Speaker: Zi Ye, Department of History, University of Hawaii at Manoa / Ke Kulanui o Hawaiʻi ma Mānoa

Abstract: »In 1996, a series of police reports to the Home Ministry of Japan were discovered during a government survey of documents associated with “comfort women.” These reports alerted the Home Ministry of several suspected human traffickers who claimed to be recruiting women on behalf of the Japanese Imperial Army. While local police authorities neither believed the claims of official authorizations nor that demands were made for “comfort women,” these claims were proven genuine by contemporaneous official records. Since these documents were discovered, “comfort women” historians have uncritically accepted the portrayal of early “comfort women” recruiters as money-driven opportunists taking advantage of the Sino-Japanese War. Due to this lack of critical review, the early recruiters’ personal histories, interpersonal relationships, and their connections to Japanese business circles and society at large remained underexplored. By collecting and scrutinizing contemporary records made newly accessible by digital humanities tools, this research challenges the prevailing understandings of the early “comfort women” recruiting networks by reconstructing the life histories of early recruiters whose names were recorded in the police reports. This research reveals that, contrary to the accepted notion that these recruiters were money-hungry social outcasts, the early recruiters were, in fact, wealthy and influential community leaders and new members of the Japanese urban gentry. ­­­­The findings of this study suggest that 1) current “comfort women” scholarship has misunderstood the nature and motivations of these recruiters, and 2) human trafficking during armed conflicts can be aided and abetted by the social gentry.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Asia: History of China / History of the Republic of China | History of Asia: History of Japan / Shōwa era | Prostitution: Forced prostitution / Comfort women | Sex and the law: Wartime sexual violence / Wartime sexual violence in World War II | War: Second Sino-Japanese War and Pacific War / Japanese war crimes