“Comfort girls-women” as Military Sex Slaves in the Japanese Empire (1937-1945)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66871/ihj.v1i1.007الكلمات المفتاحية:
“comfort stations”, “comfort women”, Japanese military sexual slaveryالملخص
This paper presents a critical historical and didactic analysis of the Japanese Imperial military sexual slavery system (1937–1945), examining its structural dimensions, historiographical challenges, and pedagogical implications for education. Despite extensive scholarly documentation, the so-called “comfort women” system remains marginalised within Eurocentric curricula and continues to be contested through Japanese state revisionism. This study analyses the institutionalisation of sexual violence as a military logistics strategy, the erasure of evidence through systematic document destruction, and the transformative role of survivor testimony, particularly Kim Hak-Sun’s 1991 public deposition, in reconfiguring individual trauma into a transnational human rights struggle. The research proposes a didactic intervention, operationalising Seixas and Morton's “Big Six” historical thinking concepts through source analysis, collaborative digital mapping exercises, and ethical reflection tasks. Findings demonstrate that the system constituted a structurally integrated state crime rather than isolated wartime atrocities, while the pedagogical programme effectively decentres Eurocentric narratives and cultivates multiperspectival historical consciousness. The study concludes that teaching “difficult knowledge” about gendered wartime violence not only addresses historiographical omissions but also fulfills history education's civic responsibility to foster active citizenship and human rights awareness. This intervention offers a replicable model for integrating overlooked Asian-Pacific theatres into European curricula while navigating the ethical complexities of teaching traumatic histories.
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