In the early 1930s, the Japanese military established a system of brothels, called "comfort stations", for the use of its soldiers and recruited tens of thousands of women as military prostitutes, called "comfort women". The majority of these women were recruited from the populace of Japan's colonies, in particular Korea, or occupied territories in China and South East Asia. Public discourse about the legality and morality of this system started in 1936 and intensified during the 1990s when Korean and other victims broke their silence. From the 1970s, the term "sexual slavery" had been applied to the "comfort women" system and was later adopted by feminist movements and international organizations. This provoked a harsh refutation by the Japanese conservatives who deny the use of (state) force towards these women. Moreover, when in 2020 one Korean survivor expressively rejected being called a "sex slave", it became evident that the discourses about the "comfort women" have been riddled with "differends", to borrow Jean-François Lyotard's concept. (According to Lyotard, a differend is a wrong or an injustice that comes about because there is no discourse in which its wrongness might be described.) To uncover and learn to endure these differends, I propose to use what Foucault would have called "truth-effects."
Reinhard Zöllner was born in 1961. Studied History and Latin in Kiel, Japanese Studies in Hamburg and Tokyo. PhD 1992, Habilitation 1997. Professorships in Halle-Wittenberg, Erfurt, Michigan, Bonn. Specializing in Japanese and East Asian History.
