«

»

Why Further Humiliate ‘Comfort Women’ by Calling them ‘Sex Slaves’? (J-Cast, Japan)


Aug 2, 2012 by

Is it better to refer to women coerced into prostitution by the Japanese Imperial Army as ‘comfort women’ or as ‘sex slaves’? Recently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is said to have directed State Department personnel to stop using the euphemism ‘comfort women’ and start calling them ‘enforced sex slaves.’ This news item from Japan’s J-Cast provides somewhat astonishing Japanese reaction to news that the South Korean government appears ready to follow America’s lead. It appears that many are still in denial about Japanese imperial activities across the continent during the war.

From Japan’s J-Cast, the news item starts off this way:

South Korea media have reported that their government is prepared to replace the term “comfort women” – the term used for women who were forced into prostitution by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II – with “sex slaves.” Some South Korea media report that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has issued a similar directive.

However, what Secretary Clinton has done in regard to sex slaves has not been verified. Furthermore, some cast doubt about whether there were “comfort women forcibly coerced into prostitution,” and Japanese Web sites featured a number of cynical responses. One user commented that “choosing an even more humiliating phrase doesn’t make sense.”

According to the Japanese online edition of South Korea’s influential JoongAng Ilbo, Trade and Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan told a parliamentary committee on July 13 that he was “ready to change the wording to ‘sex slaves.’” Reportedly, he felt that a description more in accord with reality was preferable. Unconfirmed reports say that Secretary Clinton told State Department staff to use the phrase “enforces sex slaves” rather than the euphemistic “comfort women.”

READ ON IN JAPANESE OR ENGLISH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Donate to The Moderate Voice

Share This

Related Posts

Sponsors

468 ad

5 Comments

  1. DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Managing Editor of TMV, and Columnist
    August 2, 2012 | 10:15 am

    Thanks WK. I thought the reality of what is spoken about here, so important that I mentioned a part of it in a post along with my response I’d left here in part. I’ve given credit for the excerpt to Worldmeets.us

  2. ordinarysparrow
    August 2, 2012 | 12:07 pm

    Would like to offer a movie suggestion to illuminate what Dr.E has shared here.

    The movie; CATERPILLAR, which is available on Netflix.

    (In 1940, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the people of a rural Japanese village eagerly await a hero’s return. But Lt. Kurokawa’s wife, Shigeko, receives a horrifying shock: Her husband has lost his arms and legs. Nevertheless, the villagers depend on Shigeko to do her duty to her country by caring for her mutilated husband. Shinobu Terajima, Keigo Kasuya and Emi Masuda star in this historical drama about the grim aftermath of war.)

    It is a movie that leaves one soul silence for it confronts war and the aftermath as has rarely been done before..

    The Japan director that made this movie is most courageous.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_%28film%29

    Without giving the story away, it addresses the effects on the soul of the Japanese people during this time at most every level.

  3. ordinarysparrow
    August 2, 2012 | 12:15 pm

    Wish someone here would do a review on this movie…

  4. rudi
    August 2, 2012 | 9:03 pm

    The Japanese crimes during WWII were just as horrific as the Germans, but we here little about japan’s war crimes. It is about time they fess up to what they did to Korean women.

  5. Rcoutme
    August 2, 2012 | 9:38 pm

    It is ‘time’ that they confess what their nation did during WWII period! Their text books list the conflict as a disagreement between them and the US. They gloss over (read: virtually completely omit) the vast majority of war crimes committed by their military. The rape of Nanking is one of the worst atrocities in modern times (probably the worst). This occurred in 1937 and the world just let it happen.

    My heart goes out to the women who were abused this way. It also goes out to all the other victims–of any war anywhere.