Sexism

From the beginning of the Meiji Period to Japan's defeat, according to Okuda Akiko, a scholar of women's history, men dominated all areas in politics, the economy and society, and led the nation to the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War and the Asia-Pacific War.

During the empire's reign, the government tolerated prostitution and human trafficking.^[572] From the early Meiji period, male traffickers purchased women, including girls as young as 13, from the heads of households and sold them to the brothels in Japan, Asia, Europe and Americas for the purpose of sexual slavery.^[573] The Meiji government licensed and taxed brothels, and the recruited women were controlled through debt bondage. The prostitution law was in effect in the Japanese colonies, but different standards applied to different regions: female prostitution with a minimum age of 18 was legal in Japanese homelands; the minimum age was 17 in Korea and 16 in Taiwan. While human rights activists attempted to criminalise prostitution, their efforts did not succeed. The empire supported the narrative that the prostitu­tion law would benefit society and was essential for public hygiene and for the military.^[574] Many of these women attempted to escape, died because of sexual diseases or committed suicide, but the government completely ignored their wishes.^[575]

As the government embraced the idea that setting up brothels would serve the greater public good, it was inevitable that the military founded and sponsored the so-called comfort stations in Asia and the Pacific, including China, Hong Kong, French Indochina, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, British Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, Thailand, New Guinea, the Japanese Okinawan archipelago, the Bonin Islands, Hokkaido, the Kurile Islands and Sakhalin.

The victims of such sexual slavery included women of various nationalities and ethnicities, including Australians, Burmese, Chinese, Dutch, Filipinas, Koreans, Indonesians, Japanese, Singaporeans, Taiwanese and Vietnamese. Procurement of these women varied. Some of them were deceived or lured with the promise of a well-paid job, some were abducted, and others volunteered without knowing the realities of the services that they had to provide. In the case of Pak Yong-sim, born in 1921 in South Pyongan, when she was 17 a Japanese policeman promised her a well-paid job, but she was taken to a ‘comfort station' in Nanjing and was coerced into providing sex to the Japanese soldiers. Three years later, she was transferred to Burma and then sent to the war front. The Japanese troops were annihilated except a few soldiers, but she and two other women escaped the battlefield and were rescued by the Chinese troops. She was pregnant and experienced heavy bleeding. A Chinese doctor gave her a Caesarean section, but discovered that her child was dead.

After Japan's defeat, the empire's attitude towards women remained unchanged until the promulgation of the new Constitution in 1947, which guaranteed women's civil rights. During the Allied Occupation, the Japanese government established the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) and opened the same kind of ‘comfort stations' for the Allied troops. The government believed that these stations would save women and girls from being raped by the Allied troops, and disregarded the fact that the RAA employees had to sacrifice their bodies for the state. The Association origin­ally planned to mobilise 5,000 women. The government intended to enlist primarily geisha, licensed and unlicensed prostitutes, waitresses, barmaids and habitual offenders under the prostitution law.^[579] In reality, however, non­professional women, including high school students who lost their families due to the bombings, were recruited. The Association put up a large poster in front of its office in Tokyo to recruit the women:

Announcement to New Japanese Women! We require the utmost co­operation of new Japanese women who participate in a great project to comfort the occupation forces, which is part of the national emergency establishment of the postwar management. Female workers, between 18 and 25 years old, are wanted. Accommodation, clothes and meals, all free.^[580]

To lure as many patriotic women as possible, the advertisement stressed that the job was urgent and important to the nation.

RAA succeeded in enlisting 1,360 women.

The RAA facilities were short-lived. Nonetheless, the Japanese govern­ment declared that women had the right to become prostitutes and contin­ued to disregard the women who were exploited by the Allied servicemen allegedly to protect a greater number of girls and women from sexual violence. Prostitution play, in which a boy imitated an Allied serviceman while a girl pretended to be a prostitute, became a popular activity among the children in occupiedJapan. ‘You like to meet my sister' became as popular as ‘give me chocolate' to many orphans who collected some money by intro­ducing their women to the servicemen. These prostitutes included girls as young as 14 years old.^[582] Although the empire collapsed, its attitude towards less privileged citizens remained no different. Even after the war ended, the government consistently justified abuses in the name of national emergency.