Stories of Japanese "Comfort Women": The Politics of Trauma and Integrity

The expression “comfort women” belies over 10 years of oppression which began in the early 1930s and continued until the end of World War II – “victims of the military sexual slavery system” is a more accurate description.

Using diaries, interviews, letters and oral testimonies, the book, based on her thesis, The Politics of Trauma and Integrity. Stories of Japanese "Comfort Women" uncovers the life or, in many cases, death struggles of these survivors in pursuit of public recognition as the victims of state violence against women.

Dr Tsukamoto uses the lenses of gender and trauma to tell the stories of two Japanese women, with very different stories, forced into a system of sexual slavery controlled by the Japanese government to the benefit of soldiers and military officers.

The book is an important contribution to the gendered history of modern Japan, but it is more than a history.

Supplemented by feminist activist methodology premised upon political agency that seeks social justice, Dr Tsukamoto’s analysis draws upon three key concepts: trauma, coherence of the self and integrity to deliver a nuanced understanding of these women’s experiences.

Written for scholars, human rights activists, sexual violence survivors and their families, counsellors and psychologists, it also provides insight into the process of recovery from this kind of trauma and how survivors went about reconstructing their identities and lives in a society which subsequently shunned and alienated them.

It also makes a significant contribution to decades of international debate, historical research, and legal discourses concerned with the ongoing history of sexual violence against women in Japan.

“Focusing upon the role of gender and trauma as the nexus between memory construction and identity formation in modern Japan, reveals these women’s relentless quest for their recovery and the creation of new identities,” Dr Tsukamoto said.

Dr Tsukamoto is Honorary Associate Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science and an affiliate of the Purai Global Indigenous History Centre at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

She is also a volunteer Associate Researcher for the Asia- Pacific Peace Museum of Canada ALPHA (the Association for Learning & Preserving the History of WWII in Asia) based in Toronto.

Her book was launched internationally via a combined on-line and face-to-face event at the Purai Global Indigenous History Centre on 2nd August 2022 at 4pm (AEST) beginning with a short on-line tour of the Japan’s Kanita Women’s Rehabilitation Centre.

A recording of the event is available here.

In December 2023, Dr Tsukamoto has awarded the Carol Pateman Gender and Politics Book Award by the Australian Political Studies Association.

The paperback version of her book will be available in January 2024 from Routledge and 20% Discount is available if you enter the code EFL04 at checkout.