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\u201cSoldiers risked their lives in circumstances where bullets were flying around like rain and wind. To give them some rest, the comfort women system was necessary. That\u2019s apparent to everyone.\u201d This claim was made by Osaka’s Mayor Toru Hashimoto in May 2013.<\/p>\n
To date, this notion is widely accepted as self-evident\u2014during World War II as well as today.<\/p>\n
Armies, and in particular conscript armies that field \u201ccitizen-soldiers\u201d face the task of preparing their men to become direct military actors\u2014that is, to be willing to face two of the most extreme experiences of human existence: the power to kill and the possibility of being killed.<\/p>\n
Military schooling trains men, physically and psychologically, in order to unleash their potential for violence but\u2014at the same time\u2014to channel it towards military goals. A soldier is supposed to be dominant and aggressive, but he should also be submissive and follow orders. A soldier has to perpetrate violence, but he also has to endure violence.<\/p>\n
Military commanders take into account that the men experience this conditioning as imposition. For the expected subjection, the military therefore promises to compensate the individual. As Jan Philipp Reemtsma argues, \u201cThe order \u2018You must!\u2019 is accompanied by the license \u2018You may.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSoldiers are not only disciplined more rigorously than other people,\u201d Reemtsma continues, \u201cthey can also\u2014at least during war\u2014take more liberties.\u201d One of the liberties that the Japanese Army Command granted its men was the perpetration of sexual violence.<\/p>\n
The sexual activity of the men, however, should be channeled and stay under control. The Army Command thus established a regulated and supervised system of \u201ccomfort stations\u201d. Thereby they aimed at keeping their men from raping women at random (which risked to cause resistance in local populations) and preventing the spread of sexually transmitted disease.<\/p>\n
Both measures were unsuccessful, as Yuki Tanaka has convincingly shown. Still, sexual satisfaction appeared as a form of leisure and a means of sublimating men\u2019s hardships, in particular their fear to become crippled or die.<\/p>\n
This is what Osaka\u2019s mayor Toru Hashimoto finds so self-evident.<\/p>\n
And, indeed, it might be understandable that the (often very young) men at war should want to have sex, if only as a temporary escape.<\/p>\n
However, it must be remembered that consensual sex and rape are dramatically different.<\/p>\n
The girls and women in the \u201ccomfort stations\u201d did not consent. The majority of them was kidnapped or deceived and forced into sexual enslavement. And even if some woman initially agreed to work in a \u201ccomfort station\u201d to ensure the survival of their family, they were by no means free. They were not allowed to go out as they wished, they could not reject a customer, or quit their job.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, all \u201ccomfort women\u201d lived in a situation that was characterized by force and violence. In addition, all women were confronted with the direct physical violence that the soldiers, who had been brutalized from the war, perpetrated against women.<\/p>\n
Hashimoto\u2019s statement is thus much more than cynical. It is misogynist and inhumane.<\/p>\n
Mr. Abe, we urge you to take full responsibility for Japan’s crime of drafting women and girls for military sexual slavery. Compensation Now!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dear reader, join us again tomorrow when we will take our protest for „Comfort Women“ rights to the streets …<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cSoldiers risked their lives in circumstances where bullets were flying around like rain and wind. To give them some rest, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303,"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/justiceforcomfortwomen.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}