Because Japan doesn’t work like the USA, and you need to recognize that. Or repeat history.
Why shouldn’t we hold them to the German standard? Weren’t you complaining upthread about not holding Japan to the same standards as them? But now you evoke the first amendment to defend atrocity deniers?
Because they lost.
No, it’s not an area where we should defer to the professionals. It’s an area where we should defer to the people who were there, doing the “work”. They say they were unwilling. Most historians take their word on it, and it’s good that they do so. But even if most historians were to side with this idiot, we should still take the women’s word on it, and in that case most historians would be wrong.
Yes, but I can’t talk to all those people, right? I need someone else to compile the evidence, analyze it, and present it.
The best evidence was when it was still available firsthand, and fresh. That was back in the days when no one disputed the facts that the Japanese army coerced sex slaves. Of course there could have been some voluntary sex workers, who were prior prostitutes and just continued their trade, that goes without saying, but many more were forced into it.
We are now at a time when hardly anyone from that era is still alive, so it is the perfect time to revise history if one were so inclined. We have to be on our guard against such distortions of the historical record.
This newcomer isn’t even a historian, just a legal jerk with vested Japanese interests and who none of his colleagues support. Ignore him for the greater good.
With today’s all ideas and memes have equal weight society, that is impossible.
The number if people who actually hold that view would probably fit comfortably in a compact car. May not even qualify for the carpool lane.
He published that tripe a month ago. Give it time.
To what? It doesn’t seem to be an area of fertile conspiracy theory development, so will many people care what he said or tend to pick up on it?
In Japan they sure as hell will. He claims the meme started in the 80s despite Sandakan No. 8 being released in 1974.
Sandakan No. 8 was based on the 1972 book Sandakan Brothel No. 8: An Episode in the History of Lower-Class by Yamazaki Tomoko. The book focused on the “karayuki-san”, the Japanese term for young women who were forced into sexual slavery (see sex trafficking) in Pacific Rim countries and colonies during the early 20th century. The book created controversy in Japan, where the subject of the karayuki-san was not discussed in public or in scholarly examinations of Japanese history. Yamazaki’s book was a best-seller and won the Oya Soichi Prize for Non-Fiction Literature; she quickly followed up with a sequel, The Graves of Sandakan . Filmmaker Kei Kumai combined the two books into the screenplay for Sandakan No. 8
The denial continues to this day.
That’s true.
That said, I should point out “Sandakan No. 8” is about Japanese women. not Korean women, and Ramseyer is very specifically focused on making the claim that Korean women were not being used as slaves. He is very clear on making that distinction, and makes it over and over.
That is an oddly specific claim to make because he never, at any point, seems to acknowledge Japanese women were used as sex slaves, and I think it’s very obvious why; it would be impossible to introduce that fact without then having to explain why the Japanese army would be willing to use Japanese women as sex slaves but not Korean women, when he DOES claim the Japanese used Korean prostitutes. That’s just the most bizarre claim; why would they be willing to use both for sex, but NOT be willing to enslave Koreans when they did enslave Japanese? It’s just too twisted a thing to explain, so he leaves out the enormous complicating factor entirely.
It’s odd to me for another reason. If the testimony of Korean women (most of those so abused were Korean) is dismissed as being all about money, Korean nationalism or political expediency on the part of elements in Japan, that leaves the accounts of women from other countries, including the Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan and even the Netherlands who were coerced into into “servicing” Japanese troops. How do their stories get swept aside? Does Ramseyer really believe that 200,000 women were lying about their experiences?
Speaking of the Philippines, the government there was apparently so anxious to appease the Japanese government and encourage investment that it “disappeared” a statue memorializing Filipina comfort women.
I watched a story about comfort women from one of the last surviving (at the time) comfort woman a while ago. It’s gut-wrenching.
It’s hard to doubt her story, so I wondered what the professor was saying. The professor is not saying that stories like hers didn’t happen. He’s just saying that they weren’t held at bayonet point. I’m not even sure I buy that, but it doesn’t make much of a distinction.
There were still Korean women who were entered into these contracts to service Japanese men. From the article in the OP:
This makes it sound so transactional, but many of these girls were very young and taken away from their families.
I’m not seeing the point the professor is trying to make.
Here’s the thing about that. It is a bit difficult to wrap your head around, so bear with me.
It wasn’t the Japanese government apologizing. It was just a few a individuals acting as Prime Ministers apologizing. And they were quickly castigated, which allows the next Prime Minister to come in and let everyone know that what the previous Prime Minister said was wrong. That is how it is viewed in Japan. Everyone goes back into the “we never did any wrong” mode.
(using “we” here instead of “our country” is my deliberate choice, you will see why)
If you tell any Australian that the early white immigrants/settlers treated the Aboriginals cruelly, then you will get no objection. In part, this is because we don’t see our present selves as having anything to do with the people of that era of Australia so we don’t feel guilt, but we do feel empathy. So we can view our country’s past with at least a little bit of objectivity.
Japanese people (on the whole) can’t do that. They view the Japanese people as a single race stemming from a divinity that is still represented by the divine emperor. They, past and present, are all in the same boat. You can’t criticize anyone without tarnishing the lot.
There’s a wonderful attitude. That would explain their desire to bury this instead of owning up to it.
The contact I’ve had with people from Japan tells me there is some sort of split in attitudes there. I’ve probably met more of the type who reject a lot of the traditionalism because that’s why they’ve come to the US, because they believe in individualism and free thought.
So do you see any change in the future to this attitude? How widespread is this attitude now? I have no way to tell if I’ve met rare exceptions or there is any trend.
It’s so difficult to tell. One indicator is to look at who gets voted into important political positions of power by the general public. In my limited 25 year experience in Japan, an increasing number of people who make public statements denying that there was forced sex labor during WW2 are being voted, or re-voted, into power.
But you have to remember that the revisionist sex-slavery issue is an extremely minor issue in Japan, and certainly not at the forefront of the average voter’s minds. Instead they are more concerned with the everyday problems of security, healthcare and taxes etc.
So how can you tell what issue(s) people are choosing to vote on? Well, you can’t.
You can see a shift in society, but you can’t pin it to any metric unless someone runs on a single issue.
What I can say is that politicians who deny WW2 sex slavery by the Japanese army can still be elected without any problems. To my mind that means that there is either a large minority or a slight majority of the population who are willing to go along with a revision of history.
I may have assumed too much. I thought the forced labor ‘denial’ was mainly held by the strong traditionalists, which may be the case in what you are saying. I have seen liberalization in some Japanese visitors and immigrants, not necessarily about this particular issue, but mainly about traditional treatment of women and people in general at work, and some other political attitudes. I don’t know how this particular issue relates to those general attitudes. I think I should assume my ignorance of these subjects leaves me short of prepared to discuss this in depth before learning much more.