Comfort women and the Information Disclosure Law
Posted by Matt Dioguardi on July 12th, 2007
What do we know about the comfort women issue?
How many interviews do we have with actual comfort women, soldiers and ex-doctors? To what degree are these interviews accepted at face value as opposed to being scrutinized in some sense?
What documents do we possess that provide a historical record?
It is generally argued that the following problems exist:
- Comfort women are resistant to come forward because of the shame and humiliation they are afraid they might experience.
- Soldiers are reluctant to reveal what part they took in the program.
- Many documents were burned immediately after Japan surrendered in WWII.
- Information that would probably implicate the relevant authorities is not being made available to the public, even though some of it still exists.
These are claims that each need to be examined in turn.
In this entry, I want to focus on the last one.
According to Yuki Tanaka in Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the U.S. Occupation, pages 19 and 20:
In order to clarify who was responsible for organizing the exploitation of women on such an unprecedented scale, it is necessary to analyze how the comfort women system became a general policy of the Japanese Imperial forces, and how this policy was implemented by military leaders. At this time, however, it is quite difficult to conduct thorough research on this issue, mainly due to restrictions on access to relevant documentation:
- Firstly, many official military documents are still classified and not open for public inspection - for example, several thousand volumes of Gyōmu Nisshi (Records of Military Plans and Operations) and Jūgun Nisshi (Field Diaries) housed in the Research Library of the Japanese Defence Agency.
- Secondly, all documents prepared by the Japanese Police during the Asia-Pacific War are still closed.
- Thirdly, it is believed that many relevant documents were prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Colonial Affairs, both of which had major responsibilities for colonial Korea and Taiwan. (From 1942, the Ministry of Home Affairs replaced the Ministry of Colonial Affairs
in charge of administration of Taiwanese affairs.) However, none of these official records has so far been released.- Finally, it is also believed that Japanese government ministries - the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Public Welfare and the Ministry of Justice - still retain considerable numbers of relevant documents, but these are not accessible to researchers. The fact that there is no Freedom of Information Act in Japan makes it difficult to change the present research conditions.
This is quite suspicious, I think. Why would this information be kept under wraps and not shared?
Interestingly, Tanaka’s book — the English translation anyway — was published in 2001. That very same year in April, an information disclosure law was passed in Japan. See 情報公開法.
Some pretty detailed information about this law in English can be found here:
Japan’s Information Disclosure Law and the Future
The above link leads to a speech by Hiroshi Miyake given in a conference about the freedom of information in Asia. The speech was probably given on April 13 or 14 in 2001 almost immediately after the new law had been passed.
In this speech, Miyake actually mentions the comfort women issue. This is what he states:
Through the introduction of Professor Masahiro Usaki of Dokkyo University, in Spring 1996 I had the opportunity to make a public address at Reinan University in Korea. When my speech was finished, a student asked whether Japan`s Information Disclosure Law would allow for the release of documents concerning the case of the wartime “comfort women,” and whether it would enable her and others to obtain this information.
The student’s question impressed me deeply. It forced me to think about the role of information disclosure in the relations between our people. Of course, I am not in a position to say what kinds of documents may or may not exist or may be released. But the first step is clear. We must use the new law to request information. This must lead to greater understanding.
Now this was six years ago, and I have tried to see if the situation has improved and whether the relevant documents have become accessible. Although I am not sure, looking around at some of the Japanese sites, it would seem the situation has not improved.
Here is an essay by Yutaka Yoshida:
The title translated reads, Oh, the Information Disclosure Law.
I don’t have time to translate any of the essay and have not read it as carefully as perhaps I should, but it sounds pretty clear to me that Yoshida is very frustrated and upset about not being able to obtain the diary of a particular solider that is held in the relevant repository.
I’m guessing that this is still an on going issue. Despite the passage of the new law in 2001, the information for some reason is still not being made available.
Why isn’t all of this information being released?
Is it just bureaucratic ineptitude, breeding needless suspicion? Or are there every damning documents that no one is being allowed to view?
Only time will tell for certain. As we speak there are people trying desperately to access the relevant information.
If anyone who has read this can add to or correct what I have written, it would be greatly appreciated.
July 12th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Tanaka’s book has no Japanese counterpart. He published it in English only.
I am not sure specifically what documents Tanaka means. The documents by Japanese police are available.
awf.or.jp/program/index.html
(http://www.)
Or google 慰安婦 警察関係資料
As for (3), I posted the comment on another blog.
occidentalism.org/?p=702#comment-25404
(http://www.)
July 13th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Ponta,
I reviewed the site you suggest.
Your first link lead to the Asian Women’s Fund site. The page it opened was a page containing information about the historical research done by the government of Japan in regards the comfort women issue. (The government conducted two full scale studies in 1992 and 1993.)
That site is very useful because they actually have PDF files containing most of the source documents that were used for drawing the conclusions that ultimately lead to the Kono Statement. For anyone else reading this here is the link.
Of course, a lot of the documents are hand written and in a slightly older form of Japanese, so for me they’re not something I can easily read through.
However, I think Yuki Tanaka must be referring to other documents that were not used in this study.
I think I see your point though. If the government conducted a full scale inquiry into this issue, not once — but twice, then wouldn’t they have made use of any relevant documents?
This is a good point and one I’ll have to think about when I look further into this topic.
Whatever the case may be though, there are people right now who are concerned with Japan’s war time responsibility, and a sore spot with them is that they can’t access certain records that they think would be revealing.
I’ve already provide two examples above, Tanaka in his book, and Yutaka Yoshida.
As time permits, I’ll try to look into this a little deeper to see what these writers thought of the government studies …
By the way I also read your comments at Occidentalism, and will refer back to them as necessary. Thanks.
Also thanks for pointing out that Tanaka’s book has only been published in English.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Thanks Matt
My opinion with regard to the information is that the government should make it available as much as possible because basically they belong to people, not government.
As for Kono’s statement. the background was a bit complicated.
seisaku-center.net/modules/wordpress/index.php?p=38
(http://www.)
It was diplomatic concession. But when taking Indonesian cases, it is true that there were cases that Japanese military was involved in recruiting forcibly. Some Japanese are against it because it was misleading;Kono’s statement didn’t make it cleat that such cases were exception, and they were done against the policy.
Of course, there are many cases, as Japanese comfort woman’s confession on your another post shows, where women suffered a lot under the horrible brothel situation and horrible social conditions. The Japanese rightists and the leftists all agree that was tragedy and in that sense, Japanese government was responsible. That is the major ground for the apologies Japanese government has made.
However, such tragedy was common in Asia. It happen under Japanese rule, it happened under the US occupation, and it had been happening under Korea until recently.
Only Japanese government acknowledged that it was wrong, and only Japanese government apologized. It is ironical that it is the U.S. representative and many of ethnic Koreans who blame Japanese government. That has been my point in the discussion on this issue.
July 13th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Hi Matt,
It would be helpful if Yuki Tanaka would point to exactly which documents he (most people think Tanaka is female - he is not) thinks are being withheld. Otherwise the same kind of scholarship can be used to level an accusation at any country for any alleged crime, that the documents proving it are being hidden from view. What I want to know is how he can know of the existence of documents he has not seen before, and cannot cite by name.
As for all documents relating to the war, everything was taken to the US and meticulously copied there. Even if the Japanese government wanted to cover something up, they could not because the US is in possession of the same documents. A researcher could gain access to those files.