8/11/2017 Were comfort women sex slaves?

The stories of ‘comfort women’ which have been made public by Korean people are untrue. There is no historical evidence that the Japanese army forced Korean women to be engaged in sexual services during the Second World War. No objective evidence has been provided not only by South Korea but also by the USA, which investigated the matter exhaustively.

Those stories are based on the fiction Seiji Yoshida forged for money or fame. His work should be regarded as a novel rather than a historical document, although it is a very malicious novel.

The Ashahi Shimbun, one of the major Japanese newspapers, utilized the fiction by treating it as if it were true in order to debase the Japanese army and Japanese government. Later this newspaper company admitted in its elaborate two-page article that its reports on comfort women had lacked objective evidence, which is an extremely exceptional conduct for a newspaper.

It is true that there were Korean as well as Japanese women who practiced prostitution for the army during the Second World War, but their remuneration was tremendous. Prostitution was legal at that time and most countries had this institution for their armies. (In some countries it is still legal today.) It should be noted that some of the Koreans were forced to be engaged in the occupation by their parents or relatives because of poverty. These facts should not be confused with acts of the Japanese army.

It is hard for most people to understand Koreans’ criticizing Japan on the basis of what did not exist at all. It is also hard to understand some Americans and other peoples who support those Koreans by setting up bronze statues of comfort women in their countries, which have nothing to do with Korean comfort women.

I would like to talk about related matters later.

Comments are welcome.

Kazuhiro Arai’s Japanese blog:         　https://araikazuhiro.blogspot.jp/

Kazuhiro Arai’s Japanese home page:   http://araikazuhiro.world.coocan.jp/