Drawing on a Sankei Shimbun page-two essay by Shiro Takahashi, this piece examines the risks inherent in the “Memory of the World” application for comfort women materials. It highlights the lack of primary evidence for forced recruitment or sexual slavery and warns that even documents indicating a regulated prostitution system could be misclassified as “sex slave” materials worldwide.

August 8, 2017.
The following is from page two of the Sankei Shimbun dated August 6.
“The Risk of ‘Sex Slave’ Narratives Becoming Entrenched.”
By Shiro Takahashi.
Specially Appointed Professor, Meisei University.
None of the thirty items submitted by the Imperial War Museum demonstrate forced recruitment of comfort women or that they were sexual slaves.
Two testimonies suggesting coercion lack clear grounds proving their truth and accuracy from the standpoint of “authenticity of materials” under the general guidelines of the Memory of the World program.
Because original primary sources specifying concrete dates, locations, and individuals are unclear, their credibility is weak.
Photo captions also appear to involve misunderstandings or distortions lacking objectivity.
Rather, the submitted materials—including official Japanese military documents—suggest that comfort women were “licensed prostitutes” managed by the Japanese military.
Since the International Solidarity Committee, headquartered in South Korea, has applied for registration on the claim that the Japanese military forced women and girls into sexual slavery and established and operated a sexual slavery system, there is a risk that if UNESCO’s International Advisory Committee scheduled for October approves registration labeling comfort women as sexual slaves, even materials indicating a regulated prostitution system will become entrenched worldwide as “sex slave” materials.
Clear statements of usage hours at comfort stations.
Photographs of adult women labeled as “girls.”
Testimonies and records lacking credibility.
Comfort women materials at a British museum.
Among the materials jointly submitted for UNESCO’s Memory of the World program, four official documents include “Comfort Station Regulations” established on May 26, 1943 by the Mandalay Garrison Headquarters.
They specify usage hours and fees from enlisted soldiers to officers and state that comfort stations are to be used by Japanese military personnel, indicating the role of comfort women as regulated prostitutes in war zones.
They also prohibit violence, stating that beating or assault is forbidden under any circumstances, and include provisions for health examinations.
Another clause indicates that comfort women could go out with permission, suggesting freedom of movement with authorization.
The photographs and videos were taken by British soldiers in 1945.
Photos from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands captioned as “Chinese and Malay girls forcibly taken from Penang as ‘comfort girls’ for the Japanese military” depict women who clearly appear to be adults interacting with infants, making the label “girls” implausible.
Audio interviews include testimony about a postwar comfort facility for Allied forces operated by the Australian army in occupied Japan, known as the “Geisha House.”
Other testimony claims a Japanese woman in her twenties was taken from a village and made to work as a nurse, cook, and comfort woman.
An excerpt from a memoir by an Indian-British soldier claims he witnessed a Korean comfort woman abducted in Myanmar and forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers, but the original memoir is not held by the museum, and details of time, place, and individuals are unclear, rendering it unreliable.
Testimony by Japanese women is also hearsay, lacking clear grounds for authenticity.
The background to the submission of such inauthentic materials lies in the spread in the West of the misconception that comfort women were sexual slaves, a misconception that grew because the Japanese government failed to rebut it.
[London = Shin Okabe].