Understanding the plight of the "comfort women"
March 18, 2009 -- The dark history of the women forced into prostitution during the Asia Pacific War and World War II came to light in the 1990s when South Korean activists defined the exploitation as a war crime. In a new book, Professor of Anthropology C. Sarah Soh suggests a more complex understanding of these "comfort women."
In "The Comfort Women," Soh illustrates how the prevailing, simplistic view of the phenomenon overlooks the diversity of the women's experiences, the influence of historical factors and the role that Koreans played in facilitating the Japanese comfort system.
The comfort women were the tens of thousands of women, many of them Korean, who were pressed into sexual servitude by the Japanese military during World War II and the preceding conflicts in Asia. But as Soh explains, their experience was far from uniform. Some women left Korea to escape domestic violence, poverty or arranged marriage. Some were consenting prostitutes who received payment; others had no choice and were forced into sexual slavery.
"Prostitution is complex enough, but the comfort women issue is complicated by war and colonial rule," said Soh. Her book blends stories from former comfort women with historical context and examines the comfort women in light of Japan and Korea's sexual cultures and Japan's colonial relationship with Korea.
Soh also highlights how nationalism shapes the way the tragedy is remembered. "Korea's outcry over the use of comfort women is a nationalistic uproar," Soh said. "Korea doesn't show the same concern for human rights abuses against women within its borders today."
Following is an excerpt from the book:
Despite their historic contributions, the approach of South Korean activists and their supporters has obscured the continued ubiquity of grave human rights violations of women, especially those working in the sex industry in postcolonial South Korea. Although activists and their supporters have successfully publicized sexual violence and atrocities committed by the Japanese military, the way in which they have framed the story as exclusively a Japanese war crimes issue has diverted attention from the sociocultural and historical roots of women's victimization in Korea, which Japan colonized from 1910 to 1945.
-- C. Sarah Soh, "The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan" (University of Chicago Press, 2008). Excerpt reprinted by permission of the publisher.
-- Elaine Bible
The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) by C. Sarah Soh (Feb 15, 2009)
Book Description
Publication Date: February 15, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0226767779 | ISBN-13: 978-0226767772
In an era marked by atrocities perpetrated on a grand scale, the tragedy of the so-called comfort women—mostly Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army—endures as one of the darkest events of World War II. These women have usually been labeled victims of a war crime, a simplistic view that makes it easy to pin blame on the policies of imperial Japan and therefore easier to consign the episode to a war-torn past. In this revelatory study, C. Sarah Soh provocatively disputes this master narrative.
Soh reveals that the forces of Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy together shaped the fate of Korean comfort women—a double bind made strikingly apparent in the cases of women cast into sexual slavery after fleeing abuse at home. Other victims were press-ganged into prostitution, sometimes with the help of Korean procurers. Drawing on historical research and interviews with survivors, Soh tells the stories of these women from girlhood through their subjugation and beyond to their efforts to overcome the traumas of their past. Finally, Soh examines the array of factors— from South Korean nationalist politics to the aims of the international women’s human rights movement—that have contributed to the incomplete view of the tragedy that still dominates today.
By Kathy Nadeau
Format:Paperback
Sarah Soh has written a balanced and informative new book on the Comfort Women issue that looks at the subject from the perspective of the bigger issue of prostitution in Asia. She meticulously documents the diversity in experiences of women recruited into this industry. Some are falsely recruited and misled to believe that they would be doing another form of work. Others are allured by the promises of entering a profession such as the kaisang profession only to end up in comfort women stations. Still others have been kidnapped by soldiers and forced into sexual slavery. Her book is a must read for those interested in scholarly research based on archival documents and extensive interviews-and observations conducted on both sides of this issue. The result is a provocative new work that challenges us to think beyond the comfort women issue to that of the rise of industrialization and women's quest for liberation from all forms of male-oriented domination-and control in favor of a more balanced relationship between peoples of all genders (i.e., a relationship of partnership and mutual respect between men and women).
Review
“This is a courageous, judicious, and well-written book that refus (Gail Lee Bernstein, author of Isami's House: Three Centuries of a Japanese Famil )
"C. Sarah Soh’s study of ‘comfort women’ offers a close-grained yet compassionate analysis of this disturbing experience. She cogently deploys ethnography and history to illuminate a crucial case in gender and international issues.”
(James L. Peacock, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill )
“This is a dispassionate, careful, well-researched, and brave book. Embedding her story in the whole history of prostitution and abusive treatment of women from the colonial period to the present, Soh shows that the comfort women system partook not just of the authoritarian politics of Japanese colonialism, but was also deeply rooted in a Korean patriarchy whose effects continued on after 1945. I expect this book will be the standard work on the subject for some time.”
(Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago )
"A brave and impressive book that usefully complicates and adds layers to our understanding of a sordid system."
(Jeff Kingston Japan Times )
About the Author
C. Sarah Soh is professor of anthropology at San Francisco State University and the author of Women in Korean Politics.
By Nerdus Maximus (The American Northeast) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) (Paperback)
... and most definitely NOT for casual readers or those who are not willing to re-examine their preconceived ideas and views of the wartime comfort women. This work is likewise ill-suited for those who aren't serious readers of history.
C. Sarah Soh, as a native Korean who was fortunate to receive formal education both in her homeland and abroad, has produced a masterful examination of a controversial issue involving Korea and Japan which people from both countries have long oversimplified.
Koreans generally believe that Imperial Japan's leadership ordered, planned, and executed the gunpoint kidnapping of thousands of Korean females and summarily shipped them like chattel to frontline brothels.
Japanese people - at least those who know this issue - either agree that the Koreans were largely victimized, or claim that this is a gross fabrication and that the comfort women were essentially willing prostitutes.
Professor Soh cites several examples, such as interviews with survivors, to show that the truth is far more complex. Some survivors stated they were not forcibly taken by Japanese troops. Others are shown to have bought their way to freedom with earnings - earnings??? Yes. Hence the question - if the comfort women were slaves, they wouldn't have had wages. Then what were they: slaves or prostitutes or something else?
Additionally, Professor Soh does the reader a huge service by detailing the sociocultural contexts of 1930s-1940s Korea and Japan. Information on views on sex, women, and the sexism that characterized pre-modern Korean and Japanese societies is provided, thus presenting the reader with a better understanding of what facilitated the existence of "sex care work" in both societies. Anyone familiar with Korea and Japan today will be aware that extramarital affairs have been generally tolerated, historically speaking, and that older men have often availed themselves of sexual services provided by far younger women.
The comfort women issue did not happen in a vacuum. Japanese generals didn't wake up one day, deciding to 'award' their enlisted men with females to sate their urges, and they didn't decide to violently seize thousands of Korean women at will. As a reader of Korean ethnicity myself, I know this is a painful subject, and I personally believe there were abductions. But as the attentive reader will see, the story is far more diverse and much more complicated that flag-waving nationalists on either side of the East Sea (or, as some call it, the Sea of Japan), would want us to believe.
It is worth noting (somewhat of a spoiler alert) that Professor Soh was shunned and coldly treated by South Koreans who are involved in the redress movement after those activists learned of the fruits of her research. I wonder why. Did Professor Soh's findings upset their ostensibly benign agenda? Is there something she uncovered the redress activists preferred not to even know and prefer that their compatriots remain ignorant of?
If the comfort women issue is of any interest to you, read this book. It is a must-have in the library of any serious student of Korea's modern history.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent study of the topic., October 4, 2011
By K8cat - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) (Paperback)
This is certainly one of the best studies that have been written on this topic. The arguments are balanced and extremely well researched and they are presented in an interesting and lively fashion. I myself have worked many years researching the question of prostitution (both forced and by choice) and I found Soh's Appendix on 'Doing Expatriate Anthropology' to be very representative of the problems that people can find when research and writing on a topic with so many problematic and upsetting facets and political agendas. The fact that Soh avoids generalizations is to her credit and her examination of how 'comfort women' fitted into national structures of gendered violence (in both Korea and Japan) brings new and important debates to this topic. I thoroughly recommend this to anyone interested in really understanding this topic from a balanced position.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Rethinking the Comfort Women Issue: A New Perspective, September 17, 2009
By Kathy Nadeau (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) (Paperback)
Sarah Soh has written a balanced and informative new book on the Comfort Women issue that looks at the subject from the perspective of the bigger issue of prostitution in Asia. She meticulously documents the diversity in experiences of women recruited into this industry. Some are falsely recruited and misled to believe that they would be doing another form of work. Others are allured by the promises of entering a profession such as the kaisang profession only to end up in comfort women stations. Still others have been kidnapped by soldiers and forced into sexual slavery. Her book is a must read for those interested in scholarly research based on archival documents and extensive interviews-and observations conducted on both sides of this issue. The result is a provocative new work that challenges us to think beyond the comfort women issue to that of the rise of industrialization and women's quest for liberation from all forms of male-oriented domination-and control in favor of a more balanced relationship between peoples of all genders (i.e., a relationship of partnership and mutual respect between men and women).
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12 of 29 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Natural Melatonin Stimulator, June 2, 2009
By Ashley M. - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) (Paperback)
The book's topic sounds intriguing, however it put me straight to sleep. The author is more concerned with stuffing the book with academic jargon then telling a story. Reading the book I had flashbacks of grad school and being inundated with polysyllabic words such as intersectionality, historicization, deessentialization, etc.
Here is a sample passage from the book where Soh describes how Japanese society viewed the comfort system, "The ideological boundaries of fascistic paternalism, masculinist sexism, and contemporary Japanese neonationalism overlap. The fascistic paternalism of wartime Japan - to say nothing of the ethnic nationalism of contemporary Japan - encompassed masculinist sexism. That is, both the wartime and contemporary statist and nationalist perspectives, as well as the generalized masculinist perspective of the military and civilian populace, share a common understanding of the ultimate function of the comfort system as a recreational amenity for the troops."
To be fair, I can't comment on the content of the book since I never made it past the second chapter. All I know is this book induced nocturnal sleepification and I had to Netflixify my TV to stay awake.
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