Since 1992, when it was discovered that Taiwanese women had been recruited as so called "comfort women" -- military prostitutes -- for the Japanese army during Word War II, the issue has received surprisingly little attention in Taiwan.
Only with the arrival of Yoshinori Kobayashi's comic On Taiwan (台灣論), has the comfort women issue loomed large in both the media and everyday discussions.
One could hardly have imagined the effect the comic would have on Taiwan's media -- many of which have launched campaigns against the Japanese right-wing activist's book.
But while opposition politicians have mounted vicious attacks against the author and two business leaders, Shi Wen-lung (
Both opponents and proponents of the book have been using Kobayashi's presentation of Taiwan's history to strengthen their political ideologies. In fact, the differing opinions among Taiwanese on the issue of national identity underlie the debate of Kobayashi's book.
For those who identify with China ideologically, both Kobayashi's accounts of the Nanking Massacre and his acknowledgement of Taiwan as an independent entity are irresponsible and dangerous.
However, those who strongly maintain Taiwan is independent of China believe On Taiwan provides a rare view which differs from the prominently Chinese accounts of Taiwan's status. With pro-unification forces lodged in intense attacks against Shi, a long-time supporter of Taiwan independence, Taiwan's ever-present ethnic and ideological divisions have been widened.
Deception, not abduction
When Shi first came forward to speak about the comfort women issue, he maintained Japanese military personnel did not use force or coercion to gather Tai-wanese women and girls. He said the women were sold by their poverty-stricken parents and that was just a fact of life at that difficult time.
The remarks caused such a heated row that Shi offered a written apology last Tuesday, admitting his knowledge on the issue was limited which resulted in misunderstandings which hurt survivors.
In fact, many people in Taiwan agree with Shi based on their own experiences or those of acquaintances. Arguably, the view that the Japanese military did not directly round up Taiwanese women by force is correct since private operators and procurers carried out the job for the military.
And in colonized areas, there was a system whereby the officials did not do the dirty work but had procurers do it for them.
In Taiwan, the methods of recruiting comfort women differed from those in Japan's occupied territories.
While there was a considerable number of abductions in China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific region, there were fewer instances in the Japanese colonies of Korea and Taiwan.
According to research on the issue, the first recruiting method was for the army in the field to appoint a director or private operator and send him or her to Taiwan to recruit comfort women.
The second is that the army in the field sent requests to army units in Japan or Taiwan, which would then choose an agent to round up comfort women.
Having received 92 complaints since 1992, investigations by the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation have confirmed 68 of them were in fact former comfort women. And it was found that a majority of them were deceived about the nature of the work they were being forced into.
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