Comfort women were women and girls who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during World War II.
慰安妇是日本军队於第二次世界大战期間誘騙、劫持、徵召、被強迫為日本军人提供性服务的女性[1][2][3][4]。日本词典《广辞苑》对“慰安妇”定義为“随军到战地部队慰问官兵的女人”，史家普遍定义为“性奴隶”。[5][6]这些女性主要来自日本本土、殖民地（臺湾、朝鮮）、軍事佔領區（中國、东南亚國家、印尼的荷兰女殖民者）。
1931年11月，日本海军将日本侨民在上海虹口经营的4家风俗场所指定为日本海军特别慰安所，此后慰妇安妇制度蔓延到日本在东亚的整个战场。[7][8]
The name "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦),[4] a euphemism for "prostitute(s)".[5] Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000 (by Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata[6]) to as high as 360,000 to 410,000 (by a Chinese scholar[7]); the exact numbers are still being researched and debated.[8] Many of the women were from occupied countries, including Korea, China, and the Philippines,[9] although women from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan (then a Japanese dependency), Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies), East Timor (then Portuguese Timor),[10][11] and other Japanese-occupied territories were used for military "comfort stations". Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then Malaya, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and French Indochina.[12] A smaller number of women of European origin from the Netherlands and Australia were also involved.
1839-42 First opium war1856-60 Second opium war1894-95 First Sino-Japanese war1895  Treaty of Shimonoseki 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war1910 Annexation of Korea by Japan1937-38  Rape of Nanking 1939-45 Second world war. Comfort women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese army from the early 1930s1945 Japan surrenders1949 Founding of the People’s Republic of China1966-76  Cultural revolution
일본군 위안부 (일본어: 慰安婦 いあんふ 이안후[*], 영어: Comfort Women) 또는 일본군 성노예(한국 한자: 日本軍性奴隸, 영어: Japanese Military Sexual Slavery), 일본 측 주장 종군위안부(일본어: 從軍慰安婦 じゅうぐんいあんふ 주군이안후[*])는 제2차 세계 대전 동안 일본군의 성적 욕구를 해소하기 위한 목적으로 강제적이거나 집단적, 일본군의 기만에 의해 징용 또는 인신매매범, 매춘업자 등에게 납치, 매수 등 다양한 방법으로 일본군을 대상으로 성적인 행위를 강요받은 여성을 말한다. 위안부가 되는 방법으로는 징용 또는 납치, 매매 등 다양한 방법이 존재하였다.
According to testimonies, young women from countries under Imperial Japanese rule were abducted from their homes. In many cases, women were also lured with promises of work in factories or restaurants; once recruited, the women were incarcerated in comfort stations both in their nation and abroad.[13] According to the U.S. military interrogation report of prisoner of war, three Korean prisoners are recorded as having responded, "All Korean prostitutes that PoW have seen in the Pacific were volunteers or had been sold by their parents into prostitution. This is proper in the Korean way of thinking but direct conscription of women by the Japanese would be an outrage that the old and young alike would not tolerate. Men would rise up in rage, killing Japanese no matter what consequence they might suffer."[14]

Asia: History lessons feed rival nationalisms
Tom Mitchell, Robin Harding and Simon Mundy
Amid signs of rising regional tension, China, Japan and South Korea are haunted by a bitter shared past
China The cultural revolution is not mentioned at “The Road to Rejuvenation”, the exhibit at China’s national museum. Neither are other self-inflicted wounds such as the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4 1989. And in a more recent example of the exhibition’s deliberate omissions, a picture of the Communist party’s 17th Politburo Standing Committee (2007-12) has been cropped to cut out Zhou Yongkang, the most senior party member to be purged during President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign.
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the cultural revolution, an event that the Communist party will find much harder to acknowledge than Japan’s second world war surrender. But that does not mean references to it are also absent in Chinese textbooks.
Unlike the more guarded treatment of the cultural revolution in public discourse and exhibitions, one Chinese textbook says it “trampled on democracy and the legal system” and even casts aspersions on Mao Zedong, Communist China’s founding father: “Mao’s judgment that there was revisionism in the central government — and that the party and the country faced the danger of capitalist restoration — was wrong.”
Some also contain dramatic accounts of Liu Shaoqi’s heroism before his death at the hands of Mao’s young Red Guards.
“With the constitution in his hand [Liu] remarked angrily: ‘I am Chairman of the People’s Republic of China. It doesn’t matter how you are treating me as an individual, but I will defend the dignity of [my office]. What you are doing is an insult to our country. I am also a citizen, so why don’t you let me speak? The constitution guarantees every citizen’s personal rights. Those who violate the constitution will be severely punished by law.”
Japan Textbooks mention the cultural revolution only briefly and echo the Chinese government’s position that it was an aberration that set back the country’s development. “It threw society into confusion and dealt the economy a severe blow,” one notes.
South Korea References are longer than those in Japanese textbooks and seem more sympathetic towards Mao’s aims. Some suggest it was a well-intentioned effort to “establish a completely socialist country”, which some academics attributed to the possible influence of left-leaning Korean scholars.
“The [Chinese] narrative is all about the illegality and unconstitutionality [of the cultural revolution] and the breakdown of the political and economic system,” says Prof Duara at the National University of Singapore. “Basically they are telling people: ‘Don’t shake the state, don’t make challenges and let us get ahead with our development programme.’”
“[Mao’s] judgment and legacy are called into question,” Prof Williams at Cardiff University adds. “[It] makes fascinating reading.”
Additional reporting by Christian Shepherd, Wan Li and Kang Buseong
Scars of conflict: A Japanese official and his military escort in Korea in 1900; the cultural revolution begins in 1966; and the Rape of Nanking in 1937
When the Chinese Communist party’s Eighth Route Army marched into Wuxiang county in 1937, one of its commanders asked to see the textbooks at a village school. Xiao Jianghe, then nine years old, remembers that the commander was not impressed with what he read. Now a tall, bone-thin 87-year-old with cataracts clouding his left eye, Mr Xiao recalls the officer’s verdict: “He said: ‘These are old books. You should read new books on the anti-Japanese resistance and sing songs about it.’”
The Eighth Route Army had rushed to Wuxiang, in northern Shanxi province, to harass an advancing Japanese unit that it would later defeat at the Battle of Pingxing Pass. That its commanders took time to examine Mr Xiao’s school demonstrated the Communist party’s appreciation of the power of textbooks. Like victors elsewhere, the party has been writing its version of history — and expunging rival narratives — ever since.
Textbooks and patriotic memorials remain central to a new battle between competing nationalisms in Japan and the two countries that bore the brunt of its military expansion in the first half of the 20th century — China and Korea. FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2012 file photo, an anti-Japan protester tears Japanese Rising Sun Flag during a rally outside the Japanese Consulate General in Hong Kong as they demand Japanese government to release Chinese activists arrested in Japan after landing on Uotsuri Island, one of the islands of Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. Although the Japanese government purchase of Senkaku or Diaoyu, was ostensibly aimed reducing tensions, the move was seen in China as an attempt to solidify Tokyoís sovereignty over the islets. Outraged Chinese staged violent street protests and attacked Japanese property. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
Click on the links to see how Chinese, Japanese and South Korean textbooks presented ｎeach event
While many Japanese textbooks acknowledge the atrocities committed by the country’s Imperial Army during the second world war, they often do so only briefly or with key details buried in footnotes. For all their flaws, however, they are at least subject to a vigorous and continuing debate between rightwing nationalists and pacifists.
There is no such conversation in China, where the ruling Communist party maintains a monopoly on history and its interpretation. “Chinese authorities need the people to hate Japan,” says Zhang Lifan, a dissident historian. “Regimes like ours must have an imaginary enemy,” he adds. “They use it to gather the people around the ruling party, as if the enemy is likely to invade us at any time.” For its part, Korean nationalism is animated by a deep sense of victimisation, but also complicated by its continuing division into a communist North sustained by China and a capitalist South protected by the US. As a united entity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Korea was Asia’s Poland, surrounded by much larger powers which treated it as a vassal state or even annexed it completely during different periods of its history. These complex currents, and China’s economic resurgence, have given rise to a sense that history in the region is now more alive — and dangerous — than it has been for years as rival nationalisms feed off each other in toxic ways. “All three countries are at a high tide of nationalism,” says Sohn Yeol, professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. The Senkaku, or Diaoyu islands as they are known in China, are controlled by Tokyo but also claimed by Beijing, and represent the biggest potential flashpoint. When Tokyo “nationalised” the Senkakus in 2012, buying them from a private owner, violent protests erupted across China.
Officials in China and South Korea are now warily waiting for remarks by Shinzo Abe on the 70th anniversary of Japan’s second world war surrender in an address that will attract widespread coverage. They do not trust the nationalist prime minister, who wants Japan to be a proud and “normal” country no longer shackled by the terms of its surrender, to issue a “clear and unequivocal” reaffirmation of previous government apologies for its wartime behaviour. Failure to do so could, at the very least, set back progress in Japan’s bilateral relations with its neighbours.  The signals from Mr Abe’s circle are that he will repeat crucial phrases from past Japanese apologies, including a reference to the country’s “aggression”, but seek to place it in the context of the times in a way more favourable to the nationalist narrative.  “[Abe] has been very reluctant, hemming and hawing, not mentioning Japan’s mistakes,” says Kim Jong-hoon of South Korea’s governing New Frontier party. “He has tried to whitewash wrongdoings. We have little hope that Abe can change his views.” A recent dispute in Japan over textbook revisions that would dilute references to its wartime past sparked alarm in Beijing and Seoul. Both capitals also routinely condemn visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which honours Japan’s war dead including some convicted of war crimes. “The textbook issue is one of the broader historical problems we have, which turns into politics,” says Prof Sohn. “We have memories of Japanese oppression and so do the Chinese. But the Japanese tend to glorify that [as their] modernisation period. The three countries have different interpretations of a single history.” Warranted or not, constant criticism from China and South Korea makes ordinary Japanese weary of apologies for their country’s wartime record.  Japan has apologised,” says Prasenjit Duara, a regional expert at the National University of Singapore. “The most important one, by [then prime minister Tomiichi] Murayama in August 1994, was a real apology. But the problem is they [politicians] keep going back to Yasukuni. So it’s very unresolved.” Japan’s younger generation, which understandably feels it should not be browbeaten for the sins of its great-grandfathers, is steadily becoming more nationalist. A similar upsurge of patriotism among young Chinese suggests that Asia’s two largest powers are locked on a trajectory that could lead to conflict. But there is an important caveat to such predictions : many in Japan still regard their country’s postwar pacifism as a source of great pride. Their convictions were visible this summer during protests against Mr Abe’s reinterpretation of the constitution to let Japan’s Self Defence Forces fight on behalf of allies.
“Whatever future there is has to be built upon an honest coming to terms with the past,” says Akira Iriye, a Japanese scholar and retired Harvard University professor. “Since 1945, Japan has been a much better country than it was before 1945. This is something it can be very proud of. But whether it can remain that way is a big question today.”  In China, the Communist party has long presented itself as the “tower of strength in the people’s War of Resistance against Japanese aggression”. According to its propaganda, the party’s heroic role during the second world war is an important source of legitimacy for its 66-year rule, alongside the renewed sense of economic and military “rejuvenation” under President Xi Jinping. But it is also a version of history that the party’s critics believe has more to do, as the dissident historian Mr Zhang puts it, with Mr Xi’s “current political needs”.
The high point of China’s second world war commemorations will be a military parade through Beijing on September 3. It is the first time such a display, usually used to celebrate 10-year anniversaries of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, will instead mark the end of the second world war.
“The parade is about domestic politics,” says Rana Mitter, an Oxford university Sinologist. “It’s another element in the way the war is being used, which is to create this sense of national identity in China.” The parade comes on top of a torrent of patriotic movies, television mini-series, concerts and exhibitions across the country. At the National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square, an exhibit called “The Road to Rejuvenation” pulls no punches in its account of the country’s “century of humiliation” — a period that stretches from Britain’s victory over the Qing dynasty in the first opium war of 1839 to the Japanese invasion, with the 1937 Rape of Nanking presented as the worst single outrage. Beijing maintains that Japanese soldiers massacred some 300,000 people — and raped women and girls indiscriminately — in Nanking, known today as Nanjing. “After Britain started the [first] Opium War, the imperial powers descended on China like a swarm of bees, looting our treasures and killing our people,” the exhibit begins. Installations include images that many parents would consider inappropriate for their children, such as a Japanese soldier in Nanking leering at a Chinese woman, stripped naked from the waist down.
“[Japanese accounts] are trying to, in some sense, minimise the impact on the reader,” says Owen Miller, an expert on Korea at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. “The Chinese approach is the opposite, trying to maximise the impact through graphic descriptions.” Despite its R-rated content, the “Road to Rejuvenation” is as popular with Chinese school children, teachers and parents as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is in the US. The lessons the students draw from it, and their textbooks, are predictable. “England I can forgive but not Japan,” Wen Pengzhi, a 13-year-old student from Sichuan province, says after viewing the exhibition with his classmates. “Not only has Japan not apologised, it fabricates history . . . [But] we will continue to strive and will surpass them.” Nearby, a middle-aged Chinese man referred his young daughter to a picture of a Japanese soldier brandishing a sword over Chinese corpses during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, during which Meiji Japan routed China’s Qing dynasty. “The Japanese devils were the worst,” he told her. The museum attached to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine urges visitors to focus instead on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, in which an Asian nation state comprehensively defeated a European rival for the first time. “Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War inspired other oppressed peoples, particularly Asian peoples, to dream of achieving independence,” Yasukuni’s final room declares above pictures of leaders such as India’s Mahatma Gandhi and Myanmar’s Aung San. It frames Japan’s years of empire as a quest to free Asia from western imperialism. “Not until Japan won a stunning victory in the early stages of the Greater East Asia War [world war two] did the idea of independence enter the realm of reality. Once the desire for independence had been kindled under Japanese occupation, it did not fade away even though Japan was ultimately defeated.”
The Japanese texts also emphasise a development not mentioned by the Chinese ones. Along with Taiwan, the treaty granted the Meiji possession of China’s Liaodong peninsula. This latter prize, however, was returned to the Qing after a “triple intervention” by France, Germany and Russia, which were seeking “to expand their own rights in China”. Russia’s presence looms particularly large as a threat to Japanese interests: “The Queen of Korea resented Japan’s intervention and drew closer to Russia.” This suggestion that European countries routinely sought to prevent Japan from joining the ranks of established colonial powers — as Japan was simply an Asian country following western rules — is a popular motif in nationalist texts about the decades preceding the outbreak of the second world war. South Korea Korean textbooks present the country as an innocent bystander caught between two warring giants and are particularly sensitive to the shifting balance of power between China and Japan. They note, for example, that the treaty forced the Qing to recognise Korea as an independent country. “With the First Sino-Japanese War,” they continue, “the existing China-centred international order in East Asia was disassembled and China’s division accelerated, leading the Qing dynasty to semi-colonised status.”
David Williams, an expert on Japan at Cardiff University, believes that the Chinese textbooks’ emphasis on the weakness of the Qing navy reinforces the Chinese Communist party’s imperative today to build a strong, modern naval force.  “It’s striking that the naval aspect was so strongly emphasised in the Chinese books,” Prof Williams says. “They feel they lack a naval tradition and they need one. So they’ve seized upon what they need.”