Five Days Commemorating the Victims of Japanese Atrocities

Day 4: Korean Comfort Women

These were women, mostly Korean but also including other nationalities, who were forced into prostitution for use by Japan’s soldiers. See here and here. They were taken “either by force or on the promise of work in factories or for Japanese families.” The main point is that Japan’s military was involved in the forcing and was doing this as a matter of policy (apparently so that their soldiers wouldn’t rape at random). Estimates on the numbers involved range from 20,000 (from a Japanese right-winger, who denies that they were forced into it) to 410,000. Moreover, “it is estimated that only 25 percent of the comfort women survived.”

When confronted with this instance of non-Western viciousness, some leftists have responded by blaming the whole business on patriarchy, making it seem as though males in Western countries bear some of the blame for this. But the fact is that other patriarchal countries did not act this way. Their militaries did not force women into prostitution. It is true that some of their soldiers went to local prostitutes, but that is very different from their governments forcing women into prostitution. Look at it this way. Patriarchy allows for prostitution, but each culture may do it in a different way. The differences are cultural differences, and if one culture does it in a more vicious way than other cultures, then that culture is to blame for that viciousness. To blame patriarchy in general and nothing else is to ignore this extra cultural factor. Like it or not, we must blame a non-Western culture for what it did.

Another point, one that I’ve been emphasizing more and more as these five days have proceeded, is that of the stupidity of mindless revisionism. Revisionism in this instance is the impulse to correct the historical record for the sake of countering the patriots in one’s culture. I call this mindless because of its motive. If the motive is truth, then revisionism is fine, but if it’s just to counter people in one’s culture one doesn’t like, then it is likely to go astray. As I’ve been pointing out, revisionism from American leftists about these various Japanese atrocities likely means, even if it means countering America’s right-wingers, siding with Japanese right-wingers.

More broadly, every country will have its patriots and most will also have those who oppose the patriots, for whatever reason. In most countries those who oppose the patriots are a small, disorganized group, but in the West in recent years, they have taken over our culture. And I say that those in the West who oppose the patriots almost inevitably support right-wingers in some other country while at the same time opposing leftists in that same country. Revising our view of the Japanese during World War II helps those right-wing patriots in Japan who want to downplay Japanese atrocities, while undermining those leftists in Japan who want to do revisionist history there and to force Japan to face up to its own shortcomings.

Apparently, then, this type of revisionism among leftists in different countries leads in opposite directions. But why shouldn’t it lead in the same direction, and why shouldn’t leftists in different countries support the same things? This is why I say that self-critical leftism is needed, because self-critical leftists aren’t interested in correcting the record for the sake of countering the patriots in one’s midst but of finding the truth. If the truth about one’s country is uncomfortable, so be it. But if it turns out that revisionist history is no better than patriotic history, then we don’t want to go there. The best way is simply to search for the truth.