This chapter examines how the label “sex slave” spread internationally and demonstrates that it fundamentally ignores Japan’s historical, cultural, and institutional realities.
By clarifying the meaning of slavery and the actual conditions of comfort stations, it argues that the “sex slave” narrative is nothing more than a false and misleading label.

2016-07-03

What follows is a continuation of “So who was it that coined the term ‘sex slave’?”
Emphasis in the text is mine.
At the outset, the Japanese government prepared documents thoroughly rebutting reports that included claims of forced recruitment and massacres of comfort women, as well as the term “sex slave,” but for reasons unknown, it withdrew them (the so-called “phantom rebuttal”), and the report was adopted despite being given the low evaluation of a “data note (for reference).”
As a result, the label “Japanese military comfort women are sex slaves” spread throughout the international community, and in 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives went so far as to adopt a resolution condemning Japan using the term “sex slave.”
But were comfort women truly “sex slaves”?
A “slave,” in other words, is someone who is the object of ownership by a master.
However, throughout its long history, Japanese society never had such a system of slavery.
Even the selling of daughters due to poverty was for the purpose of repaying debts.
Even when women were sold and became prostitutes, they could leave the profession once their fixed term of service had ended.
There was also a system of redemption, whereby if someone paid off the debt, the woman could leave the profession.
From the employer’s perspective, prostitutes were not objects of ownership.
At no time did Japan have a status system like that of the West, where free persons or plantation owners completely owned slaves and bought and sold them.
Moreover, Japanese military comfort stations were operated by civilians, and women who had been sold due to poverty worked there, with the ability to leave once they repaid their debts.
Hygiene management was stricter than in private brothels, authorities kept a close watch to prevent exploitation by operators, and checks were even conducted to ensure that comfort women were not women who had been abducted.
The label “sex slave” is nothing more than a falsehood that ignores Japan’s history and culture, as well as the actual conditions of the comfort stations.
To be continued.