Kobayashi Yoshinori, author of the popular Japanese comic On Taiwan (
At a press conference yesterday, the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation (婦女救援基金會), a non-governmental organization long dedicated to fact-finding on Taiwanese comfort women, lambasted Kobayshi's "twisted" presentation of the issue in interviews with two Taiwanese business leaders -- Hsu Wen-lung (許文龍) and Tsai Kuan-tsan (蔡焜燦).
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"It's nothing but an outrageous distortion of a painful history, which over 1,000 Taiwanese women had to go through at the cost of their youth and lives," said Lin Feng-hao (
"To ignore this kind of distortion today is like rubbing salt into old wounds. And to be silent about the author's male-chauvinistic views is to encourage the idea that women's bodies are a tradable commodity," Lin said.
In his comic On Taiwan, which has been available in Chinese in Taiwan since early February, Kobayashi cited Hsu, president of Chi Mei Electronics Corp (奇美電子) and senior advisor to the president, as saying that "All the comfort women were voluntary. It is impossible that they were forced to perform sex services for the [Japanese] army."
In contrast to accounts of the issue in Taiwan, Hsu was further quoted as saying that "The Japanese military was very concerned about human rights and it was an advancement for these women to be able to become comfort women."
Kobayashi also quoted the close friend of former president Lee Teng-hui (
Chu Te-lan (朱德蘭), an associate history research fellow at Academia Sinica, refuted Kobayashi's statements on the basis of her research on Taiwanese history during the Japanese colonial period from 1895 to 1945.
Chu indicated that while the recruited comfort women indeed included a few public prostitutes, the majority of them were recruited against their will, either by means of coercion, force or deception.
Kobayashi's previous book On War (
According to Avant Garde Publishing (
He will visit Taiwan in March to have face-to-face debates with the opponents of his accounts of colonial Taiwan.
The publisher also revealed the second edition of the book is now at the printers.
According to the Womens Rescue Foundation research, demand for sexual slaves increased dramatically after 1932 when Taiwan became a primary location for the recruitment of comfort women.
The files of the Taiwan Colonial Trade Corp (
Aside from the Taiwan Colonial Trade Corporation, the Japanese government also used prefectural officers and local police to recruit comfort women by forcible means. Moreover, many young women were recruited by deceptive means, being offered housemaid or laundry jobs.
The International Industrial Talents Education Special (INTENSE) Program to attract foreigners to study and work in Taiwan will provide scholarships and a living allowance of up to NT$440,000 per person for two years beginning in August, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) told a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee yesterday. Pan was giving an update on the program’s implementation, a review of universities’ efforts to recruit international students and promotion of the Taiwan Huayu Bilingual Exchanges of Selected Talent (BEST) program. Each INTENSE Program student would be awarded a scholarship of up to NT$100,000 per year for up to
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