Caroline Norma is the author of The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars, published in 2015. The book explores the origins of the Japanese military's system of sexual slavery and illustrates how Japanese women were its initial victims. She is a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research emphasizes on Asian politics, history of sexuality, modern history, and war.
Dr. Norma, your research focuses generally on prostitution, pornography, and trafficking in Australia, Japan and South Korea. Can you tell us about how you became interested in this important topic, and specifically what led you to write about the stories of Japanese comfort women?
I started to focus on the injustice of prostitution for women after completing an internship in the Philippines at age 19, and seeing Australian men both pimp and prostitute women in that country. I gradually became part of the global feminist anti-prostitution movement, and made contact with activists in Japan. My subsequent focus on the history of the "comfort women" was driven by the understanding that, in fact, their victimhood as prostituted women is not widely recognised, and, rather, activists champion their cause for other reasons, like colonialism or "sexual violence" broadly. But this framing leaves out Japanese victims who were mostly trafficked into military comfort stations from civilian brothels. So I was led to stories of the Japanese comfort women out of concern about the plight of victims of prostitution in the past and the present.
Why is it that Japanese comfort women have been overlooked in history, more so than comfort women of other nationalities?
Japanese women and girls were mostly sourced from sex industry venues, like brothels and geisha houses. This was a convenient and cheap way for the Japanese military to secure victims, given ties ties with pimps and traffickers operating in the colonies and Manchuria. These women are sidelined in histories of the "comfort women" because contemporary academic ideas about prostitution are influenced by "sex work" ideology that sees prostitution as a form of work for women, rather than paid rape. So, the bar is set very high for recognition of harm in relation to any instance of men's prostitution of women--victims must be described as being abducted and forcibly detained. Even though Japanese women and girls were, indeed, abducted etc in their military sexual enslavement, their affiliation with the sex industry leads historians to distinguish them from other victims, so that victims of other nationality are "properly" recognised and respected.
What cultural factors influenced the atrocities inflicted upon comfort women, do these factors still exist, and still influence current day incidences of sexual slavery as a weapon of war?
Yes, military prostitution by, for example, British soldiers in Kenya and Australian soldiers in Iraq still happens, and so effectively there still exist "comfort women" today, except that sex work ideology disguises their true victimisation. Countries like Australia accept prostitution as work, and there is no reason to think that, in a time of war, Australian troops wouldn't prostitute women at rates similar to those of the Japanese military in the Second World War. This kind of sexual license afforded military men today functions as a weapon of war, because governments can raise armies of men on the implicit promise of sexual reward. Men in Western countries are enthusiastic about prostituting different nationalities of women in domestic sex industries, and they relish the opportunity to exercise entitlements against women abroad.
Many comfort women speak about the “cultural shame” they experienced even after having survived their torture and imprisonment. In what ways can we fight this cultural shame?
We must stigmatise and shame men who prostitute women--either in war or in peace--in order to shift the blame from victims to perpetrators. Victims and the women who support them must be clear in the message that prostitution is paid rape in any context, on the battliefield or in peacetime cities. In the same way we have attempted to stop victim blaming for rape victims by highlighting the criminality of rapists, we must stop blaming prostitution victims in the guise of "sex work" and start condemning men for bypassing consent through paying money.
Since your book came out in 2015, have you seen progress or movement in the fight for justice for Japanese comfort women specifically?
Yes, in Japan now there is a small but growing movement that precisely enacts the model my book attempted to promote. They advocate on behalf of the former "comfort women" victims from a perspective of criticising Japan's contemporary sex industry, which interns many teenage girls who are Japanese. This is a similar situation to the war, in which Japanese men victimised women and girls of their own nationality to secure trafficking victims for military brothels. Today, they prostitute trafficked teenage girls from Japan's poor regions, and prey on homeless girls in the inner-city. Feminists in Japan today show similarities in the organisation of these girls for prostitution today and the way Japanese military-commissioned brokers trafficked them during the war.
What might justice look like now, when so many survivors of these atrocities are no longer living?
I've suggested that an East Asia-wide anti-prostitution movement would be the strongest guarantee of anything similar to the "comfort women" system emerging again in any future time of war. Now, in peacetime, we need to organise across Asia to break the trafficking networks and population acceptance of prostitution, so that this infrastructure and citizen bystanding attitudes don't exist if war ever breaks out. We also have to break the habit of men of sexual exploitation in the form of prostitution and pornography. Men have to be re-trained to see these things as not sexy or desireable. We leave ourselves vulnerable to another "comfort women" system in a time of war as long as we allow peacetime systems of prostitution and pornography to continue.
Thank you so much!
Learn more about Caroline Norma's The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars here.