Ramsiyer on Osaki, and thr critics

 

(1) 오사키의 예를 완전히 잘못 인용한 것 등을 볼 때 램지어 교수의 학자적 양심 (이 오류가 의도적이었을 경우) 혹은 주의력 (이 오류가 비의도적이었을 경우)에 대한 신뢰는 저 개인적으로는 여전히 좀 어렵구요.

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(2) 또 노동자가 노동의 내용을 정확하게 인지하고 있지 못 했다면 '자발적'이라는 단어의 사용은 적확하지 않다는 저의 입장에도 변함이 없습니다. 노동 내용을 부모가 알고서도 팔아넘겼거나 알선업자가 속인 경우, 계약은 있었으나 노동의 구체적 성격/내용을 정확히 인지하지 못 하고 있었던 노동자도 다수였다고 이 부분까지 명확히 밝혀야, 그래야만 양측이 평행선 달리기를 멈추고서 fair하고 생산적인 논의가 가능하지 않겠나 저는 생각되네요. 어느 부분이 '중요'한지는 독자 각자가 판단할 몫이고, 중요하지 않은 '사소한' 부분이라도 최대한 정확한 것이 학자의 능력이고 또 미덕이겠죠. 대중과의 소통을 원하는 학자라면 더더욱요.

At age 13, she began working for the family as a prostitute. Because of the cost of passage and three years of room and board, she now owed 2000 yen. Under the new terms, customers paid 2 yen for a short stay and 10 yen for an overnight visit. The brothel owner kept half the amount, and provided room and board. Out of the remaining half, she paid down her outstanding balance and bought cosmetics and clothing. If she worked hard, she found that she could repay about 100 yen a month.

Before Osaki had finished repaying her loan, her owner died and she found herself transferred to a brothel in Singapore. She disliked her new owner, so one day she and some of the others went down to the harbor and bought a ticket back to Malaysia. The point is important: even overseas, women who disliked their jobs at a brothel could – and did – simply disappear.

Osaki found a new brothel. She liked the couple who owned it (and they negotiated her release from the earlier brothel), and in time took to calling the wife mother.¨ There¨ she stayed until an expatriate Britisher made her his mistress. Later in life, she returned to her home in Amakusa.

Author Tomoko Yamazaki (1972) traveled to Amakusa to explore this history. There, she befriended an elderly emigrant prostitute named Osaki. Osaki had indeed worked many years abroad, but hers was not a story either of paternal oppression or of sexual slavery. Osaki had been born in a small village to a family who already had a boy and a girl. A few years after her birth, her father died. Her mother then found a new lover. As he had no interest in her very small children, she abandoned them and married him anyway. The three children survived together in a tiny shack, and scrapped together what they could to eat. Other women in the community had worked as prostitutes abroad, and had returned with substantial sums of money. In time, her older sister left to work abroad as a prostitute herself.

When Osaki turned ten, a recruiter stopped by and offered her 300 yen upfront if she would agree to go abroad. The recruiter did not try to trick her; even at age 10, she knew what the job entailed. She discussed it with her brother, and decided to take the work to help him establish himself in farming. She travelled to Malaysia, and worked as a maid for three years. She was happy, she recalled. Her family fed her white rice and fish every day, which was more than the three abandoned children had been able to scavenge in Amakusa.

Morris-Suzuki, Stanley and her colleagues observed that Ramseyer’s statements in the article were often plainly contrary to the sources he cited for their support. In one striking example, Ramseyer wrote about a young Japanese girl who went to Borneo to work as a prostitute: “When Osaki turned ten, a recruiter stopped by and offered her 300 yen upfront if she would agree to go abroad. The recruiter did not try to trick her; even at age ten, she knew what the job entailed.” (Ramseyer raised no question about a ten-year-old’s ability to consent to sex.) Stanley and her colleagues found that the girl’s testimony, in the book that Ramseyer cited, actually said that she and other girls resisted, saying to the brothel keeper, “You brought us here without ever mentioning that kind of work, and now you tell us to take customers. You liar!” The girl further recalled, “After our first night, we were terrified. We hadn’t realized this was what men and women did. It was so horrible, we could hardly believe it.” 

The scholars also found it “curious” that, while purporting to describe a voluntary contract system, Ramseyer referred to the employer as Osaki’s “owner.” (Ramseyer e-mailed me to say that he was “puzzled and troubled” upon reading the scholars’ allegation of his misstatement, and added, “I don’t know how this happened, but I did in fact make a mistake here.”)