What a horrible euphemism: “comfort women.” Just needed to be said.
A recent article by Howard French in the IHT’s Letter from China series begins:
Imagine a world where Germany denied the Holocaust, the United States denied the slaughter of Native Americans and Europe denied organizing its immensely profitable and centuries-long trans-Atlantic trade in African slaves.Why would they bother? Presumably because they thought cleaning up these dark blots on their past would boost their self-esteem, enhance patriotism and raise their stock in the world.
Close your eyes, spin on your toes three times and reopen them to behold a world where precisely this sort of thing goes on: today’s East Asia.
There are many sore points in the relationship between China and Japan, but none so raw as World War II or, as it is known in China, the “War to Resist Japan.” This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Rape of Nanking and already more than a half-dozen movies are in the works with Woody Harrelson, and Oliver Stone, and the estate of Iris Chang among many others getting involved in different projects. When violence, sex, and nationalism come together it makes an explosive cocktail. Such is the case of the comfort women: girls and women, mostly from Korea and China, who were forced to work as prostitutes in the service of the Japanese army during the 1930s and 1940s.
This past week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ripped the scabs off an old wound when he publicly claimed that there was no “historical proof” coercion was involved. Abe’s statement directly contradicts a 1993 Japanese government study and official statement that read in part:
“The Government study has revealed that in many cases [the comfort women] were recruited against their own will, through coaxing coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments. They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere.”
Now, it is likely Abe made the statement for domestic consumption. His brief tenure in office has been…well, tenuous. He needs to shore up his base and there are many conservatives in Japan who want nothing more than to retract the 1993 statement. The IHT article quotes one such lawmaker:
“Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs and set prices,” said Nariaki Nakayama, leader of a group of 120 Japanese lawmakers who want to rescind a 1993 official declaration acknowledging the imperial army’s exploitation of what are euphemistically called “comfort women.”
“To say that women were forced by the Japanese military into service is off the mark,” Nakayama continued. “The issue must be reconsidered, based on truth, for the sake of Japanese honor.”
But what is the good of doing so? Is history, and especially history education, nothing more than rhetoric and tales in the service of national self-esteem?
China, to its credit, is staying relatively low-key over the latest flap. When Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing “Met the Press” on CCTV this past week, he all but dodged the question. The People’s Daily quoted only a low-level CCP member (mayor of Jiaxing, Zhejiang) as saying: “The Japanese government should take history as a mirror and look forward to the future to properly handle the China-Japan relations for mutual interests.”
And those mutual interests are both considerable and growing. Trade between China and Japan is reported at $184.4 billion for 2006. This fiscal year the number is supposed to top $200 billion. 200 billion is a lot of reasons for both sides to not go rocking the boat.
The CCP is beginning to realize as well that nationalism can be a useful but also dangerous tool in domestic and foreign politics. In 2005, news of changes in Japanese textbooks over the issue of the Nanking Massacre spread throughout the internet in China. This in turn led to demonstrations, boycotts, and violence. At first the CCP let it go (there was the issue of Japan’s desire to join the UN Security Council after all, and the Chinese people denouncing Japan’s wartime atrocities made for great television), but soon the CCP cracked down lest it find itself unable to put the genie back in the bottle. Anti-”foreign” demonstrations in China have a nasty habit of turning into anti-”government” demonstrations–think: May 4, 1919.
In truth, countries like North Korea and China should be careful how loudly they scold Japan about “rewriting history.” Chinese textbooks notoriously excise bad or uncomfortable subjects from the history curriculum and DPRK textbooks, as far as we can tell, are so full of propaganda and rhetoric as to have very little connection with “history” at all. But this glass houses situation obscures the larger problem: history is not here to make people feel good. The purpose is to learn something about where we (as human beings, all of us) came from and to help us put the problems of the present into the larger context of our shared pasts. Hiding facts that shame us does nothing. Slavery and the brutal treatment of the Native Americans by the US goverment is a part of who we are whether we like it or not and American scholars have, by and large, done a good job of openly discussing these topics. We could, of course, do better. Similarly, the Cultural Revolution and the horrible atrocities of the Japanese army during WWII are a part of history. We can’t make these things go away by sticking our heads in the sand. What we can do is try to understand what happened. Maybe we don’t always learn our lessons perfectly (Vietnam/Iraq) but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying.
Prime Minister Abe should be ashamed for using this issue to bolster his faltering administration. If he was misquoted, he should say so swiftly and with conviction. If he wasn’t, he should retract his statement and publicly apologize for using the pain and suffering of thousands of women as a political crutch.
That’s a great quote from Howard French.
It’s interesting that the official Chinese response is so restrained at present: but I wouldn’t necessarily take that as any sign of a fundamental shift in attitudes. The general trend of anti-Japanese sentiment still seems pretty strong. 2 years ago it was calculatedly unleashed precisely because of the lobbying for the UN Security Council seat by Japan.
I was teaching at a University here when those protests kicked off in ‘05, and they were entirely orchestrated by central government. All students were whipped into an anti-Japanese frenzy by the media propaganda, but the CCP apparatus dictated which Universities – or which year groups, which classes within Universities – would participate in the demonstrations. A lot of my students were frustrated that they “weren’t allowed” to join in.
I hear it was much the same with the mobbing of the US Embassy after the Sarajevo bombing. I’ve heard numerous stories of policemen then – supposedly there for crowd control – bringing in wheelbarrows full of masonry and inviting students to take one brick each and give it their best shot.
While China’s attitude is often bellicose, I do find it very disturbing that the Japanese are lagging so far behind the Germans in acknowledgement of their war guilt (and the Germans weren’t exactly a shining example in this), that their current leaders are still talking about preserving “Japanese honour” as a reason for disputing what happened. Is it really the concept of “saving face” that prompts this continuing denial of history? That might be a factor in the Chinese failure to fully recognise their history as well.
Have you been to the ‘Unit 731′ Museum outside Harbin? I know it’s not “your period”, but it is a fascinating, terrifying place, and it does bring a number of issues about the denial of history and the use of history to serve political agendas very sharply in focus.
Great post on a great post. But are you implying that the United States hides slavery and its treatment of Native Americans in the same way Japan essentially lies about its WWII history? If so, I see no equivalency. If not, why did you even bring it up?
CLB,
My point was just the opposite: that the US does discuss those shameful incidents (like slavery, Native Americans) and we are better off for doing so.
well, native americans and slavery, sure, but when was the last time americans honestly discussed their behavior in, say, korea, vietnam or the current occupation of iraq? while there are a fair number of historians who do actually research such stuff, and a healthy oral 野史 in society at large, the public and political discussions of such things are tamped down as intensely as japanese right-wing denials of their country’s atrocities. always a “few bad apples.”
i’m, not sure america really has much of a leg to stand on in our own defense, apparently only those who lose wars have to fess up about the nasty stuff they did. not that any of that lets the japanese off the hook, mind you.
“but when was the last time americans honestly discussed their behavior in, say, korea, vietnam or the current occupation of iraq?”
From my perspective, all are a near constant topic of discussion, however politics are forever coloring what any side considers “honest”. And many prefer polemical works supporting their convictions to the drudgery of plowing through first hand sources or official records. And if that’s the way we are in the west, why should the east be any different?