【 日本語訳/Japanese 】

April, 2020
Hidemi Nagao ( Former Civil and Media Liaison Officer of the Commander U.S. Naval Forces, Japan, Novelist and Non-fiction Writer )

Did CED give serious thought to its recommendations to Japan?

1.　Do the readers still remember conclusive observations the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) presented to Japan on November 19, 2018? It is documented as CED/C/JPN/CO/1.

2. 　Nadeshiko Action homepage posted them on November 21, 2018 with the following additional information.

“It is the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA), the Women’s Active Museum of War and Peace (WAM), and the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan that tabled the comfort women issue to the committee. CED is believed to have made conclusive observations in response to an opinion brief the three organizations jointly submitted.”

3. 　The brief dated July 12, 2018 contained the following recommendations regarding the comfort women issue.

“(1) The State party (*Japan) should ensure that public officials and leaders will desist from making thoughtless remarks regarding responsibility of the Government of Japan for violations committed against ‘comfort women.

(2) The State party should humbly face the conclusive observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in which the Committee regrets that the announcement of the bilateral agreement with the Republic of Korea in December 2015 ‘did not fully adopt a victim-centered approach’ and urges to recognize ‘the right of the victims to a remedy, and accordingly provide full and effective redress and reparation, including compensation, satisfaction, official apologies and rehabilitative services,’ and work on this issue faithfully with consideration given to the feelings of the victims.”

4. 　The finalized CED recommendations to Japan deal with the comfort women issue in paragraphs 25- 26. Paragraph 26 states, in part, as follows.

“(b) Ensure that all cases of so-called “comfort women” who may have been subjected to enforced disappearance, including removal of children born to these women, are investigated thoroughly and impartially without delay, regardless of the time that has elapsed since they took place and even if there has been no formal complaints;

(c) Ensure that the alleged perpetrators are prosecuted and, if found guilty, punished in accordance with the gravity of their acts;”

5. 　The recommendations are based on the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance which was adopted at the 61st United Nations General Assembly on December 20, 2006. The convention took effect from December 23, 2010. Japan acceded to the convention since its onset. The United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand as well as China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, or Iran has not.

6.　 It is unreasonable, in the first place, for the Korean Council to be cited as one of the report originators, isn’t it?  For, South Korea is not yet a signatory country to the convention. It is like saying, “We are not bound by the convention. But you must execute what the committee recommends because you are supposed to uphold it.”

7. 　If the Japanese government sincerely commits itself to execute the recommendations above, i.e., to reveal facts and prosecute and punish the perpetrators, something extremely troublesome would come to the fore between South Korea and Japan; more so for the former than for the latter.

7.1.　 Lt. Col. Archie Miyamoto (U.S. Army Retired) published in 2017 “Wartime Military Records on Comfort Women,” 2d Edition, from Amazon Fulfillment. After having read Japanese Foreign Ministry documents (consul general reports), he gives the following comments (pp. 37-39).

“(1) These reports provide concrete evidence many comfort stations were operated by Koreans, a fact not widely known outside Korea and Japan.

(2) They (*comfort stations) were not operated by the military or by military employees. Prostitution was legal and operating a brothel was not considered an illegal activity. Types of business operated by Koreans, in addition to comfort stations, include photo shops, retails stores, restaurants, transportation business, trading companies, …, and hotels.

(3) Korean operators of special comfort stations in many cases had women and children, in other words, families. This is evidence that they were not single men who were part of the Japanese Army. The same applied to Japanese operated comfort stations.

(4) In all reports, special comfort stations operated by Japanese had Japanese comfort women, and those operated by Koreans had Korean comfort women. There is not a single report that lists any Korean comfort women in a Japanese operated comfort station. There were many reports on the same city at different time but showed no significant changes.”

7.2. 　Miyamoto cited three reports dispatched to the ministry from consul generals stationed in China as examples of the Japanese comfort women employed by the Japanese and the Korean comfort women employed by the Koreans:

(1) Jiujiang, Central China, Consulate Report No. 561, 11/8/38.
Japanese Operated Businesses:

Special Comfort Stations      15
Japanese operators               42 men, 25 women, 1 child
Japanese Comfort Women   107

Korean Operated Businesses:

Special Comfort Stations      9
Korean Operators                   26 men, 8 women, 3 children
Korean Comfort Women       143

(2) Nanchang, Central China, Consulate Report No. 217, dated August 9, 1929.
Japanese Operated Businesses:

Japanese Comfort Stations  3
Japanese Operators               5 men, 3 women
Japanese Comfort Women   8

Korean Operated Businesses:

Korean Comfort Stations      8
Korean Operators                   19 men, 9 women
Korean Comfort Women       94

(3) Chiaohu, Central China, Consulate Report No. 170, dated August 2, 1939.
Japanese Operated Businesses:

Japanese Comfort Stations  4
Japanese Operators and Japanese Comfort Women 10 men, 31 women, 2 Children

Korean Operated Businesses:

Korean Comfort Stations      2
Korean Operators/comfort    2 men, 30 women, 1 child

7.3. 　The records above show 64 or so Korean operators and their families ran 19 Korean comfort stations with more than 260 Korean comfort women in three cities. If some of the Korean women were victims of the enforced disappearance, who should be the perpetrators of it? Can the Japanese government duly prosecute and punish them? Can South Korea cooperate with Japan to bring justice?

8.　The McDougall Report of 1998 states,　“Between 1932 and the end of the Second World War, the Japanese Government and the Japanese Imperial Army forced over 200,000 women into sexual slavery in rape centres throughout Asia. … The majority of those ‘comfort women’ were from Korea, …. It is now clear that both the Japanese Government and military were directly involved in the establishment of rape centres throughout Asia during the Second World War. The women who were enslaved by the Japanese military in these centres – many of whom were between the ages of 11 and 20 – were housed in locations throughout Japanese-controlled Asia, where they were forcibly raped multiple times on a daily basis and subjected to severe physical abuse and exposed to sexually transmitted diseases. Only about 25 per cent of these women are said to have survived these daily abuses. To obtain these “comfort women,” the Japanese military employed physical violence, kidnapping, coercion and deception.”

9. 　Had there been 200,000 Korean women who were forced to become comfort women, and had only 50,000 women, 25% of them, survived the ordeal until the end of the war as South Korea alleges, 150,000 of them would have disappeared in the meantime. Whatever the causes of their disappearance may have been, i.e., fatal illness, murder by torture, running away from the house, it was the Korean house masters who employed the Korean comfort women. Professor Park Yu-ha who authored “Comfort Women of the Empire” says, “The psychological and physical scar those women have borne is not solely attributable to the violence the troops inflicted upon them. It was the house masters who were also to be blamed for confinement, forced labor, and violence imposed upon the women (p. 113).”

10.　This is a supplemental note. Professor Hiroshi Hashiya who authored “Teikoku Nihon to Shokuminchi Toshi” [Imperial Japan and colonized cities] (author translation) in 2004 mentioned brothels in Taipei as follows (p. 95). It is hard to believe Japanese or Taiwanese house masters ran the three Korean brothels mentioned below.

“When Taiwan was ceded to Japan by China, there were no brothels inside the Taipei City Walls. The Japanese began to arrive in Taipei and went to the Wanhua District where local brothels were. Since then, Wanhua became a center of brothels in the region. 1940 saw 25 brothels with 220 Shogi. Among them were 42 Koreans, 20% of the prostitutes in the district. Though its background is unknown, their names were Joseon (*Korean) House, New Joseon House, and Peninsula House.”

11.　 I loudly wonder if the CED committee that received an opinion brief seriously wanted to make Japan commit herself to punish the perpetrators. I also wonder if the committee adopted the conclusive observations, being fully aware that South Korea was not yet a member state to the convention.

12. 　I will not mention herein the propriety of the conclusive observations regarding the statute of limitation because it requires more space. A layman would understand Article 35 of the convention as it states. Then, you may reasonably conclude that the conclusive observations seem like a stretch because the article states as follows.

“Paragraph 1. The Committee shall have competence solely in respect of enforced disappearances which commenced after the entry into force of this Convention.

Paragraph 2. If a State becomes a party to this Convention after its entry into force, the obligations of that State vis-à-vis the Committee shall relate only to enforced disappearances which commenced after the entry into force of this Convention for the State concerned.”

13. Lastly, I hope no Korean comfort women—who were called the fifth logistic items or western princesses—had gone missing during the Korean War and no Vietnamese comfort women—who worked at South Korean comfort stations—had gone missing during the Vietnam War. By the way, Professor Choe Kilsung, who authored “Chosen Senso de Umareta Beigun Ianfu no Shinjitsu” [Truth on the birth of comfort women for the U.S. military during the Korean War] (author translation) in 2018, wrote that he had personally experienced the Korean War in his village and that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops had not raped local women whereas the United Nations Command troops had raped women till the comfort stations were established in the village (pp. 47-86).

“The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future,” said Queen Elizabeth II on April 6, 2020 when she addressed the nation.

【 日本語訳/Japanese 】

March, 2020
Hidemi Nagao ( Former Civil and Media Liaison Officer of the Commander U.S. Naval Forces, Japan, Novelist and Non-fiction Writer )

Shusenjo— The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue (film)

1.  Shusenjo is a documentary film which has three versions with subtitles in English, Japanese, and Korean. Miki Dezaki directed and produced it and publicly released it on April 20, 2019.¹  As the English subtitle indicates, so the film does deal with the comfort women issue.  But it presents other matters as important issues, too.

2.   The audience of this film is divided into three categories: (1) Those people who have been sympathetic to the self-proclaimed comfort women will be happy because it presents what they want to see; (2) Those people who have been suspicious of their claims (allegations) will be disappointed because it ignores facts; and (3) Those people who have not been interested in the issue will become convinced of Japan’s threat to the world because of its political messages.

3.  The film focuses on the intellectuals who stand against the South Korean allegations. Dezaki maliciously labels them as denialists, revisionists, or rightists (*the neutrals hereinafter) and criticize them.  Then he highlights Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an unforgiven politician.

4. Methods Dezaki employed for filmmaking are questionable because he chose,

4.1.  To interview the neutrals for the purpose of criticizing their views.

4.2.  Not to reasonably and seriously scrutinize the propriety of the South Korean allegations below.

(1) Forcible/coercive recruitment of the comfort women by the military and the Japanese government is argued without citing too much about Seiji Yoshida and none about Kako Senda. What they said and wrote is treated in the film as a very small portion of the big picture.  It is very hard to understand why Dezaki presented a video clip image of Yoshida.  For, it is Yoshida who set a fire on the comfort women issue.  This is no laughing matter.

(2) The existence of 200,000 Korean comfort women in warfront is handled as one of the views because it is the human rights violation that counts most.

(3) The fact that the comfort women—who provided sexual services for troops—were in a slavery condition in the broadest sense of the term is emphasized without defining the difference between sexual slaves and prostitutes.

(4) Whatever liberty the comfort women enjoyed in warfront is marginalized because it jeopardizes the understanding that they were victims of sexual slavery.

4.3. To impress the audience that the Kono Statement is proof that the Japanese government has acknowledged its wrongdoings in the past, without carefully analyzing the entire statement.

4.4. To bash Japan and Premier Abe for its/his orientation to slight the comfort women issue and to promote militarism, nationalism, and Shintoism, so that Japan’s prestige in the international community continues to be damaged.

4.5. Not to mention how Dezaki obtained videotape interviews with the neutrals. He partially hinted it during an after-the-show interview he gave to a journalist in London.²

4.6.  Not to properly appraise the book Professor Park Yu-ha wrote, “The Comfort Women of the Empire.”

4.7.  Not to mention the claim of Professor Su Zhiliang of the Shanghai Normal University that the number of comfort women to have been more than 400,000, including 200,000 Chinese women because Dezaki wants to emphasize the aspect of the human rights infringement for the issue.

4.8.  To believe what Yoshimi said about the Semarang Incident, without carefully reviewing the Batavia trial transcriptions.  There have been wrongful convictions not only in Japan but also in the U.S.

4.9.  To keep topics, to a minimum, of the Korean comfort women during the Korean War and the Vietnamese comfort women during the Vietnam War so that the audience cannot pay too much attention to the South Korean military use of comfort women.

5. A few aberrations noted in the film are as follows.

5.1.  Etsuro Totsuka says, “The government did not investigate illegal cases of recruiting women by some crooked agents.  It did not punish them.”  Conventional wisdom has it that Korean agents recruited Korean women while Japanese agents did Japanese women.  Quite a few Japanese consulate reports suggest that Korean house masters ran their comfort stations by employing Korean comfort women.³  Japan’s punishing those Korean agents would add fuel to the fire if it is what Totsuka meant.

5.2. Yun Mi-hyang of the Korean Council says, “South Korea is responsible for the issue to some extent.  That is why we, the Korean Council, has been blaming the patriarchy in Korea.  But the Japanese government exercised the gigantic rape system, which overrides the patriarchy in Korea.”  She does not consider it necessary to blame the Korean patriarchy.

5.3. Mina Watanabe of the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM) says, “The number of comfort stations is more than 140,” after the WAM made a map of comfort stations.  If more than 140 comfort stations housed 200,000 comfort women (or 30,000 or more than 50,000 comfort women as Yoshimi mentioned in two occasions), at most 1,400 (or 200, or 350) women worked at each comfort station.  Those numbers are nowhere close to what Japanese consulate reports mentioned.  Those reports indicate running a comfort station was a family business.³  The management of a Korean comfort station was a Korean family business.

6. Dezaki said during an interview session after the film showing in London, “99.99% of historians consider the women were sexual slaves.”² What he meant is the neutrals are not historians.  But his film does not support those historians weigh facts.  Professor Park wrote that the system of comforting was certainly ‘criminally chargeable’ but it was not a crime under law at the time.⁴

7. 　Conclusion
Shusenjo is a superficial game Dezaki wanted to play.  He merely skimmed the cream of the comfort women issue.  That is why he did not heed to the importance of facts in history, which unequivocally proves he is a pseudo reformist.

The message Dezaki intended to deliver to the audience is to damage the prestige of Japan though he did not disclose any reason for his animosity against Japan.

The film pictures Dezaki not as a researcher who spares no effort to solve the issue but as a representative of the Internet generation with a capitalist mindset.  He sought quick returns to enter the spotlight.

It is unfortunate for Dezaki to have committed himself to the filmmaking.  The longer he continues the film tour, the more damage it would inflict upon his personality development.  He is repeating the history of the self-proclaimed comfort women in South Korea since 1990s: They have kept parroting a seemingly reasonable social cause to become the media icons and they lost personality and opportunities to enjoy real life the world has for them.

There may come a day when Dezaki enlightens himself to become one of the neutrals.

8.　Supplementary notes

8.1. A misleading e-mail request for interview
Dezaki sent an e-mail request to eight claimants in 2016. He first explained them what he was doing was an academic research or a graduation work, or a graduation project as he was studying at the Jochi Graduate School (Sophia University). Then he asked for a videotaped interview. One of the e-mail sent to Yumiko Yamamoto was as follows (*translated from Japanese into English by Yamamoto).⁵

“In May 2016, I received an email “Subject: Interview request for a documentary from Mikine Dezaki, a Sophia University graduate student.”

＜　The mail was written in polite Japanese as follows:

I am a Japanese American. I am now a graduate student of Sophia University. Through my research on the comfort women issue, I have come to understand that the issue is much more complex than what I read in the western liberal media. I know that there is a severe lack of authenticated documentary evidence regarding forced recruitment of comfort women and that the conditions for the comfort women may not have been as bad as some activists and academics claim. I must admit that I did believe the western media at one point, but now, I have my doubts. As a graduate student, I have an ethical obligation to present the people I interview with respect and fairness. This is an academic research. It must meet certain academic standards and expectations, which would prevent it from becoming a biased journalistic piece. So, I will produce it with equitability and neutrality. I am going to submit it to the University as a graduation project.＞

8.2. A lawsuit filed against Dezaki
Dezaki interviewed Yoshiko Sakurai, Kent Gilbert, Mio Sugita, Tony Marano, Hideaki Kase, Yumiko Yamamoto, Nobukatsu Fujioka, and Toshikazu Fujiki. All of them believed his documentary was a graduate study till the film was commercially released in April 2019. They issued a joint protest statement on May 30, 2019 and requested him not to show the film to the public because they did not explicitly agree to Dezaki’s intention of making the interviews as part of a commercial film. He refused it. Five of them filed a suit in the Tokyo District court on June 19, 2019 to terminate the film’s public showing and to claim for damages of 14.6 million yen.

8.3. Dezaki’s graduate school instructor, Professor Nakano

8.3.1. The five plaintiffs of the lawsuit questioned the administrative propriety of Dezaki’s graduate work and his instructor Professor Koichi Nakano’s supervision. They mailed a contents-certified mail to the Jochi University on August 28, 2019.⁶ They requested the university (1) to investigate the graduate work and (2) to admonish both Dezaki and Professor Nakano. The claimants cited the university’s guideline on researches which pertains to people who become subjects of a study/discussion. Its subparagraph 5(2)ka stipulates, “A researcher must expeditiously destroy information and data of a subject person when he/she withdraws his/her earlier consent to the research at issue.”

8.3.2. In response, the university established a five-member investigation panel. After the claimants questioned the impropriety of the panel composition and Nakano’s exclusion as one of the accused, the university changed two of the five members and included Nakano as the accused.

8.3.3. On January 15, 2020, the university mailed a letter of request to Fujioka. President Yoshiaki Terumichi requested Fujioka to refrain from disclosing to other people any matter related to the panel investigation. Terumichi was concerned about Fujioka’s use of Facebook as a venue to discuss the request and university responses. He said such an act would jeopardize the investigation proceedings.

8.3.4. The president’s letter of request seems to be reasonable under a normal circumstance. Problem is a fact that Dezaki has been promoting the film’s public showing in foreign countries while the panel investigation is in progress. In fact, he toured 34 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Europe since September to December 2019, and additional 19 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada from February to March 2020. The president’s warning to Fujioka and his allowing Dezaki’s tours are inconsistent.

8.3.5. For information, Nakano held talks with Chairman Kazuo Shii of the Japan Communist Party, which were printed in the Akahata, official daily of the party, on January 1, 2016, January 1 and February 22, 2020.⁶

9. As for the lawsuit filed against him, Dezaki said that it might take one year or even ten years before a judgment is given. He also said the lawsuit like that was called a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) to suppress freedom of speech.²

*******************************************************

＜　Bibliography　＞

1. Shusenjo. Retrieved from https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki on December 13, 2019.

2. Kobayashi, Ginko. (2019/11/19 (Tue) 23:48) Ianfu Mondai ni Semaru Eiga Shusenjo, Ei Essex Daigaku no Joeikai de Dezaki Kantoku ga Katatta Koto ha [What film director Dezaki said on his film Shusenjo to scrutinize the comfort women issue at a film screening at the University of Essex] (a/t). Retrieved from YAHOO News Japan on March 3, 2020

3. Miyammoto, Archie. (2017). Wartime Military Records on Comfort Women. 2d Edition. Amazon Fulfillment, pp. 37-39

4. Park Yu-ha. (2014). Teikoku no Ianfu [Comfort Women of the Empire]. Asahi Shimbun Publishing, pp. 201-202

5. Nadeshiko Action Homepage, Eiga Shusenjo Daigakuinsei no Shotai wa Saha no propaganda Eiga [Film Shusenjo, the film is a propaganda made by an undergraduate of the left wing] (a/t). Posted on September 16, 2019

6. The Second Symposium to Accuse the Deceitful Movie Shusenjo at Kensei Kinen-kan, Tokyo, on February 27, 2020.