when the “comfort woman” monument sa manilabaywalk was unveiled, not too far away from the japanese embassy, it was the day 77 years ago that japan launched a surprise attack on the philippines, some ten hours after the attack on pearl harbor.  it was also the feast day of the immaculate conception, december 8, 2017, which may or may not have anything to do with the bronze sculpture’s madonna-like vibes, kaya lang ay mas malungkot, and looking lost.  our (very own) lady of perpetual angst.  i love it, too, that she’s kind of sexy.  all nuances covered.  bravo, jonas roces!

“The blindfold symbolizes injustice or the continuous desire for justice,” he said, referring to the demands of surviving comfort women for an official apology and compensation from Japan, both of which have remained ignored.

The statue’s dress, embellished with images of the perennial grass “cadena de amor” (coral vine), stands for the women’s resilience, Roces said. He added: “Since Japan is the ‘Land of the Rising Sun,’ the statue turned its back to the sea where the sun sets.”

read xinhuanet.com‘s Philippines unveils World War II sex slave statue in Manila.  former president, now manila mayor, joseph “erap” estrada wasn’t present at the ceremony but a representative read his message lauding the installation of the historical marker in manila.

“Like others before it, this reminds us of a chapter in our past. Whether it reminds us of an event, a place, or an honored person, it is nevertheless worthy to be remembered for its impact on our nation. This morning we remember the plight of the comfort women,” Estrada said in a speech read by his representative during the unveiling ceremony.

“While we cannot erase all of their pain and suffering, we can at least do our humblest best to show them that they are not alone. Through this marker, we are expressing our intention never to forget what they went through, and to do all we can to make sure such a tragedy never happens again,” he added.

the japanese government protested, of course.  and president duterte?  he started out fine, actually, and then he flip-flopped.  read carolyn arguillas’ Duterte on ‘Comfort Women’ monument: from “it’s freedom of expression” in January to “fine” if on private property.

DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 30 April) — In January this year, President Rodrigo Duterte acknowledged Japan as the largest contributor of aid to the Philippines and thanked it for its many contributions to the country but on the issue of the then newly-installed ‘Comfort Women’ monument along the baywalk of Roxas Boulevard in Metro Manila, for which the Japanese government expressed regret…

He told MindaNews …. on January 12 that when the Japanese Minister of Internal Affairs and Communication Seiko Noda paid a courtesy call on him in Malacanang on January 9, he informed her that he “cannot stop the relatives or even the comfort women still living, from their freedom to express what they are expressing through the statue.”

“That is a constitutional right which I cannot stop. It’s prohibitive for me to do that,” he said.

FAST FORWARD three months.  march 28  manila-shimbun.com reported that the monument had been vandalized.   april 23 teresita ang see via business world reported that there was a backhoe parked beside our “comfort woman”.  april 26, president duterte left for singapore to attend an ASEAN summit.  april 27, close to midnight, DPWH started drilling.  by sunrise she was gone.  

april 29 when duterte returned, nagmaang-maangan siya.  wala siyang alam.  ni hindi raw niya alam na mayroong comfort woman monument.

“Whose initiative was it? I really do not know. I don’t even know that it exists.”

and then he stopped joking.

put simply: his sympathies lie with japan.  he caved in. nagpa-bully sa japan.  the first ever leader of a sovereign (“sovereign”) nation to take down a “comfort woman”.  without shame.

…  “if there is what you would call a memorial for an injustice committed at one time, it’s all right but do not use — it is not the policy of government to antagonize other nation. But if is erected in a private property, fine. We will honor it. And the Japanese government and people would understand it that there is democracy here, freedom of expression is very important,” Duterte said.

“But do not use government because it would reflect now on — kung ginusto ba natin (if we wanted it). It’s practically the same in South Korea, ‘yung comfort women. Pero so much water has passed,” he said.

“Masakit kasi uli- ulitin mo na tuloy (It’s painful if you keep repeating it). And you start to imagine how they were treated badly. But Japan has apologized to the Filipinos. And they have certainly made much more than… in terms of reparation,” he said.

… The President said the Japanese “has paid early for that,” that reparation “started many years ago so huwag na lang natin insultuhin” (so let’s not insult them).

masakit?  sobra naman, sir!  sino ba talaga ang nasaktan?  at hanggang ngayon, sino ba talaga ang nasasaktan?

insulto?  grabe naman, sir!  hindi pang-insulto ang “comfort woman” monument.  every place in the world that a “comfort woman” statue rises — in parks, public spaces, even passenger buses, in south korea, america, europe, australia, canada —  it is not to insult but to REMIND japan that the world has not forgotten, will not forget, the horrors forced on “comfort women” made to serve as sex slaves of japanese soldiers during the second world war.  it would be an insult to japan ONLY IF such horrors did not happen and we were all just making it up.

read ‘Comfort Women’ Denial and the Japanese Right by Julie Higashi, Yoshikata Veki, Norma Field and Tomomi Yamaguchi.

It is a remarkable thing to behold, the extent to which the issue of “comfort women” galvanizes the Japanese right more than two decades after the first Korean survivor appeared in public. The hopeful moments of the Kono Statement (1993) and the Murayama Statement (1995) seem to belong to a remote past. Circumscribed though they were, those official statements by the then chief cabinet secretary (Kono Yohei) and prime minister (Murayama Tomiichi) squarely acknowledged the grievous consequences of imperial Japan’s acts of aggression not only on the Japanese people but their Asian neighbors, and most pertinently with respect to “comfort women,” the involvement of the Japanese military.

That the “comfort woman” system has been documented1 as entailing the Japanese military, meaning that it can in no way be written off as an enterprise of private brokers, is one of the several interlocking points that exercise rightist revisionists. Another is the use of the term kyosei renko, or “forced mobilization”: the women, often young enough to warrant characterization as “girls,” were recruited, transported, and made to serve against their will. The lure of promised employment in the dire circumstances produced by colonial rule-trickery, in other words-was part of the coercive character of this system. Acknowledging systematic coercion, in turn, is to acknowledge that the system was indeed one of “military sexual slavery,” underscoring the cynical deception of the “comfort woman” euphemism. (The term continues to be meaningful as historical referent, and specifically, as verbal coalescence of willful, flagrant deception.) [emphasis mine]

the cynical — willful, flagrant — deception.

how kind it is na nga of the victims, and the world, to not dispute, let japan get away with, the euphemism “comfort women” for the actual SEX SLAVES the women were.  but it’s not enough for the government of japan that simply refuses to formally publicly acknowledge the war crime, and to directly apologize and make reparations to the “comfort women”.

what japan wants is for the the victims, and the world, to simply forget the matter, for all kinds of reasons, among these, that “comfort stations” were a necessary evil in a time of war.

read ‘Comfort women’ and history by dan steinbock:

Until recently, the extent of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery has been downplayed. According to conservative historian Ikuhiko Hata, there were barely 20,000 “comfort women” in the 1930s and 19s and they were largely willing prostitutes, with no or minimal direct involvement by Japanese military.

… In reality, the number of Japan’s wartime sex slaves is estimated at some 200,000 women. According to Chinese scholars in Shanghai, in which a “comfort station” was established in the Japanese concession already in 1932, the real number of “comfort women” may have been as high as 360,000 to 400,000.

… Most women were from areas occupied by Imperial Japan, particularly China and Korea, but also the Philippines. There were also “comfort stations” in Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, East Timor and other Japanese-occupied territories. Additionally, hundreds of women in the region were involved from the Netherlands and Australia.

in japan misogyny goes back a long long way.

Economically, Japan is one of the world’s 10 most competitive countries, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Yet, its ranking in the WEF Global Gender Gap Report is deplorable. In gender equality, Japan is not among the top 10, not even among the top 100 but 114th (!); well behind Myanmar, India and Nepal, and barely ahead of Ethiopia and Nigeria.

Forced silence about wartime sexual slavery is part of a broader legacy of sexual discrimination that casts a long shadow over the position of women, their human development and economic potential in Japan.

long shadow indeed.   and while prime minister shinzo abe and his party are at the helm, expect no apologies or reparations, only more bullying.  abe is the grandson of nobusuke kishi, a famous “war-criminal”-“war-hero” who was part of the tojo war cabinet during world war 2.  he believed in the racial superiority of japan in this part of the globe.

…  starting in 1933, Kishi attacked democracies and praised Nazi Germany as Japan’s model.  … In 1937, Kishi signed a degree calling for the use of slave labor in Manchukuo and northern China.  The enslavement of men paved the way for the exploitation of Chinese and Korean women as sex slaves and the expansion of sexual slavery into Japan’s occupied colonies in Asia. … a believer in the Yamato race theory, Kishi thought that the racially superior Japan was destined to rule Asia “eternally.” [emphasis mine]

world war 2, that ended with the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki by imperialist america, was a disaster for japan, the imperialist wanna-be.  kishi and his ilk were imprisoned as  class A “war crime suspects” for over three years.

In the 1950s, America was in the midst of the Cold War. So, in Japan, many war leaders were enlisted by the US to suppress Japanese communists and socialists. That’s how Kishi was released from the Sugamo Prison and became known as “America’s Favorite War Criminal.” He played a key role in the creation of the “1955 System,” which made the Liberal Democratic Party the dominant political force in Japan and America’s key ally – until today.

in fact japan has a history problem, one complicated by america’s patronage since the post-war era.  where would loser japan be today if not for winner america’s special treatment after the war.  read robert dujarric’s Japan’s history problem

… Japan is always judged based on how West Germany (and later a reunited Germany) has faced its Nazi past since the chancellorship of Willy Brandt (1969-1974). This contrast makes Japan look very much like an underperformer. There is no photograph of a Japanese prime minister bowing in Nanjing to match the famous shot of Brandt kneeling in Warsaw. Tokyo lacks a counterpart to the giant Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Japanese governments have taken a narrow legalistic approach to requests for compensation to the sex slaves and forced laborers of Imperial Japan, whereas Germany has generally been more forthcoming in paying for claims. German leaders do not engage in self-destructive debates about the definition of invasion. Angela Merkel would not offer tokens of respect to shrines honoring men hanged following the Nuremberg Trial. Berlin does not order its diplomats to protest against the erection of memorials to victims of the Nazis.

To some Japanese, it seems unfair to benchmark their country to Germany. For various reasons, Germany is an outlier when it comes to its relationship with its darkest era. Moreover, one of the roots of Japan’s perceptions of history is the legacy of U.S. policy. The United States did not “purge” Japan with the same intensity as it denazified Germany. Albert Speer, who ran Germany’s armaments industry (and its slaves), was sentenced to twenty years behind bars. His counterpart in Japan, Nobusuke Kishi, was quickly released by U.S. authorities, and then rose to be prime minister (when the CIA funded the ruling Liberal Democratic Party). The Showa Emperor (Hirohito) not only escaped indictment, but was even spared testifying at the Tokyo Trials. In his later years, U.S. President Richard Nixon welcomed the Emperor on Japan’s first imperial visit to America. Washington granted amnesty to the murderous physicians of Unit 731. These actions were perfectly logical at the time, but they obviously had consequences for Japanese interpretations of the Showa War. If president Eisenhower and the U.S. Congress had welcomed a former member of Hitler’s cabinet to Washington as they did Prime Minister Kishi, it would have sent to Germans the message that the Nazi era was not that bad after all.

Japan cannot escape this juxtaposition with Germany. Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were Axis allies. Both were defeated by the same coalition in World War II. Due to this doomed marriage, Hitler’s Germany is unavoidably the nation that comes up when discussing Showa Japan.

This link will not go away. Posthumous divorces are not recognized in the civil code. The Japanese Cabinet’s actions in dealing with the 1931-45 conflict will always be graded on a “German scale.” Cases of partial “historical amnesia,” though they are the norm worldwide, are thus perceived as particularly odious. They also undermine Japan’s interests by needlessly increasing anti-Japanese sentiment.

japan needs to face facts.  the longer that takes, the many more “comfort women” memorials will rise, and eventually we might even dare call them the “sex slaves of japan”.

meanwhile, our own lady of perpetual hurt stands by the door of the sculptor’s studio in antipolo, patiently waiting to be returned where she deserves to stand, in that public space, her back to the bay, facing the land of the rising sun.

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Blinkmanship by michael tan
8 Facts You Should Know About Filipino Comfort Women by cody cepeda
Ang-See on comfort woman statue’s removal: Where’s our moral dignity? 
Put statue back where it belongs by isabel escoda
ON THE “CONTROVERSIAL” WORLD WAR II MEMORIAL AT ROXAS BOULEVARD
Remembering Japan’s war dead: Shrines in the Philippines by teresita ang see
Over 400 Memorials to Japanese Soldiers in the Philippines – Protesting the shameful act of the Japanese Government, forcing the removal of a single memorial to the “comfort women”!! – PETITION