Why we should love Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto

There are plenty of reasons to love the Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto. Two weeks ago, he made remarks about comfort women has caused a ripple in the international waters of women issues.

I'm not really clear on what Hashimoto actually said, because when I worked from the Rafu Shimpo I noticed that sometimes statements made by politicians were taken out of context. And sometimes, the media gets caught up in whatever sounds good and sells papers and gets good ratings.

When I first wrote about the issue of comfort women, it was in an essay published in the Rafu Shimpo called "The Rape of Conquered Women." At that time--just before the Los Angeles Riots, there were two claims that are no longer touted today: The comfort women was something unique to the Japanese and that even the Nazis hadn't used sex slaves. One of the favorite witnesses for English language articles was Seiji Yoshida. His accounts and his book were widely criticized by Japanese historians (who were then in turned bitterly criticized for being Japan apologists).

As it turned out, neither claim was true. The Nazis did have sex slaves--taken from the Jewish, gypsies and other political prisoners. The exploitation and sexual enslavement of women from conquered populations has a history that goes back further than 415 BC, which was when "Troades" or "The Trojan Women" was first produced. Greek playwright Euripides wrote the tragedy during the Peloponnesian War. In 1971, Katharine Hepburn was Hecuba, Vanessa Redgrave was Andromache and Genevieve Bujold was Cassandra. Irene Papas was the infamous Helen.

After the publication of my essay, men, mostly I suppose Korean, threatened my colleagues and myself. Ironically, a man threatening me with violence or rape because I held an opinion he didn't like puts such a person on the same level of men who rape during war. Fear is a way of silencing dissenting voices. Rape is a way of silencing women and disgracing "their" men.

The rape and enslavement of conquered women during 415 BC was one of the perks of war. What about in 1930-1940s when the Japanese committed the war crimes supposedly associated with the comfort women. I propose there are several problems in revisiting these acts and interpreting them.

1. Racism in the Allied Countries such as the U.S. allowed for the rape of non-white women by white men without much fear of punishment. 
2. Institutionalized racism affected national and international policy.
3. The attitudes toward rape tended to blame the victims.
4. The attitudes toward women protected as property.
5. Because women were treated as property within certain cultures and societies, the concern was not about how women were treated by how women were treated by others.
6. Similar war crimes committed by the Allied troops against the women, including "rescued" comfort women, complicated the issue and made it more likely to be ignored.

According to Associated Press reporters Mari Yamaguchi and Malcolm Foster,  Hashimoto's most recent statement clarifies his position. He "meant to say military authorities at the time, not only in Japan but in many other countries, considered it necessary." From my understanding of Japanese history, this is true. One of the first things they provided for foreigners in Yokohama after the opening of Japan was a whore house. There was a concept that men needed to have a sexual release and this wasn't only present in Japanese culture. The British also held that attitude and brothels were a part of their experience during World War I. 

Probably what should outrage women in Japan is that he suggested in a recent visit to Okinawa that the U.S. military make better use of the legal sex industry "to control the sexual energy of those tough guys."  

You might have been misled by more recent articles. In Japan Today, Washington's Jen Psaki supposedly denounced the comments Hashimoto made on Friday (17 May 2013), however Psaki's comment were on 16 May 2013. 

The full transcript reads:

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Takashi from Japanese newspaper Asahi. Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto recently made a comment on the so-called “comfort women” issue, arguing that even though it is unacceptable from the moral perspective value, but the comfort women were necessary during the war period. And he also argued that it is not fair that only Japan is criticized by the United States and other countries, because there are other country military that were provided sexual service by prostitute. And do U.S. has any position on his comment or criticism against the United States? 

MS. PSAKI: We have seen, of course, those comments. Mayor Hashimoto’s comments were outrageous and offensive. As the United States has stated previously, what happened in that era to these women who were trafficked for sexual purposes is deplorable and clearly a grave human rights violation of enormous proportions. We extend, again, our sincere and deep sympathy to the victims, and we hope that Japan will continue to work with its neighbors to address this and other issues arising from the past and cultivate relationships that allow them to move forward.

QUESTION: Do you describe this issue sex slave or comfort women?

MS. PSAKI: Again, I don’t know that I’m going to define it. You kind of laid out the specific details there, and we have described this issue in the past as comfort women[ii].

The U.S. State Department didn't reply to Hashimoto's additional comments. According to JapanToday.com, Hashimoto reply to Psaki via Twitter was:

Let me go straight to the point. When America occupied Japan, didn’t they make use of Japanese women?

I can’t help but point out that it is unfair for America to criticize only Japan by putting aside acts by its own country.

The United States should face what the US military did against local women, in particular Okinawan women when they occupied Japan.

The U.S. State Department (Patrick Ventrell, the acting deputy spokesman) didn't actually reply to these statements in the Monday daily brief:

QUESTION: Something about Japan’s comfort women? Osaka Mayor Hashimoto continued to argue that the American troops utilized women for sexual purpose during the occupation period in Japan, and even later – especially in Okinawa. And he also argues that the United States is unfairly criticizing Japan by putting aside what they did to local women during and after the war period. And I was wondering if you have any comment on that.
MR. VENTRELL: I didn’t hear who you said at the beginning that said this.
QUESTION: Osaka Mayor Mr. Hashimoto.
MR. VENTRELL: This is something that Jen addressed at the briefing last week and gave a very robust condemnation of those remarks. I really refer you to what Jen said last week. But we already condemned those.
QUESTION: But I thought what she condemned last week was his comments about them being a military necessity.
MR. VENTRELL: Yeah. Is this a new --
QUESTION: This sounds to be – this seems to be something new.
MR. VENTRELL: I hadn’t seen these new remarks. Let me --
QUESTION: The mayor says that the U.S. troops used– whatever term you want to call them – during the occupation.
MR. VENTRELL: Let me look in. I’m not aware of new remarks by the mayor of Osaka, more that we had a strong reaction to what he had said previously. Let me look in and see whether we’re aware of any subsequent remarks.

While the article goes on to assert "There is no mainstream evidence that modern militaries other than Japan employed a formal sex slavery system." it also continues that "Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower is among credible sources who say American troops committed multiple rapes of Japanese women during the occupation and that press censorship muted reporting of these crimes."

What the article means by formal is hard to define. If by modern, Dower could refer to the early modern period of the 18th Century. There is ample evidence that the Nazis had sex slaves and they kept good records. There is also evidence that the British military in India kept and promoted military brothels. Brothels were lawful in British India until the 1930s and created racial and class conundrums, particularly when European prostitutes came. To put this in the context of the history of Japanese aggression,  first Sino-Japanese war was in the 1894-1895 and the second was in 1937-1945 with minor incidents beginning in 1931.  And what about the American military in Vietnam or in Korea? A 2009 UCLA thesis by Elya Filler looks at the role of Japan's comfort women system in the contemporary sex industry, but doesn't indicate where the Japanese got this idea.

When Commodore Perry opened Japan in the 1850s, Japan had been in seclusion for 200 years. It had no modern army, navy or airforce. Where did it learn modern warfare?  Military brothels were already being used in Europe and Asia by the British and French.

I do not believe that we as Americans or former Comfort women from Korea have the right to pressure the people of Osaka to find a new mayor, particularly since he has raised the issue of comfort women and attempted to expand the conundrum of the comfort women from an Asian point of view.  We've had mayors accused of sexism such as New York's Michael Bloomberg and Warren, Michigan's James Fouts. Fouts added that public employees should buy American autos. Bloomberg and Hashimoto are men of the 2010s. Men and women in the 1930s and 1940s in America were conditioned to accept:

1. All women want to be raped.
2. No woman can be raped against her will.
3. If a woman was raped, she was asking for it (perhaps by the way she was dressed or by being out late at night or drinking alcohol).
4. Rape can be enjoyable as in if you're going to be raped, you might as well  relax and enjoy it.

Susan Brownmiller noted in her book "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape" that gang rape was found in many cultures as a measure of control for women who strayed from their prescribed social roles. The 1975 book has a chapter devoted to war and notes that during the Occupation of Japan there were incidents of rape. 

A more recent article by Terese Svoboda, noted that the U.S. government concealed information about rape and that the reasons were not just political but also racial. The punishment of black soldiers for rape was more extreme. 

Another article online draws from Svoboda as well as other researchers and newspaper reports of the time. There is also mention of Korean comfort women being raped by U.S. forces.  While the article is new, the information is not. I was aware of the rape of Japanese comfort women by the Allied forces a few decades ago from sources written in English. 

Although Hashimoto has backpedaled in a long three-hour statement, his original assertions should indicate why the issue of the comfort women is more complicated than has been presented to Americans by the media. Further, South Korea seems more concerned about their women's treatment by Japan as opposed to the concept of comfort women or the current plight of foreign women in Korea who find themselves under similar circumstances. That seems to hark back to the ancient concept of rape as a crime against property and not a person. According to Wikipedia, South Korea supplied comfort women to American forces in Korea and according to the New York Times, some of they want apologies and compensation. In a 2009 New York Times article, the women called the South Korean government hypocritical, something that is perhaps not lost on many Japanese.

Hashimoto bravely continued to assert:

Based on the premise that Japan must remorsefully face its past offenses and must never justify the offenses, I intended to argue that other nations in the world must not attempt to conclude the matter by blaming only Japan and by associating Japan alone with the simple phrase of "sex slaves" or "sex slavery."

As L.A. Asians, shouldn't we be concerned about the rape or sexual slavery of all Asian women during war or colonialism or even times of peace? That is the conundrum of the Korean comfort women. The issue should reach beyond Japan and reparations for crimes committed under imperialism has far-reaching implications. Imagine if Great Britain had to pay reparations to all the countries that had been under the British Imperial empire, including the women who became sex slaves.