The Japanese Military Force During World War II

By 1938 Japan had invaded much of China and had taken over Nanking killing more than 42,000 civilians. The Chinese government never surrendered completely, and the war continued on a lower scale until 1945. During World War II, the Japanese military forced women from various different countries to work as comfort women to the Japanese soldiers. Trafficking in women is a form of sexual slavery in which women are transported across national borders and sold for prostitution, sex tourism, or migrant workers. Women were kidnapped or brought over under false pretenses thinking that they were being given jobs. The comfort women of the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II are an extreme case of this institutionalized sexual violence against women. Through research and testimonies from comfort women survivors during World War II and former Japanese veterans, I attempt to show the ways that this has affected the intersection of colonial power, gender and class. I argue that the development of gender contributes to the construction of Japanese colonialism and the system of comfort women helped Japan as an imperial state gain power. The ideas of masculinity and femininity is what helped the maintenance of the Japanese military system and comfort stations made an impact in which Japan expanded its colonies by military means.

Beginning in the 1930s, comfort stations were being set up in China and they were mainly private comfort stations. The reason for comfort stations was to try and prevent Japanese soldiers from raping local women, which did not completely work. The Japanese did not start to make larger comfort stations till after the Rape of Nanking or also know as the Nanking Massacre. In December 1937 the Japanese capture Nanking an...

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...the Japanese Army facilitated specific forms of gender identity, in which to be a soldier meant to be a real man. Men often think to achieve their manhood they have to go through military service in the army, especially through combat. As hard as it was to be in the army the soldiers say that it has made a man out of them, and in some cases army life was easy compared to the hardship they were going though just trying to make a living. The effects of discipline that the army puts upon the soldiers may vary depending on the class origins of the recruits; they come together towards the production of a dominant model of manhood. This also includes rape, plunder, and arson, which was to demonstrate their power or bravery. However, I argue that military versions of masculinity are deeply contradictory, in that feminization and masculinization are enacted simultaneously.