Textbook Changes Erase Comfort Women, Says Chinese Media
by julia on Thursday, April 18, 2013
by julia on Thursday, April 18, 2013
While earlier this week we saw an article on how key historical figures from premodern Japanese history were being revised in new history textbooks, Chinese media outletXinhua has also raised the issue of representation of Japan’s 20th century history, and in particular the issue of forced military prostitution.
Understandably, for those former comfort women who survived the war and testified against the soldiers who raped them, an accurate re-telling of their experience is their legacy, and the only way their voices can continue to be heard. But due to what some Japanese scholars and politicians see as the disputed status of forced military prostitution by the Empire of Japan, there has been continual friction between Japan and Korea as to how this ought to be represented in history textbooks.
Here, Xinhua decries the new move to revise current textbooks, claiming that it is intended to erase all traces of Japan’s aggression on the East Asian mainland. Needless to say, the netouyo disagree.
From Yahoo! Japan:
With Revisions of Japanese History Textbooks, Former Comfort Women Won’t Rest in Peace — Chinese Media Discusses
With a goal of erasing topics such as the forced prostitution of comfort women by the Japanese military from Japanese history textbooks, the Japanese government is promoting revisions by an official textbook inspection organization. In a speech to the National Diet on April 10, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology Shimomura Hakubun stated, “We need to record an interpretation of history in our textbooks that encourages pride in Japan.”
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo also said, “There’s a need to evaluate whether our textbooks are being used from an educational perspective.” Recently, Diet Member Nishikawa Kyoko of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) complained, “The textbooks describe the Japanese military treating comfort women as sex slaves, and that’s a damaging view of history.” The Chinese International Xinhua News reported the story.
If Japan changes descriptions of Japan’s “aggression” to “expansion” and completely deletes the Japanese military’s coercion of comfort women into prostitution, all in the name of “respecting patriotism and love for one’s birthplace, and encouraging pride,” it will ultimately be the same as denying history and undermining the established theory regarding Japan’s militarism. The former comfort women who died without resolving their resentment won’t be able to rest in peace.
Japan insists on the specious argument that the comfort women acted out of “free will” rather than “coercion,” but there’s abundant evidence that the Japanese military used methods like fabricated job offers and kidnapping to force women into prostitution. One elderly woman continued to complain to the Japanese government for over a decade. If she truly sold her body of her own free will, why did she spend her entire live tearfully demanding atonement? Japan’s claims completely resist reason.
