The Origin of the ‘Comfort Women’ System

Abstract

Military ‘prostitution’ or other forms of sexual exploitation and violence during war have always been widespread, but it is often suggested that sexual exploitation and violence on such a large scale as the ‘comfort women’ system cannot be identified at any other time in history. The ‘comfort women’ system may be unprecedented in many respects, such as the way that women were mobilized and ‘recruited’, and the diversity in its organi­zation and operation (Yoshimi and Hayashi, 1995: 4–6). While distinctive military culture influenced the development of the ‘comfort women’ system (Yoshimi, 1995a: 208–9), this should not be attributed to a unique Japanese culture/tradition or to the effect of Japanese pre-modernity, but should be seen as the outcome of modernity itself, as discussed in Chapter 2. Specific Japanese socio-cultural factors cannot be ignored in understanding why and how the ‘comfort women’ system was developed and organized, but this should be contextualized against historical and geographical backgrounds. This requires a particular attention to the formation of the modern Japanese nation-state and its national subjects from the late nineteenth century, and how it incorporated certain norms of gender and sexuality, which led to the construction of the ‘comfort women’ system.