{"id":11764,"date":"2023-09-25T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T13:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/?p=11764"},"modified":"2023-12-05T08:37:26","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T23:37:26","slug":"4-5%e3%80%80did-military-comfort-women-actually-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/?p=11764&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"4-5\u3000Did \u201cMilitary Comfort Women\u201d Actually Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A Japanese Army and Ministry of Foreign Affairs document that shows the words \u201ccomfort women\u201d and \u201ccomfort station\u201d were used.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nAmong the reasons given when requesting the deletion of jugun ianfu (\u201cmilitary comfort women\u201d) from school textbooks are that the term itself didn\u2019t exist at the time, and that the designation \u201cmilitary\u201d is unsuited since it implies the women were civilian employees of the military (Nobukatsu Fujioka, Monbu daijin e no kokai shokan [\u201cAn open letter to the education minister\u201d]).\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIs that really the case? Japanese military at the time initially had a variety of designations such as shakufu (\u201cbarmaids\u201d) and ianjo jugyofu (\u201cwomen employed at comfort stations\u201d), but it was most common to call them ianfu (\u201ccomfort women\u201d). And the places where these women lived were called ianjo (\u201ccomfort stations\u201d) or gun-ianjo (\u201cmilitary comfort stations\u201d).\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe word jugun ianfu (\u201cmilitary comfort women\u201d) was originally coined by Kako Senda in his work jugun ianfu (\u201cMilitary Comfort Women\u201d) (first published in Japanese in 1973), and has gained popularity since. They were taken everywhere the Japanese military went, so the word jugun (literal meaning is \u201cfollowing the military\u201d) must have seemed like a perfect fit.\r\nHowever since the 1990s, those involved in issues of wartime responsibility have criticized the term, saying that jugun (\u201cmilitary\u201d) gives the impression the women followed the military voluntarily, and that the word \u201ccomfort\u201d did not accurately reflect the reality that was faced by these women. They were victims of sex crimes, forced to conduct sexual activities, not \u201ccomforting\u201d the soldiers. The claim was that the word \u201ccomfort\u201d was deceptive and far removed from what actually occurred. So instead of \u201ccomfort women,\u201d terms such as \u201csexual slave\u201d and \u201cmilitary sex slave\u201d have been used instead.\r\n\r\n \r\n

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A document of the Japanese Army and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that shows that the words \u201ccomfort women\u201d and \u201ccomfort station\u201d were used.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nOn the other hand, there is the opinion that, even though the term does not accurately reflect the situation, it is a historical fact that it was used, and that it is important to keep historical record of the fact that the Japanese army used such a deceptive expression. It has become popular in these cases to avoided using only jugun (\u201cmilitary\u201d) and make the subject clearer, calling them \u201cJapanese Military comfort women\u201d.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nNor is using the word jugun (\u201cmilitary\u201d) a mistake. A quick reading-up of history will tell you that the term does not mean they were civilian employees of the military. Also, as seen in terms such as \u201cmilitary nurse\u201d, \u201cmilitary journalist\u201d and \u201cmilitary authors,\u201d there are other instances of forced enlistment which invalidates the opinion that the word connotes the meaning of \u201cvoluntary\u201d. In essence, the designation jugun ianfu (\u201cmilitary comfort women\u201d) accurately describes the situation these women were in, in the sense that they were ordered to follow where the military went (this is a point on which many opinions differ).\r\n\r\n \r\n

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Kako Senda, Jugun Ianfu (\u201cMilitary Comfort women\u201d), Kodansha, 1984<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nIf we argue that we cannot use words that were not in use at the time, we cannot write history. It need not be said that most terms describing historical events were not used at the time, but were invented after the fact.\r\nIt is utterly laughable to argue that since the term \u201cmilitary comfort women\u201d was not used at the time, there were no such persons, or that it should not be included in school textbooks.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Japanese Army and Ministry of Foreign Affairs document that shows the words \u201ccomfort women\u201d and \u201ccomfort sta […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"swell_btn_cv_data":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[208,134],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11765,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11764\/revisions\/11765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}