Park Yuha “Comfort Women of Japan Empire – Battle between colonialism and memory” Asahi Shimbun Publishing, 2014
This review was written in English since any other readers except Japanese can read.
About the author. She was born in 1957. Currently in the position of Professor of Japanese literature at Sejong University in Korea.
In 2005, published “Transcending anti-Japan Nationalism”, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, which won the Japan-Korea Cultural Foundation award
In 2005, published “For accommodation – School textbooks, Comfort women, Yasukuni Shrine, and Tok-do” in Korea.
In 2006, published the Japanese version as Heibon-sha library, which won the Jiro Daibutsu Press award in 2007
Translated works of Soseki Natsume and Kenzaburo Oue, etc., introducing them to Korea, as a bridge between Japan and Korea.
About her publishing this book.
In August 2013, published Korean version of this book
In Spring 2014, held a symposium with the title “The comfort women subject – the 3rd voice”
On 10th September 2014, published the report of the symposium onto The Huffington Press
On 30th November 2014, published this book, inserting the symposium report as “Afterword”
If trying to represent this book in the brief way, it should be ”a single volume of comprehensive and well-balanced reference to comfort women subject, with which Japanese and Korean people have difficulties to share common acknowledgment not only between both countries but also in each country, referring to Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea in 1965, and publications since 1970’s and recent references on internet, keeping the neutral position from Japan and Korea, aiming to describe it as realistic as possible right now.
According to the beginning of its first chapter, the first trigger to inform the world of the comfort women subject was another book ”Comfort women in battle fields – accusation from eighty thousands ‘voiceless women’” published in 1973, written by a journalist, Natsumitsu Senda. In spite of some incorrect descriptions based on the latest researches, as the author (Park Yuha) pointed, the book is still quite valuable to record real words of comfort women and their traders 40 years ago, which we have extreme difficulties to get from Japanese comfort women or traders now because they must have become the senior generation, and moreover, this subject is under the soured situation among the participants.
When Korean comfort women started to raise their voices was 1991. As only about 20 years have passed since Korea came into democracy in early 1990’s, there is a certain insufficiency in building rigid organizations of the government or opinion formation, which give some impacts on dealing with this subject. The typical example should be “The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan”, which has unbalanced understanding of the subject and has lobbied to the world against Japan. The author (Park Yuha), who is the same Korean as the members of the Council, is unlocking the complex situation surrounding the subject with her sober approaches.
To explain the characteristics of this book, the readers need to take notice of the title. The meaning of the adjective “of Japan Empire” shows the colonialism in the subtitle “Battle between colonialism and memory.” Hitherto, the comfort women subject has been frequently dealt as a part of the Greater East Asian War by the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II. However, for the essential understanding of the subject, we must go back to the colonial problem since the Manchurian Incident. Japan, who colonialized Korea by imitating Western great powers, impressed Korean people as “the second Japanese” and sent Korean comfort women to the battle fields of the Japanese army as “Japanese.”
In addition to the background stated above, poverty in Korea at that moment became the big factor to provide Japan with comfort women. Korean women at that moment, who were under miserable situation in their family, became comfort women ipso facto to escape the environment. Some Korean people played a role to provide the women for Japan army’s accommodation. It was also the requirement of the time where Korean civil servants and/or traders had to become collaborators to survive in the colonized Korea.
One of values of this book is the detailed accounting of the “variety” in what kinds of situation comfort women were working and how traders acted in managing the women. The situation was not so simple as “16-year old girls were forced to become comfort women” which Korea (means The Council) explains nor “prostitutes became comfort women by their own volition” which Japanese negativists explain. Another value of this book is the detailed accounts on historical documents and its legal aspects, which include the judgment by Korea court of constitution (2011 summer), Report by Radhika Coomaraswamy, Final report submitted by Ms. Gay J. McDougall, United States House of Representatives House Resolution 121 (2007), and ILO Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (2004). It explains how they have been formed, along with the issues.
Both Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono (1993) and Asian Women's Fund (1995) are explained in a dedicated chapter as actions by Japan. Due to the insufficient understanding of the essence of the actions in Korea, however, the rift on this subject between Korea and Japan has been amplified. As a reason why these actions have not well worked, the essence of Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Property and Claims and Economic Cooperation (1965) is clarified. After all, it’s the essential subject regarding the Treaty of Peace with Japan after WWII, which, as the result, reaches the colonial subjects by Western world powers to Less Developed Countries including Asia. Understandably, it represents similar cases of dealing women of LDC by Western “imperium” other than Japan, with a certain amounts of details.
Fixing attention on the historical facts on and situation surrounding comfort women, the author proposes like: “Japan and Korea immediately should form a national body where the members can discuss about the solution of this subject. It’d be desirable to start the discussion, promising that any conclusion could be reasoned out with a defined period (a half year, or one year at the longest) to.” (p.312).
This book can be recommended as the best single volume of the reference to this subject as of today when lots of new facts emerged for the approximately twenty years since 1990’s. The publication of the English version would highly be desirable.
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