Yamato Fumiko: A synonym for a traditional Japanese woman of excellence, usually used to describe women who are quiet and feminine, but have a strong heart.
Is it crazy to describe a prostitute in terms of Yamato Fumiko? Learn about modern Japan. History, especially the great role played by Japanese prostitutes before and after World War II, will know that this description is very reliable.
In the middle of the 19th century, the "Black Ship Incident" gave Japan a glimpse of the strength of the US empire, and the Subsequent Meiji Restoration completely ignited the enthusiasm of the island nation to strive for strength. The ideal is very full, but after more than two hundred years of isolation, it is not easy to catch up with the Western capitalist countries at once!
The number one problem in the development of capitalism is to complete the primitive accumulation of capital. At that time, Britain relied on the enclosure movement, the United States relied on the western development, and Germany relied on prussia's iron-blooded policy. Nanyang sister.
Nanyang sister, to put it bluntly, is a Japanese prostitute who sells herself in Nanyang. In the 1980s, there was a Japanese movie called "Wangxiang", which caused a huge shock in the Chinese mainland. The film tells the tragic story of a poor Japanese girl named Azaki who was tricked into selling her to Nanyang as a prostitute.
The 14-year-old Azaki was tricked by human traffickers into Nanyang as a migrant worker and sold to the no. 8 brothel as a prostitute. All kinds of struggles and resistance were suppressed, and Azaki relied on the thought of his family to endure humiliation to receive guests, about 30 guests a day, including whites, blacks, yellows... All from the bottom of society.
Azaki gave the money she earned to the Japanese government and her family, who used her money to build a house and marry her brother. After she returned to Japan, there was no place for her. Desperate, Azaki was forced to emigrate to the northeast to marry and have a child. Later, her husband died, her son hated her and humiliated her, and Azaki became Azaki's wife, and he died alone.
Azaki is a Nanyang sister. In the late 19th and early twentieth centuries, Japanese prostitutes could be seen in Siberia, China, India, and even Africa. Among them, especially the economically prosperous Nanyang has the largest number of people, which is named "Nanyang Sister".
Aqi's fate is tragic, but compared with many Nanyang sisters, he is still lucky. The girls have no guarantees about living in a foreign country, and the boss scolds them casually. Many people are unfortunate to have sexually transmitted diseases, and no one can treat them, so they can only wait silently for the condition to worsen, their whole body festers, and they die in a foreign land with hatred.
But the strange thing is that most of these Nanyang sisters who endure inhuman life are not deceived like Aqi, but voluntarily run to Nanyang to the skin and meat business. They send the money they earn back to their home countries, partly to improve the lives of their families and partly to donate to the state's taxes.
Isn't that incredible? In fact, from the perspective of Japan's custom history, this is easy to understand.
In Japan, on the one hand, children are regarded as the private property of their parents and can be bought, sold, pawned, or leased at will. As early as feudal society, many poor families would sell their daughters to brothels as prostitutes; as daughters, contributing to the family with their bodies was regarded as "filial piety". Under the influence of this thought, many girls are willing to be sold by their parents.
On the other hand, the State has always maintained an attitude of connivance and encouragement towards prostitution. They called prostitutes "wandering women." As early as the Muromachi shogunate in the 16th century, the "Allure Bureau" was established to collect taxes from tourist girls. In the 17th century, the last shogunate, the Edo shogunate, vigorously pursued the "Yukuo Policy" in order to maintain its rule. Encourage the Great Lords, the samurai, and the wandering women to indulge in sex, to destroy their fighting spirit, to exhaust their financial resources, and to leave them without the strength to rebel.
This crooked policy did not prevent the demise of the shogunate, but led to the prevalence of STDs throughout the country. In the late shogunate period, nearly 30% of Japan's population suffered from syphilis. What is even more frightening is that it has had a very bad impact on Japanese customs and national ideology, and prostitution and prostitution have become commonplace.
In the Meiji period, at the beginning, the Japanese government advocated "breeding industry" and giving priority to the development of industry, resulting in a large number of peasants going bankrupt and their lives in difficulty. Later, it was found that due to insufficient accumulation of capital, the national industry could not develop at all, but the daughters of bankrupt peasant families were forced to go overseas to start a skin and meat business for their livelihood, which was very popular and had a good income. Once again, the sobering government carried forward their tradition of starting with women.
They brainwashed the women of the good family, claiming that the best choice for women to be loyal to the emperor was to donate their bodies. Women who have been reduced to prostitutes have also been brainwashed, calling them "ugly women", a disgrace to the country, and if they want to wash away the shame, they must make more money for the motherland.
Probably brainwashed, such a contradictory statement is actually very open. For a time, a large number of young Japanese women went overseas to sell spring, which became a tool for the Japanese government to revitalize the national economy. How much money do they make for the country?
At that time, the Fukuoka Daily News published:
The women who sailed from four villages in the Ohama Department of Shimabara sent more than 12,000 yuan to their fathers and brothers in their hometown last year. The total number of 30 villages in Shimabara exceeded 300,000 yuan."
According to statistics, during the reign of Emperor Meiji (1868-1912), more than 100,000 women were exported. Exactly how much money these people have remitted to their return to China cannot be verified. But before the First World War, the bloody sale money of these prostitutes did play a very stimulating role in promoting Japan's rich country and strong soldiers.
Logically, the Japanese government should be grateful to these women who "sacrificed themselves for the country", right? Not really!
After World War I, the Japanese government made a windfall from a debtor country to a creditor country, ranking among the top in the world. For the sake of great power decency, Japan has completely "abolished prostitution" overseas. They used ships to transport the overseas Nanyang sisters back to their native Nagasaki, and then all of them were dismissed. Just like what happened to Azaki, most of these women's families were reluctant to take them in. Many people have to return to their old businesses, commit suicide when they are old, or live in seclusion in remote mountain villages after they are old. The heroes who "sacrificed their lives" for the country were completely abandoned.
The motherland is no longer dependent, and the homeland has become the real sad place of the Nanyang sisters, many of whom would rather die in a foreign land than return home. Overseas, the tombstones of these Nanyang sisters invariably all turned their backs on the motherland, just like Yu Qiuyu wrote:
Maybe they didn't dare, maybe they didn't want to, they twisted their heads fiercely, and lay down in the other direction, no longer holding their stomachs, no longer hating, not even sweeping the corners of their eyes to sweep the place where they used to miss every day.
Speaking of "comfort women", everyone will invariably think of the women in China, South Korea, and the Philippines who were plundered by the Japanese army and had a tragic fate. In fact, the earliest comfort women were Japanese women.
In 1917, Japan sent troops to Siberia, sending 72,000 men. The Japanese army's violence against Russian women led to the spread of venereal diseases, and more than 10,000 Japanese officers and soldiers were infected, more than they died in battle, which seriously affected combat effectiveness and eventually suffered a fiasco.
In japan's consistent tradition, naturally it is not necessary to strictly restrict the private lives of soldiers from then on, but to naturally move their minds to the other extreme: to establish a "comfort" system in the military. Comfort women are directly managed by the force to reduce the incidence of STDs.
Under the banner of "rear support", the Japanese government began to recruit comfort women on the mainland. At first it was secret, and almost all the people who chose were prostitutes. Later, with the expansion of the scale of overseas combat troops, the comfort women recruited on a small scale could no longer meet the needs, and simply openly encouraged women to "dedicate themselves to the country" among the people, and some women who were paralyzed by so-called "patriotism" rushed to the battlefield for "the country and ideals." The Japanese government called them "wives of the military."
One of them, Hideko Nakamura, was the most crazy. Hideko Nakamura's husband, Nakamura Okaji, was originally a Nakasa of the 106th Division of the Japanese 11th Army, but was killed in the North China Battlefield. According to normal logic, Hideko Nakamura should hate war and love peace.
Contrary! Under the government's day and night brainwashing, this woman believes that only by defeating China can she avenge her husband. So he asked the military department to take his daughter with him to be a comfort woman.
Overjoyed, the Japanese military gladly agreed to Hideko Nakamura's request to list her as an example for many military widows. The power of example is infinite, and under the "inspiration" of Hideko Nakamura, more Japanese women rushed to the front line to "dedicate themselves to holy war".
Although the Japanese women who served as comfort women were tragic, one thing must be clear: during World War II, only a small proportion of Japanese comfort women in the Japanese army were killed, and the largest number of victims were Chinese women! It is estimated that in the 8-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the total number of comfort women in the Japanese army was more than 400,000, of which at least 200,000 were Chinese women, and the rest came from South Korea and Southeast Asia. Their suffering is a hundred times more tragic than that of Japanese women.
In August 1945, with the landing of two American atomic bombs, Japanese militarism came to an end. MacArthur led the U.S. military into Japan. This was despite a statement soon issued by MacArthur saying that there would be no "brutal, personal retaliation."
However, pushing oneself and others, and then considering the past wind evaluation of the US military, still brought great panic to this island country. Their greatest fear is the abuse of women in their countries.
To this end, the Japanese Diet held an emergency meeting to discuss countermeasures, and unanimously decided to carry forward the "old tradition" and provide "comfort" services for the stationing of US troops with reference to the wartime comfort women system. At the expense of a small number of women, in exchange for the safety of the majority of the population.
In order to implement this resolution efficiently and quickly, the Japanese government is absolutely open-minded. First, the cabinet urgently approved about 50 million yen for the construction of comfort facilities for the US military, despite the economic situation that was stretched after the war. Subsequently, the Ministry of the Interior did not hesitate to leave "evidence" in history, and formally issued to local governments the "Preparation of Comfort Installations in Foreign Garrisons" and the "Circular on the Issue of Comfort Installations in Foreign Military Garrisons to the Police Security Bureau Chiefs of the Ministry of internal affairs", asking local police departments to assist in the establishment of comfort stations.
On August 26, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department led the official opening of the "Special Comfort Facilities Association", which is the historically notorious RAA Association. Under the leadership of this association, state-run comfort stations have mushroomed rapidly. In less than three months, it had reached 45, all over the country, and there were more than 4,000 managers alone.
Like the wartime comfort women system, at first, the Japanese government was still suspicious of this kind of "state selling" behavior, and planned to recruit comfort women only from the existing public prostitution and private prostitution.
But the result was greatly unexpected by them, and the tried-and-true banner of "patriotism" actually failed. The always docile prostitutes were unusually resistant to this order. Even the owners of some of the big brothels did not say no. One of the brothel owners, toshi Narukawa, replied:
To yesterday's enemies, today with the body to serve, of course, this can also be forced orders, but even prostitutes, whether they can accept it is not easy to say. Please allow us to go back and discuss.
It can be seen that even prostitutes have a higher self-esteem than the Japanese government.
In this way, despite the Government's strong demands, less than a third of those who are willing to cooperate in the end are not even required.
On the one hand, the prostitutes who refused to cooperate, and on the other hand, the US military, which was eyeing the tiger, gritted its teeth, completely tore off its face, and instructed the RAA Association to publish false advertisements in the newspaper:
New Women – Foreign-related clubs recruit female clerks, pack food, shelter and clothing, high income, limited to women aged 18 to 25.
In post-war Japan, the people's livelihood was poor, the unemployment rate remained high, and it was difficult to have an advertisement for recruiting workers, and men were given priority. A large number of families who lost their husbands and fathers to the war were on the verge of starvation. Suddenly, seeing this kind of advertisement for the recruitment of women and generous treatment, coupled with the assurances of the state media and official agencies, the people are convinced and flock to it. More than 1,600 people came to interview in one day, and within three months, more than 60,000 women from all over the world applied for employment.
Despite life's hardships, when interviewed, when they heard that they were going to sell their flesh to work, many women turned around and left. Only those who really have no way to live will grit their teeth and choose to stay. They are all good family women. Japan's Ministry of the Interior gave them an embarrassing nickname: Special Standing Up.
In addition to prostitutes and civilians, female soldiers were also reduced to comfort women of the Us military.
There is a "Toshishi Women's Unit" within the Japanese army, which was established in 1944 when Japan was defeated and retreated, in preparation for the decisive battle on the mainland. The members are all young Japanese women and female students. After the war, a significant number of these women "obeyed orders" and became comfort women in the U.S. military.
What follows is the days of hell. A woman who used to work in comfort services said:
Day and night, American soldiers chewed gum and waited in line outside, and women were imprisoned in the house, and there was no freedom to refuse... Pick-up is up to 55 people on a day.
While these girls were "trying to serve the public" for their livelihood and the country, the Japanese leadership was busy with two other things: ordering the strict protection of the wives and daughters of the royals, Chinese, and chaebols from being invaded by American soldiers; and doing everything possible to extract money from the comfort women's "selling money." At that time, the price of a single American soldier for a service was 100 yen, which was equivalent to twice the average monthly salary in Japan. According to the agreement, a small part of this goes to comfort women, and most of it goes to the pockets of the chaebols.
Comfort stations
Fast forward to 1946, and unexpectedly, the "comfort US military" activities in full swing were suddenly stopped. The reason is hard to tell. It was because american soldiers refused to use condoms and contracted sexually transmitted diseases with comfort women.
For a time, the families of the US military on the other side of the ocean protested in groups. Under pressure, MacArthur had to demand that the Japanese government close various comfort stations.
55,000 comfort women, with an injury and illness, were driven to the street without compensation, and they were abandoned by the government. With the special experience in the comfort station, even the former good family women are difficult to return to the normal life before, and the rejection of relatives and the pressure of survival force many of them to completely fall into the dust and become real prostitutes.
Conclusion: Being used again and again, and being abandoned again and again, people can't help but sigh that Japanese women are really pitiful. But in fact, whether voluntarily, brainwashed, or coerced, these fallen women have played the role of militarist accomplices after all, which is really impossible to fully sympathize with. And a government that makes such use of its own people, no matter how it develops in the future, will not win real respect.