Women in Early 1940s Japan

Earlier this month, The Japan Times reported that several thousand women in Tokyo had threatened to boycott sex with their husbands if they voted for Yoichi Masuzoe, one of the mayoral candidates in the upcoming election. Masuzoe had made comments at a press conference to the effect that women were unfit to make government decisions because their judgment was that erratic during their monthly period. After Masuzoe won, the same group is calling for all women to boycott sex with any man who voted for him.  Such a movement would have been unthinkable during the early 1940s, the setting for parts of my latest novel, Hold Back the Sun.

In pre-Pacific War Japan, women were decidedly second-class citizens. This had been true since the beginnings of the Samurai Period. The greatest value of women, especially in middle and upper class society, was as child bearers and sex objects to be enjoyed by men. The Japanese viewed sex drive, especially in men, as just another appetite that needed to be consistently satisfied. Among the peasant farmers, of course, women were also valued for their labor in cultivating crops.  When the push towards modernization began in the late 1800s, women were also viewed as a source of industrial labor, at least until they were married.

Women had few freedoms. They were always under the domination of a male. Before marriage, they had to obey their fathers. After marriage, their husbands assumed command. Widows were expected to follow the orders of their oldest son. Nowhere were the words of the old folksong sung by Joan Baez, The Wagoner’s Lad, truer than in Japan:

Oh heartache’s the portion of all womankind,

She’s always controlled; she’s always confined,

Controlled by her parents until she’s a wife,

A slave to her husband the rest of her life

In the home, the wife was the husband’s servant. When he returned from work, she took his coat and made him comfortable, holding his chair while he sat if they used western furniture. She prepared and served the food and was responsible for child care. If her husband was an eldest son, she was required to become his widowed mother’s servant also. If the husband desired sex, she could not refuse him. But the primary job of a wife was not sexual entertainment. It was bearing children to carry on the family. For pure sexual enjoyment, Japanese men frequented geishas and yûjos (courtesans).  Japan’s sex trade was extensive and sophisticated. The pinnacle of the trade was the famous Yoshiwara sex market in Tokyo. Girls as young as twelve were literally sold into this trade by their families. They became sex slaves. Of course, peasant farmers could ill afford to live by this standard. They were more likely to depend on their wives for sexual pleasure.

Some readers of Hold Back the Sun have suggested that I was too harsh on the Japanese arch-villain. But considering the culture in which he was brought up, is it any wonder that he viewed women primarily as sex objects? Or that he considered them incapable of complex thinking. As one of the militarist ultra-nationalists, he would have harbored hatred for European colonialists for the subjugation of Asians. Such a man would have been ashamed and enraged to lose a bridge tournament to a “mere woman,” and a white one at that. He would view revenge in the form of sexual slavery as a matter of simple justice.

The position of women improved a great deal after General Douglas MacArthur and his staff wrote political sexual equality for women into the new Japanese constitution. Women today are much more independent. A large percentage of educated young women have discovered that they don’t need a man to support them. Almost forty percent of these women are refusing to marry and assume the role of servants. A poll showed that about 30 percent of all Japanese between 18 and 30 years old have never had even one date.  Yet the attitudes of some politicians like Yoichi Masuzoe indicate that men still have a way to go in their attitudes. It will be interesting to learn how the boycott turns out.

Much of the information in this post was drawn from Cities of Sin, a 1930s publication of the League of Nations Commission on White Slavery.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels released and for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun is set in the war in the Pacific. 

A Shameful Secret of World War II: Sexual Slavery in the Axis Armies

Korean Comfort Women held by the Japanese Imperial Army

The first scene of my new novel, Hold Back the Sun, takes place in Madam Kitty’s, a posh Gestapo brothel in Berlin. Nazi friends are giving a going-away party for the book’s chief villain, a Japanese Military Attaché.  Madam Kitty’s was an actual establishment located at the address I give it in the novel. Its purpose was to ply foreign diplomats with liquor and sex, and then extract secret information from them during “pillow talk.” All the rooms were bugged to capture the conversations on recordings.

I did not mention it in my novel because it did not fit into the story, but almost all the prostitutes in Madam Kitty’s were in fact sex slaves, the wives and daughters of political prisoners. The Gestapo gave these women a stark choice: become espionage prostitutes or have their loved ones executed.

All three of the Axis armies of World War II were supported by systems of military brothels. Compelling evidence exists that at least the Germans and Japanese employed conscripted sex slaves. What little has been written about the Italian Army suggests that they primarily utilized professional Italian prostitutes.

During the peak years of the war, the German Army and the Gestapo operated some 500 military brothels. Researchers have reported that some 34,000 women conscripted from the conquered races or from concentration camps worked in these entertainment houses. Ironically, when they became, ”worn out,” many were placed in concentration camps for the crime of prostitution. Perhaps because of the utter devastation of Nazi Germany and the fact that Stalin’s Army committed what has been called, ”the greatest mass rape of women in history,” during the conquest of East Germany, the suffering of Germany’s sex slaves has gone largely unmentioned in history.

By far the largest employment of military sex slaves was by the Japanese Army. After discipline broke down during the “Rape of Nanking,” the Army staff decided that providing the soldiers with their own prostitutes was necessary for “good order and discipline.” Detailed planning for the conquest of Southeast Asia included provision of Ianfu (Comfort Women) units down to at least the battalion level. Hard pressed to fill these units with volunteers, the Army resorted to deception and mass kidnappings. During the course of the war, over 200,000 Asian women from territories under Japanese control were conscripted, the vast majority from Korea. But thousands of women from China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, and other subject nations shared their fate. In Java, some 300 Dutchwomen were also enslaved. At least sixty were kidnapped from internment camps and placed in “comfort stations.” What they endured can only be described as a months long gang rape. Unbelievably, the suffering of “front line” Ianfu was even worse. Many were forced to entertain up to 40 “clients” per day while living in primitive conditions and being fed barely enough food to keep them functioning.   

Very few of the Japanese responsible for these crimes against humanity ever had to pay for their actions. Only those officers and noncoms responsible for the kidnappings and rapes in Java were tried by the Allies after the war. The officer held primarily responsible was hanged. Perhaps because of the racial attitudes of the time, the plight of the Asian women was largely ignored.

During the 1980s and 1990s, many of the former Ianfu came forward to tell their stories and demand compensation. In 1994, one of the Dutchwoman, Jan Ruff-O’Herne, wrote of her ordeal in her book, Fifty Years of Silence. After a long period of outright denial, one Japanese president finally offered something of an apology. A fund was set up for the Comfort Women, but payouts are minimal considering what these war victims endured.

I have long been troubled by the plight of the Japanese Army’s sex slaves. When I began writing HoldBack the Sun, I decided to illuminate these war crimes in my novel. I hope that I have done an adequate job.