The Nature of Men

 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/