Japan’s Comfort Women Book Review

757 Words2 Pages

A main argument Tanaka has is the constant denial of the Japanese comfort women. It became something that was not talked about. Tanaka mentions his father and his uncles, “…very little reference was made to the live of local Chinese people…” (pg.2). They had kept all quiet when it came to talking about the wrongs of the war. Soldier’s and the government feign ignorance when it comes to the matter of comfort women. The head of the allied troops did the same covering the sexual crimes of occupation soldiers in Japan. An example of this is when, “…SCAP issued a… press code for Japan and controlling press reports by introducing post censorship”(pg.124). They purposefully hid the wrong of their troops also so that it would not get back to the states. Women during and after were seen as tools to satisfy these man allowing them to escape when from the real world. The government turned their heads the other way.
Tanaka’s next argument is, sex becomes a source of oppression, brutality and money in war. In his introduction to the book he states, “Sex is a beautiful and extremely enjoyable human relationship with a partner” (pg.1). As soon as war comes into the picture it is used for oppression in a country that has been dominated by another. One woman by the name of Yi Sunok was switched from one comfort station to a comfort station in Singapore, where she again demanded to give up her body to Japanese soldiers. The interesting thing is the Japanese didn’t use their own women for prostitution and if they were used it was only licensed prostitutes. The women used for low ranking soldiers were Korean and Taiwanese women. These two countries both belonged to Japan as colonies. They were forced into becoming prostitutes they had no way to de...

... middle of paper ...

...only lied with their women.
Overall Yuki Tanaka was able to show just how the Japanese and every country around the world can hide things that they do not want to be known either because they are ashamed of what they have done or the fact that they just do not care to acknowledge they had committed a brutal crime against women, even to those that were not even born during this time. His arguments throughout the book convinced to a great level that during a war things can be changed, showing the ugliness of dehumanization. No country is innocent when it comes to war. He gets one thinking of how everyone can know about the Holocaust a racism against at ethnicity but not of the racism, sexism against women.

Works Cited

Tanaka, Toshiyuki. Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.

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