recruiters
into a multi-year stint in a Shanghai brothel.
To avoid this morass, the Home Ministry issued clear instructions (Gun’ianjo, 1938; Shina, 1938):

3. The comfort stations
3.1. Venereal disease
The reams of Japanese government documents about the comfort stations from the 1930s and early 1940s make clear that the
government established the institution to ﬁght venereal disease.
To be sure, it had other reasons too. It wanted to reduce rapes.
And one strange 1939 army document from North China suggested
that comfort stations would help the army ﬁght communism within
its ranks (Kitashina, 1939). Primarily, however, the military set up
the stations to ﬁght venereal disease: by deﬁnition, a c̈omfort stationẅas a brothel that had agreed to follow the military’s stringent
sanitation and contraceptive procedures.
The Japanese military did not need additional prostitutes; it had
plenty. Prostitutes have followed armies everywhere, and they followed the Japanese army in Asia. Instead, the Japanese militaryneeded healthy prostitutes. During the army’s Siberian expeditionin 1918, the commanders had found large numbers of their soldiers disabled by venereal disease.6 As the army expanded across
China in the 1930s, it found that there too the local prostitutes
were heavily infected. If its soldiers were going to patronize brothels, it wanted them patronizing brothels that kept the debilitating
diseases in check.
To minimize that risk of disease, the army took several steps.
It licensed those brothels that agreed to meet its standards – andnamed them c̈omfort stations.Ït required prostitutes at the licensed
brothels to undergo weekly medical examinations. If they became
infected, it banned them from serving customers until fully recovered. It ordered all customers to use condoms (provided free either
by the army or by the brothel), and forbad prostitutes from serving anyone who refused to do so. It required all prostitutes andcustomers to wash with disinfectants immediately after sex. And(a) For women traveling for the purpose of prostitution, approvalshall be granted only to those women heading to North andCentral China who are currently working as licensed or effective
prostitutes, who are 21 years old or older, and who are free ofvenereal and other infectious diseases . . .
(b) When receiving the identiﬁcation documents detailed in thepreceding section, the women should understand that theyshould immediately return to Japan upon the conclusion of theirprovisional contract or when that completion is no longer necessary.
(c) Women intending to travel for the purpose of prostitution must
apply to the police ofﬁce for their identiﬁcation documents inperson.
The Ministry told recruiters to hire only women who alreadyworked as prostitutes. To insure that the women knew what they
were agreeing to do, it told police not to issue travel documents
unless each woman applied in person with her contract. And at
the time of the interview, it demanded that the police tell eachapplicant to return immediately when her contract expired.

5

6

Takei (2012: tab. 6), Zai Jokai (1938, 1937).
5, see estimates of days lost, Yamada and Hirama (1923: 269).

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International Review of Law and Economics 65 (2021) 105971

it banned its soldiers from patronizing any brothels other than thelicensed institutions.7

account 3 percent of the gross revenue the prostitute generated.
In addition, the brothel was to pay the woman a fraction of thetotal gross revenue that turned on the amount of her outstanding
debt. With 1,500 yen or more outstanding, she was to receive 40
percent of the revenue; if she had less than 1,500 yen, she was toreceive 50 percent; and if she had no outstanding debt she was totake 60 percent. Of this share, the brothel was to apply 2/3 toward
the remaining debt, and directly pay the prostitute the rest (Maree,
1943; see also U.S. Ofﬁce, 1944).
Upon completing the contractual term or (if earlier) repaying
the loan, the women could go home. A Korean receptionist for comfort stations in Burma and Singapore kept a diary for several years(Choe, 2017a,b). Regularly, comfort women from his brothel completed their terms and returned to their homes. In the course of
his research on comfort women, Kako Senda met a veteran who
had helped to recruit women from Japan. Obviously, he had selfinterested reasons to say what he said. But when Senda (1973:
26-27) asked him, "were there any women who actually paid backthe 1,000 yen [advance] and went free?," "oh, there were," hereplied. "There were lots. Among the ones who went with the ﬁrst
regiment, even those who were slowest paid it off in a few months
and went free."3.2. Contract duration
Although the comfort stations hired their prostitutes on contracts that resembled those used by the Japanese licensed brothels
on some dimensions, the differences were important. To leave thecountryside for work at a Tokyo brothel, a woman wanted someconﬁdence that she would earn wages high enough to offset therisks and harshness of the job, and the hit to her reputation. To
leave for a brothel on the military front, she incurred different vastly
greater risks. Most obviously, she faced all the dangers of war –whether ﬁghting, bombing, or the rampant disease on the front.
She also faced far more serious risks of brothel non-performance.
Should a brothel owner in Tokyo try to cheat on the contract, a prostitute might complain to the police. On the front, she would ﬁnd nopolice except those that worked for the army. In Tokyo she mightsue the brothel owner in court for nonperformance. On the front,
she had no such option. In Tokyo, she could walk out of the brothel,and disappear into the anonymity of the Tokyo metropolis. On thefront, she might be able to do this – but it all depended on wheremore speciﬁcally the brothel might be.
Translating the Tokyo brothel contracts to the front, in otherwords, required changes. The most basic contractual difference: amuch shorter contractual term. Reﬂecting all these risks that followed from the brothel’s location on the front, the contracts usuallyspeciﬁed only two-year terms. Recall that the Japanese contracts
typically provided six-year terms, and the Korean contracts threeyear terms. Some Korean comfort women in Burma worked oncontracts as short as six months to a year (e.g., Josei, 1997: 1–19).

3.5. Prostitute savings
The amount that a prostitute earned beyond her up-front
advance varied. Even by the contractual terms themselves, thatamount depended on the revenue a prostitute generated. Scholars routinely suggest that that brothel owners must have cheatedtheir prostitutes – and no doubt some did. People cheat each otherin any industry.
Crucially, however, many brothel owners did indeed pay theirprostitutes beyond that large up-front advance. The receptionist with the diary noted that the comfort women kept savings
accounts. He noted that he regularly deposited money on theirbehalf in them. And he noted that he regularly sent money backto their homes on their behalf, and received telegrams conﬁrming
receipt (KIH, 2016a; Choe, 2017a,b). Indeed, some comfort women
earned and saved enough to establish comfort stations of their own(Park, 2014: 111).
Of all the Korean comfort women who left accounts, Mun Okju seems to have done well most ﬂamboyantly. She writes in her
memoir (KIH, 2016b):3.3. Contract prices
For these short but potentially dangerous assignments, thebrothels paid (annual) wages much higher than those at the Tokyo
brothels. Typically, for the two-year job they paid several hundred
yen up-front. Sample contracts for Japanese women recruited to
Shanghai comfort stations in 1937 provided advances of 500 to
1,000 yen (Naimusho, 1938). Similarly, Home Ministry documentsfrom 1938 report Japanese women travelling to the Shanghai comfort stations on 600–700 yen advances, with one woman receiving
an advance in the 700−800-yen range, and two in the 300−500-yen
range (Naimusho, 1938).
Note what this means: in compensation for the much higher
risks involved, prostitutes at the comfort stations earned muchhigher pay. Domestic prostitutes in Korea and Japan already earned
considerably more than they would earn in other employment.
Recall that those in Japan earned 1000 yen to 1200 yen on six
year terms. At the comfort stations prostitutes from Japan earned
600–700 yen on two-year terms.

I saved a considerable amount of money from tips. . . . I knewthat all the soldiers put their earnings in the saving accounts
in the ﬁeld post ofﬁce, so I decided to put my money in thesaving account. I asked a soldier to make a personal seal and put
500 yen in the account. . . . I became the owner of the savings
passbook for the ﬁrst time in my life. I worked in Daegu as ananny and a street seller from the childhood but I remained poor
no matter how hard I worked. I could not believe that I could
have so much money in my saving account. A house in Daegu
cost 1,000 yen at the time. I could let my mother have an easy life.
I felt very happy and proud. The savings passbook became mytreasure. . . .
It was fun to go shopping by rickshaw. I can’t forget the experience of shopping in a market in Rangoon. There were lots ofjewelry shops because many jewels were produced in Burma,
and ruby and jade were not expensive. One of my friends collected many jewels. I thought I should have a jewel myself, so I
went and bought a diamond.
I became a popular woman in Rangoon. There were a lot moreofﬁcers in Rangoon than near the frontlines, so I was invited tomany parties. I sang songs at parties and received lots of tips.

3.4. Contract terms
Some of the other contract terms reﬂected the greater insecurity
on the front as well. Take the 1943 military regulations regarding the stations in Malaya. Women in Japan considering a job in
Malaya could reasonably wonder: will I be robbed; when the army
retreats will I be able to carry my savings; if I die will my family haveany access to my money? In response, the regulations required thebrothel to open a (Japanese) postal savings account for each prostitute in her name. It then required the brothel to deposit in the

7
Gunsei (1942), Shina (1942), SCAP (1945), Morikawa (1939), Mandalay (1943),
U.S. Interrogation Report (n.d.), Hito gun (1942).

6

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International Review of Law and Economics 65 (2021) 105971

3.6. The closing years of the war

to shirk within their unmonitored quarters, the brothels wanted
terms that gave women an incentive to work hard. The womenagreed. Together, the women and brothels concluded indenturecontracts that coupled a large advance with one or two year terms.
Until the last months of the war, the women served their terms or
paid off their debts early, and returned home.

The Japanese government mobilized Korean workers mostaggressively during the last two years of the war, and scholars havesometimes suggested that those were the years it most aggressively
recruited comfort women. In fact, the opposite is true. The closing years were not ones where the government was trying to staff
brothels. Those were years it was moving prostitutes out of brothels
and into munitions factories.
As the war turned bad for Japan, the military began runningout of men. In 1936, 240,000 men served in the army. Once thearmy invaded China, that number climbed to 950,000 (1937). It hit
3.58 million in 1943, 5.4 million in 1944, and 7.34 million in 1945.
Increasingly, the army called up reservists approaching age 40. By
the end of the war, 60.9 percent of the men aged 20–40 had servedin the military, and 2 million had been killed (Watanabe 2014: 1,
8).
The military was also running out of supplies (see generally
Miwa, 2014). As the army called up its 30-something reservists andsent them to the front, it needed others to take their place in themines and factories. It had not drafted its young Koreans (despite
their being Japanese citizens) into the army. By 1944, however, it
did begin sending large numbers of Korean men to those mines
and factories. Simultaneously, it began sending young unmarried
Japanese and Korean women into the factories as well.8
Brothels were the least of the government’s worries. Steadily,brothels and high-end restaurants began to close. The army was
shifting all plausible Japanese men from civilian production to thefront. To replace them it was moving Korean men to Japan. It
was moving both Japanese and Korean women out of homes andinessential jobs and into munitions production.9 Think Rosy the
Riveter in Korea: the Mainichi shimbun newspaper (1944) published a letter from a woman hauling freight in Pusan harbor. Our
country needs us, she exclaimed. J̈ust because we’re women doesn’tmean that we can closet ourselves in our homes.B̈etween the general austerity in the air and the loss of prostitutes to the factories,
brothels steadily went out of business.10

References
Choe, Kilsung, 2017a. Chosen shusshin no choba nin ga mita ianfu no jijitsu [The
Truth About Comfort Women, as Seen by a Korean Receptionist]. Haato
shuppan, Tokyo.
Choe, Sang-Hun, 2017b. Deal with Japan on Former Sex Slaves Failed Victims,
South Korean Panel Says. N.Y Times, Dec. 27.
Chosen, sokakufutokeinempo, 1906. 1906-1942. Zaicho kanren gyosha [Related
Industry Parties in Korea] (1906-1942), in Suzuki, et al. (2006).
Chosen, sokakufu, 1944. Kokumin choyo no kaisetsu [Commentary on Citizen
Mobilization], Oct. 1944, in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 2-597).
Chosen, norodosha, 1945. Workers in Korea], Mar. 10, 1945, in Suzuki, et al. (2006:
2-563).
Chuo shokugyo shokai jimu kyoku, reprinted in Ken’ichi Taniguchi, ed., Kindaiminshu no kiroku [A Report of the Modern Populace] 3-412 (Shin jinbutsu oraisha) 1926. Geishogi shakufu shokaigyo ni kansuru chosa [An Investigation into
the Placement Industry for Geisha, Prostitutes, and Bar Maids] (1926).
Fujinaga, Takeshi, 1998. Nichiro senso to Nihon ni yoru “Manshu” e no kosho seido
ishoku [The Russo-Japanese War and The Transplantation of The Licensed
Prostitution System by Japan to “Manchuria”]. In: Katsurakawa, Mitsumasa(Ed.), Kairaku to kei [Recreation and Regulation] (Osaka daigaku sangyo
kenkyujo).
Fujinaga, Takeshi, 2000. Chosen shokuminchi shihai to “ianfu” seido no seiritsu
katei [Control over the Korean Colony and the Establishment Process ofthe“Comfort Women” System]. In: VAWW-NET (Ed.), “Ianfu” senji seiboryoku
no jittai, I [The Reality of the “Comfort Women” and Sexual Violence in
Wartime, I] (Ryokufu shuppan), at 196.
Fujinaga, Takeshi, et al., 2001. Shokuminchi Taiwan ni okeru Chosenjin
sekkyakugyo to’ ianfu’ no doin [The Korean Entertainment Industry in Colonial
Taiwan and The Mobilization of the’ Comfort Women¨. In: Katsurakawa,
Mitsumasa (Ed.), Kindai shakai to baishun mondai [Early Modern Society and
the Prostitution Problem] (Osaka sangyo daigaku sangyo kenkyu jo).
Fujinaga, Takeshi, 2004. Shokuminchi kosho seido to Chosenjin josei [The Colonial
Licensed Prostitution System and Korean Women]. In: Niccho yuko sokushin(Ed.), Nihon to Chosen no kankei shi [History of the Relations Between Japanand Korea] (Agenda Project).
Fukumi, Takao, 1928. Teito ni okeru bai’in no kenkyu [A Study of Prostitution in the
Capital] (Hakubunkan).
Gun’ianjo jugyofuto boshu ni kansuru ken [Regarding the Recruitment of Military
Comfort Women]. 1938. Army Ministry Infantry Bureau Proposal], to North
and Middle China forces, dated March 4, Riku shimitsu No.745, vol. 10, 1938, in
Josei (1997: 2-5).
Gunsei kanbu bisaya shibu [Philippines]. 1942. Ianjo kitei sofu no ken [Regardingtransmittal of Comfort Station Regulations], Nov. 22, 1942, reprinted in Josei(1997: 3-187).
Hakken no gyosha ga godo [Eight Firms Merge], Keijo nippo, Nov. 30, 1943, inSuzuki, et al. (2006: 2-579).
Hanto no kinro doin taisei [Labor Mobilization on the Peninsula], Keijo nippo, Aug.
27, 1944, in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 2-595).
Hata, Ikuhito, June, at 328 1992. Showa shi no nazo wo tou [Investigating thePuzzle of Showa History]. Seiron.
Hatarakeru onna no hitoha hitori nokorazu hatarako [Women Able to work Should
All Work], Mainichi shimpo, Sept. 23, 1943, in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 2-568).
Higuchi, Yuichi, 2005. Soryokusen taisei to shokuminchi [The Total War Systemand the Colonies]. In: Hayakawa, Norio (Ed.), Shokuminchi to senso sekinin[The Colonies and War Responsibility] (Yoshikawa kobun kan), at 53.
Hito gun seikanbu. 1942. Ianjo kitei sofu no ken [Case Regarding the Transmition of
Comfort Station Rules], Nov. 22, 1942, reprinted in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 1-383).
Ito, Hidekichi, reprinted (Tokyo: Fuji shuppan 1982) 1931. Sekitoka no kanojo no
seikatsu [The Lives of Women Under the Red Lights] (Jitsugyo no Nihon sha).
Josei no tameno Ajia heiwa kokumin kikin, ed. 1997. Seifu chosa: J̈ugun ianfu’kankei shiryoshusei [Government Investigation: Documents Relating to theC̈omfort Women Accompanying the Military] (Ryukei shosha).
Keijo [Seoul] nippo, June 12 1918. quoted in Takeshi Fujinaga, Shokuminchi
Chosen ni okeru kosho seido no kakuritsu katei [The Establishment Process for
the Licensed Prostitution System in Colonial Korea], Nijusseiki kenkyu, Dec.
2004, evening ed.
Keishi cho sokan kanbo bunsho ka. 1933. Showa nan nen keishi cho tokei ichi ippan[An Outline of Police Agency Statistics for 1932] (Sokan kanbo bunsho ka).
KIH, available at: 2016a. Korea Institute of History. 2016. K̈orean Comfort Station
Manager’s Diary,Änalyzed by Professor Choe Kilsung. Apr. 24, 2016. http://
scholarsinenglish.blogspot.com/2016/04/korean-comfort-station-managersdiary.html.
KIH, Apr. 20, 2016 2016b. Korea Institute of History. 2016. Former Korean Comfort
Woman Mun Oku-chu.

4. Conclusion
The Japanese army had a problem. It did not lack for brothels.
Prostitutes follow armies everywhere, and they had followed theJapanese army in the 1930s and 1940s. The problem was medical:
these local prostitutes suffered from very high levels of debilitating
venereal disease. If their soldiers were going to frequent brothels,
the command at least wanted them in healthy brothels.
Toward that end – not toward better public health but toward
maintaining a deadlier military force – the military imported thestandard Japanese and Korean licensing system. Brothels and prostitutes registered with it. Designated physicians conducted weekly
medical examinations. Brothels required condoms, and prostitutes
were told to refuse clients who balked. Both clients and prostitutes
were to wash with disinfectant after every encounter.
The contracts themselves followed basic game theoretic principles of c̈redible commitments.B̈rothel owners (not the military)
hired the bulk of the new prostitutes, and hired most of themfrom Japan and Korea. Realizing the incentive brothel owners had
to exaggerate their future earnings, women wanted a large portion of their pay upfront. Brothels agreed. Knowing that they were
headed for the front, women wanted a maximum service length.
Brothels agreed. In turn, realizing the incentive the women had

8Hatarakeru (1943), Romu (1943), Chosen (1944, 1945), Higuchi (2005: 53).
Senso (1943), Hanto (1944).
10
Senso (1943), Hata (1992: 330, 333), Hakken (1943).
97

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International Review of Law and Economics 65 (2021) 105971

Kim, Pu-ja, Kim, Yon, 2018. Shokuminchi yukaku [Colonial Pleasure Quarters](Yoshikawa kobunkan).
Kitashina, hakenjimukan, 1938. Sainan yuki ryokaku no seigen [The Limitation ofPassengers Bound for Jinan], Mar. 1, 1938, in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 1-143).
Kitashina homen gun shireibu. 1939. Kyosanto no waga guntai ni taisuru[Regarding the Communist Party and Our Military], April 5, 1939, in Suzuki,
et al. (2006: 1-148).
Kusama, Yasoo, 1930. Jokyu to baishofu [Waitresses and Prostitutes] (Hanjin sha).
Mainichi, shimbun, 1944. Feb. 26, 1944, in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 2-562).
Mandalay, command, 1943. Ianjo kitei [Comfort Station Rules], May 26, 1943,
reprinted at Josei (1997: 4-288).
Maree, gunseikan, 1943. Ianjo shisetsu [Comfort Facilities], Nov. 11, 1943, inSuzuki, et al. (2006: 1-433).
Michiya, Saiichiro, 1928. Baishunfu ronko [Studies in Prostitution], in Suzuki, et al.
(2006: 1-786).
Minami Shina hakengun. 1939. Eisei shun ho [Sanitation Dsipatch], Aug. 1939,
reprinted in Josei (1997: 2-79).
Miwa, Yoshiro, 2014. Japan’s Economic Planning and Mobilization in Wartime,
1930s-1940s. Cambridge University Press.
Morikawa butaicho. 1939. Morikawa butai tokushu iangyomu ni kansuru kitei[Morikawa Detachment Rules Regarding Special Comfort Industry], Nov. 14,
1939, reprinted at Josei (1997: 2-327).
Naimusho, 1938. Shina toko fujo [Women Passage to China], Feb. 18, 1938, inSuzuki, et al. (2006: 1-124).
Nihon yuran sha, ed. 1932. Yukaku annai [Guide to Pleasure Quarters] (Nihon
yuran sha). Taiwan sotokufu. 1932. Sekkyaku gyosha su [Number ofEntertainers], Dec. 1932, in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 1-858).
Nihon no shokuminchi shihai to kokkaiteki kanri baishun [Japan’s Colonial Control
and the National Management of Prostitution], Chosenshi kenkyukai ronbun
shu, 32: 37 (1994).
Nihon Kirisuto kyo fujin kyofu kai. 1920.Kaigai shugyofu mondai, I [The Overseas
Prostitution, I] (Nihon kirisuto kyo), reprinted (Jobundo, 2010).
Nihongun, 2020. “ianfu” kankei shiryo shusei [Collection of Materials Relating to
the Japanese Military “Comfort Women”] (Akaishi shoten).
Odaka, Konosuke, 1975. Nihon tochika ni okeru Chosen no rodo keizai [Korean
Labor Economy Under Japanese Control]. Keizai kenkyu 26, 145.
Ohsato, Katsuma, ed. 1966. Meiji iko honpo shuyo keizai tokei [Principal Economic
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Park, Yu-Ha, 2014. Teikoku no ianfu [Comfort Women of the Empire] (Asahi
shimbun shuppan).
Ramseyer, J.Mark, 1991. Indentured prostitution in imperial Japan: credible
commitments in the commercial sex industry. J. Law Econ. Org. 7, 89.
Romu kanri no kyoka e [Toward Strengthening Labor Management], Keijo nippo,
Sept. 23, 1943, in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 2-567).
SCAP, 1945. Research Report: Amenities in the Japanese Armed Forces, Nov. 15,
1945, reprinted in Josei (1997: 5-139).
Senda, Kako, 1973. Jugun ianfu [Military Comfort Women] (Futaba sha).
Senso he hanto romu wo gyoshu [Focus Peninsular Labor on War], Keijo nippo, Oct.
9, 1943, in Suzuki, Yamashita & Tonomura, supra note, vol. 2, at 569 (limiting
employment of women in sekkyaku industry in Korea).

Shakai, jigyokenkyujo, 1936. Shuro shone shojo rodo jijo chosa [Survey of Working
Conditions of Working Boys and Girls] (Chuo shakai jigyo kyokai).
Shina toko fujo no toriatsukai ni kansuru ken [Regarding the Handling of Women
Bound for China], Feb. 23, 1938, Home Ministry, Police Bureau, Hatsukei No. 5.
Shina haken gun. 1942. Showa 17 nen 7 gatsu fukukankai doseki jo iken [Opinions
Espressed at the July 1942 Vice Ofﬁcers Meeting], Oct. 3, 1942, reprinted in
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Taiwan, sotokufu, 1932. Sekkyaku gyosha su [Number of Entertainers], Dec. 1932,
in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 1-858).
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ni tsuite [Regarding the Korean Community in Shanghai During theJapan-China War] (Nicchu senso shi kenkyukai). http://iccs.aichi-u.ac.jp/
archives/010/201205/4fc4385498c26.pdf.
Toa, nippo, Nov. 5 1937. Shojo yuin dan kyukei [Gang to Entrap Young Women
Sentenced], in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 1-829).
Toa, nippo, Mar. 7 1939. Shinpan momoiro hakuku kyo. in Suzuki, et al. (2006:
1-829).
U.S. Interrogation Report. N.D. No name, No number, No date, reprinted in Josei(1997: 5-111).
U.S. Ofﬁce of War Information, 1944. Interrogation Report No. 49, Oct. 1, 1944, in
Josei (1997: 5-203).
Uemura, Yukitada, 1918. Urare yuku onna [Sold Women] (Daito kaku), reprinted in
Kindai fujin mondai meichosaku shu zokuhen [A collection of Famous Authors
on Women’s Issues – Continued Series], 5-57 (Nihon tosho sentaa, 1982).
Uemura, Yukitada, 1929. Nihon yuri shi [A History of the Japanese Pleasure
Quarters] (Shun’yo do).
Watanabe, Manabu, 2014. Dare ga heishi ni nattano ka (1) [Who Became a Soldier(1)]. Shakai gakubu kiyo 119, 1.
Yamada, Hiromichi, Hirama, Sahashi, 1923. Tokei yori mitaru karyubyo [Venereal
Diseases Seen Through Statistics] (Nanzan do).
Yamamoto, Shun’ichi, 1983. Nihon kosho shi [A History of Licensed Prostitution in
Japan] (Chuo hoki shuppan).
Yamashita, Yoshie, 2006. Chosen ni okeru kosho seido no jisshi to so no tenkai [TheRealization and Development of the Licensed Prostitution System in Korea], inSuzuki, et al. (2006: 2-675).
Yamazaki, Tomoko, 1972. Sandakan hachiban shokan [Sandakan Number 8
Brothel] (Chikuma shobo).
Zai Jokai, soryojikan, 1937. Zai Jokai soryojikan ni okeru tokko keisatsu jimu jokyo[Circumbstances of the Special Police Matters for the Shanghai Consulate], Dec.
1937, in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 1-74).
Zai Jokai, soryojikan, 1938. Showa 13 nenju ni okeru zairyo hojin [Resident
Japanese in 1938] (1938), in Suzuki, et al. (2006: 1-118).

Further reading
Suzuki, Y., et al., 2006. Nihongun “inanfu” kankei shiryo shusei[Collection of Materials Relating to the Japanese Military “Comfort
Women”], 1. Akashi shoten, Tokyo.

8

Harvard Professor’s Paper on ‘Comfort Women’:
Perfect Opportunity to Raise a Serious Discussion on the Subject

South Korean media is at work again, going on their witch-hunt against Professor JohnMark Ramseyer of Harvard Law School, who published a paper titled “Contracting for Sex
in the Pacific War.” The Korean Student Association of Harvard University released astatement, which has since collected many signatures, criticizing Professor Ramseyer anddemanding his apology as well as the retraction of his paper. Meanwhile, South Korean
media has been gleefully broadcasting this situation, dismissing Professor Ramseyer’s
academic paper as “nonsense.”
For a long time, activist groups such as the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for
Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (The Korean Council) have been propagating the
hypothesis that comfort women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military.
Academic debate and verification about this were attempted in Korea by several
academics, including Professor Yooha Park, Professor Younghoon Lee, and Professor
Seokchoon Lew. But their efforts were always thwarted by thoroughly anti-Japanese,
nationalist activist groups and media and by the judiciary that complied with theiragenda. As such, we cannot express enough how deeply concerned we are that thiscontroversy over Professor Ramseyer's paper might go down the exact same track, as wehave observed over the years in South Korea.

1.
First of all, what we would like to point out is that Professor Ramseyer’s paper was
officially approved to be published by the International Review of Law and Economics, arenowned international academic journal, after his paper received appropriate evaluations
including peer review. The paper was recognized for its originality by experts ininternational academia, and the subject of the paper was acknowledged as worthy ofacademic debate. So why are external agents, who have nothing to do with academia,
talking of the paper being ‘nonsense’ and trying to prevent any discussion from taking
place?

Contrary to all the fuss that Korean media is making, Professor Ramseyer’s paper isactually not about proving ‘comfort women’ are prostitutes. Using the concept of"credible commitments" in game theory, the paper delves into unique types and terms ofcontracts between the ‘comfort station’ owner and the ‘comfort women’, which cannot be
explained from the perspective of sex slave theory. From the law and economics
perspective, it investigates why the owner and the women involved in domestic
prostitution in Japan and colonial Joseon (Korea) signed long-term contracts that allowed
them to exchange large sums of wage advances and why a unique method of profit
distribution was formed between them. Moreover, it discusses that in the case of comfort
women, since they were dealing with wartime soldiers, not just with any soldiers at
ordinary times, all conditions such as their advance payments, wages, and periods
differed from the conditions for ordinary prostitutes who dealt with civilians.
From an economic point of view, it is understandable that Professor Ramseyer
presupposes that contracts of comfort women were voluntary in nature. This is because,in economics, coercive measures, such as forced mobilization, are viewed as irrational
options that cost a lot more than market transactions. Not only does the paper explore
the working conditions of prostitutes under the authorized prostitution system in Japan,
but it also explains in detail how the process of becoming a comfort woman was
different for those from colonial Joseon than for those from mainland Japan. It alsopresents specific data that shows that the tyranny of pimps was particularly harsh incolonial Joseon.
Follow-up articles and academic debates in the future will be able to gradually decide
if Professor Ramseyer's arguments were thorough enough or if they had any serious
academic flaws. To a certain extent, academics in ivory towers remain independent fromsociety and should be able to have fierce discussions even on subjects that areconsidered taboo by society, such as the “comfort women issue.” Such a processcontributes to raising the intellectual level of society as a whole. Open and rigorous
debates constitute the basis of a sound academic process.
2.
In this regard, we are particularly shocked at the anti-academic behavior of many
Harvard students of Korean heritage, who are demanding an apology from Professor
Ramseyer for his article and are abruptly requesting that his paper be retracted from thejournal. We cannot help but point out and criticize this type of behavior reminiscent of
the 'Cultural Revolution' in China.
'Retraction' is a final disciplinary action taken after an investigation is carried out by ajournal or when serious misconduct is found in a thesis. What the students are trying to
do is trample on the very value of academic freedom over an issue about which one canhave different opinions and perspectives, even before a vigorous discussion has takenplace regarding the subject of the paper. How will the international academia andscholars react to this situation?
At this time, other than the article written by a student of Korean heritage published in
Harvard's student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, not too many articles in international
media are currently addressing the controversy over Professor Ramseyer's paper. It’s
partly because the subject requires specialized knowledge, but more importantly, it’s
because foreign media has an unspoken understanding that this issue is basically amatter that needs to be settled by academic practices and logic.
In that respect, we wonder if the anti-academic behavior of Korean students at Harvard
will only invite criticism from international media, giving them another reason toundermine Korea. If there are adults who prompted students to act this way, they should
also take the time to reflect on their irresponsible behavior.
3.
At the same time, we ought to be extremely wary of the fact that Professor Ramseyer's
personal life is under more scrutiny than the actual content of his paper. For instance,
those criticizing him focus on the fact that he stayed in Japan for a long time during hischildhood, that he is a Mitsubishi professor, and that he received a medal from Japanese
government.
Of course, pointing out a possible conflict of interest for a scholar making claims thathave social implications is not, in itself, wrong. However, such inspection must be equally
carried out for those on the other side, who are criticizing Professor Ramseyer.
It’s because ‘academic freedom’ is supposed to guarantee fair treatment andprocedures, even to those who make unpopular or uncomfortable claims.

In this regard, we should equally recognize the fact that Professor Ramseyer is ascholar at the most prestigious law school of America and has been widely recognized inacademia for his academic achievements.
4.
In international academia, there have been various discussions even on the mostfundamental problem concerning the comfort women, such as whether ‘forced
mobilization’ actually took place and whether the concept of ‘sex slave’ is an appropriate
term or not.
Only in South Korea has the debate about the issue remained stagnant for more thanten years. The rigid position of activist and civic groups, which are not at all or only
remotely related to academia, and that of international organizations, which only accept
unilateral claims lacking academic depth, became the main authority on the issue andhindered any serious conversation from taking place.
If we, South Korea, ever wish to participate in the conversation on comfort womenamong international scholars, we must develop and present arguments strictly built on
facts and logic and stop using reckless activism and impertinent, false ‘fact checks’.
In order to do that, we should be able to have discussions on the subject without
censorship. We cannot keep treating the hypothesis of sexual slavery in the Japanesemilitary as some sort of a sacrosanct realm that is perfectly error-free.
As we, the Republic of Korea, are one of the parties directly involved in the issue, theobligation for us to allow rigorous conversations about comfort women proves to be all
the more important than ever.

February 9th, 2021

Signed by- Kyujae Jeong (Busan mayoral candidate, Freedom United Party, April 7, 2021 Byelection)- Daeho Kim (Seoul mayoral candidate, Freedom United Party, April 7, 2021 By-election)- Dongshik Ju (Representative, Citizen's Solidarity for Regional Equality in Korea)- Minho Han (Representative, Citizen’s Movement for Unveiling Confucius Institutes ofChina)- Younghoon Lee (Principal of Syngman Rhee School & Retired Professor of Economics,
Seoul National University)- Seokchoon Lew (Retired Professor of Sociology, Yonsei University)- Ikjong Joo (Researcher & Lecturer, Syngman Rhee School)- Anki Joung (Former Research Professor of Economics, Korea University)- Wooyoun Lee (Senior Researcher, Nakseongdae Institute for Economic Research)- Byungheon Kim (Representative, Korean History Textbook Research Center)- Deokhyo Choi (CEO & Journalist, Korea Human Rights News,)- Uiwon Hwang (CEO & Journalist, Mediawatch)- Gisu Kim (Lawyer & Co-representative of Solidarity of Lawyers for Freedom andUnification)- Donghwan Lee (Lawyer & President of Chungcheong Chapter of Lawyers for Human
Rights and Unification of Korea)- Soyeon Kim (Lawayer & President of Daejon Chapter of Lawyers for Human Rights
and Unification of Korea)

APPENDIX 3 – A LIST OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE “COMFORTWOMEN” SOURCES (from material compiled by Columbia University
Law School)
A List of Sources•

Barkan, Elazar. "Sex Slaves: Comfort Women and Japanese Guilt."
In The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating HistoricalInjustices. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.

•

Brooks, Roy L. When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy over
Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice. New York: New York
University Press, 1999.

•

Chai, Alice Yun. "Korean Feminist and Human Rights Politics: The
Chongshindae/Jugunianfu ("Comfort Women")
Movement." In Korean American Women: From Tradition to Modern
Feminism, eds. Young L. Song and Ailee Moon. Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 1998.

•

Choi, Chungmoo, ed. The Comfort Women: Colonialism, War, andSex. Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997.

•

Chong, Yong-hwan. Reconcilation for Whom? Comfort Women of the
Empire as Invented History. Soul-si: Purun Yoksa, 2016.

•

Chung, Hyun-Kyung. " 'Your comfort versus my death': Korean
comfort women." In War's Dirty Secret: Rape, Prostitution, and Other
Crimes against Women, ed. Anne Llewellyn Barstow. Cleveland, OH:
The Pilgrim Press, 2000: 13-25.

•

Dolgopol, Ustinia and Snehal Paranjape. Comfort Women: An
Unfinisheed Ordeal. Report of a Mission. Geneva, Switzerland:International Commission of Jurists, 1994.

•

Dudden, Alexis. Troubled Apologies – Among Japan, Korea and theUnited States. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

•

Gustafsson, Karl. Transnational Civil Society and the Politics ofmemory in Sino-Japanese Relations: Exhibiting the "Comfort
Women" in China. Lund: Centre for East abd South-East AsianStudies, Lund University, 2014.

•

Hata, Ikuhiko. "No Organized or Forced Recruitment: Misconceptions
about Comfort Women and the Japanese Military."Society for theDissemination of Historical Fact (2007). Available at: http://www.sdhfact.com/CL02_1/31_S4.pdf•

Hata, Ikuhiko. "The Flawed U.N. Report on Comfort Women." In
Women and Women’s Issues in post World War II Japan, ed. Edward
R. Beauchamp. New York: Garland, 1998.

•*Henson, Maria Rosa. Comfort Woman: A Filipina's Story of
Prostitution and Slavery Under the Japanese Military. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999.

•

Hicks, George. The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of
Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War. New York andLondon: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.

•

Hicks, George. "The Comfort Women." In The Japanese Wartime
Empire, 1931-1945, eds. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R.
Peattie. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.

•*Howard, Keith, ed. True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women:
Testimonies. London: Cassell, 1995.

•

Hyun, Dae-song. The Historical Perceptions of Korea and Japan: Its
Origins and Points of the Issues Concerning Dokdo-Takeshima,
Yasukuni Shrine, Comfort Women, and Textbooks. Gyoha-eup
Kyeonggi-do, Korea: Nanam, 2008.

•

International Symposium on Filipino Comfort Women: Papers andProceedings. Diliman, Quezon City: Institute of International Legal
Studies, University of the Philippines Law Center, 1994.

•

Kim-Gibson. Dai Sil. Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women.
Parkersburg, Iowa: Mid-Prairie Books, 1999.

•

Kimura, Maki. Unfolding the "Comfort Women" Debates: Modernity,
Violenence, Women's Voices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

•*Media Joho Translation Committee, trans. Can You Hear Us? The
Untold Narratives of Comfort Women. Seoul, Korea: The
Commission on Verification and Support for the Victims of Forced
Mobilization under Japanese Colonialism in Korea, 2014.

•

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea. Documents on theVictims of Sexual Slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army During theSecond World War. United Nations Reports and Relevant
Documents. 2014.

•

Naoko, Kumagai. The Comfort Women: Historical, Political, Legaland Moral Perspectives. Translated by David Noble. Tokyo:
International House of Japan: 2016.

•

Nihon Bengoshi Rengokai. Recommendation on the Issue of"Comfort Women." Supplementary Explanation of the
Recommendation on the Issue of "Comfort Women." Tokyo (?):Japan
Federation of Bar Associations, 1995.

•

Nihon Bengoshi Rengokai. Recent Development of JFBA's Activities
on the Issue of "Comfort Women." Tokyo: Japan Federation of Bar
Associations, 1998.

•

Norma, Caroline. The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery
During the China and Pacific Wars. London and New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

•

Pilzer, Joshua D. Hearts of Pine: Songs in the Lives of Three Korean
Survivors of the Japanese Comfort Women. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012.

•*Qiu, Peipei. Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial
Japan's Sex Slaves. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

•*Ruff O'Herne, Jan. 50 Years of Silence. Sydney: Editions Tom
Thompson, 1994.

•

Sajor, Indai Lourdes, ed. Common Grounds: Violence Against
Women in War and Armed Conflict Situations. Quezon City,
Philippines: Asian Center for Women’s Human Rights, 1998.

•

Sancho, Nelia. War Crimes on Asian Women: Military Sexual Slavery
by Japan during World War II: The Case of the Filipino Comfort
Women, Part II. Manila: Asian Women Human Rights Council, 1998.

•*Schellstede, Sangmie Choi, ed. Comfort Women Speak: Testimony
by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military. New York: Holmes & Meier,
2000.

•

Schmidt, David A. Ianfu: The Comfort Women of the JapaneseImperial Army of the Pacific War: Broken Silence.Lewiston, NY:
Edwn Mellen Press, 2000.

•

Soh, C. Sarah. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence andPostcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2008.

•

Son, Elizabeth W. Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,”
Performance, and Transpacific Redress. Ann Arbor: Universityof Michigan Press, 2018.

•

Stetz, Margaret and Bonnie Oh, eds. Legacies of the Comfort
Women of World War II. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001.

•

Tanaka, Yuki. Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War
II. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.

•

Tanaka, Toshiyuki. Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and
Prostitution during World War II and the U.S.
Occupation. London: Routledge, 2002.

•

Ueno, Chizuko. Nationalism and Gender. Translated by Beverly
Yamamoto. Melbourse: Trans Pacific Press, 2004.

•

Yoshimi, Yoshiaki. Comfort Women. Sex Slavery in the JapaneseMilitary During World War II. Translated by Suzanne O'Brien. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

•

The Truth of the Japanese Military "Comfort Women." Seoul:
Northeast Asian History Foundation, 2007.

•

United States Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global
Environment. Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women:
Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the
Global Environment of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House ofRepresentatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, First Session,
February 15, 2007.

•

War Crimes on Asian Women: Military Sexual Slavery by Japan
During World War II: The Case of the Filipino Comfort Women.
Manila: Asian Women Human Rights Council, 1998.

SUZUKI et al 2006, vol. 1 pp. 118-120

APPENDIX 5
Suzuki et al 2006, vol. 1 p. 143

SUZUKI et al 2006, vol. 1 pp. 118-120