"Japan’s ‘Comfort Women’ and Historical Memory: The Neo-nationalist Counter-attack"

INTRODUCTION

This reaction paper will discuss the article, ‘Japan’s ‘Comfort Women’ and Historical Memory: The Neo-nationalist Counter-attack’, written by Yonson Ahn. The article explores the controversial issue of comfort women used by the Japanese army in Second World War and the attempt by certain sections to erase the public memory on comfort women as a part of “historical revisionism” (Ahn 2008, 32). The article considers the literature on comfort women in Japan, particularly with an emphasis on the meaning of comfort women, the state’s involvement in the project, and other related issues.

This reaction paper posits that the article is correct in its position which is more respectful to the voices of the victims.

Main Body

The article takes exception to the position taken by some scholars who question the state’s involvement in the comfort station because of the lack of the official documents. The article states time and again that neo-nationalists depend on the official narrative while they discount the narrative of the victims. In this the article also takes a critical note on the progressive writers who also use official records rather than the experiences of the comfort women. I believe that the position taken by the article is correct because apart from the official narrative, the real voices of those who served as comfort women should have been used to create the historical narrative. While this may not be the traditional method of seeking historical truth, it may provide a new method of seeking out recent history on the comfort women (Kimura 2016). The victims of the actual system can be allowed to provide the narrative in absence of official records.

The article uses disapproving language to address these positions, at one place noting that “As an excuse, neo-nationalists like Hata and Fujioka depict the ‘comfort stations’ as akin to modern-day restaurants housed within Japan’s Ministry of Education building: visited by Ministry personnel but not operated by the Ministry” (Ahn 2008, 35). I agree with this position of the article because the naysayers who deny the existence of comfort women or trivialise the role of the state are obviously trying to ignore the role played by the state while they admit the existence of comfort stations, which does not make sense (Yang 1997).

The article also takes exception to the position of neo-nationalists who define force or coercion in the narrow terms of “physical force, such as abduction” (Ahn 2008, 36). Instead the article mentions that force could also be applied in different ways, such as, on daughters for saving their fathers from being conscripted. I agree with this because force and coercion cannot be seen only in the context of physical force, especially when the power relations between the Japanese Army and the Korean women were skewed heavily in favour of Japanese where they did not have to actually physically coerce women.

Conclusion

The position taken by the article is the correct position. The article is able to take a more nuanced position than neo-nationalists and treat the issue of victim’s voices with more respect.

Bibliography

• Ahn, Yonson. 2008. "Japan’s ‘Comfort Women’And Historical Memory: The Neo-Nationalist Counter-Attack." In The power of memory in modern Japan, by Yonson Ahn, 32-53. Brill.
• Kimura, Maki. 2016. Unfolding the ‘Comfort Women’Debates: Modernity, Violence, Women's Voices . Switzerland AG: Springer.
• Yang, Hyunah. 1997. "Revisiting the issue of Korean “military comfort women”: the question of truth and positionality." Positions: East Asia cultures critique 5 (1): 51-72.