The Nature of
Men
Misa
Ulises
Teacher
Stella Maris Saubidet Oyhamburu
Language
and Written Expression IV
Institute
ISFD N° 41
The Nature of
Men
“Give me any plague, but the plague of
the heart: and any wickedness, but the wickedness of a woman.” (Eccles. 25:13)
Gender inequality has been perpetuated since remote times placing women into a
subordinate condition. Moreover, unbalanced relations between men and women
have introduced over domination upon females in such ways that women were only
viewed as men’s property. Unfortunately, this tendency of men openly abusing
and harassing women have also taken place in the Asian territory in the shape
of a multitude of sexually frustrated soldiers raping the local women. Although prostitution in Japan has existed
all through the country's history, all the atrocities carried out by the
Imperial Japanese Army throughout and even after WWII remained euphemistically
disguised as “comfort system” for several decades due to different reasons
including, the lack of documents supporting the use of coercive force for the
recruitment of women, considering comfort women as licensed prostitutes
engaging in legal business and furthermore, accepting unkind male sexuality in
the nature of War.
Despite the number of rising women’s
testimonies about the comfort women issue, Japan did not have clear evidence to
support their allegations. “None of the materials available to us backed up the
allegations that the Japanese government and military were directly involved in
coercive recruitment,” Nobuo Ishihara, a former deputy chief Cabinet secretary
who took part in the drafting of the Kono Statement said on February of this
year at a Lower House Budget Committee.
Although, the statement addresses military’s involvement in the matter,
it was only based on some witnesses accusations since the welfare ministry,
responsible for handling these kind of issues, lack of any relevant documents
to support it. As a matter of fact, most war-time official records disappeared
or were deliberately sabotaged by officers after Japan’s surrender obscuring
the path to the truth of the “comfort women” outcome and eventually introducing
further misconceptions.
The
concept of “legalized prostitution” has attempted to cover up the way in which
women were treated in the comfort stations in that controversial atmosphere as
well. The life of those women who were
unfortunate victims of the Japanese “comfort system” were not viewed in the
same way by U.S Army records. Actually, there are official documents in the
United State Office of War Information explicitly declaring comfort women to be
“Professional Prostitutes”. Those records particularly did not identify
instances of abduction or force recruitment of women. Conversely, such
documents inferred that at that time it was clearly evident that legalized
brothels were established operating as commercial prostitution and women would
engage into that business for obvious economic reasons. Thus, the document
asserts that most of those women kept more than half of their fees and during
their “free time” participated in dinner parties and other “recreations”.
Moreover, concepts such as “kidnaping” or “sexual servitude” have not been
related to the comfort-women case until the 1980’s.
Finally, the old tradition about male’s
sexuality being clearly “uncontrollable” provides a broader but more arguable
justification for the implementation and further coverage of the Japanese Army
comfort system. Thus, the concept of women being historically oppressed plus
the spreading of gender inequality, which has clearly proved to be more evident
during war times, bring up again another item to bear in mind the understanding
of what has been stated above. Following the expansion of Japan’s territory,
many military soldiers running out of “volunteer prostitutes” began recruiting
Chinese and Korean women in order to satisfy the ordeal of sexually frustrated
men, first by deception but then implementing straightforward abduction. Even
though no records had been found to prove these recruitment mechanisms, men
supremacy over women has grown to be for centuries an inherited part of the
nature of humanity and furthermore has become a weapon of war, accepted in
combat and eventually possible of being covered up by a stigmatized society.
It is a fact that the comfort women issue has
raised more controversy in the last twenty years than it did when it was
actually taking place during the regime of the Imperialized Japanese Army.
Indeed, it is widely acknowledged that even nowadays, the insufficiency of
reliable evidence becomes an unfortunate disadvantage to track the history of
violence against women. Furthermore, the historical background of a country
which had upheld Prostitution from the beginning and ultimately the old
tendency and ideology of men’s sexuality being unmanageable bring again into
question more arguments to analyze the predisposition of a Nation to conceal
and disguise the constant sexual abuse of thousands of women. Although reparations
and compensations are being contemplated for these women, there seems to be not
enough interest on the Japanese Government to reconsider the study of this
matter and determine a solution for all the suffering these women have
undergone. Meanwhile, let us not now promote an era in which such issues remain
unclear and ambiguous in the relationship between History and Testimony. Let us
instead recall an unfortunate number of women whose voices had not been allowed
to speak for the truth for more than fifty years.
Works
Cited
WcP.Story.Teller
. (March 08, 2010). Women's Day hears
voice of "comfort women". Retrieved on August 15,2014, World Cultural
Pictorial from: http://www.worldculturepictorial.com/blog/content/womens-day-hears-voice-comfort-women-wwii-survivorsv
Works
cited: Yoshiko Nozaki. (2012). The
“Comfort Women” Controversy: History and Testimony*. Retrieved on August
12, 2014, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus from: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yoshiko-Nozaki/2063
Hick, G..
(October, 1996). Roberts on Hicks, 'The
Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second
World War'. Retrieved on August 18, 2014, H-Women from: https://networks.h-net.org/node/24029/reviews/29798/roberts-hicks-comfort-women-japans-brutal-regime-enforced-prostitution
Williams,
L. (2013) Comfort women: South Korea's
survivors of Japanese brothels. Retrieved on August 18, 2014 from: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22680705#story_continues_2
Ueno, C..
(February 28, 2006). The Place of
"Comfort Women" in the Japanese Historical Revisionism. Retrieved
on August 12, Sens. Public from: http://www.sens-public.org/spip.php?article196&lang=fr
McNeill,
M. (October 21, 2010). Japanese
Prostitution. Retrieved on August 20,2014, The Honest Courtesan from: http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/japanese-prostitution/
