Date of Award

8-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Committee Chair/Advisor

Dr. Ryan Hilliard

Committee Member

Dr. Archana Venkatesh

Committee Member

Dr. Douglas Seefeldt

Abstract

From 1932 to 1945, the Imperial Japanese military sexually enslaved approximately two hundred thousand Asian women from Japan, Korea, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Philippines. This institution was known as the comfort women system, which the Imperial Japanese government created to ensure the sexual and mental health of Imperial Japanese military personnel. This provision of comfort for Imperial Japanese military personnel was enabled by cultural influences introduced in the Early Modern period of Japan, which normalized a contemptuous attitude toward sexual labor. This blend of Early Modern Japan, as well as the beliefs that facilitated the need for comfort women, creates what this thesis contends is the “comfort culture” of Japan. This retrospective study of the comfort women phenomenon includes the continuities of stigmatic conduct against sex workers, the national entity of Japan, and political sponsorship of sex work. It coincided with the discontinuities that manifested throughout Japan's imperial period, such as nationalistic ideologies, the Japanese economy, and imperial notions of race, which contributed to the creation of the comfort women system. The effects of this system did not stop following the conclusion of World War II as contemptuous attitudes towards sexual laborers relayed into postwar memory, which promoted a narrative that associated the former comfort women as sex workers rather than sex slaves.

Included in

Asian History Commons

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