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The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) Paperback – February 15, 2009
by C. Sarah Soh (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 29 ratings
In an era marked by atrocities perpetrated on a grand scale, the tragedy of the so-called comfort women—mostly Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army—endures as one of the darkest events of World War II. These women have usually been labeled victims of a war crime, a simplistic view that makes it easy to pin blame on the policies of imperial Japan and therefore easier to consign the episode to a war-torn past. In this revelatory study, C. Sarah Soh provocatively disputes this master narrative.
Soh reveals that the forces of Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy together shaped the fate of Korean comfort women—a double bind made strikingly apparent in the cases of women cast into sexual slavery after fleeing abuse at home. Other victims were press-ganged into prostitution, sometimes with the help of Korean procurers. Drawing on historical research and interviews with survivors, Soh tells the stories of these women from girlhood through their subjugation and beyond to their efforts to overcome the traumas of their past. Finally, Soh examines the array of factors— from South Korean nationalist politics to the aims of the international women’s human rights movement—that have contributed to the incomplete view of the tragedy that still dominates today.
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The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan
January 2009
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C. Sarah Soh
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Krieg und Kriegsverbrechen in Museen der japanischen Selbstverteidigungsstreitkräfte. Militärische Erinnerungspolitik und museale Selbstrepräsentation (Rahmentext zur kumulativen Dissertation)
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In an era marked by atrocities perpetrated on a grand scale, the tragedy of the so-called comfort women—mostly Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army—endures as one of the darkest events of World War II. These women have usually been labeled victims of a war crime, a simplistic view that makes it easy to pin blame on the policies of imperial Japan and therefore easier to consign the episode to a war-torn past. In this revelatory study, C. Sarah Soh provocatively disputes this master narrative. Soh reveals that the forces of Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy together shaped the fate of Korean comfort women—a double bind made strikingly apparent in the cases of women cast into sexual slavery after fleeing abuse at home. Other victims were press-ganged into prostitution, sometimes with the help of Korean procurers. Drawing on historical research and interviews with survivors, Soh tells the stories of these women from girlhood through their subjugation and beyond to their efforts to overcome the traumas of their past. Finally, Soh examines the array of factors— from South Korean nationalist politics to the aims of the international women’s human rights movement—that have contributed to the incomplete view of the tragedy that still dominates today.
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University of Chicago Press
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February 15, 2009
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“This is a courageous, judicious, and well-written book that refuses to yield to knee-jerk responses or politically correct narratives, but rather insists on setting the comfort women within broader historical and cultural contexts. Sympathetic and sensitive, C. Sarah Soh nevertheless challenges both feminist and ethnic nationalist paradigms in an astonishing display of objectivity. The Comfort Women is a lucid, brave, and important work.”
-- Gail Lee Bernstein, author of Isami’s House: Three Centuries of a Japanese Family
"C. Sarah Soh’s study of ‘comfort women’ offers a close-grained yet compassionate analysis of this disturbing experience. She cogently deploys ethnography and history to illuminate a crucial case in gender and international issues.”
-- James L. Peacock, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“This is a dispassionate, careful, well-researched, and brave book. Embedding her story in the whole history of prostitution and abusive treatment of women from the colonial period to the present, Soh shows that the comfort women system partook not just of the authoritarian politics of Japanese colonialism, but was also deeply rooted in a Korean patriarchy whose effects continued on after 1945. I expect this book will be the standard work on the subject for some time.”
-- Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago
"A brave and impressive book that usefully complicates and adds layers to our understanding of a sordid system."
-- Jeff Kingston ― Japan Times
“Since 1991, when Korean comfort women first stepped forward to demand compensation, much has been written about the Japanese military comfort system. Through careful anthropological work, Soh adds to knowledge about this system and provides a nuanced context within which to understand it. . . . In this courageous book, Soh succeeds in her aspiration to write against both adversarial ethnonationalisms and ahistorical international feminisms.” ― Choice
About the Author
C. Sarah Soh is professor of anthropology at San Francisco State University and the author of Women in Korean Politics.
Product details
Publisher : University of Chicago Press; Illustrated edition (February 15, 2009)
Language : English
Paperback : 384 pages
Customer Reviews: 4.2 out of 5 stars 29 ratings
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Top reviews from the United States
FreeTradeTool
4.0 out of 5 stars A must-read above all others on the subject
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2017
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After rereading the book recently, I have renewed respect for Professor Soh – she has taken a very courageous step to reject the ‘master narrative’ of the comfort women issue by providing so much on the historical background of Korea as well as revealing information on many of the comfort women survivors, facts that are conveniently left out by activists of the redress movement. It is no wonder that Chong Dae Hyup, the main organization that promotes the movement in South Korea, no longer wants to do anything with Professor Soh, but her name not being on the list of academics supporting the 2015 Open Letter in Support of Historians in Japan, an attempt to pressure Japan to further acknowledge and once again account for the ‘past wrongs,’ really speaks volumes.
More than anyone in American academia, she fully understands the complexity of the issue as demonstrated in her extensive research, and she is undoubtedly the most qualified to discuss the matter objectively, having received education in Japanese, Korean, and English. Moreover, she is currently a resident and scholar in the United States, making her independent of any activist groups from overseas, which allows her to speak freely without compromising academic integrity. While I personally do not support transnational feminism which is what the professor identifies herself with, this book must be thoroughly studied in order to partake in any reasonable discussion on the issue of Imperial Japan’s Comfort Women system. A solid 4.5 stars for the depth of the research and the overall objectivity that is maintained throughout the book.
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muenster
4.0 out of 5 stars Necessary, complementary read for this subject
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2016
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This book provides a much-needed alternate angle of the comfort women experiences. Because the era and the situation was so tragic, most accounts are written in a narrative that everything was terrible, all of these women hated every aspect of their miserable lives, and that is the only way to interpret this time in history. C. Sarah Soh comes in and offers to tell the largely ignored accounts of the women that had neutral or even positive things to say about things that happened to them. She is not glorifying anything that happened at this time, just offering the testimonies that do not fit into the popular narrative. The events of this period are still tragic, and I support the survivors' seeking closure by way of an official apology, but I appreciate being able to see more sides of the situation to get a fuller picture.
Only fours stars because sometimes the writing got awkward, like when she would unnecessarily provide the Korean pronunciation for a random word. Some made sense because they were thematic and appeared often throughout the book, but others seemed to just be there as a reminder that you are reading about people in another country who spoke another language.
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Nerdus Maximus
5.0 out of 5 stars Profound, informative, thought-provoking...
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2012
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... and most definitely NOT for casual readers or those who are not willing to re-examine their preconceived ideas and views of the wartime comfort women. This work is likewise ill-suited for those who aren't serious readers of history.
C. Sarah Soh, as a native Korean who was fortunate to receive formal education both in her homeland and abroad, has produced a masterful examination of a controversial issue involving Korea and Japan which people from both countries have long oversimplified.
Koreans generally believe that Imperial Japan's leadership ordered, planned, and executed the gunpoint kidnapping of thousands of Korean females and summarily shipped them like chattel to frontline brothels.
Japanese people - at least those who know this issue - either agree that the Koreans were largely victimized, or claim that this is a gross fabrication and that the comfort women were essentially willing prostitutes.
Professor Soh cites several examples, such as interviews with survivors, to show that the truth is far more complex. Some survivors stated they were not forcibly taken by Japanese troops. Others are shown to have bought their way to freedom with earnings - earnings??? Yes. Hence the question - if the comfort women were slaves, they wouldn't have had wages. Then what were they: slaves or prostitutes or something else?
Additionally, Professor Soh does the reader a huge service by detailing the sociocultural contexts of 1930s-1940s Korea and Japan. Information on views on sex, women, and the sexism that characterized pre-modern Korean and Japanese societies is provided, thus presenting the reader with a better understanding of what facilitated the existence of "sex care work" in both societies. Anyone familiar with Korea and Japan today will be aware that extramarital affairs have been generally tolerated, historically speaking, and that older men have often availed themselves of sexual services provided by far younger women.
The comfort women issue did not happen in a vacuum. Japanese generals didn't wake up one day, deciding to 'award' their enlisted men with females to sate their urges, and they didn't decide to violently seize thousands of Korean women at will. As a reader of Korean ethnicity myself, I know this is a painful subject, and I personally believe there were abductions. But as the attentive reader will see, the story is far more diverse and much more complicated that flag-waving nationalists on either side of the East Sea (or, as some call it, the Sea of Japan), would want us to believe.
It is worth noting (somewhat of a spoiler alert) that Professor Soh was shunned and coldly treated by South Koreans who are involved in the redress movement after those activists learned of the fruits of her research. I wonder why. Did Professor Soh's findings upset their ostensibly benign agenda? Is there something she uncovered the redress activists preferred not to even know and prefer that their compatriots remain ignorant of?
If the comfort women issue is of any interest to you, read this book. It is a must-have in the library of any serious student of Korea's modern history.
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T. Lee
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5.0 out of 5 stars Critical Reading on the issue
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2015
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Fantastic work viewing the comfort women issue in light of gender issues. Well-researched and footnoted, and yet written in a very accessible way that's an easy read.
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Bobbie A.
5.0 out of 5 stars A deep study of the complexity of the Comfort Women
Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2009
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I enjoyed reading this book, because it has a balanced yet in-depth look at the Comfort Women in Korea. It was educating yet sobering to learn about all the different complicated circumstances that lead to militarized prostitution.
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kim seungyong
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2015
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it`s good!!
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H. Nieuwenhuizen
5.0 out of 5 stars A revelation
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 14, 2011
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This is an amazing book and puts this sensitive issue of comfort women in perspective. Anyone who wants to really understand the background how this could have happened without the sensationalism of the modern times should read this book. The author comes from the same culture as most of the comfort women and understands the reasons much better than any non Asian person could. It makes us understand why it took so many years after the war for these victims to try and find justice and at the same time understand much better the Japanese reaction, even to this day to all the claims and calls for apologies.
It's not an easy to read book and almost reads like a study book, probably because of the author is a professor of anthropoly and she explains that clearly in her reasons for writing this history, which is very well re-searched.
It leans heavily on the Korean culture and ways of life starting from before the war right up to the modern day, for reason that the majority of the comfort women were from Korean origin but goes on to explain how everything changed as the war progressed. I think a must-read for anybody interested in this sad chapter of history which tends or tended to be forgotten, but even by reading the book reasons for that can be clearly understood. Equally well anyone interested in Chinese, Korean and Japanese culture and history should read this book.
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うさちゃん
3.0 out of 5 stars 韓国人が書いたものとしては中立的
Reviewed in Japan on March 4, 2015
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往々にして売春は自由意志ではなく、強制によってなされることが多い。ヨーロッパに多いロシア人売春婦はロシアマフィアが管理、強制しているように。
強制的に戦争中に性労働を強いられた犠牲者の方には国籍を問わず同情を禁じ得ない。
しかしながら、強制といっても、親に売られた、朝鮮の業者に騙されたなどの結果としての強制であり、日本軍、あるいは官憲が拉致して売春をさせたという証拠はインドネシアに於けるオランダ人の例を除いて存在しない。本書にもあるように韓国人元慰安婦の供述は変遷しており、韓国世論への迎合の可能性が高い。
しかしながら、慰安所を管理していたのは日本軍であり、その恩恵？を受けていたのも日本軍兵士であるから、道義的責任について謝罪の必要はあるとは思うが、すでに日本国政府は謝罪している。さらに日本と韓国の間の財産、請求権一切の完全かつ最終的な解決が日韓基本条約で確認されている。
いわゆる従軍慰安婦の問題は朝日新聞の誤報によって多くの女性が拉致されたとの誤解が広まったことが火に油を注いだ面が大きく、本書のように、韓国人の立場としては比較的客観的な内容は評価に値すると思う。
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timtak
5.0 out of 5 stars 気持ちは反日でスタイルもそうですが、掘り出した事実は、強制はなかったようです。
Reviewed in Japan on May 22, 2015
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口調というか、書き方からすれば、慰安婦制度がひどかったと思われているように聞こえてきますが、韓国の歴史家も強制の証拠が見つからず、有名なもと慰安婦も任意参加という証拠について言及していますので、妙にバランスがとれているように思います。大まかに言うと著者の結論は、（義理の父を含めての）親戚は借金返済などのため娘たちを売ることがあるから、前払い売春制度は、女性の家族が一度前払い金を貰ったら、女性は性の奴隷ですので、ひどいとのご意見だと思います。和訳があればよいと思います。おすすめしたいです。
11 people found this helpful
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Jud
5.0 out of 5 stars Every Japanese should read
Reviewed in Japan on July 26, 2013
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This should be mandatory reading in Japanese schools
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Alex
Nov 27, 2013Alex rated it it was amazing
All I can say is that this is probably the best work on the topic. Simultaneously sympathetic and nuanced, Soh complicates a nationalized issue where multiple authorities claim legitimacy on "Official History." This is important because as the author evidences, the so-called "Comfort System" did not appear in a vacuum. They are a product of capitalism, war, and masculinist legitimization of the male desire for sex. While most people, influenced by nationalist historiography, would probably dismiss such a view, I highly recommend this text for anyone who has an open mind and is willing to learn beyond the dichotomy of Victimized (Korea) and Victimizer (Japan). While she might appear biased at points, as the pieces fall into place, we see a holistic view of an issue that still lingers today and we can take comfort in the fact that this is neither pro-Japan revisionism (although some of the arguments have been appropriated by Japanese neo-nationalists), nor is it simply another retelling of post-colonial Korean victimization. These issues need to be discussed and explored beyond the bounds of nationalism—after all, while the Historical Comfort System in all its brutality may have died on August 15, 1945, comfort systems continue to exist today within Korea, Japan, and beyond. We need to look at the systematic factors that enables this behavior and these policies, and I believe that this book has done an excellent job of accomplishing just that. (less)
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Will
Mar 29, 2019Will rated it really liked it
I found the parts about the crushing patriarchy of Korean society to be the most interesting, as well as comparisons to Japanese sex tourism today. The stories of the Korean women who left home to become "modern girls" and were duped into slavery were heartbreaking, but Soh's call that we should remember those who entered prostitution willing (but were still exploited) is my main takeaway here. (less)
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Sara Goldstein
Aug 05, 2021Sara Goldstein rated it really liked it
Shelves: physical-book, history, social-justice
Was really shocked to learn how nuanced the comfort women issue is. I always thought it was essentially women forced into sexual slavery but turns out there were a whole range of situations involved (ranging from consenting sex workers, to coerced prostitution, to mass rape). Soh does a great job of conveying the gray area whereas many people on both sides would have you believe it’s a black and white issue.
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Gayla Bassham
Nov 07, 2020Gayla Bassham rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2020-reads, non-fiction, women-s-studies, politics, history
A provocative and nuanced thesis that sees the "comfort women" of Japan and Korea as fully realized human beings instead of simple victims. Worth reading, although a bit jargony -- but this is a flaw shared by many academic books. (less)
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Jamie
Dec 04, 2019Jamie rated it it was amazing
I had to read this book for my graduate school's modern history class, and it is by far the best book that I have ever read. (less)
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carolyn !!
Dec 18, 2020carolyn !! rated it it was amazing
Shelves: 2020-favs, nonfic
this book complicates the traditional view of comfort women, which is the pitiable, one-dimensional victim of sex slavery. this is not a nationalistic retelling of history with a patronizing moral thrust (though soh gently reminds the reader that the comfort system was nothing less than an inhumane atrocity). instead, this is a portrayal of these women as individual, complex humans, some of whom do not fit the typical narrative of a victim of wartime sexual violence. perhaps the most striking insight the book left me lies in the unexpected diversity in testimonies, ranging from former korean comfort women that reflected on comfort stations with nostalgia to those that were bitter that japan lost the war. could not recommend enough - i will never stop thinking about the contents of this book. (less)
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Alison
Sep 28, 2012Alison rated it it was amazing
I read The Comfort Women for my final research paper on Comfort Women for my undergraduate degree. It is an amazing piece of information for anyone interested in the topic of comfort women or as a key source for your own research. It is analytical without losing the interest of the audience or losing factual accuracy. This is not an easy read, but the topic itself is not an easy topic to digest. This is a definite read for anyone interested in Japanese Imperialism/WWII history or in Korean history. (less)
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Chloe
Apr 15, 2014Chloe rated it liked it
Shelves: undergrad-course-readings, historical-non-fiction, crime-non-fiction, ww2-non-fiction, east-asia
This would be a really fabulous book for people interested in Comfort Women or the intricacies of World War Two in East Asia, although it's a bit too academic and deals with too heavy a topic to be an easy read. I thought it was a fine book, but I wasn't all that interested in it because I read it for a class. (less)
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Anh Le
Apr 13, 2016Anh Le rated it it was amazing
One of the best anthro-historical treatments of the subject with nuanced and complex analyses.
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