Representations of Gendered Violence in Manga: The Case of Enforced Military Prostitution

Abstract

As a key part of contemporary Japanese mass visual culture, manga has increasingly been used to shape popular perceptions of history. In recent years, there has been a great deal of discussion surrounding politically conservative and revisionist manga that distort the military's actions during Japan's wars throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In regard to the issue of enforced military prostitution, victims, activists, and scholars have found the depiction of so-called ‘comfort women’ as willing prostitutes or participants to be extremely offensive. Compared to these revisionist works, there are other artists who look to address and faithfully represent and depict the military prostitution issue in manga. Unlike their revisionist counterparts, these artists grapple with the inherent sensitivities of such an issue and struggle with ways to communicate the brutality of gendered violence. These works illustrate important similarities and differences in how artists structure and frame historical narratives in manga. More importantly, the works raise questions about the impossibility of adequately conveying the experiences of soldiers and victims during the war. They also serve as a reminder to the diversity of representations in contemporary Japanese discourse.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Vera Mackie, Roman Rosenbaum and two anonymous reviewers for their astute and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Katsuhiko Suganuma and Mayumi Shinozaki for their help in locating some of the sources used herein.

Notes

¹There is no agreed terminology for referring to these victims. In this article I use ‘enforced military prostitution’ to refer to so-called ‘comfort women’. Although English-language scholarship often uses the phrase ‘comfort women’ (ianfu) or ‘military comfort women’ (jūgun ianfu), many victims have remarked that they are grossly offensive and misleading. Dutch survivor Jan Ruff-O'Herne forcefully wrote that ‘[t]he euphemism “comfort women” is an insult … We were never “comfort women”. Comfort means something warm and soft, safe and friendly … We were war-rape victims, enslaved and conscripted by the Japanese Imperial Army;’ see Ruff-O'Herne, Fifty Years of Silence, 136–137. This raises the problem of what to call survivors and victims. Older references in Japanese historiography and soldiers' memoirs usually refer to these women as prostitutes (shōfu), but this fails to take into account the coercive and institutionalized exploitation women were subjected to as well as possibly implying voluntarism on the part of these women. Other Japanese words like seidorei or seidoreisei (translated in English as ‘sex slave’ and ‘sexual slavery’) are often used in contemporary Japanese research on the subject, but like Laura Hein I believe such phrases in English may unconsciously evoke references to pornography, which I hope to avoid. Although not perfect, by using the phrase ‘enforced military prostitution’ I hope to emphasise (first) the coercive and institutional system run by the military that (second) sexually exploited these women against their will. I avoid the use of the term ‘comfort women’ in this article except in quoted material. For other scholars' perspectives on this terminological issue, see Chung, ‘The Origin and Development of the Military Sexual Slavery Problem,’ 220–222; Gluck, ‘Operations of Memory’, 71; Hein, ‘Savage Irony’, 343; Mackie, ‘Sexual Violence, Silence, and Human Rights Discourse’, 39–40; Soh, The Comfort Women, 142.

²See Clifford, ‘Cleansing History, Cleansing Japan’ and Sakamoto, ‘Will You Go To War?’ for a sample of arguments dealing with Kobayashi's work, including details about Sensōron.

³Yonezawa, ‘Manga no kairaku’, cited in Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us, 181.

⁴Yamano, Manga Kenkanryū; Yamano, Kenchūgokuryū; Yamato, Nikkyōsō no kyōshitsu gakkō. Generally, Kenkanryū claims Korea's current social and economic successes are due to Japanese colonialism and downplays or denies any negative aspects of colonialism. Among other issues, it asserts Japan has no reason to apologise for its actions during the war (including for the enforced labour of Koreans or for enforced military prostitution), and that two small islets in the Sea of Japan, referred to as Takeshima in Japanese or Dokdo in Korean, belong to Japan. As of the writing of this article, there were four volumes in the Kenkanryū series. For further details on the increasing popularity of Kenkanryū, see Sugiura, ‘“Kenkanryū” wa naze naru mō wo hiraku no ka?’, 25.

⁵Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us, 182.

⁶Images of women subjected to enforced military prostitution wooing soldiers also may have a similar effect. For examples, refer to the images of enforced military prostitutes in Kobayashi, Shin gōmanizumu sengen 3, especially 40, 80–81, 180.

⁷Chute, ‘Comics as Literature?’, 459.

⁸However, feminist scholarship on gendered violence has the tendency to frame gendered violence in terms of ‘violence against women’, thus ignoring ‘violence against men’. See Nayak and Suchland, ‘Gender Violence and Hegemonic Projects’, 471–472; O'Toole et al., ‘Preface: Conceptualizing Gender Violence’, xiii.

⁹Saris and Lofts, ‘Reparation Programmes: A Gendered Perspective’, 79.

¹⁰Nayak and Suchland, ‘Gender Violence and Hegemonic Projects’, 469.

¹¹Gluck, ‘The Past in the Present’, 64–95, esp. 82–84.

¹²Shimazu, ‘Popular Representations of the Past’, 101.

¹³See Coser, ‘Introduction’, 24.

¹⁴For example, Kobayashi's Sensōron sold in excess of 400,000 copies in the first three months of publication and well over a million in total. Yamano's Kenkanryū series has sold over 900,000 copies in total. These figures presumably do not take used book sales into account. In the case of both works, these figures are prominently displayed on the advertising strips (obi) attached to the books. See Kobayashi, Sensōron, and Yamano, Manga Kenkanryū 4.

¹⁵Iwasaki and Richter, ‘The Topology of Post 1990s Historical Revisionism’, 514.

¹⁶Mackie, ‘Sexual Violence, Silence, and Human Rights Discourse’, 42–43. Works mentioning enforced military prostitution in detail have been published since the Allied Occupation of Japan: for one early example, refer to Kerkham's discussion of Tamura Taijirō's novel Shunpuden in Kerkham, ‘Pleading for the Body’. Senda Kakō's well known bestseller Jūgun ianfu sold over 500,000 copies in the 1970s: see Kawada et al., ‘Zadankai, nokosareta sensō no shukudai’, 169. Women's liberation groups were also mentioning enforced military prostitution as early as 1970 in their writings: see Mizoguchi et al., eds, Shiryō Nihon ūman ribu-shi, 1, 197, 216–19.

¹⁷One particular disagreement has seen Ueno Chizuko criticizing Yoshimi and Suzuki for naïvely reinforcing a positivist view of history championed by politically conservative researchers, something both roundly deny. O'Brien, ‘Translator's Introduction’, xx. For commentary on the debate between Ueno Chizuko and Yoshimi, see Ueno Terumasa, ‘“Posuto kōzōshugi” to rekishigaku’.

¹⁸Soaplands are officially businesses where clients (typically men) can go to be bathed by women. Unofficially, many of these women are prostitutes who engage in sexual activity with their clients.

¹⁹Uesugi, Datsu gōmanizumu sengen, 65.

²⁰Ibid.

²¹Examples of research critiquing revisionist manga include Miller, ‘A Response to Kobayashi Yoshinori's On Taiwan’; Sakamoto, ‘Will You Go to War?’; Shimazu, ‘Popular Representations of the Past’, 113–115. In Japanese, see Uesugi, Datsu sensōron; Uesugi, Datsu gōmanizumu sengen; Ōta and Pak, ‘Manga kenkanryū’ no koko ga detarame.

²²Uesugi, Datsu gōmanizumu sengen, 15.

²³Popular examples of manga critical of war include Ishinomori, Manga ningen no jōken (The Human Condition, based on Gomikawa Junpei's six-volume novel of the same name), Nakazawa, Hadashi no gen (Barefoot Gen), and Chiba, Shidenkai no taka (The Hawk of the Shidenkai). Tessa Morris-Suzuki has written a brief critical analysis of ‘Aru hi ano kioku wo koroshi ni’, which examines the issue of enforced military prostitution and is discussed in the following section. See Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us, 200–203.

²⁴The Young Jump website proclaims itself as ‘Japan's number one seinen manga magazine’, with seinen manga generally recognized as a sub-genre targeted towards this age group of 18 to 30. See ‘Web YOUNG JUMP’, http://yj.shueisha.co.jp/ (accessed 28 February 2010).

²⁵In addition to Aru hi's original publication in the weekly serial Shūkan yangu janpu and subsequent publication in the collected volume of adapted manga Mono kū hitobito: komikku ban, 283–312, it has also been published in Miyadai et al., Sensōron mōsōron, 155–184.

²⁶Another major work critical of Japan's wartime actions by Ishizaka is Tadashii sensō (published in Young Jump from 1983 to 1989). For the original non-fiction travelogue that Aru hi is based on, see Henmi, Mono kū hitobito, 325–345. For further information on Ishizaka's manga, see Miyadai et al., Sensōron mōsōron, 185–91. An interview dealing with Ishizaka's anti-war views, ‘Ishikawa Kei ni kikitai’, can be found at http://www.magazine9.jp/interv/ishizaka/ (accessed 28 February 2010).

²⁷Henmi, Mono kū hitobito: komikku ban, 1.

²⁸Miyadai et al., Sensōron mōsōron, 186.

²⁹More recent works by Ishizaka include Himitsu no hako and Aku.

³⁰‘Shiro no gundan’ is part of her long-running Annonzoku (Tranquil Family) series. See Ishizaka, ‘Shiro no gundan’, 91–114.

³¹Ibid., 103–104.

³²Ibid., 104.

³³Ibid.

³⁴ Dōjinshi are self-published works. For details on the production cycle of manga in an industrial or corporate setting, see Kinsella, Adult Manga 50–69.

³⁵Since 1992, demonstrations in support of survivors' claims for compensation and an official apology from the Japanese government have taken place outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul every Wednesday.

³⁶Ishizaka, ‘Aru hi ano kioku wo koroshi ni’, 287.

³⁷Ibid., 290.

³⁸Ibid.

³⁹Ibid., 292.

⁴⁰Henmi, Mono kū hitobito, 330.

⁴¹Ishizaka, ‘Aru hi ano kioku wo koroshi ni’, 302–303. Emphasis added.

⁴²Ibid., 305–306. This episode is remarkably similar to that experienced by Yi Yongsu. Refer to her testimony in Howard, True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women, 93.

⁴³For example, refer to the testimonies of Kim Soon-duk in Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 39; Kim Tok-chin in Howard, True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women, 46–47; Ha Sunnyo in ibid., 63.

⁴⁴According to his memoirs, former Prime Minister Nakasone authorized the construction of a so-called ‘comfort station’. Veteran Asō Tetsuo was involved in gynaecological examinations of enforced military prostitutes. Asō's diaries and memoirs will be discussed in further detail later in this article. For former Prime Minister Nakasone's contribution to a war memoir anthology, see Nakasone, ‘Nijūsan sai de sanzennin no sōshikikan’.

⁴⁵Although there is initially some ambiguity as to whether or not He-suk and Taniguchi had intercourse, He-suk clearly states two pages later she gave him gonorrhoea. See Ishizaka, ‘Aru hi ano kioku wo koroshi ni’, 306.

⁴⁶Ibid., 296, 302.

⁴⁷This episode with Taniguchi is six pages before the story's conclusion. See ibid., 304–06.

⁴⁸Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us, 202.

⁴⁹Jan Ruff-O'Herne was born and lived in the Dutch East Indies before being interned by the Japanese with other Dutch citizens in the Ambarawa Prison Camp in 1942. She was taken to a so-called ‘virgins' brothel’ in Semarang by the Japanese army in 1944. Further details can be found in her memoir 50 Years of Silence, 68–72.

⁵⁰See Asō, Rabauru nikki vol. 1–3; Asō, Shanghai yori Shanghai e.

⁵¹Senda Kakō's 1973Jūgun ianfu, for which he interviewed Asō, is widely recognized as the first major treatise on the issue of enforced military prostitution.

⁵²For further details on the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) and Allied military prostitution, see chapter six in Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 133–166.

⁵³Upon a trip to a Tokyo bookstore, I discovered Report was shelved in the history section with monographs dealing with enforced military prostitution and not in the manga section. I believe this speaks to the attitudes of many bookshop owners who tend to avoid shelving translations of American and European comics with Japanese manga as well.

⁵⁴For example, refer to some of the image previews available on the Amazon.co.jp website, ‘Manga “ianfu” repōto 1: Chon Gyona’, available online: http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/reader/4750325910/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link (accessed 2 May 2011).

⁵⁵Ch[obreve]ng, Manga ‘ianfu’ repōto, 78–105. For details on the origins of systematized military prostitution by the Japanese military, refer to chapter one in Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 8–32.

⁵⁶Major works cited in Report other than Asō's memoir include Senda, Jūgun ianfu; Nishino and Kim, Shōgen mirai e no kioku; Ruff-O'Herne, 50 Years of Silence.

⁵⁷Ch[obreve]ng, Manga ‘ianfu’ repōto, 106–114.

⁵⁸Rosenbaum, ‘Historical Revisionism in Contemporary Manga Culture’, 5.

⁵⁹Sakamoto, ‘Will You Go To War?’. For examples of Ch[obreve]ng's use of photographs, see Ch[obreve]ng, Manga ‘ianfu’ repōto, 109–114, 120, 123, 156–157.

⁶⁰See Rosenbaum, ‘Historical Revisionism in Contemporary Manga Culture’ for details of Kobayashi's and Motomiya's use of photographs.

⁶¹Ch[obreve]ng, Manga ‘ianfu’ repōto, 110.

⁶²Ibid., 110–111.

⁶³Japanese newspapers covered the supposed contest between the two officers en route to Nanking in 1937. Both were found guilty at the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and executed for war crimes. Since then, a number of historians have noted the contest was likely exaggerated and may not have actually occurred in the manner it was originally reported. However, the Tokyo District Court affirmed that the contest was not fabricated in a 2005 lawsuit for defamation brought by the soldiers' families against the Mainichi and Asahi newspapers as well as journalist Honda Katsuichi. For details, see the Japan Times article ‘Suit Denying Pair's Wartime Beheading Spree Fails’.

⁶⁴Ch[obreve]ng, Manga ‘ianfu’ repōto, 113.

⁶⁵Ibid., 116.

⁶⁶Ibid., 142.

⁶⁷Ibid.

⁶⁸Ibid., 152. Japanese military officials widely believed Korean women were better suited for enforced military prostitution as their strong Confucian values ensured not only their virginity but also their lack of sexually transmitted diseases at the time of their so-called ‘recruitment’. Asō's confusion here seems to be representative of the disbelief held by Ch[obreve]ng (as well as others, including Asō himself as evidenced by his report) that such a policy would stem the transmission of disease. A translation of this report, ‘A Positive Method for Prevention of Venereal Disease’ can be found in Asō, From Shanghai to Shanghai, 172–185.

⁶⁹Ch[obreve]ng, Manga ‘ianfu’ repōto, 153–154.

⁷⁰For example, see Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women; Soh, The Comfort Women; Yoshimi, Jūgun ianfu.

⁷¹Ch[obreve]ng, Manga ‘ianfu’ repōto, 5.

⁷²A critique of Korean nationalism in historiography and activist literature on enforced military prostitution can be found in Yamashita, ‘Nationalism in Korean Women's Studies’.

⁷³Ch[obreve]ng, Manga ‘ianfu’ repōto, 261.

⁷⁴Gluck, ‘Operations of Memory’, 55.

⁷⁵Ibid., 69.

⁷⁶Yang, ‘Finding the “Map of Memory”’, 82–83.