[Interview] ‘Consolation ladies’ recruitment differed in Japan, colonies, scholar says

“I first encountered Kim Hak-soon’s [testimony] round November 1991. I don’t recall clearly whether or not she had come to Japan or if it was an NHK broadcast, however I noticed her for the primary time on the tv display screen. Recounting the violence she had suffered, Kim stated, ‘I would like the younger individuals of Japan and Korea to know these info.’ Watching her communicate, I assumed, I, as a historian, had the duty to help this trigger.”

Yoshiaki Yoshimi, 78, professor emeritus at Chuo College in Japan, holds a singular place within the 35-year historical past of the motion looking for justice for the Japanese navy’s “consolation ladies” system of sexual slavery. 

The motion started in earnest when Kim Hak-soon (1924-1997) broke the silence and have become the primary girl to publicly testify as a survivor; Yoshimi corroborated Kim’s testimony by unearthing the primary items of proof that the Japanese navy was instantly and deeply concerned within the recruitment technique of younger ladies and ladies.

These had been six official paperwork that Yoshimi present in December 1991 on the library of the Nationwide Institute for Protection Research, underneath the Protection Company (now the Ministry of Protection). On Jan. 11, 1992, the Asahi Shimbun reported on these findings. 5 days later, on Jan. 16, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa met with President Roh Tae-woo of South Korea and was compelled to apologize repeatedly for this grave historic truth. 

In that sense, the previous 35 years that Korean and Japanese civil societies spent trying to find the reality in regards to the consolation ladies challenge have additionally been a interval of relentless battle for Yoshimi, who has devoted his scholarly profession to bringing to gentle the Japanese navy’s atrocities.

Yoshimi, who opened the door to full-fledged analysis on consolation ladies inside Japan, visited Korea to attend a symposium commemorating 35 years of ongoing battle on Thursday. The occasion, titled “35 Years of Analysis Achievements and the Way forward for Counter-Reminiscence for Resolving the Situation of the Japanese Army’s Sexual Slavery,” was hosted by the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Problems with Army Sexual Slavery by Japan and the Japanese group Combat for Justice on the Seoul International Middle Worldwide Convention Corridor. Previous to the occasion, Yoshimi met with the Hankyoreh to debate his new guide and what he stated “stays to be accomplished.”

“Following the publication of my 1995 guide ‘Consolation Ladies: Sexual Slavery within the Japanese Army Throughout World Struggle II,’ I launched a brand new guide this July titled ‘The Japanese Army’s Consolation Ladies’ [published by Iwanami Shoten], which synthesizes extra analysis findings from the previous 30 years,” Yoshimi stated.

When requested what the previous 35 years have meant to him, Yoshimi responded, “Again then [in the 1980s to early 1990s], the widespread understanding was that the consolation ladies system wasn’t created by the [Japanese] navy however arbitrarily established by non-public operators. Nobody imagined there could be official navy paperwork.” 

Yoshimi, who was then a researcher in his 40s specializing in Japanese trendy historical past, had been finding out Japan’s chemical warfare in China utilizing poison gasoline on the time. 

“Earlier than my years of finding out overseas within the US [from 1989 to 1991], I used to be trying to find poison gas-related supplies on the Nationwide Institute for Protection Research after I got here throughout paperwork ordering the institution of navy consolation stations,” the professor stated. 

After listening to Kim Hak-soon’s testimony, Yoshimi started actively trying to find such materials and found a complete of six items of proof, together with a doc titled “In regards to the Recruitment of Army Consolation Station Workers, and so on.” created by the previous Military Ministry on March 4, 1938. The paperwork acknowledged that the dispatched troops ought to management the recruitment of consolation ladies, completely vet recruiters, and preserve shut coordination with native navy police and police. 

“I assumed this was immensely essential materials, so I made copies,” Yoshimi stated. After articles associated to those paperwork appeared within the Asahi Shimbun, the Japanese authorities launched an investigation. This finally led to the Kono Assertion of 1993, which acknowledged that the Japanese navy was “concerned” in recruiting consolation ladies in opposition to their will to work at consolation stations.

Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a professor emeritus of historical past at Chuo College in Japan, speaks to the Hankyoreh at a resort in Seoul on Dec. 18, 2025. (Kim Younger-won/Hankyoreh)

Yoshimi’s new guide synthesizes current analysis findings from Korean and Japanese students, clarifying extra definitively than earlier than that the Japanese state established the consolation ladies system. Notably, it meticulously distinguishes and describes the particular traits of recruitment throughout totally different areas: Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia. This evaluation naturally reveals there was a brutal construction of discrimination that existed between Japan and its colonies.

For example, in Japan, the director of the Police Bureau of the Ministry of Dwelling Affairs issued a directive on Feb. 23, 1938, titled “Concerning the Dealing with of Ladies Touring to China.” This doc stipulated that solely ladies assembly the next standards may very well be recruited as consolation ladies in Japan and permitted to journey abroad: those that had beforehand engaged in prostitution, these aged 21 or older, and people free from sexually transmitted ailments or different infectious sicknesses. 

Based mostly on this directive, 400 ladies had been transported from Japan to navy consolation stations in Guangdong Province, China in November 1938 on the request of the twenty first Military and the Military Ministry. The Japanese authorities imposed these restrictions as a result of in 1925 it had ratified the Worldwide Conference for the Suppression of the Visitors in Ladies and Kids.

Nevertheless, the Japanese authorities had declared that the conference “doesn’t embrace Chosen [ie, Korea], Taiwan, the leased Territory of Kwantung, the Japanese portion of Saghalien Island and Japan’s mandated territory within the South Seas.”On account of this discriminatory construction, in contrast to in Japan, ladies in Korea underneath 21 with no prior expertise in prostitution had been additionally primarily lured into turning into consolation ladies by way of strategies corresponding to employment scams. 

The brand new guide additionally introduces testimonies, corresponding to one stating that round 3,000 Korean ladies had been transported from Korea to the Manchuria area in 1941, coinciding with the Kwantung Military Particular Maneuvers train performed in preparation for the struggle in opposition to the Soviet Union. 

“Clarifying how such mass mobilization occurred in Korea is a activity for the longer term,” Yoshimi confused. “Such pressured recruitment would have been unattainable with out mobilizing the police or administrative state companies.”

Subsequent, Yoshimi targeted his efforts on definitively proving that the Japanese navy consolation ladies system was a system of sexual slavery, regardless of the Japanese authorities’s denial. 

“The navy consolation ladies system completely matches the definition stipulated within the 1926 Slavery Conference. [Comfort women] had no freedom of residence or freedom to exit. They wanted to obtain a be aware of permission from the navy,” he stated. 

“In addition they had no proper to refuse sexual companions. They need to have had the liberty to give up, to cease working in the event that they didn’t want to, however they couldn’t try this both. Contemplating each these Japanese navy rules and the victims’ testimonies, we can’t deny that the navy consolation ladies system was a system of sexual slavery,” Yoshimi went on.

Nevertheless, the Japanese authorities has persistently denied this truth. In 2007, it made a cupboard choice asserting that “no proof has been discovered displaying pressured recruitment by the navy or authorities.” Within the December 2015 South Korea-Japan consolation ladies settlement, it finally refused to acknowledge its “obligation” — a key demand from survivors. In 2021, it determined that utilizing the time period “navy consolation ladies” in textbooks was inappropriate.

Yoshimi emphasised, “Whereas the Japanese authorities refuses to acknowledge its duty, we should bear in mind what occurred and hold talking out.” 

“Because the Japanese authorities promised within the Kono Assertion, we should make sure that these points are eternally remembered by way of historic analysis and training, in order that the identical wrongdoings are by no means repeated.”

By Gil Yun-hyung, editorial author

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