Comfort women: A final solution

The coming-out campaign may even help rekindle some past affection - albeit extremely rare because of strict wartime regulations and harsh environment - between some former comfort women and their clients, as described by Hicks' 1994 book. Should such "dangerous liaisons" be discovered, they should be quickly turned into novels, TV soaps, and anime, particularly of the popular adult - content "Hentai" variety.

Hollywood - which has been Germany heavy and Japan light - should lose no time in putting to the big screen these stories that guarantee to be more tear - jerking than Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon. This should be done, of course, without Oliver Stone, whose 2013 speech at the annual Hiroshima commemoration (available on YouTube) unnecessarily shock - and - awed the innocent mind of the current generation of Japanese to the root causes of the atomic blasts: Pearl Harbor, the Nanking Massacre, the Manchuria "entrance", Korean colonization, etc.

The profits from marketing these entertainment products can be used for multiple purposes, including setting up museums and statues of comfort women around the world, hopefully with their former clients together in an affectionate posture. Meanwhile, the Japanese government should present this treasure of Japanese history to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee as a case of "outstanding cultural importance to the common heritage of humanity".

This will be a logical step following Japan's recent submission to the same UN committee of those Kamikaze suicide pilots, whose tragically heroic actions are winning the hearts and minds of a growing number of Japanese including Prime Minister Abe. [23] Should this application fail, the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics may prominently feature such a "tough love" between Japanese men and Asian women.

Last if not least, this heritage should be seriously considered by Japan's Ministry of Defense as an integral component in the Japanese forces, whose future mission would inevitably include overseas deployment given the current trend in Japan to reinterpret, revise or reject the constitutional constraints on its military.

For all my good intentions, scientific estimates and reasonable suggestions, the above reasoning could still be unacceptable to people with a normal mindset, which is perfectly understandable. Nonetheless, I would be pleased if this intellectual exercise could stretch the moral and analytical limits for Ruth Benedict's classic juxtaposing of the bipolar behavioral patterns in Japan:

The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways. [24]

All cultures have two sides. Few, if any, exhibit such a huge gap between the good and evil. And the comfort-women versus sex-slaves dichotomy was such a perfect unity of opposites that even Benedict would be surprised by Japan's extraordinary ability to reduce wide range of human sexuality - from intimate lovemaking to violent rape - to mere mechanical and tireless operation in its gigantic wartime sex machine. It would be a great loss if such a unique record of human behavior finds no place in Japan's collective narrative.

Yu Bin is senior fellow of Shanghai Association of America Studies. He can be reached at yu1999@hotmail.com

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