The Recognition of the « Comfort Women », Geopolitical Conflict and Patriarchy

“More than anything, I categorically reject the term ‘comfort women’! Since it means something warm and gentle. We weren’t ‘comfort women’, we were victims of abduction and rape by the Japanese army!” Jan Ruff O’Herne

These words, spoken by Jan Ruff O’Herne, a former “Ianfu” (“comfort woman” in Japanese), and used in the comic strip “Femmes de réconfort” (Comfort Women), bear witness to the trauma still suffered by former “comfort women”. This innocuous phrase actually hides a sordid euphemism referring to thousands of young women and girls kidnapped during the Japanese conquest of Asia and used as sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War, between 1931 and 1945…