The ‘Comfort Women’ Issue: Moving Beyond the Debate

Abstract

During the Second World War, tens of thousands of girls and women across East Asia were victims to horrific acts of sexual violence on a systemically organised scale by the Japanese government. These women became known, euphemistically, as the ‘comfort women.’ The cavernous psychological and physical scars left on these women were enduring. Despite this massive injustice, their voices quickly fell into obscurity and remained this way for the ensuing fifty years. After the efforts of various Korean feminist organisations in the 1990s and the publication of some survivor’s testimonies, the ‘comfort women’ finally received the attention they deserved. The ‘comfort women’ movement pushed these women out of the shadows of public discourse. The women and their supporters demanded that the Japanese government make an official apology and offer means of financial redress to the survivors. However, their re-emergence has not necessarily always been welcomed; it has sparked a wide political and historical debate: the ‘comfort women’ debate. Some Japanese conservative historians and politicians, for example, categorically denied the very existence of ‘comfort women’ as sex slaves. This, in turn, ignited a vociferous reaction from ‘liberal’ academics, feminists and politicians; they have been extremely dissatisfied with the apologies and means of financial compensation that the Japanese government has offered so far. Whilst their efforts and achievements can be commended, given that they helped bring the issue to public attention in the first place. However, as the ‘comfort women’ debate is on-going for nearly thirty years and there seems to be no end in sight, could it be claimed that some of these liberal criticisms are actually exacerbating the issue further, instead of actually aiding it? The purpose of this thesis is to take a more nuanced approach to this liberal critique; to ask whether some of their criticisms are wholly justified and, furthermore, question whether there might have been other fundamental factors, such as nationalism, gender, and patriarchal customs, that have been neglected in the debate which, in turn, could have helped come to any resolution for the surviving ‘comfort women.’ It shall be argued that an intersectional approach was needed in much of the liberal critique; an approach which takes into account all factors which have influenced this tangled, tortuous saga. Such an approach is so crucial as it facilitates an environment which comprehensively and properly recognises what actually happened. Telling the whole truth is vital to set all those involved on a path towards societal healing and reconciliation. This thesis is fundamentally an attempt to move further beyond the current debate.