Yuki Tanaka's Japan's Comfort Women

Yuki Tanaka's "Japan's Comfort Women"

This paper is a review of the book Japan’s Comfort Women-Sexual slavery and prostitution during WWII and the US occupation by Yuki Tanaka. This book was published in 2002 by Routledge. The book deals with the thousands of Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other Asian and European women who were victims of organized sexual violence and prostitution by means of “comfort stations” setup by the Japanese military during World War II.

As we first get into the book, we find out that the origins of comfort stations i.e. military brothels are unknown, but official documents strongly suggest that the Japanese Imperial Forces created comfort stations roughly around 1931-1932 for Japanese sailors. In the introduction we get some of Tanaka’s personal opinions and thoughts, and a vivid account of what it felt like to be a comfort woman by a Filipina. “Twelve soldiers raped me in quick succession, after which I was given half an hour rest. Then twelve more soldiers followed. I bled so much and was in such pain; I could not even stand up” (p.1). During the war, the Japanese could see that their soldiers were committing mass rape toward civilians. That led military leaders to ask the Japanese government for comfort stations to be made in order to prevent such crimes. This is a quote from a Japanese Lieutenant-General in 1932. “Recently I have heard a lot of scandalous stories, including that some of our soldiers wander around seeking women. Such a phenomenon is hard to prevent as fighting becomes less frequent. Therefore the establishment of appropriate facilities must be accepted as a good cause and should be promoted” (p.10). They were also created to boost soldier morale and to prevent the spread of VD among fellow troops. In the first couple of chapters Tanaka explains how women from different countries were procured into working as sex slaves and how they were brought into such dealings. The women used for comfort houses were at first professional Japanese prostitutes, and poor Japanese and Korean women. They were usually recruited by an agent who would go to a specific town and look for girls to recruit. Of course deceit was used to get these girls to come in that they were promised a nice paying job, food, and shelter if they came along. The recruiting of Korean women was a way of the Japanese to colonize their newly gai...

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...ned to police because of fear of being harmed, so the exact number is hard to tell. Most GI’s did not care for the Japanese because they had won the war and thought everything around them were spoils of the war that they had every right to indulge in. Lots of numeric figures and testimonies of actual rapes are prevalent in this chapter. Tanaka in the final chapter talks about how during the occupation the Allied forces forced the Japanese to “voluntarily” setup services to adhere to their men. The Recreation and Amusement Association was created to provide sexual and recreational entertainment to the Allied forces occupying Japan. These services included not only comfort houses but beer halls, restaurants for officers, billiard clubs, and dance halls like cabaret. The Allied forces did not want to seem as bad guys by forcing Japan to do these things. So they used blackmail in order to get what they want. By mere suggestion, the Allied forces hinted that their stay would be shorter if the Japanese gave them what they wanted. It is ironic how setting up comfort houses ended up backfiring against the Japanese as their own citizens were now being exploited due to occupation by force.