Considering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a
Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation
Park Yu-ha(Professor, Sejeon University)
Editorial note: The following text is the content of a presentation given at an Introduction to Peace
Education event held in Okinawa in June 2014. After Professor Park published her Comfort Womenof the Empire in South Korea in August 2013, she was sued for defamation on the basis of this bookin June 2014. To this day, heated debate on the issue continues in Japan as well as in her native South
Korea. The text below, a transcript of her presentation, is presented in largely unedited form in line withthe purpose of this book1 and the wishes of the author.
——
What is the best way to consider the “comfort women” issue? I would like to approach thisquestion—perhaps the greatest cause of worsening relations between Japan and South Korea inrecent years—by exploring the thoughts of two historians at the forefront of the comfort womenissue in Japan, adding my own commentary to their positions.
The foundation for my presentation comes from a radio program broadcast in June 2013,“Hata Ikuhiko and Yoshimi Yoshiaki: Considering the Comfort Women Debate with Two Leading
Historians.” Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has said that he wishes to “leave interpretation of the past
up to the historians.” However, the debate among even the so-called leaders in that field has been
unsuccessful to date in crystallizing the points of broad agreement on historical truth, making it
clear that historians on their own are unlikely to produce an agreement between Japan and South
Korea on the comfort women issue. Indeed, the issue is so thorny that it is proving difficult to
produce an agreement even within Japan, let alone Japan and South Korea.
What are the reasons for this difficulty? During the long years that the issue remained unresolved,
citizens of both countries absorbed detailed information about the issue, taking it beyond academia
and into the realm of politics. What is more, in addition to information concerning the experiencesof the comfort women and the traditional discourse concerning it, now attitudes and emotions, alongwith people’s concerns about their own political positions have entered the picture, making it difficult
indeed to break through the fixed ideas that they have on the comfort women issue. The number ofpeople connected to the issue, either directly or indirectly, has also risen over the years, with mostof them coming to view themselves as concerned parties indirectly connected to the comfort womenquestion. For many, given the long period of time that they have associated themselves with theissue, the “comfort women” issue has become to identify the very means of expressing their identity
as well as their very way of living. We have thus arrived at a time when it is extraordinarily hard to
break down people’s positions and ways of thinking in this area, preventing the participants from
1 This text was published as chapter 5 of Yamaguchi Takeshi, ed., Heiwa to kyosei o mezasu Higashi Ajia kyotsu
kyozai: Rekishi kyokasho, Ajia kyodotai, heiwateki kyoson (Common Teaching Materials for East Asia Aimed at
Achieving Peace and Symbiosis: History Textbooks, Asian Communities, and Peaceful Coexistence), Akashi Shoten,
2016.

1

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

arriving at an agreement with one another. And all of these factors have arisen in part because weare now in the post–Cold War era.
What is needed now is, firstly, a shared understanding of who the comfort women were, alongwith the recognition of the protest movements and conflicts that have taken place over the last 20
years. In short, we must grasp not only the comfort women issue but also the conflict associatedwith it in order to achieve a common understanding of all the questions involved.
1. Who Were the Comfort Women?
Defining the “Comfort Women”
Since the early modern era, a rising number of men headed out of their own countries on theirown, making use of rapidly developing transportation networks and internalizing their nations’ drive
to extend influence overseas. This was soon accompanied by a growing number of women moving
abroad to support these men in their activities. In the case of Japan, this first took the form of theprovision of women to serve foreign military personnel arriving on Japanese shores, but around thesame time, such women also began traveling overseas. These were the so-called Karayuki-san, manyof whom hailed from impoverished households, either being sold by their parents or making thissacrifice of their own volition for the sake of their families.
Some of these women went to the Korean Peninsula in the wake of the men who were stationed
there as part of the imperial military or who had moved there in line with the state policy promoting
the movement of Japan’s population to its colony. In time, a licensed prostitution system was set up
in Korea, and Korean women also began working within it. From the time of the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904–5, there had been women “offering comfort” to the men in the military; they had cometo be called the joshigun, the “women’s army,” in the light of the ancillary role they played to Japan’s
troops.
In other words, “comfort women” could be defined as “women who moved to combat zones orcolonized areas to support the men who were there as part of the state’s policies to extend Japan’s
political and economic power.” The “comfort stations” used by troops and merchants alike appearedquite early on. Terms in Japanese like iansho (comfort stations) and ianfu (comfort women) areoften thought of as having their genesis in the 1930s, but the functions they describe began in theearly modern era as an aspect of imperialism broadly defined, including that practiced by Western
powers.
“Comfort Women” and “Korean Comfort Women”
As a matter of course, in seeking to provide comfort women to support the men departing fromJapan to points overseas, the authorities – naturally - looked first to Japanese women. Korean women
were incorporated into this system once the Korean Peninsula became a colony of the Japanese
empire. By the 1920s, Korean women were already stationed in places like China and Taiwan toserve the needs of the Japanese (and the Koreans who had become subjects of the Japanese empire)
there. These women may be understood as being the precursor to those who today come to mind
when one hears the phrase “Korean comfort women.”

2

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

The Karayuki-san Become the “Women’s Army”
Among the Karayuki-san were some who, even though they were sold by their families andworked in brothels, had carved out a situation for themselves there, achieving a status where they
could lend some money or offer a place to carry out confidential talks to the men who were there“for the sake of the nation.” It was this status that earned these women the moniker “women’sarmy.” While they were looked down upon from many quarters in society, they had also achieved acertain “promotion,” so to speak. There were also some cases where these women expressed pridein being able to support, however indirectly, the men who were laboring for the sake of the Japanesenation. Once the state began moving toward war, they would also support the cause of Japaneseimperialism. It must be noted, of course, that during all of these phases there was little change inthe fundamentally brutal nature of their lives, which was such that it drove more than a few of these
women to try taking their own lives.
2. On the Comfort Women During the 15-Year War
A Range of “Comfort Stations”
From the time of the Mukden Incident of September 1931, the Japanese Imperial Army managed
hygiene and other related issues at prostitution facilities for the sake of troops stationed on thecontinent—tasks that on the Japanese home islands were handled by the police. (Some of thesefacilities were restaurants, cafes, and other types of businesses.) Facilities that met certain standards
were designated as comfort stations exclusively for military use, while other stations were createdwithin military regiments. As the number of troops stationed on the continent climbed, the militarycame to rely on the services of intermediaries who recruited women to work in these stations.
In other words, the facilities that we today consider to have been comfort stations were not all
newly built by the military; some of them had existed in some form since the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese
War and the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War. Moreover, some of the “third-party operators” operating
this system were actually affiliated with the military, or treated as civilian military employees, tomake it easier for them to handle movement of workers and business management within the
military system. Japan’s military officer class, meanwhile, tended not to make use of the rougher
comfort facilities in the regiments, opting to patronize dining establishments called clubs in nearby
cities.
It is commonly understood that the militar y built or designated official comfort stations inorder to prevent venereal disease from spreading and clamp down on espionage. There were otherreasons, though, including the purpose of ensuring that the rising numbers of military personnel
using the stations could do so affordably. This was accomplished through the use of controlled-costrate charts for the facilities. It is important here to recognize that the comfort stations that would
later come to be viewed as problematic took many different forms, depending on the time when andthe place where they were established.
A Range of “Comfort Women”
This also means that in the strictest sense, not all locations where Japan’s soldiers satisfied
their sexual needs can be deemed “comfort stations.” For instance, brothels staffed primarily by

3

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

local women, not to mention straightforward cases of rape, should be considered separately fromthe “comfort women” (defined as those women working to support the troops from their own
country). These other women occupied a different position from the “women’s army” who served
as compatriots to the military men. The term ianfu, comfort women, is properly applied only to
Japanese citizens, which also include women from Korea and Taiwan, who were then subjects of theempire.
The situation was undeniably muddled, though, given that the ordinary brothels also provided
sexual services to Japan’s military men. There were even some establishments outside the militarysystem—designated brothels though they may have been—that put up signs advertising themselves
as “patriotic establishments” and opened their doors to Japanese troops.
In the 1990s, when the existence of the comfort women became an international issue, the issue
was plunged into confusion by calls to all women who had had sexual relations with Japanese troops
to take the name “comfort women,” despite the lack of a common understanding of just who theactual comfort women were. This is the primary cause of the divergence of opinion within Japan
about the definition of these women.
The comfort women differ from one another in many ways—depending on their nationality andthe period in which they entered the system, on where they served (near the front of the fighting orin a rear area), and on their individual character. The experiences they underwent and the way theyhandled them similarly differ as a result.
On “Forced Conscription”
It goes without saying, therefore, that the paths that took these women to the position ofengaging in sexual labor for the army were also varied. One of the first people to raise the comfort
women issue in Korea mistakenly conflated her experiences as a member of the chongsindae,
laborers mobilized to support the war effort, with those of the “comfort women.” As the mobilization
took part on a school-wide scale, with all students at her school being sent off to work in factories,
she assumed that this was forcible conscription. In fact, though, the chongsindae system was aimed
at mobilizing subjects of the nation who were enrolled in school for purposes of the war—in otherwords, educated young people. Most women who eventually became comfort women had lower
levels of education, or no schooling at all. The wide-spread Korean belief that the comfort women
were forced into the system arises not from, as deniers in Japan assert, the former comfort womenare lying about their experiences, but rather from this misunderstanding that arose during the
1990s.
Going back further, we find that as far back as the colonial era, there were already rumors afloat
that women who joined the chongsindae would end up becoming comfort women. The comfort
women were said to be called up “to perform duties for the troops.” In fact, these duties extended
well beyond those of a sexual nature; the women assisted in nursing tasks and did laundry. Korean
comfort women were asked to do jobs including washing bloodstained militar y uniforms andcleaning the graves of fallen soldiers.
The cases where Korean comfort women claim to have been forcibly taken by the military andplaced in the system are, from an examination of collections of their statements, relatively few

4

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliationin number. And even then, there is a strong likelihood that business operators affiliated with themilitary sent men wearing military-style clothing to procure labor for the comfort stations. This is
not to mean that no physical force was involved in obtaining women to work in the system (and, ofcourse, the military played a central role in transferring the women conscripted in this way to thestations where they served), but such cases should be viewed as exceptional cases.
We can view the cases where Dutch or Chinese women were gathered directly by the military,placed in isolated facilities, and pressed into sexual labor as being forced conscription in the
broad sense. These cases were not, however, part of the “comfort women” system as I describe it
above. These were not Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese women called up from within the Japanese
Empire to play a supporting role for its military. Here the Japanese troops were involved in single,
or repeated, incidents of rape involving “enemy women”. But as the experiences of the comfort
women came to be viewed in the same light as those experiences of the enemy women, people on
the opposite sides of the debate lost the ability to develop a shared understanding of critical concepts
such as “forced conscription” and “comfort women.” The confusion has only grown in the debate
since then.
“Comfort women” then, can be categorized into three different groups. The first are what might
be called “camp-following” comfort women, who moved from place to place along with the troops inwhat could be viewed as a form of national mobilization, a more loosely defined chongsindae system.
The second are those who worked in privately managed facilities designated for use by the military
authorities to maintain hygiene, including some that had been in place since early on in Japan’s
fighting in or occupation of the territories where they were located. And the third are those “enemy
women” who were captured on the battlefield or in occupied territories and raped or pressed into
forcible prostitution.
Physical force was clearly involved in the cases of the Dutch and Chinese women. For some
Korean women who view their own experiences as having been forced conscription, I believe
their cases may have involved people wearing military uniforms (operators designated as militaryaffiliated) deceiving the women by stating that they would be joining the chongsindae—a forcible
form of conscription, albeit one that was codified in the law as “state mobilization, and moreoverlabeled as “voluntary” participation by the young people taken away.
The Japanese Army and Korean Comfort Women
The Korean comfort women were given Japanese names and wore Japanese kimono in theirwork. They were, in other words, substitutes for Japanese women. Different rates were set for the
comfort women, with the Japanese earning the highest amounts, followed by the Koreans. These
Koreans had been mobilized for the sake of “patriotic duty” to Japan—a duty these women ordinarily
would prefer not to be involved with. In this sense, the Korean comfort women were a product ofJapanese colonial rule, and the comfort women issue was not a product of the war per se by war, butsomething that predated it as a problem that came with imperialism. There were also Koreans who
were raped when, for example, the troops moved from place to place—something made more likely
by the discriminatory attitudes the Japanese held toward the Koreans.
At the same time, we can see different structures in place in the militar y comfort stations
where women were assembled “in the service of the state.” Here the women found themselves in

5

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

the position of comrades standing alongside the troops in the face of the enemy. The officers andmilitary police protected the women from violence on the part of the troops and the businesses
associated with the stations. Given the nature of the structure, it may even have been possible forlove to blossom between the Japanese military men and the Korean comfort women.
The Third-Party Operators
There is no denying that these women were gathered by third-party operators in response to theneeds of the Japanese military. To date, though, there are no statements or textual materials thatshow conclusively that the military itself took the initiative in instructing these operators to abduct
women or lie to them to secure their services. The operators, both Japanese and Korean, were theentities that did at times draw the women into service on false pretenses, forced them to work evenwhen sick, monitored them to ensure that they did not escape, and pressured them to get abortions
when they became pregnant. There were, of course, some exceptions to the rule, but many of the
comfort women found themselves exploited by these operators, forced into inescapable debt andtreated like slaves. And the operators functioning on a larger scale tended to be the Japanese ones.
Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki has noted that the comfort women lacked the freedom of residence—
to live where they wished—and the freedom to leave their jobs. But this is, simply stated, because
they were held captive by the operators. It appears that in many cases they were stripped of theirfreedom by military oversight for the same reason that men in the military were not free to move
about at will: to prevent espionage, or because the surrounding areas were dangerous.
The “200,000 Girls”
The figure 200,000, often given as the number of comfort women, is believed to have actually
been the total number of women in the chongsindae, including both Japanese and Koreans mobilized
by the state. There is a Korean newspaper article published in 1970 that refers to 150,000 Japanesewomen and 50,000 to 60,000 Korean women involved in these ef for ts. The above-describedmisunderstanding has only been amplified by those who take this number to be that of the comfort
women.
There were in fact ver y few women young enough to be called “girls” who became comfort
women. In the infrequent cases where girls under the age of 15 appeared in the system, the military
men of the time treated them as exceptions to the ordinary state of affairs. Almost all of the former
comfort women who report being pressed into service as girls also note that most of the others wereolder than them. On the basis of statements and historical materials available to us, we can state thatthe average age of the comfort women was above 20. When girls who had not yet attained adulthood
were in the comfort stations, this was likely due to the actions of the operators, not the desires of themilitary.
The 1965 film Sunset on the Sarbin River, directed by Jeong Chang-hwa, offers a glimpse into
Korean memories of the comfort women system as held in the 1960s. The comfort woman who
appears in this story is no young girl. It is only in more recent years that the standard image of the
comfort woman has been presented as a child.
This does not mean, of course, that there were no young girls withinin the system. To this very

6

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

day, indeed, many of the females pulled into the sex industry are underage. It was indeed because of
their young age, in part, that society’s safety nets were unable to protect them. There also appear tohave been cases where girls were taken away to work as servants, only to be pressed into labor as
comfort women later on.
Returning Home After the War
During the period surrounding the end of the conflict, some comfort women lost their lives inbombing raids near the front lines. Many of the comfort women stranded in China as the war ended
found themselves in the same situation as the Japanese who had moved there to live in their nation’s
colonial holdings, suffering greatly in their efforts to make their way back to the Japanese islands.
Some of them no doubt met their ends during this difficult journey back home. Those who survived
either returned home or remained where they were on the continent. Many of the third-party
operators abandoned the women where they were, and the remnants of Japanese military helped
some of them return to their homeland.
3. The Comfort Women Debate: Postwar Reparations and Memory
Apologies and Reparations in the 1990s
In the 1990s, Japan launched the Asian Women’s Fund, with the aim of providing apologies andreparations to women who came forward as former comfort women. This fund was founded on theauthority of the cabinet at that time. Due to doubts about whether the women had been forced into
service, it had no chance of gaining approval in the National Diet, but the Japanese government—
the members of the cabinet—agreed to provide these apologies and monetary reparations. Thiswas blasted, however, by those arguing that the government was evading its proper responsibility
by pushing this decision through without relying on the legislator-initiated approach which theychampioned, and some Diet members opposed the cabinet decision.
Considering, however, that the Japanese government’s position on individual claims to reparations
was that they were settled by the 1965 agreement between South Korea and Japan, (and hence
there could be no official payments), that therefore there was no legal duty on part of the Japanese
government to provide such aid, the government looked instead to its “moral duty” as reparation
for these women. This move may be understood as the government taking a neutral stance in theface of fierce opposition from those arguing that the comfort women did not constitute a historicalissue in the first place. When the government launched the Asian Women’s Fund as the channel for
reparations, moreover, the Japanese people responded positively, donating a considerable amountto its funding. If we are to define an apology by the Japanese state as a “statement on behalf of its
people,” then it may be argued that this fund served such purpose.
In the end, some 89% of this program was paid for out of state coffers. But this effort encounteredcontinual, strong opposition, and divided opinion in South Korea, eventually leading at first just 7
women—and even in the end, a total of only 60—to accept payments via the Asian Women’s Fund.
The fund itself was closed down in 2007.

7

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

A Settlement of Historical Accounts in 1965
The 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea, being based in parton the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, was an agreement addressing matters related directly to thewar, and not related to the settlement of historical accounts of Japan’s colonial rule over the Korean
peninsula. Reparations made to subjects who had been called up in ser vice of the empire werelimited to those drafted following the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War beginning in 1937, and thebulk of the treaty’s measures aimed at squaring away financial matters, including the question ofsavings in what had become cross-border accounts following the sudden separation of the countriesof Korea and Japan.
Japan, for its part, suggested allowing individuals to make claims for reparations. The Koreanside, however, perhaps with the North Korean state in mind, rejected this overture, opting instead
for a solution where the state could collect all reparations as the “sole state” on the Korean peninsula.
This can be seen as an outcome of the harsh reality of the early Cold War era.
At first, the Koreans did seek to claim reparations for damage (including the loss of human life)
suffered due to Japan’s colonial rule. But this demand went unfulfilled—a measure demonstrating
the lack of an apologetic stance in Japan regarding its colonial rule. This unapologetic position was
one that postcolonial powers manifested could during the post-war era - a legacy that still demands
our attention. In the early postwar years, though, both the former imperial power of Japan and its
former colonies were bound by the strictures of the Cold War, pushed by the United States to rush
through an insufficient settlement of accounts between them.
The Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910
The Japan-Korea Treaty, sometimes called the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, signed in 1910
was “forcibly imposed” on the Korean side in an “illegal” manner, according to some. If this treaty
is defined as illegal, then Japan naturally becomes legally culpable for its colonial rule over the
peninsula. Even if it seems ethically proper to call this annexation illegal, however, realisticallyspeaking it is difficult to make this claim. Japan performed this act with the approval of the great
powers of the day—the United States, Britain, and other nations that were colony-holders in theirown right—and the act was entirely in line with the rules that they had put in place at that time. Oncethe leaders of Korea agreed to the annexation via the 1910 treaty, it became difficult to describe it astechnically illegal.
This does not mean, of course, that the agreement was without problems. It is important torecognize that “the law” at any given time is a reflection of the thinking and expectations of the polity
defining it—it is a matter intimately connected with the people living their lives in that particular“here and now.” Indeed, the views of these people are even more important than the question of
the legality, or lack thereof, of the measures of that age. Japan’s annexation of Korea could not be
defined as illegal in a milieu where there was no law against the practice of one country rulinganother. Illegality, then, cannot be claimed, on the basis of this lack of relevant law and the presenceof Korean politicians who approved the move. More important than all of this, though, is that the
majority of the Korean people did not wish for this to take place.

8

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

Of Sins and Crimes
The Korean side (organizations that were formed to suppor t the former comfor t women)
was demanding that the Japanese side admit that the recruitment of comfort women and the useof comfort stations constituted criminal acts and also to pass legislation in the Diet to provide
reparations to the victims of the system. (Supporters of this cause in Japan took the same position.2)
Given, however, that prostitution was not illegal in Japan of that era, it is difficult to consider such act
as constituting a crime. At that time not even sexual violence was viewed as criminal, leading men tocommit rape repeatedly with little thought of the wrongness of their acts.
The buying and selling of human beings, however, was unequivocally viewed as wrong in thatera, and was a crime. And a whole raft of actions of the era—control of colonies by imperial powers,
rape, and the forcible mobilization of local populations (whether as soldiers or as the chongsindae)
were undeniably wrong, giving little heed to the human rights of the non-Japanese races and thewomen who were treated so harshly. Despite the fact that they were all mobilized to the same front
lines, though, the men sent to do the fighting saw legal redress for their hardship, while the comfort
women saw nothing similar done for them. There is simply no way to use legal channels to pursue
justice for them—a limitation of the modern state system that has long discriminated against womenand those engaged in prostitution. Any consideration of how to craft new apologies to these victims
must take place in full recognition of these factors.
The Asian Women’s Fund Revisited
In this sense, the “moral culpability” that was the focus of actions in the 1990s was, while perhaps
not comprehensively addressing the issues I described above, at least a valid effort in the directionof providing proper apologies and reparations to these women. There was a recognition that the
Korean comfort women who had come forward were part of a system with its roots in colonialism,
and compensation was being provided for this reason.
Former colonial powers such as Britain and Italy had already apologized for their rule over thecolonies. In Japan, too, similar actions were taken by figures such as Prime Minister Hosokawa
Morihiro and Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi. These apologies offered in the 1990s did not havethe desired impact, though, leading to the need for additional measures for the remaining survivors.
This led naturally to the need of expanding the discourse to include not only the war but also Japan’scolonial rule. This is because the case of Korean comfort women cannot be understood merely bycomparing against the cases of Dutch and Chinese women in the context of women’s human rights
during war time. Once, however, the issue is viewed from the perspective of problems engenderedby the colonial rule as practiced by the Netherlands and other imperial powers of the past, thenit becomes possible for the all colonial nations, including the United States, Britain, and theNetherlands to reflect upon their own roles and at last confront it squarely as their own issue, too—an issue tied in with the way that all of these countries, in both the past and the present day, havemobilized women both from their own citizenry and from other nations out of a desire to expand
their own national power.
2 On April 23, 2015, civic groups in Korea and Japan altered their position somewhat on this point, stating that if
the Japanese government were to use public funds for reparations and offer an apology to the former comfort women,
it would obviate the need to formally accept legal responsibility.

9

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

Sexual Slavery or Prostitution
In people’s efforts to deny culpability for the comfort women issue or to seek evidence casting
doubt on it, they often rely on the image of either prostitution or sexual slavery. But in truth thedifference between these two is not important. Even in cases where women were involved in thesystem without having been forced into it, there is no change to the cruelty of the conditions inwhich they found themselves. When seeking grounds to hold Japan responsible for the comfort
women issue, there is little significance in questioning whether they were sex slaves or prostitutes;
whether they were forced to take part or did so voluntarily. The needs of the state indirectly caused
them to be mobilized; to maintain the war effort they were required to provide sexual services. As
people who in some cases lost their very lives in this cause, whether to battle, sickness, or brutal
labor, they can certainly be described as slaves of the state or the empire.
The Kono Statement
The Kono Statement of 1993, issued by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei on August 4 of thatyear, noted of the comfort women that “in many cases they were recruited against their own will.”
It was not, however, an admission of forcible conscription into the system. It simply touched on thefacts that the process by which they were brought into the system was not in line with their own
will, and that it was not their choice to perform sexual labor in the comfort stations, in these cases.
This was an admission not that the Japanese state had directly used physical force against them,but rather that there were (colonial) systemic aspects of force working against them at that time.
The statement is an accurate recognition that in the case of the Korean women, even when they
voluntarily went into the system, this was an outcome of Japan’s colonial rule over the peninsula. The
statement does not, in other words, represent an admission that Japan wielded force in conscripting
these women, as is claimed by those who seek to have the statement retracted or amended. In termsof the Japanese state’s role in managing the system, meanwhile, the statement’s admission that“administrative/military personnel directly took part” is based firmly in fact, and until this is provenotherwise, there is no reason to revisit the Kono Statement.
The Struggle for Resolution
Voices within Japan opposed to the Asian Women’s Fund have helped to bolster the claims of
the Korean civic groups supporting the victims, and over the past two decades—the last 10 years
in particular—the number of Japanese people opposed to the claims of the Korean side has risen
considerably. Any new effort today to publicly collect funds for the victims would not likely see a
response of public support like that seen the last time. The Asian Women’s Fund, despite its lofty
goal of helping to resolve the comfort women issue and build peace in Asia, can only be described ashaving led to further discord in the region.
Some of the supporters of the comfort women see the system that used them as a uniqueproblem created by Japanese fascism, thereby defining all comfort women across the board as
purely victims who were taken by force into the system. However, this serves only to conceal the
problematic aspects of the colonized state as an entity pressed into cooperation with the colonizer.
The suppor ters of the former comfor t women successfully made their appeal to the global
community, but the issue of the Korean comfort women has not been fully perceived as one of theuniversal human rights of women.

10

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliation

With respect to the offering of apologies or reparations, once the issue became an issue to beresolved between states, the only way to resolve it was to bring about an agreement between theirpeoples of the two nations. But when nongovernmental organizations supporting the comfort women
held a mock “international tribunal” in 2000 and found Emperor Showa guilty – setting asidewhether
or not this was an appropriate verdict from a legal standpoint, - it would only distance the citizens
of Japan from coming to an agreement. And indeed, the first decade of the new century saw therise of the ken-Kan ryu, or “anti-Korean wave,” in Japan, and the 2010s saw increasing incidents ofhate speech against Koreans in the country. These developments were followed by a hardening ofJapanese opinion on the comfort women issue and a steady souring of Japanese-Korean relations.
Global Opinion
Beginning in the first decade of the 2000s, instead of convincing the Japanese government of thejustice of their cause, the activists looked rather to present their case to the global community inorder to put pressure on Japan. This activist approach paid off. But the United Nations reports thatcriticized Japan for the comfort women system have not been entirely based on correct information.
Many of them are grounded in the belief, for example, that as many as 1.2 million young women
were forcibly conscripted, made to work as sex slaves, and in most cases massacred after thefighting ended.
Dutch women have also made statements to the United Nations on their experience as comfort
women; in their case, their ordeals did indeed take place in what is properly termed a “rape center.”
But as Koreans were placed alongside these Dutch women, people came to view them as having
been in the same situation. Their situation was, of course, a cruel one to be in, but it should havebeen considered as a different case.
The Dutch women became victims when Japan took over Indonesia, which the Netherlands held
as a colony. From the Dutch perspective, Japan, an enemy country, took and raped these women.
This is another factor that may well have influenced the broader global perspective on the comfort
women issue as a whole.
4. Empire and the Comfort Women
To the present day, in Okinawa and other places where US militar y bases are located, there
are women present to provide “comfort” to the American troops stationed far from home. In Japan
during the immediate postwar years, or in South Korea during the Korean War and thereafter, themilitary has continued to create “comfort women.” These women are not in the same conditions as
those in the Japanese prewar and war-era system: the postwar women are not being mobilized “forthe sake of the nation,” as in the past, and there is the difference between it being a time of war anda time of peace, as now (although this is a peace marked by readiness for conflict).
The bases in question were established in wartime, or during the Cold War, and have been
maintained ever since. Today it is the United States that is creating comfort women in Japan and
Korea. Of course, the governments of these host nations are quietly acknowledging this requirement
as they facilitate the provision of the women.
In the past, states created empires in their quest to extend their spheres of political and economic

11

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource LibraryConsidering the Comfort Women Issue: Toward a Shared Historical Understanding and Reconciliationinfluence. In the contemporary era, the Cold War and the globalization that followed are creating
new empires. The territorial issues and other troubles seen in East Asia today are rooted largely in
American intervention in the region, but this fact is not clearly visualized in debate on the issues.
The nations of Asia struggle against one another as a result.
The struggle between Japan and South Korea is driving militarization and increased conservatismin the latter country, which is acting also with the question of North Korea in mind. In cases where
North and South Korea present a united front to criticize Japan, they are actually helping only topreserve the Cold War ways of thinking - thinking that in turn has its root in the era of Japaneseimperialism. Once the parties involved realize the contradictions of this approach, arrive at a sharedunderstanding of the comfort women issue, and become able to share a recognition of the problemsof colonial rule, we will at last see a chance for true reconciliation.
Reference material: “A Third Voice on the Comfort Women Issue,” presented on April 29,
2014, at the Press Center, Seoul
Recommendations:
1. The governments of both countries should assemble a consultative body with a membership
including former comfor t women as the primar y concerned par ties, government of ficials,
representatives of civic support organizations, and academics in the field. This body will begin
substantive discussion to resolve the issues, with the ultimate aim being to achieve an agreement
between the two countries. The process of forming this group and the content of its deliberations
must be disseminated via the media to concerned parties and the public at the same time, allowing
citizens of the countries to consider the issues and empathize with those involved.
2. Civic groups and related organizations in both countries must at once cease their slanderous acts
against the other countries and against the former comfort women, redirecting their energy into
efforts to resolve the issues. The comfort women issue is a human rights issue; as it is a source of
conflict between Japan and South Korea, the governments of these nations must squarely face one
another and pursue solutions.
3. T he media in each countr y must not publish unmoderated content that fans the flames ofhatred among citizens of the other country. Needed rather is content that contributes to mutual
understanding; the resolution process for the comfort women issue must go beyond addressing
this single issue to help reduce the ill will that has grown on both sides.
Reference material: Excerpt from “Sei to sensei” (Sex and Despotism), from Muramatsu
Takeshi’s 1979 Haruka naru kokyo: Rai to Chosen no bungaku (A Distant Homeland:
Hansen’s Disease and Korean Literature)
I now imagine a woman standing before me. Let us presume she is a representation of sex. If she
is a Korean woman, we can easily become sadistic. If she is a woman from one of the countries ofthe West, we can easily change into impotent men. Our sense of eros sways back and forth between
these two extremes. In the same way that the sexual act achieves the pinnacle of pleasure by effacing
and annihilating our core sense of self, our logos, or logical thought, can annihilate the sense of self,
easily enabling us to approach a state of fascism. Both our eros and our logos were put to work inthese ways, in the realms of both our own authority and those of others.
This paper was translated by JIIA from Japanese into English with the author’s consent in 2020.
JIIA takes full responsibility for the translation.
12

The Japan Institute of International Affairs / Resource Library