Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II (Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture)
During the Asia Pacific War (1931-45), the Japanese government forced up to 200,000 Korean, Taiwanese, Indonesian, and other young Asian women to work as so-called comfort women, providing sexual services for the armed forces of Imperial Japan. Yoshiaki's invaluable study explodes the claims of right-wing Japanese nationalists that comfort women were merely wartime prostitutes. Citing official military records and correspondence, the author proves beyond a doubt that the victims of this monstrous system were actually sex slaves who were subjected to repetitive rape and violence. Often kidnapped or tricked by false promises of legitimate employment, the comfort women were trebly exploited as colonial subjects, members of the rural and urban poor, and women. Yoshiaki, a politically engaged scholar, analyzes the comfort-women issue against the background of Japan's prewar system of licensed prostitution and contemporary Asian sex tourism, where Japanese men continue to exploit the women of neighboring Asian countries. The translator's introduction illuminates the Japanese debate over comfort women, to which this book is an indispensable contribution. Steven I. Levine, Univ. of Montana, MissoulaCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.