« We can discuss nuance all day long, but at the end of the day, it was Japan that invaded Korea and used slave labor. »
After angry emails from readers, condemnation by the international press and pushback by some of its contributors, the Japan Times has backtracked on an editorial policy that changed how the newspaper would refer to wartime forced laborers and so-called “comfort women.”
The controversy and subsequent walkback were sparked by an editor’s note appended to a November 30 article in the Japan Times about a South Korea Supreme Court ruling that ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to pay compensation for wartime forced labor.
Check out the Japan Times editor’s note on comfort women and forced laborers. https://t.co/ohcBHTMNRX
— Motoko Rich (@motokorich) November 30,2018
The November 30 editor’s note, which can still be read at the end of the article, states that the term “forced labor” and the way “comfort women” have been described in the Japan Times in the past could have been misleading:
Editor’s note: in the past, The Japan Times has used terms that could have been potentially misleading. The term “forced labor” has been used to refer to laborers who were recruited before and during World War II to work for Japanese companies.
However, because the conditions they worked under or how these workers were recruited varied, we will henceforth refer to them as “wartime laborers.”
Similarly, “comfort women” have been referred to as “women who were forced to provide sex for Japanese troops before and during World War II.”
Because the experiences of comfort women in different areas throughout the course of the war varied widely, from today, we will refer to “comfort women” as “women who worked in wartime brothels, including those who did so against their will, to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.”
Women from colonized, conquered and occupied countries from across Asia were conscripted and enslaved by the Japanese military during World War II, euphemistically called ianfu (comfort women) by Japanese military authorities, have long been a source of political controversy.
