Japan Press Weekly

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2013 September 4 - 10 [HISTORY]

Manga will portray a Korean ‘comfort woman’

A group in Kyoto City is working on a cartoon story to give a true picture of the Japanese Imperial Army’s use of sex slaves, the so-called “comfort women”.

A 36-year-old semi-pro manga artist will produce a work depicting a former comfort woman about whom Japanese non-fiction writer Kawata Fumiko writes in her book “Akagawara no Ie”. The woman was taken to Okinawa from the Korean Peninsula during the war to serve Japanese soldiers as a sex slave, and she remained in Okinawa even after the war ended.

In June, when the idea of producing a graphic novel came up, Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru’s remark that the comfort women system was “necessary” became a hot topic of discussion, but the cartoonist, a mother of two children, said, “I didn’t know much about the true state of such women.”

She looked in books and on the Internet to gather information about the issue, and then found out that some women still suffer from PTSD due to the physical violence unleashed on them at that time.

She said, “It is unforgivable to have treated the women like sex toys just because it was during the war. This fact shouldn’t be swept under the rug.”

Last month, she went to Nagasaki for the World Conference against A and H Bombs and listened to U.S. film director Oliver Stone pointing out at the conference’s closing plenary that historical facts should be taught no matter how cruel they may be. His speech gave her courage to go ahead with the manga project.

She is now geared up for the challenge, saying, “I will work hard on this so it will be considered to be worth reading.”