Talk:Comfort women

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• Memorare Comfort Women Statue and Historical Marker, Roxas Boulevard.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:08, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Were there comfort men as well

or was it just the women the japanese used for comfort — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.207.184 (talk) 12:44, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Sociological questions

Aside from the appalling injustice to women, what does the comfort women phenomenon say about the character of Japanese males? Was the ruthless exploitation simply a passing phase brought about by the stresses of war, or did it reveal something deeper about Japanese character? The rape of Nanking occurred 13 years before WWII. Why is there no discussion of this issue? Is such a question politically incorrect because is might lead to stereotyping? Does truth matter anymore? When did social science become the servant of ideology? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.137.86 (talk) 12:30, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Wartime rape is extremely common throughout history, regardless of race, culture or time period. The attempt by the Japanese government to replace widespread rape with institutionalized prostitution was certainly novel, but upon examining the rationale behind the establishment of the system you should quickly realize that a similar idea could have occurred to anyone in power.

The main reason for why the Japanese government chose to invest in the project was due to its perceived usefulness in controlling the spread of STDs among frontline soldiers, and as a way to prevent rape, which they feared would instill hostility in the local populace and consequently make them more difficult to rule. Of course, we know in hindsight that the system ended up failing to live up to these expectations. On that note, there is little evidence indicating that this system of prostitution caused more damage than it prevented; for all we know, victims of the system may well have been treated considerably better than victims of uncontrolled wartime rape, given how (seemingly) many of them survived to tell the tale.

For a modern day example of governments that display a similar level of utilitarianism, we need not look further than the CCP in China, or the modern North Korean government. And utilitarianism is far from a trait unique to governments in Far East Asia; the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were infamous for their ruthless functionalism. And who knows, the Allies may have dabbled in similarly questionable pursuits, and we might simply be unaware of this due to lack of historical records. Either way, we do know wartime rape has always been (and still is) commonplace on all continents.

As for the reason for why wartime rape is so prevalent, several sociological, psychological and evolutionary biology-based explanations have been proposed. Gottschall's article "Explaining wartime rape" (published in the Journal of sex research in 2004) offers a good review on the subject. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 13:23, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

The recruitment of voluntary comfort women at the beginning of the war

Since a user decided to start an edit war to revert to an older version of the introductory sentence that defines the term "comfort woman", I will add this talk section to address their point.

As is already mentioned in the article, the system started out as a program of voluntary prostitution, but derailed into a form of sexual slavery once the army could no longer bring enough voluntary prostitutes from Japan to meet an ever-increasing demand for comfort women, and consequently chose to outsource the process of procuring the sex workers to local middlemen. A source (pp 3-5) is already given in the article.

As such, given that voluntary "comfort women" did in fact exist, the first sentence of the article should take this into account in order to maintain neutrality and accuracy. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 16:14, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

This topic would not exist if it was only about paid, voluntary prostitutes. The basis of the topic, the global outrage against the Japanese, comes from taking women and girls from occupied lands and forcing them into sexual slavery.

You have repeatedly tried to normalize the Japanese comfort women program, to explain the Japanese actions as logical or reasonable. Insisting on the mention of paid prostitutes is part of that push. You are trying to skew the topic away from global outrage, but that's how it is presented in the great mass of sources, so your push is non-neutral. Binksternet (talk) 16:41, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Accurately portraying history is not an attempt to normalize anything, there were voluntary women who were apart of the comfort women program just as there were those who were there against their will, purposefully omitting one while keeping the other is biased. Wikipedia is not about outrage but about building an encyclopedia, "global outrage" is not the focus of the article historical accuracy is, please remember that. XiAdonis (talk) 03:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Establishing a false balance is biased, not neutral. If a tiny fraction of the comfort women was voluntary, then giving that fraction equal prominence is false balance and biased. Binksternet (talk) 06:09, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Assuming your hypothetical example of giving equal prominence to both voluntary and unvoluntary women without regard to portraying matters as they actually were historically were true then yes that would be false balance.

"false balance is biased, if a false balance is done then that is biased", yea no shit buddy. If your going to say something say something of substance and not this pointless nonsense. XiAdonis (talk) 06:36, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Guys, just reminding that it'd be good to remain civil and avoid any personal attacks in this talk page, especially on a really controversial topic like this. After all, all edits are presumed in good faith and should be treated as such. Feel free to consult WP:TPG for any guidelines on how to handle a talk page discussion. NettingFish15019 (talk) 07:49, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Lead sentence

I'm opening this discussion to head off what looks like a developing edit war over this. So far, it involves myself, Jpgordon, and Bavio the Benighted; this is the most recent edit. The crux of the matter is the word were. Later in the article, it is made clear that Comfort Women included not only women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army, but also other women, some of whom might have been involved in such activity prior to WW-II, and/or some of which might be involved in this activity voluntarily. The linked most recent change reverted the wording back to use the word were, which might be taken to imply that Comfort Women consisted only of the particular women and girls mentioned immediately thereafter, with an edit summary saying that a change to make it clear that others might have been involved requires discussion. Please discuss. Barring consensus to the contrary, I propose that this last change be reverted or that wording to the same effect be adopted. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 18:29, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support "Comfort women were mainly women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II, or who participated in the earlier program of voluntary prostitution" or something similar. It's a more accurate opening statement. --John B123 (talk) 19:40, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
• I'm only involved because of the edit warring; I don't have a strong opinion otherwise. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 00:49, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
• I think it would be poisonous to insert a false balance into the lead sentence by giving the tiny fraction of voluntary prostitutes any kind of mention. Of course we should tell the reader about them later, but not in the first sentence. The tiny fraction of voluntary prostitutes is not why we have this topic. Rather, the women and girls who were coerced and forced into sexual slavery are the topic. By far the majority of our sources describing this topic do so by first telling about the forced and coerced girls and women. We should follow that style. Binksternet (talk) 06:16, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
• Agree with Binksternet. Also, the intro lead already has a reference to it anyways as "Originally, the brothels were established to provide soldiers with voluntary prostitutes in order to reduce the incidence of wartime rape, a cause of rising anti-Japanese sentiment across occupied territories". I think it'd be fairer to not include reference to 'voluntary', which seems to form only a minority of comfort women in the rest of the article and was mostly before much of the controversy, to which this topic is relevant, arose. NettingFish15019 (talk) 07:42, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support A non insignificant number were willing prostitutes, I find issue with the "sex slave" wording as most historians avoid that label, there were an amount who were deceived by independent brokers and recruiters but they did not make up the majority and they were not sex slaves , however thats not a discussion im willing to have right now.

Source/further reading if anyone is interested in learning in depth about this issue:

Wartime Military Records on Comfort Women: Information War against Korea, United States, and Japan by: Archie Miyamoto

Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone by: Ikuhiko Hata

To say that only a tiny fraction were voluntary prostitutes is simply historical distortion. XiAdonis (talk) 08:13, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Just responding to the 'voluntary' argument here. I've added my argument and sources against this (which suggest that the broad majority of comfort women were coerced and did not volunteer) below in the "Relevance of Ramseyer" section, which I won't copy-paste here just to save space. I'd like to comment on XiAdonis's suggestion regarding the term 'sex slave' and point out that this label was officially been recognized by several academics and organisations, such as by the United Nations in McDougall's 1998 report (added in the section below). It would therefore not be inappropriate to use it. NettingFish15019 (talk) 14:06, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• I've been looking at the talk page archive for this topic, and it seems there was a consensus reached around this opening statement "Comfort women were women and girls forced into a prostitution corps created by the Empire of Japan. The name "comfort women" is a translation of a Japanese name ianfu (慰安婦). Ianfu is a euphemism for shōfu (娼婦) whose meaning is "prostitute(s)". The earliest reporting on the issue in South Korea stated it was not a voluntary force, and since 1989 a number of women have come forward testifying they were kidnapped by Imperial Japanese soldiers" (from Archive 6). Much of the archived talk page seems to support against using 'voluntary' as false balance (though this is based on my skim-reading of the talk pages). I thought it'd be relevant here. NettingFish15019 (talk) 14:23, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• A couple of points:

• I don't find a source-supported assertion in the article to the effect that all but a "tiny fraction" (from above) of comfort women were forced into providing sexual services. Discussion above seems to hinge on an editorial consensus re the tininess of this fraction. If reliable sources exist supporting a characterization re the tininess of this fraction, it seems to me that the article ought to characterize this and ought to cite those sources. If sources differ, this ought to be handled according to WP:DUE. In the absence of this, or in the absence of a consensus among sources that the fraction is tiny, I think that the implicit assertion, were, in the lead sentence, which relies on the fraction being tiny, does not belong there. added: This 1993 NYT article reports that the Jpapense government has acknowledged that there were a large number of comfort women and that "recruiters resorted in many cases to coaxing and intimidating these women to be recruited against their will". It doesn't have any information re the proportion forced, though.
• The false balance article wikilinked a couple of times above is "about the media term", and probably not directly applicable here. Argument to moderation seems closer, but not dead on; I have the impression that the argument being made here re that is similar to the argument there that "one should not be looking for a middle ground between information and disinformation." The problem with that is the difficulty of distinguishing which is which.

Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 18:32, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

• I get your point Wtmitchell. but I guess my concern is even if there's no consensus in this talk page re the fraction of those who were forced (and I don't think we will reach a consensus on that), the question is whether any reference to 'voluntary' should remain in the lead sentence. It's in itself a source of great controversy between Japan and countries from whom comfort women originated. My overall point is that putting in the lead sentence would risk WP:FALSEBALANCE (the link I meant to use, not the one going to the wikipedia article in general). The article has already addressed the concerns of those who want to keep it in the lead sentence (and it is already in the intro itself), but the most common understanding of the term 'comfort women' is for those who were forced into providing sexual services. The proportion, I agree, is up to much debate, mainly because most of the records coming from that time have been destroyed. The National Archive, for example, is aware of this problem, and is providing help in finding resources related to "Any materials related to the so-called "Comfort Women" program, the Japanese systematic enslavement of women of subject populations for sexual purposes". But most media, academic and diplomatic sources (a simple Google search suffices) show that the term 'comfort women' is linked with women who were forced, not those who volunteered. To include 'volunteer' would add undue weight, in line with WP:WEIGHT. NettingFish15019 (talk) 06:09, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

This would be historical distortion, though. The fact of the matter is that all women who served in comfort stations were referred to as "comfort women". There were 50 000 - 400 000 in total, and the vast majority had been hired as prostitutes and were treated and paid extremely well compared to their contemporaries in local brothels (source: "Contracting for sex in the Pacific War" by J. Mark Ramseyer ; memoirs of Mun Ok-ju ; several books by independent investigators published in the 2010s).

On the other hand, we only know of few cases of sexual slavery. Only 16 cases in fact, based on 16 testimonies. That's less than 0.1%―a vocal minority―so this in itself would amount to WP:FALSEBALANCE. According to most neutral, recent investigations, the previous claims asserting that a significant fraction of comfort women had been forced into sexual slavery appear to have been economically and ideologically motivated revisionism by former comfort women, feminists as well as Korean activists. The reason the Allies took no issue with the Comfort Stations nor made them a major talking point in the Tokyo Trials is almost certainly exactly because most of them operated legally. I did an in-depth examination of current evidence in the Relevance of Ramseyer section; to summarize, no current evidence (inc. all sources cited in the Wikipedia article here) corroborates the idea that more than 1% of comfort women would have been forced to work against their will.

In articles that concern historical constructs, maintaining historical accuracy should be regarded as a matter of tantamount importance, regardless of modern media portrayal of said concepts. At the very least, I don't think we should bend the definition of a historical concept just because modern media depiction focuses on a tiny subset of said concept. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 08:08, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

NettingFish1501, my concern is not with the word volunteer, it is with the word were. I think that it is clear that the ranks of comfort women included some women whe were forced into sexual slavery and also included some women who were in that situation voluntarily -- the question is, "Was the proportion of those who had been forced into sexual slavery so overwhelmingly large to make it reasonable to say in the lead sentence that comfort women were women forced into sexual slavery, begging the inference that this was true of all comfort women?". Another question, equally important in Wikipedia, is, "What reliable source supports this implicit assertion that this proportion was so overwhelmingly large?".

memoirs of Mun Ok-ju, I will be interested to see the source you mention when it appears in the Volume 65, March 2021 issue of the International Review of Law and Economics. I don't know whether I will be able to see it online but I'm guessing that, since I am presently located in the U.S., I will be able to get my hands on a copy through my local library.

Bavio the Benighted, thanks; your examination has been more thorough than mine. I would add that, as WP editors, we need to assure that WP article content observes WP:V and (importantly here, I think) WP:NOR. The use of the word were in the lead sentence must be based on some content in the article body which is supported by some cited RS(s) -- but I'm not sure of what that content is, of what those sources are, or whether they can be verified to support the sense of the use of were in that context. It seems to me that MOS:LEADCITE applies here.

Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:12, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

• Japanese government has officially and clearly indicated objection on the terms, "forced" and "sex slaves", and large numbers like " 360,000" based on historical research facts in "Diplomatic Bluebook 2019 / The Issue of Comfort Women." The second point, expression of "sex slaves" contradicts the facts and should not be used, noting that this point had been confirmed with South Korea ain a Japan-South Korea agreement 2015. Please take a look at this page and consider these points.Yasuo Miyakawa (talk) 07:56, 3 February 2021 (UTC)Yasuo Miyakawa (talk) 10:28, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

That 2019 Japan MOFA statement does not seem to agree with the 1993 NYT article which I mentioned above. That article used the term, "virtual slaves", but it seems to be based on the 1993 Kono Statement which, FWICS, is not so explicit in that regard. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:44, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

• WP:FALSEBALANCE is being misapplied here. The guideline refers to "viewpoints on any topic" and includes "conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories". This is not a matter of viewpoint but a matter of fact. A pertinent part of the BBC quote in WP:FALSEBALANCE is "make a distinction between an opinion and a fact". As this a question of fact not opinion/viewpoint, then WP:WEIGHT is the relevant guideline. Putting aside the argument about the relative numbers of voluntary and forced women, the generally held view is that most of the women were forced. Comfort women were mainly women and girls forced into sexual slavery .... satisfies WP:WEIGHT. To simply state "Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery .... is inaccurate and misleading. --John B123 (talk) 17:53, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I would be fine inserting the word "mainly" without the voluntary component mentioned in the first sentence. Binksternet (talk) 18:11, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
    • I'd be ok with that as the voluntary part is brought out later in the lead. --John B123 (talk) 18:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
    • Me too, as an unsupported view taken to be commonly held. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 19:32, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Using the word "mainly" implies non-neutral POV. The only thing we know for a fact is that comfort women were prostitutes. Some coerced, others voluntary.

Scrutinizing the sources forced me to re-evaluate my position on the leading sentence. We should remove all conjecture. References to sexual slavery and/or volition inherently introduce bias and have no place in the definition of the concept itself. We are in no place to define the lives of 400 000 women based on the testimonies of 16, especially if those 16 contradict testimonies and memoirs of other comfort women (some of whom were pressured to silence by activists), and especially given the high likelihood of financial and ideological motivations affecting the content of said testimonies.

At this point I urge all editors to review the evidence we have: I repeat, there is nothing to indicate―even indirectly―that more than 1% of comfort women had been forced to serve the military. Defining the term as such would be expression of opinion, not fact. On the contrary, much evidence now suggests that only a tiny fraction were subjected to the type of treatment that is the source of the controversy today. The definition of a historical concept should not be based on the (financially and ideologically motivated) statements of a vocal minority amounting to <0.1% of all the people who fall under said definition, especially given that we have suspiciously few testimonies from the rest of the <400 000, not to mention from the tens of millions of friends, boyfriends, siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents, teachers, neighbors and so forth who should presumably also have been aware of this "forceful recruitment of women". Yet we only have 16 testimonies; this, if anything, proves that we are indeed looking at an exceedingly rare issue that only affected a very, very small minority of comfort women.

The notion of most comfort women being forced to work being "mostly taken for fact" is outdated. I refer to my arguments above and the Relevance of Ramseyer section. The notion is now rejected not only by Japanese researchers (whom many here seem to believe are somehow inherently biased, ignoring the fact that the most damning evidence for isolated crimes against comfort women are based on Japanese studies, not to mention that the outrage itself originated in Japan) but also by Korean investigators (see the sources below).

In light of all current evidence, the most accurate, neutral way to define the term would go more along the lines of:

"Comfort women were prostitutes who worked at military brothels ("comfort stations") established by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories during World War 2.

The brothels gained infamy following the publication of a novel depicting kidnappings and incarceration of girls into comfort stations by Japanese novelist Seiji Yoshida, which, at the time, was thought to be based on real events. This was followed by 16 testimonies by former comfort women concerning poor treatment as well as deceptive and coercive recruitment practices. These revelations incited international outrage, with many likening the brothels to institutions of sexual slavery, although this notion has recently been challenged by researchers in Korea, Japan and elsewhere whose findings indicate that the vast majority of comfort women had been legally contracted for the job and were well-remunerated for their services."

Sources:

* Source 1: The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Author: Sarah Soh)

* Source 2: Comfort Women of the Empire (Author: Yu-ha Park)

* Source 3: Confronting Korea's Censored Discourse on Comfort Women (Article by Joseph Yi)

* Source 4: Memoirs of Mun Ok-ju

* Source 5: Wartime Military Records on Comfort Women: Information War against Korea, United States, and Japan (Archie Miyamoto)

* Source 6: Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone (Author: Ikuhiko Hata)

* Source 7: "Contracting for sex in the Pacific War" (Author: J. Mark Ramseyer)

With the above changes, I agree to removing the word "voluntary". There is very little factual information we can rely on to determine how 99% of comfort women ended up working at the stations. I would argue that them being much more well-treated and well-remunerated than most other prostitutes of their time would indicate a high likelihood of a large fraction of them having worked voluntarily, but given the lack of evidence in that regard this type of conjecture should, at the very least, not be mentioned in the definition itself. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 02:47, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - This is rather a non-issue to me. When a Wikipedia article is created, it's because the topic is notable. "Comfort women" is notable because of the sexual slavery issue; the "voluntary prostitutes" has never been a part of it. "Comfort women" is also the common name for the women abused in sexual slavery by the Japanese in WWII. We only need to define what "comfort women" is commonly known as. STSC (talk) 15:16, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Look at the Wikipedia page for Nazi Party. Is the party defined as "the people who killed Jews for no reason and tried to conquer the world"?

That's how the term "nazi" is used in common parlance, and very much the extent to which the Nazi Party is perceived by most people in modern society. That's also very much the extent of its "notability", as far as the average person is concerned.

This is not how the Wikipedia page defines the Nazi Party, though.

Why? The answer is simple: because that would be a sweeping generalization and thus historically inaccurate. And even then, that, in terms of sheer numbers, would still likely be far less of a generalization than claiming that comfort women "were sex slaves".

How the word is used in modern contexts is irrelevant; on Wikipedia, historical distortion is generally not tolerated for any reasons, regardless of public opinion. That said, if you feel this runs contrary to Wikipedia's policies and you wish to edit the page describing the Nazi Party to better fit modern usage, you may feel free to do so. However, I doubt this would be appreciated by any historians who use Wikipedia.

The exact same treatment should be given to all historical articles. Wikipedia should not re-define a word based on media sensationalism, because the site was never intended to parrot the claims of mass media outlets. Articles are supposed to be factual, and as such definitions should stick to verifiable facts and dispense with non-neutral POV.

Here is our current best candidate for an improved, neutral, objective and purely evidence-based definition (suggestions are welcome):

"Comfort women were prostitutes who worked at military brothels ("comfort stations") established by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories during World War 2.

The brothels gained infamy following the publication of a novel depicting kidnappings and incarceration of girls into comfort stations by Japanese novelist Seiji Yoshida, which, at the time, was thought to be based on real events. This was followed by 16 testimonies by former comfort women concerning poor treatment as well as deceptive and coercive recruitment practices. These revelations incited international outrage, with many likening the brothels to institutions of sexual slavery, although this notion has recently been challenged by researchers in Korea, Japan and elsewhere whose findings indicate that the vast majority of comfort women had been legally contracted for the job and were well-remunerated for their services."

Do we have consensus with this definition? If not, why not, and what changes would you suggest? This definition incorporates the allegations of sexual slavery by the activists, thus perfectly addressing the issue of notability. It also contains no mention of "voluntary prostitutes"; as such, it seems to take into account all concerns that have been expressed thus far.

Unless I'm missing something, contrary to previous definitions, this one is also completely in line with all primary sources, both those given in this talk page as well as everything cited (directly or indirectly) in the actual article. And again, please, I urge everyone to re-examine all sources; once you do so, it becomes glaringly obvious that the article, as it currently stands, is largely based on opinion, not fact. I refer to my arguments above, as well as to those below, in the Relevance of Ramseyer section. If you have counterarguments or suggestions for improving the definition above, please let me know. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 17:12, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

And note that if we do decide to redefine the term based on popular conceptions, all references to the total number of historical comfort women (i.e. 20 000 - 400 000) will need to be removed, and the Japanese "ianfu" can no longer be mentioned as a synonym either, because both only apply when "comfort woman" is used as a translation for "ianfu". If we redefine "comfort women" as "the subset of ianfu who were subjected to sexual slavery based on testimonies", information pertaining to historical comfort women in general will completely lose relevance in the context of this article. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 17:50, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree with Bavio the Benighted's suggested lead, as it would introduce a severely unbalanced POV. It effectively ignores and marginalizes the many sources that indicate the coercive practices that were inherent in the comfort women system (sources presented elsewhere in this talk page), indicated by phrasing such as 'vast majority' and 'thought to be, at the time, based on real events'. While I appreciate that Bavio the Benighted says they have responded to those sources below, it seems to be unduly moving away official and neutral sources, especially by only focusing on one particular source (ie. Yoshida's novels) to advance this 'wholly voluntary' viewpoint that the this lead sentence seems to be suggesting. This is not to mention some of the sources cited don't seem to support the lead sentence's suggestion. The references to Soh, Park and Yi, for instance, only note that there were some women who enlisted voluntarily, without supporting the claim that "the vast majority of comfort women had been legally contracted for the job and were well-remunerated for their services". In any case, the rest of the article already addresses some of the user's concern.

What matters is what made the term 'comfort women' notable. The analogy to the Nazi Party seems irrelevant here, which is a broad-ranging topic and is notable for reasons outside of the user's selected events. On the other hand, the term 'comfort women' has become notable due to the sexual slavery issue. and is commonly used as such. As John B123 says, the generally held view is that most women who were considered comfort women were forced. John B123's suggested lead (along with agreement by Binksternet, Wtmitchell and STSC, though correct me if I'm wrong to assume so) seems to be better and there seems to be a consensus drawing around it. NettingFish15019 (talk) 04:24, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I feel my suggestion above does address all of these concerns quite well. Going point by point:

1. No sources indicate that coercive practices were inherent in the ianfu system in itself. Recruitment was left to local middlemen, some (though not necessarily the majority) of whom used coercive and deceptive tactics to recruit women. This practice seems to have extended not only to comfort stations, but to non-military, lower-class brothels as well. Also, this would not amount to sexual slavery, but would instead represent an instance of forced prostitution, given that the contracts were legal and that the women were remunerated relatively well based on Ramseyer's findings and e.g. the memoirs of Mun Ok-Ju.

2. The definition I suggested above does not assert that all or even a majority of comfort women had served voluntarily; as you say, this would not be supported by the sources. What it does claim is that the vast majority of comfort women were legally contracted and well-remunerated for their services. As per Ramseyer's paper, the brothels paid the prostitutes the equivalent of several years of salary in advance. This, in some cases, lead, according to e.g. Park's book, to fathers selling their daughters to the brothels. Again, this is forced prostitution and may indeed have been rampant at the time. This could explain why so few of the former comfort women chose to testify, since they may not have wished to incriminate their own parents. Either way, we have little evidence indicating that this would have affected the majority of comfort women, hence we should err on the side of caution and remove all conjecture regarding how the comfort women ended up in the brothels from the definition of the word itself.

3. The comfort woman system is inherently notable from a historical perspective, as it represents a rare attempt by a military to combat the spread of STDs and the incidence of wartime rape by providing soldiers with prostitutes. The 16 allegations of sexual slavery are in fact a relatively minor point of interest in this larger historical context.

4. The current definition is only supported by old sources based on financially motivated allegations by activists, as opposed to the suggested definition, which prioritizes new and neutral sources, thus achieving better alignment with Wikipedia's policies of Age matters, Biased or opinionated sources and WP:UNDUE. No recent official source supports the notion that the majority of comfort women had been illegally forced to work in the brothels (whether or not forced prostitution could have been legal in the 1930s - 1940s in Japan and China being a potential source of dispute) and it has been flatly rejected by some "official sources" such as the former Prime Minister of Japan (not that appealing to authority would matter in this context; authority alone will never prove anything unless corroborated or contradicted by actual, traceable evidence).

5. The term "comfort woman" or "ianfu" has a strict historical definition, referring to prostitutes (forced or voluntary) who served members of the military in brothels known as "comfort stations" established by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories during World War 2. This is the definition used by historians, and re-defining the term based on common conceptions would thus create a discrepancy between one part of the article using one definition and another part using another. My analogy to the Nazi Party does seem relevant here. The article mentions estimates of the numbers of comfort women, around 20 000 - 400 000. This is not the number of involuntary prostitutes―it is the total number of prostitutes who worked at comfort stations. Now, if we decide to redefine the term as "comfort women who were forced to work at the comfort stations", those estimates will no longer apply and would need to be removed. I suggest that if deemed notable enough, comfort women who were subjected to kidnappings and deceptive recruitment practices could be given their own article. However, this article pertains to the historical concept on a general level and should therefore prioritize neutral sources and historical accuracy.

I agree the suggested definition may be misleading in its current form, though. It could be more optimal to rephrase the final sentence by de-emphasizing the "vast majority" part and making the part about remuneration more objective, e.g. along the lines of:

"Comfort women were prostitutes who worked at military brothels ("comfort stations") established by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories during World War 2.

The brothels gained infamy following the publication of a novel depicting kidnappings and incarceration of girls into comfort stations by Japanese novelist Seiji Yoshida, which, at the time, was thought to be based on real events. This was followed by 16 testimonies by former comfort women concerning poor treatment as well as deceptive and coercive recruitment practices. These revelations incited international outrage, with many likening the brothels to institutions of sexual slavery, although this notion has recently been challenged by researchers in Korea, Japan and elsewhere whose findings indicate that most comfort women were legally contracted for the job and were well-remunerated relative to non-military prostitutes."

Unless I'm misunderstanding someone's argument, this version seems to address all concerns expressed thus far. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 06:41, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• I think it'd be easier for me to respond point by point first.

1. Many sources indicate that coercive practices were inherent, contrary to what you suggest. The UN Report, as well as the various sources already included in this talk page, clearly show that whatever the surface appearances there may have been, there was clear coercion. Not to mention, 'forced prostitution' is a sub-set of sexual slavery, with the sources mentioned clearly stating that many women were not remunerated or, if they were, inadequately. I've already responded to the Ramseyer report below. As for the memoirs you link, the reality is that whatever wages they may have gotten was severely inadequate compared to the state of the economy, to the point where the wage was mostly nominal. In any case, the representation of one woman does not counteract that systematic coercion that happened in the comfort women system.

2. It does, in fact do so, by your lead sentence as "comfort women were prostitutes", with no mention of coercion or sexual slavery, and the suggestion that "this notion (of sexual slavery) has been challenged", without referring to any sources that contradict the sources provided. It implies that the majority of women were not subjected to sexual slavery. Many of the documents relating to the comfort women system were destroyed, yet the research undertaken by the UN and US, as well as scholars such as Hayashi, Jonsoon and Szuzki. In any case, the sources provided in the suggested lead do not provide any support for the statement that "most comfort women were legally contracted for the job and were well-remunerated relative to non-military prostitutes"; they only acknowledge that some women enlisted. Soh, in particular notes that it would be dangerous to do so, and that it would risk advancing denialism and revisionism relating to comfort women.

3. A simple Google search shows that the comfort women is notable due to the sexual slavery issue. Most of the discussion around this topic, and indeed in this talk page, is around whether and how women were forced into providing sexual services. I don't know why there's so much focus on '16 allegations', given the ample sources already provided in the talk page.

4. Referencing 'biased or opinion sources' and 'WP:UNDUE' seems inadvisable here, as the sources that show that comfort women were mainly coerced are being ignored in favor of Ramseyer (who I've already addressed below). Also, the 'age matters' hyperlink again has little relevance, when the sources trying to show the consensus, or at least why this topic is notable, have not been rejected. Getting rid of any source just because it's older is not the purpose of this Wikipedia policy. In any case, if you want more recent sources, Ahn Yonson's 2020 book "Whose comfort? : body, sexuality and identities of Korean 'comfort women' and Japanese soldiers during WWII" shows that comfort women were mainly coerced. But this kind of 'who's got the most recent source' is, again, not the policy's purpose.

5. The lead sentence proposed that 'comfort women were mainly women and girls forced" already reflects historical accuracy. Comfort women as a term and concept is broadly notable due to the coercion. The Nazi Party on the other hand, is notable for a host of different reasons, and is therefore of little relevance here.

In any case, there seems to be a consensus around John B123 suggested lead and this is the one that should be followed. NettingFish15019 (talk) 07:43, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I'll break down the points further to make it easier to address specific arguments:

1. This point has already been rebuked, repeatedly even. Nowhere has anything of the sort been proven; it has only been assumed based on 16 potentially biased testimonies. If you feel I'm wrong, I urge you to cite your sources here.

1B. The point regarding whether or not the prostitutes were in fact well-remunerated by absolute standards has been addressed by the latest change in my suggestion. Based on Ramseyer's findings the prostitutes were indeed well-remunerated compared to non-military prostitutes, and based on Mun Ok-ju's memoir, they were not poor by any means. However, I agree absolute claims regarding their pay should be avoided in favor of relative ones.

1C. You mention sources stating that women were not remunerated. However, you do not cite a specific source. In addition, this fails to take into account the advance payment; the prostitutes received several years worth of money in advance for their services that they (or their parents) could use to pay off debts. This would explain why some received less pay than others.

2. The term "prostitute" does not indicate voluntary service. See the Wikipedia article on forced prostitution. Defining the comfort women as prostitutes is an objective fact supported by all sources, even if they were, indeed, coerced to serve in the comfort stations. This definition will also hold water if it turns out that most comfort women did, indeed, enlist of their own free will. This is why the definition itself should be expressed as such, without taking a stance on whether or not the majority were served voluntarily or against their will. This is the only fully neutral, fully objective definition that has been proposed thus far.

2B. Here, again, it's worth noting that "legally contracted" simply means that there existed a legal contract that bound them to work at the brothels. The issue of remuneration, again, should take into account the advance payments paid to the comfort women or their parents. And while you don't mention the particular quote by Soh that warned agained revisionism, I believe she was referring to the notion that the majority of comfort women served out of their own volition. Volition is never mentioned in the suggested introduction, so it perfectly addresses this concern in particular.

3. You confuse Wikipedia's definition of notability, which is a measure of whether or not a topic deserves its own article, with relevance. WP:N directly states that "determining notability does not necessarily depend on things such as fame, importance, or popularity", and instead defines notability as a characteristic of any topic that is sufficiently covered by reliable sources. Here, too, the nazi analogy illustrates the point. A simple Google search shows that nazis are mainly "notable" for their involvement, either direct or indirect, with concentration camps and other atrocities; but that does not mean that the majority of the nazis operated concentration camps or that they took part in other war crimes, though, nor that the majority were directly involved with the initiation of WW2. Saying that the subject is "notable", in Wikipedia's terms, simply means that it deserves its own article.

3B. I focus on the 16 testimonies because they are the primary source that most secondary sources cited in this talk page rely on. If you can point me to any other primary source (aside from Yoshiaki's 1995 and 2000 books, which I mention in my first and latest posts in the Relevance of Ramseyer section) I would be interested in examining them as well, of course.

4. You mention Ahn Yonson's 2020 somehow "showing that the majority of comfort women were forced to work in comfort stations". I personally do not have access to this book at the moment, so I would appreciate it if you would elaborate how the author managed to prove this. Here, verifiability, namely, the traceability of the argument is of paramount importance. Based on the summary of the book, it does not seem to contain any new research on the subject of volition, unlike Park's, Soh's and Ramseyer's works, in which case Age matters does not apply here. Also, I hope you would refrain from misrepresenting my position: just like I never espoused the idea that comfort women were "100% voluntary" (because this notion is neither supported by hard facts nor logic) here, I made no calls for the removal of sources based on their age. I said they need to be deprioritized relative to new sources, which is what Wikipedia's policy dictates, i.e. that the article should no longer be written from a one-sided perspective based on old, potentially biased testimonies. And regarding your arguments on Ramseyer, I addressed them in the relevant section below (I marked the post with a ■ to make it easier to find).

5. This definition is inherently based on opinion, not facts. Again, the estimated numbers of comfort women mentioned in the article are the total numbers of prostitutes who worked at the comfort stations; here, we use the term "comfort woman" to denote all prostitutes, both forced and voluntary. If we then decide to redefine the term as "girls and women mainly forced to work as sex slaves in comfort stations" we are making an unsubstantiated assumption and these numbers may no longer apply. Again, assertions must be strongly supported by evidence, as per WP:VERIFY, and currently, there is no strong evidence to suggest whether or not 99% of comfort women worked in comfort stations out of their own will.

6. Consensus is irrelevant if unsupported by reliable sources or if affected by systemic bias on the editors' part, as per Wikipedia's policies. If no one is unable to counter arguments in favor of removing the "sex slave" definition and yet the consensus settles on retaining the non-neutral, one-sided presentation, we will simply have to call in more editors for dispute resolution to continue the debate until an evidence-based consensus is reached.

So, the following still seems to be our best candidate for a neutral, objective definition:

"Comfort women were prostitutes who worked at military brothels ("comfort stations") established by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories during World War 2.

The brothels gained infamy following the publication of a novel depicting kidnappings and incarceration of girls into comfort stations by Japanese novelist Seiji Yoshida, which, at the time, was thought to be based on real events. This was followed by 16 testimonies by former comfort women concerning poor treatment as well as deceptive and coercive recruitment practices. These revelations incited international outrage, with many likening the brothels to institutions of sexual slavery, although this notion has recently been challenged by researchers in Korea, Japan and elsewhere whose findings indicate that most comfort women were legally contracted for the job and were well-remunerated relative to non-military prostitutes."

The leading sentence, at the very least, seems indisputably to be the only way to objectively define the term "comfort woman", since this is in complete agreement with all sources presented thus far and is contradicted by none of them. What follows next is more arbitrary, and suggestions are certainly welcome here (e.g. whether Seiji Yoshida deserves a mention, whether the wording of the following sentences is misleading, etc) but even in its current form it does seem to address all concerns expressed thus far without cherry-picking evidence or ignoring the other side of the argument. You said it fails to mention evidence supporting the idea of widespread sexual slavery, but this is simply not true: it cites the 16 testimonies that all the other sources, including the 1996 UN report, use as their primary source, presenting the best evidence we currently have to corroborate the notion that a significant fraction of comfort women may have been forced or deceived into working at the comfort stations. It also does not directly dispute this notion; rather, it mentions that the notion of widespread sexual slavery has merely been "challenged" based on newer research, which is absolutely true and should be mentioned near the definition as per WP:NPOV. Again, I think this introduction encompasses all of our points of view quite well. ■ Bavio the Benighted (talk) 09:44, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I'll need to re-read all of that more carefully to better appreciate the detail but, overall, it seems clear that this discussion now ranges over several separate usages of the term comfort women -- • the term itself, • the program, and • the women.-- and that there's enough meat on each of those bones for a separate article. This article is long and complicated and seems destined to become longer and more complicated; so... how about recasting this article as an article about the term and, in that article, summarizing and linking to separate articles about the Japanese WW-II program and about the women? Particulars about those separate articles could be worked out on their separate talk pages. The mechanics of this would be complicated. An existing article titled The Comfort Women is about the book with that title, there are currently 42 articles in Category: Comfort women, and appearances of the term are no doubt wikilinked to here from many other WP articles. I won't attempt to even guess at the complications here, but I'll initially suggest articles titled Comfort women (the current article title) about the term, WW-II sexual slavery#Japan about the program (a detail article of the current Sexual slavery#Japan during World War II article#section), and WW-II Japanese comfort women about the women (with sections about voluntary and conscripted women and, probably, subsections for notable conscripts and links to individual articles about some of them). Such a reorganization would require a lot of work and, while I might participate, I'm not really into this topic enough to be a major contributor. Something to think about and perhaps discuss, though. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:24, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

@Bavio the Benighted: I have reverted your changes to the lead. You need consensus to make these changes, "most recent suggestion" isn't the way it works. --John B123 (talk) 20:27, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@John B123: The current consensus has remained uncontested on the talk page for 9 days. You can see this above: no one has mentioned any counterarguments for more than a week. This indicates that the lead sentence should absolutely be changed, given that no one is defending it anymore.

If you feel the previous lead was better, please provide your reasoning above and wait at least 3 days so that other editors have time to discuss your suggestion. If you feel you have nothing more to discuss, the current best suggestion (the one you just reverted) will replace the old, non-neutral lead sentence as per WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, WP:AGE MATTERS and WP:BIASED as explained in the arguments here and in the Relevance of Ramseyer section.

Note that reverting changes that have been established on the talk page without making any attempts to challenge the consensus amounts to vandalism, as per WP:VD, especially in the case of sourced, good-faith edits. The same can be said about the recent "minor" edit by STSC which apparently attempted to shut down the discussion in favor of keeping the old, less neutral, contested lead.

And this would apply even if consensus has not been established though, in this case, it has―the arguments presented here are leaning heavily in favor of the above suggestion compared to the current version―since the change is based on several sources citing new primary evidence, gaining weight over the old sources as per WP:AGE MATTERS.

I'm beginning to suspect strong systemic bias on the editors' part for this page in particular, given that so many here seem to be arguing in favor of of a biased lead. Defining the concept using the word "sex slave" in itself is clearly in violation of WP:IMPARTIAL, given that the sources indicate that the comfort women were prostitutes by definition and in practice. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 20:53, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Bavio the Benighted: What "current consensus"? Do you mean your latest suggestion which has been opposed by one and supported by none, that's not a consensus. Suggesting systemic bias because other editors disagree with your view is not acceptable. --John B123 (talk) 21:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Bavio never had a temporary consensus to remake the article into a negationist vehicle. Bavio's arguments against the UN source were ineffective. The UN source stands as definitive. Binksternet (talk) 21:49, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

--John B123 (talk) 21:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@John B132: See my post above, starting with "I'll break down the points further to make it easier to address specific arguments:" and ending with a ■. All of the arguments given there are currently uncontested. No one is defending the old lead sentence in favor of the suggested, more neutral lead. This in itself already means that the consensus is heavily shifted in favor of the suggestion above.

And given that some users here appear to be in favor of keeping the disputed definition despite all evidence indicating that it is both incorrect and impartial, clearly violating WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, WP:AGE MATTERS and WP:BIASED, suspecting systemic bias seems reasonable at this point. And if you don't find my arguments above convincing, Ramseyer's old paper sums up the WP:NPOV issue with our article here much better than I could: all of the sources pointing to a "sex slave" narrative are based on a single, extremely dubious primary source (Chong Dae Hyup) and contradicted by new findings (i.e. new primary sources) by independent investigators such as Park Yu-ha and Sarah Soh. If you or anyone else has a counterargument I'm more than happy to continue the discussion, but I've been waiting for a while now and the debate seems to have ended in favor of my suggestion, as you can see from the post above.

And indeed, I found it telling that user STSC tried to downplay the dispute by removing the discussion template from the leading sentence, despite being unable to defend the current definition against my arguments here and in the Relevance of Ramseyer section, and even marked their edit as "minor" so as to avoid notifying editors. This convinced me that those in favor of the old version likely have no substantial counterarguments left, and are now choosing to engage in vandalism instead to maintain the non-neutral definition. Needless to say I wasn't amused by this development, not after having spent so much time and energy arguing logically in favor of the more neutral, objective definition while faced with what seemed to be systemic bias by other editors. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 21:57, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

All of the arguments given there are currently uncontested. No one is defending the old lead sentence in favor of the suggested, more neutral lead. This in itself already means that the consensus is heavily shifted in favor of the suggestion above. For the consensus to shift to your suggestion it needs people to say they agree with it, which nobody has. --John B123 (talk) 22:17, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. No one is able (or willing) to come up with any counterarguments anymore, yet several users remain strongly opposed to the adoption of a more neutral definition. Indeed, several users here have chosen to uncritically parrot the claims of old and disputed sources while simultaneously blindly rejecting any evidence that contradicts their views. One user has previously resorted to edit-war to push their cause (and managed to get me blocked despite being the initiator), another to vandalism, seemingly to shut down any further discussion.

I wonder what could explain these contradictions. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 22:46, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, you may well be heading for another ban with your continual accusations of bias and vandalism against other editors who disagree with your viewpoint. --John B123 (talk) 23:07, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Unlikely. I never accused e.g. NettingFish15019 of bias or vandalism despite having expressed disagreement on the subject. The ones I did accuse are blatantly engaging in sneaky edits and edit-warring.

Check out the current editing history of the main article. Two users have explicitly removed calls for discussion from the leading sentence despite having been unable to present any evidence corroborating their stance for a month now. Regardless of your stance in the debate, I'm sure you agree this seems to be an attempt to prevent the establishment of a new consensus, which is both biased (by definition) and runs directly against Wikipedia's policies (hence, vandalism).

At this point it seems we should submit this topic for dispute resolution, given that none of the current editors seem willing to engage in any further debate. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 23:31, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• If I may jump in, I once suggested an edit to the lead sentence as well, for reasons similar to the ones suggested by Bavio the Benighted. I think it is relevant I bring some of the points that were unaddressed.

My proposal was to replace "Comfort women were women and girls forced into being sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army" By "Comfort women were women and girls who worked in the military brothels for the Imperial Japanese Army, many of whom having been forced into being sex slaves". The proposed change is motivated by a violation of wikipedia's neutral point of view policy of the previous formulation on 2 points.

1) The first one is about the implication that Comfort Women equate sex slaves. While the modern usage of the term often confounds with sexual slavery, historically speaking, this is far from being established. As a matter of fact, while widespread coercion existed, the amplitude of coercion itself is not established by historians either. Sarah Soh, a Korean American scholar, deplores in her book "The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan" how equating comfort women’s experiences into a uniform sexual slavery narrative overlooks the complexity of an evolving empire-wide system incorporating “licensed prostitution and indentured sexual labor, wartime military rape and battlefield abduction into sexual slavery.”. This view is shared by many other historians, including Korean scholar Park Yu-ha. There is no question that the Comfort system led to the sexual violation of tens of thousands of women. In spite of this, definitions such as the one provided in the first sentence of the article do not offer an accurate view of the complex comfort system, and rather further aggravates the misalignment between the academic understanding and the much needed public discourse.

2) The second point is the suggestion that the Japanese Imperial Army was directly behind the coercion, as implied by the formulation "forced into being sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army". Once again, while the existence of kidnapping and coercion is clear, there is no evidence pointing to the Japanese Imperial Army, on an institutional capacity, having ordered these acts. As noted by Prof. Jinyul Ju, "several Korean researchers found that some victims had originally testified that their families had sold them to traffickers or pimps, and that comfort women were the victims of deceptive recruitment and coercion by Korean traffickers or pimps rather than the Japanese government. For sharing their findings, the researchers were prosecuted for slander, and in 2017, one of them was fined." There are other sources that shows the Japanese government in fact seeked to punish these contractors and agents who kidnapped some girls. The reformulation would fix this implicit bias by adopting a more neutral tone.

On a last note, and interestingly, the article used to be more nuanced in the past - see Comfort_women&oldid=426326787, for example. If you retrace the history, you would see the nuance is gradually being lost, often without proper justification. It is really crucial that the Wikipedia article stays in tune with the latest academic findings rather than merely parroting the most popular narrative of the time, as the issue of Comfort Women is a topic which tends to be politically charged and thus often targeted for manipulation. I would strongly invite you to read some of the commentaries and opinions expressed by Korean Professors, who describe how the Comfort Women mainstream narrative has become virtually impossible to contest both publicly and academically without bearing the consequence of being ostracized and, sometimes, even imprisoned. As quoted by these Korean scholars, "The suppression of critical discourse too often means that Koreans, including students, lack awareness of arguments and data challenging the dominant narrative".

Regardless of the decision, I kindly and strongly ask the editors here take the time to carefully consider the available resources, if necessary fix some of the unjustified past edits, and update the page based on the available academic work, since, if not on Wikipedia, where else would these students turn to to get information that would broaden their understanding? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doragoram (talk • contribs) 17:25, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

References

Proposal

Seeing as this discussion is seems to have stalled, I propose that the lead, currently "Comfort women were women and girls forced into being sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army ...", be changed to "Comfort women were mainly women and girls forced into being sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army ...", i.e. inserting the word mainly. --John B123 (talk) 21:20, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support. This gives a proportionate nod to those who say that the comfort women program includes the paid prostitutes who were the first recruits to the early part of the program, when Japan was first invading mainland Asia. But the largest body of comfort women, the main subject of this article, is the many thousands of girls and women who were forced into sex slavery during World War II. Binksternet (talk) 21:46, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support. I have no problem with there being the word 'mainly'. It acknowledges that there have been some women who were nominally paid, but that the overriding concern in this article is the women were was coerced into being 'comfort women', which is what most people and academic research into this topic focuses on. In any case, I thought there was already a consensus forming around this proposal in the above section, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Sure, there is some opposition, but 'consensus' doesn't mean unanimous approval. NettingFish15019 (talk) 01:15, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
• I'm in opposition given that this definition is inaccurate, unobjective and violates WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, WP:AGE MATTERS and WP:BIASED. Based on newer and more reliable sources, the word "sex slave" should be replaced with the word "prostitute", possibly followed by a note along the lines of "in current usage, the term 'comfort woman' is often used to denote those of the comfort women who were forced to work at the brothels".

The old definition is only supported by sources indirectly citing Chong Dae Hyup, which, as described by Sarah Soh, Park Yu-ha and Ramseyer (reference) is a far-right nationalist group known to have pressured comfort women into fabricating testimonies. The UN Special Rapporteur, who wrote the 1996 report Binksternet seems to consider to be the holy grail of sources for this particular topic (despite exhibiting several red flags as I pointed out below) also received her information directly from Chong Dae Hyup without performing any fact-checking on her end. Indeed, there is no evidence that a significant fraction of comfort women had been subjected to sexual slavery, as I have already proved both in the Lead sentence and the Relevance of Ramseyer sections. Again, I highly recommend perusing this paper or reading Soh's and Yu-ha's books for those unaware of Chong Dae Hyup's influence on the current narrative and how it goes against the findings of several independent sources in both Korea and Japan.

For a neutral definition, "Comfort women were prostitutes who worked at military brothels ("comfort stations") established by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories during World War 2." seems optimal. The word "prostitute" makes no assumptions regarding volition―it is a well-documented fact that prostitutes are often subjected to workplace violence and human trafficking, which matches well with our understanding of comfort women. All sources agree on this definition (only those citing Chong Dae Hyup are motivated to make it less impartial by using the term "sex slave"). Therefore, according to WP:NPOV, this is the definition that should be used in the article. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 22:36, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you couldn't resist edit warring at the same time you were trying to gain consensus. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 01:05, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support addition of "mainly". Absolutely no way will I support the supposedly neutral definition that labels sex slaves as prostitutes. What's next, calling African slaves migrant workers? Meters (talk) 04:15, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
• Neutral - In the first sentence of the article, it actually defines the topic "comfort women" in general. We should not attempt to define the meaning of comfort women as in a dictionary, so adding the specific word "mainly" is unnecessary. Besides, I don't see any sources that include "mainly" in their descriptions of comfort women. STSC (talk) 20:21, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Relevance of Ramseyer

Added discussion section for the relevance of Ramseyer's view. I realize that he's a university professor, but not sure about the relevance of his view here. First, it's just added in the 'History' section with the opinion that 'comfort women' were not forced, which pushes a claim that effectively denies what most of the article states and which could add false balance. Second, it's published in Japan Forward, a nationalist and far-right (according to some media outlets like Forbes) tabloid newspaper published by Sankei Shimbun (See WP:NPOV's section on Bias in Sources). I would delete it, as I have been trying to do and as it's new content; from what I understand from WP:ONUS, it's up to whoever first added Ramseyer's view here to include it in the article. Just in case someone tries to report edit-warring though, I added a discussion here. NettingFish15019 (talk) 07:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Do you have that forbes article calling japan forward far right and nationalist? "Tabloid" certainly is not accurate. I dont think Ramseyers claim denies most of the article, some women were certainly coerced that however does not make them sex slaves, i dont think Ramseyers believes no women were coerced at all. He is not the only one who denies that comfort women were sex slaves historian ikuhito hata does as well as a number of korean professors including Lew Seok-choon of Yonsei University, Park Yuha of Sejong University, and Professor Lee Yong-hoon of Seoul University to name just a few. It is not an unpopular position XiAdonis (talk) 08:23, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
• Sankei Shimbun is the fifth major newspaper, and still has 1.3 milion circulation in Japan last year. It is not recognized as a "Tabloid" media. And there is no bias in comparison with official Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan) documents on this topic.Yasuo Miyakawa (talk) 11:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Here's the Forbes article ("https://www.forbes.com/sites/adelsteinjake/2017/10/30/japan-may-be-moving-right-politically-but-its-communist-party-still-holds-some-sway-with-voters/?sh=22e23ed07dfc"). On the note about 'tabloid', I'm not referring to Sankei Shimbun, but its publication 'Japan Forward'.

On whether there was coercion, I'd like to make two points. First, I'm aware that there is recent argument by the Japanese government that there was no coercion involved. However, the broader consensus is that, in the vast majority of cases, there was significant coercion and no 'volunteers'. International sources include the United Nations Report in 1996, which details that women were deceived with promise of high-paying jobs and abducted and defined the comfort stations as 'military slavery', , UN special rapporteur Gay J. McDougall, who concluded that the Japanese Army violated the prohibition against slavery, and Amnesty International , as well as official positions of countries like the United States (see United States House of Representatives House Resolution 121), China, South Korea and Malaysia. Academic sources include Gabriel Jonsson of Stockholm University , Hirofumi Hayashi of Kanto Gakuin University , John Lie of UC Berkley , and Shogo Szuzki of the University of Manchester , all of whom support and provide evidence that the vast majority of comfort women were coerced. Ueno Chizuko of Kyoto University particularly cautions against the 'volunteer' theory, for several reasons. First, the fact that "no positive sources exist supporting claims that comfort women were forced labor" must be treated with doubt, as "it is well known that the great majority of potentially damaging official documents were destroyed in anticipation of the Allied occupation". Second, the relative silence of victims caused their later testimony to be denied as historical evidence, despite the fact that "the comfort women system succeeded in keeping the women who had been made comfort women silent" and who later gave evidence with the help of women's support groups (at pg 131).

The fact that the vast majority of comfort women were coerced was also acknowledged by the Japanese government until recently (up until around the 1990s). For example, the Japanese government in 1993 admitted coercion in recruiting comfort women, though denying any compensation in documents such as in Takagi Kenichi's address to the Association for Asian Studies in 1994, and the 1993 Kono Statement, until it was questioned by then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The result is that the broad consensus (excluding the current arguments made by the Japanese Government) is that the broad majority of comfort women were coerced.

Second, regardless of the arguments above, I'm not sure about the relevance of including Ramseyer's viewpoint in the history section, unlike possibly the viewpoint of the Japanese government, which Yasuo Miyakawa asserts. The contribution to the article is minimal with a simple assertion, which appears to make no significant contribution to the article as a whole and goes against the broader consensus presented by the article. To include his view would be to invite false balance and should therefore be deleted. NettingFish15019 (talk) 13:57, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• General note regards to JAPAN Forward, correction of information: It is not a news-site/publication of Sankei Shimbun, and is operated by JAPAN Forward association, which is a membership organization, although its chief editor came from Sankei Shinbun. It is difficult to scale or categorize its political position at the moment, as it is not published by a corporate publisher. Finlay, it is not a kind of 'tabloid'. Dr.Yasuo Miyakawa (talk) 10:50, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Japan Forward's editor Yasuo Naito claims that they are "well-reasoned conservatism". This is misleading: it is obviously a far-right political opinion publication, as it carries items of interest to far-right readers such as criticism of South Korea, promoting Japan's defense forces, criticism of the United Nations, and North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens, conveying the information with a far-right slant. The board of directors has Sankei Shimbun people on it. Ramseyer admits he cannot read or speak Korean, so it's a miracle that he could be considered an expert on the Korean aspects of the comfort women issue. His scholarly paper is based on Japanese records, and is very limited in scope. Binksternet (talk) 21:17, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Criticism of Ramseyer's findings, on the other hand, is based on 16 (financially motivated) testimonies by former comfort women, who likely had no idea of how the system worked outside their personal experience. In other words, both sides' claims are supported by very limited evidence. In addition, the evidence cited by the critics lacks statistical significance―i.e. there is no indication that the ianfu system had been any more predatory than any other system of prostitution, even by modern standards. See my (numbered) arguments above in the Lead sentence section and below for more thorough arguments. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 06:28, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

References

• The article you linked made no mention of Japan forward and while they did mention the Sankei Shinbun in passing they did not call them far right or nationalist. I understood that you were calling japan forward a tabloid but i disagree with that.

The arguments of the Japanese government is not that there was no coercion involved in any cases at all, this is a misconception. I would caution against using sources from the 90s like the ones from the UN as completely definitive as consensus changes with time, with the unearthing of new evidence, and with the dying off of political and ideological motivations, they should be cross referenced with the most recent scholarship and have their validity properly tested. The United States House of Representatives House Resolution 121 used the debunked and now retracted seiji yoshida memoirs as proof, a group of Japanese academics and historians criticized it heavily in an advertisement ran in the Washington Post. It cannot be taken seriously and im not sure if it counts as a binding and official position of the US government or just a ruling by lawmakers at the time. Amnesty International is ideologically driven and is not an authority on history, they are a human rights focused organization that ironically has been criticized for violating the human rights of its staff "Staff reported multiple accounts of discrimination on the basis of race and gender and which women, staff of colour and LGBTQI employees were targeted or treated unfairly." Multiple governments including the United States has criticized Amnesty for one-sided reporting I understand this has nothing to do with their claims about the comfort women and i am not using these criticism to counter those, i think its fine to include their view in the article if properly attributed but they are not focused on historical research, the work of historians should be preferred.

The first sentence in Gabriel Jonsson's paper you linked is already incorrect "About 80 percent of the estimated 70.000-200.000 comfort women Japan took by coercion from 1932-1945 were Korean", the majority of women were not Korean to state this as an absolute fact puts the entire paper into question. The man further states "Japan has given no official apology to the victims" this is an outright lie.. Numerous apologies have been made, nothing in this paper should be taken seriously imo. I've only read the abstract of Hirofumi Hayashi paper but it seems to be about whether the Japanese military at the time held culpability for the women who were coerced or if it fell to individual brokers and recruiters. He takes the position that the military was responsible, the abstract makes no mention of how many women were coerced and how many were prostitutes, the word "slavery" is also not used at all I dont think the paper affirms what you used it as a source for. I dont have access to any of those papers outside of Gabriel Jonsson's so i cannot comment on them at all in depth, im not qualified to dispute them either and all i can do is point to other historians and academics that have published research saying otherwise. To be clear im not attempting to remove the "sex slavery" wording im fine with the article retaining that even if i disagree with it. To continue to comment on what you've said though, the kono statement states two things i want to point out

"The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military." this seems to contradict Hirofumis's paper, you are presenting alot of sources and claiming a historical consensus however there is not even consensus between your sources, admittedly this issue is very complex and i dont believe this level of disagreement can be avoided but that only pokes holes at any claim of true historical consensus.

"In many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc." again no claim is made on the number of coerced women

This paper published by Ramseyer goes quite in depth and is not a "simple assertion" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0144818820301848, removing his view because it contradicts some of the article is the wrong move, i think ive illustrated why your claim at a historical consensus against Ramseyer is incorrect. I do think the article can be improved by properly stating Ramseyers view and explaining why he came to that conclusion which would fix your criticism that it makes no significant contribution to the article outside of stating his view. XiAdonis (talk) 19:57, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

References

• Forbes pretty clearly states "The party's newspaper, Akahata (赤旗), has over 1.12 million readers and one weekly magazine predicts they may eclipse Japan's far right newspaper, Sankei Shimbun in the near future". Nippon also says "Sankei Shimbun, which takes pride in its position at the far right of the spectrum"(Nippon), which extends "Japan Forward" because it publishes it.

As for your claims, I'd like to avoid any further general discussion on the topic if possible, especially as Wikipedia talk pages aren't for that. I'll respond briefly to your points though. On your overall comments on the UN, US and Amnesty International, I brought these up to show that the broader consensus, at least in the international community, which has undertaken its own discussions on this subject, is that comfort women were largely coerced. You can't limit the issue to the "work of historians" when this issue has strong political implications.

Specifically, for the UN, I wanted to show that the international community has already undertook its own research and concluded that the vast majority of comfort women were coerced; the lack of any subsequent UN reports and their thorough research makes it so that the 1990s UN reports are still good and reliable. As for the US House Resolution, I can't find anything to support the "retracted memoirs" or "letter". In any case, I only highlighted it to show that the US's official position is that comfort women were largely coerced. You can't say that it can't be taken seriously when House resolutions express the collective sentiment of the House on a particular issue, which in this case is comfort women. I also don't think the House Resolution has been reversed by the US government. It's been endorsed by countries including the European Union, the Netherlands, Canada and the Philippines (see here)), which demonstrates the larger consensus around this issue. As for Amnesty International, I'm not sure what relevance the 'toxic working culture' claim has here. For the US link, your source doesn't seem to critize Amnesty International, but only the claims that the "US is a top offender of human rights". In any case previous Wikipedia notability discussion came to the consensus that it is a largely reliable source (see here and here.

As for the criticisms you make against the sources, I'm not going to go into each of your claims to avoid a general discussion, except to note that I can't find any sources that dispute Jonsson's claim (nor have any been linked here, except for the Japanese government's view). In any case, the claim that "because one thing is wrong, it means everything must be wrong" would be dangerous, and would probably leave this page, if not the majority of Wikipedia, source-less. The historical and broad consensus I'm trying to show is that "the vast majority of comfort women" were forced, which each of these sources state and provide evidence for. This Open Letter by around 150 academics also support this. As the vast majority of academic literature supports this broader consensus, adding Ramseyer's view doesn't help advance this article as a whole. The only sources that I can find which possibly dispute this either come from the Japanese government (whose views are already in the article and are relevant to the article as a whole as they are a stakeholder) or right-to-far-right newspapers/blogs, which by Wikipedia notability guidelines should not be included.

I'll conclude by saying that the Japanese government had acknowledged that the vast majority of comfort women were forced and changed its stance changed post-1990s (here). Most of the dispute that the Japanese government has had is whether the Japanese government itself is responsible for compensation, not whether most comfort women were forced. In any case, I fail to find any sources or statements by other countries which support Japan's position. Ramseyer's view should not be included in this article, as it adds little to it as a whole while going against the broader academic and international consensus.

In any case, we need to reach a consensus on how to deal with the reference to Ramseyer sooner or later. NettingFish15019 (talk) 03:16, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

We must remove the Ramseyer piece from Japan Forward as it is a far-right, politically motivated misrepresentation of the issue. Ramseyer is much more careful to remain fact-based in his scholarly journal article "Contracting for sex in the Pacific War", from the International Review of Law and Economics, scheduled for print publication in March 2021. In the latter piece, Ramseyer restrains himself from claiming that all or most comfort women were voluntary. He discusses the voluntary aspect in depth, describing the economics of the program, but he does not deny the forced sex slavery. Binksternet (talk) 06:48, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Alright, it took a while but now I have read through all the sources you cited and fact-checked the sources they cited. Having traced all claims to their root, I can confidently assert that there is no "consensus" and that the vast majority of comfort women, probably more than 99%, were voluntary prostitutes.

The New York Times article only mentions the Japanese government acknowledging that "many" women were coerced to work in the brothels. There are no mentions of actual numbers or how the government came to that conclusion (not that they ever could reach that conclusion with any degree of certainty, given that records were disposed of in 1945). Based on the overwhelming weight of evidence, the actual numbers seem to have been extremely low compared to those of voluntary prostitutes. It seems that the Japanese government simply went with the prevailing narrative without performing an internal investigation, given that they present no factual basis for their admission, same as with the US and EU.

The UN rapporteur's 1996 report is based on the 16 testimonies by the same handful victims who have been cited by other sources as well, which is far from sufficient to indicate widespread sexual slavery. The rest of their "evidence" simply proves the existence of military brothels:

Though little documentation remains that bears witness to the recruitment methods, the actual operation of the system is widely attested in records which survive from the period. The Japanese military meticulously recorded the details of a prostitution system that appeared as to be regarded as merely another amenity. The rules for comfort stations in Shanghai, Okinawa, other parts of Japan and China and the Philippines still survive, detailing, inter alia, rules for hygiene, hours of service, contraception, payment of women and prohibitions of alcohol and weapons. These regulations are some of the most incriminating of the documents to have survived the war."

Yes, you read right. The most incriminating piece of evidence proves that the Japanese military established the brothels, took care of hygiene, prohibited weapons and alcohol (probably for the safety of the workers, given that the army had paid them in advance), mandated use of contraception, had predetermined hours of service and payments for the comfort women. I.e. the only solid evidence we have literally suggests, according to the UN 1996 report, that the comfort stations were high class brothels and that comfort women were treated like high class prostitutes. This is exactly in line with Ramseyer's findings.

The UN report also mentions an isolated case of brutality involving 70 victims in Micronesia, but mentions no details whatsoever, making the claim impossible to fact-check and rendering it dubious at best.

The official position of the United States in 2007 has absolutely zero value given that they used that Seiji Yoshida's fictional novel as "evidence" which is solid proof indicating that they literally couldn't be bothered to fact-check their sources and which immediately invalidates all "authority opinions" that effectively copy paste the US 2007 stance.

As for the rest of the academic sources you cite: Jonsson does not give any evidence. Hayashi refers to a statement by JWRC which makes a vague reference to "official documents" without giving a single example (presumably referring to those that prove involvement of military in the establishment and maintenance of the brothels) and then mentions two other cases of purported coercion of women, which may well be fringe cases, given that there were supposedly 50 000 - 400 000 women working in the brothels compared to the <500 reported victims. After some more digging / trying to trace their sources I found this as well as two different accounts of police having rounded up women, once in Borneo and another time in East Timor. So the evidence boils down to three isolated cases of abuse of authority by the special police (or members of the army; some of these accounts have absolutely no details and one was based on an indirect account of other people's testimonies, making it even harder to discern the line between fact and fiction). None of the evidence leads us to conclude that any more than a thousand of comfort women would have been coerced to serve against their own will, which is far from the majority and seems easier to attribute to actions by individual malicious actors rather than all the local middlemen or the military as a whole. Most of the evidence in the publications you cite only serve to corroborate the idea that the system was indeed based on voluntary service, given how difficult it is to find accounts that point to the contrary.

If there is a "wide consensus" then it must be based on solid evidence. Any consensus without proof to back it up is going to crumble as soon as someone points out the lack of evidence. And when we look at the evidence, we find that until now, a wide consensus has only been reached on two points:

* 1. The Imperial Army established the comfort stations to provide soldiers with voluntary prostitutes (quite obvious given that one of their goals was to prevent rape) and was involved in their maintenance, and

* 2. Some (at least 10-40 based on testimonies, maybe up to 1000) women were probably forced to work in them against their own will. This is if we take their word for it; they presumably wouldn't want to lie, despite the obvious financial incentives, the possibility they might want to lie simply to incite hatred to force an apology from Japan for their own isolated cases of misfortune, them probably wanting to double down on their claims given that if they back down they might lose face, and political factors such as nationalists whispering in their ears telling them to be as tough as they possible could.

Everyone presumably agrees that some prostitutes, some 10-40 of them, were screwed by the system and forced to work at the stations. Just as with all prostitution even in the modern world, not all of the workers enter the profession out of their own will. Nothing else has been agreed upon by academics, and you can see this in the way most well-cited historians refer to the events, being careful not to imply anything more than that some comfort women were victims of the system.

Post-2010 much more evidence has been brought to the light of day, such as testimonies and memoirs by non-abused comfort women whose voices had long been censored by the Korean activists, which makes it clear that no pre-2010 narratives can be taken at face value. In fact, the idea that most were coerced seems to have been entirely made up by Seiji Yoshida after which the notion was adopted (uncritically) by activists. Many of the women did testify of abuse (with 16 out of 238 registered survivors claiming that they had been abducted by soldiers) but these testimonies were later contradicted by accounts by other ex-comfort women, whose experiences were much more in line with what you would expect from a system of legal prostitution. Based or Ramseyer's research and e.g. the memoirs of Mun Oku-chu, most comfort women could earn a fortune in their job. That's a far cry from "sexual slavery"; it doesn't even seem remotely like what we would expect from a system of forced prostitution. Those alternative accounts were thoroughly censured and shamed in Korea, and at least one of the comfort women had seemingly blatantly lied about being abducted from home in the middle of the night contrary to her own earlier testimony. In light of all the new evidence, at this point, no one seems to be seriously trying to argue that anything more than a vocal minority had been forced into sexual slavery within the system, and even in these cases it seems highly likely that none of the girls were actually abducted, but were instead sold to the establishments by their parents and middlemen, presumably to pay off a debt or simply to earn money.

And this should go without saying, but note that appealing to authority is a logical fallacy. Actual authoritative sources always detail the source of the information. If one authority says one thing and another authority says another, that's the point where we start scrutinizing the evidence behind the assertions to get to the bottom of things. Almost all of the citations in this case point to the victim testimonies and nothing else. None of the sources you cite address evidence that surfaced in the 2010s by independent investigators much of which directly contradicts earlier consensus (not surprising, considering that that "consensus" was established almost purely based on 16 testimonies).

The open letter you linked only mentions the few testimonies we already know of, as well as the military involvement in establishing and maintaining the brothels. Based on these facts alone, we can conclude that perhaps 20-1000 comfort women were treated as sex slaves, while the rest of the 50 000 - 400 000 worked in the stations out of their own volition. As of now, the Wikipedia article uncritically parrots the claims of a vocal minority amounting to 0.01% - 1% of all comfort women based solely on a couple of anecdotes, second-hand sources and hearsay. The article is clearly not up to Wikipedia's standards in terms of objectivity or neutrality; it is heavily biased in favor of a single outdated narrative, which also happens to be pushed by some 'academics' without evidence, probably out of political reasons or pure ignorance.

If you can find a source that mentions an actual study or records, or even indirect (but convincing) evidence that would facilitate quantifying the number of women who were coerced as opposed to being hired through legal channels, feel free to link it here. It doesn't seem like anything of the sort exists, though, in which case the article needs a thorough overhaul to restore neutrality and accuracy.

Bavio the Benighted (talk) 04:02, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Wow, what a pile of unsupported nonsense. 99% voluntary? Ridiculous. You have shot yourself in foot here, losing all credibility. Binksternet (talk) 04:44, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

You seem to have completely forgotten the purpose of Wikipedia. I have zero credibility, and so do you. This is irrelevant, however, since we let the sources do the talking.

So, go ahead. If you find my assertion "ridiculous", feel free to present evidence to the contrary. I read all the sources; did you? Or are you just parroting them without bothering to read through them? Bavio the Benighted (talk) 07:40, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

No, I don't need to "present evidence to the contrary" after you completely misrepresented the most widely accepted accounts, starting with the UN's thorough research. The UN stance is that the comfort women program "should be considered a clear case of sexual slavery and a slavery-like practice".[1] They describe how women were deceived starting in 1937, told they were signing up for factory jobs and similar, but dragged off to sex slavery, including girls 14 to 17 years old. They were kept guarded, prevented from leaving, forced to work as sex slaves. The UN reports "approximately 200,000" women were forcibly recruited, which makes any number of voluntary prostitutes pale in comparison. Because of this high level source in direct contradiction to your viewpoint, I don't think I need to spend time convincing you. Regarding the Ramseyer writings, I still think we must throw out the opinion piece in Japan Forward, and any text dependent on it, while we may keep the Ramseyer economic analysis presented in the scholarly journal. Binksternet (talk) 01:38, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

See the Age matters and Biased or opinionated sources sections in WP:RS. When new sources contradict old ones, new sources take priority. And given that there is clear bias in favor of sensationalizing the issue, especially due to financial reasons, sources that present a black-and-white picture should be deprioritized in favor of ones that inspect the issue from a more neutral angle. As it so happens, in the 2010s, several new, neutral sources have begun contradicting pre-existing consensus―and that pre-existing consensus in itself was based on a non-neutral source (the 16 testimonies) and hence is to be strictly deprioritized in favor of the new evidence as per WP:UNDUE . This is by no means an uncommon occurrence in the field of historical research; indeed, very often new findings contradict old theories, prompting a thorough re-evaluation of the evidence.

In addition, if you to read through that 1996 paper through critically, as I mention above, you will notice that it directly mentions that the most incriminating part of evidence against the Japanese military indicates that they 1. established the brothels, 2. enforced strict hygiene and use of protection, 3. prohibited weapons and alcohol and 4. laid out rules regarding working hours and compensation. In other words: there is no direct evidence of institutionalized sexual slavery, according to the UN 1996 paper you cite; in fact, the most "incriminating documents" indicate that comfort stations were, indeed, legally operating, high-class brothels.

Now, tell me: where does the 1996 paper get the notion that comfort women were forced to work at the brothels?

You guessed it. The 16 testimonies.

On one side we have an a old, vastly generalized narrative based on 16 financially motivated testimonies. On the other we have newer research by several non-aligned investigators which directly disputes the old narrative. Which side should be given priority on Wikipedia?

Again, defining an issue that may have directly affected 400 000 and indirectly affected tens of millions of people based on 16 testimonies goes directly against WP:UNDUE and amounts to historical distortion. Some sources indicate that those very testimonies had been altered in order to incriminate members of the Japanese military even in situations where the comfort women had been sold by their own parents to the brothels, which would indicate forced prostitution, not sexual slavery; in addition, only 16 out of 238 registered comfort women have testified, with some who expressed disagreement with the allegations being pressured to silence by the activists. Ramseyer's findings and the memoirs of Mun Ok-ju corroborate the notion that comfort stations were legally operating brothels. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 05:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - Per WP:UNDUE, the content about Ramseyer should be removed. STSC (talk) 01:02, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Mentions of sexual slavery may be removed based on WP:UNDUE given the lack of evidence and the economically motivated bias associated with the allegations. Information regarding the majority of comfort women that is confirmed by several independent sources can not, by definition, be given undue weight as per WP:UNDUE and may therefore not be removed. I added several sources above in the Lead Sentence section, all of which include independent research published after the US and UN statements were made (and therefore should be prioritized as per Age matters) each contesting the notion that a significant fraction of comfort women had been kidnapped and/or subjected to sexual slavery. Also, I think we can all agree that the allegations of sexual slavery may have been financially motivated given that they included demands for monetary compensation: hence, any source that directly relies on the 16 testimonies must be deprioritized compared to neutral investigations such as Ramseyer's paper as per Wikipedia's rules regarding Biased or opinionated sources. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 05:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• The comment that "I think we can all agree that the allegations of sexual slavery may have been financially motivated given that they included demands for monetary compensation: hence, any source that directly relies on the 16 testimonies must be deprioritized" seems to violate WP:OR to me. In any case, the links made to the 'independent research' do not support the argument that the majority of comfort women were not coerced; they only acknowledge that, while there were some women who enlisted, many were coerced by forces outside of their control.

As for the UN report, the overall overall conclusion is that "the system of comfort stations set up by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War was a violation of its obligations under international law and accept legal responsibility for that violation. It also states that "Ultimately, the Japanese were able to procure more women for the increasing demands of the army by using violence and outright coercion. A large number of the women victims speak of violence used on family members who tried to prevent the abduction of their daughters and, in some cases, of being raped by soldiers in front of their parents before being forcibly taken off", supporting the statement that the majority of comfort women were coerced. Furthermore, on the repeated reference made to the 'incriminating documents' and the attempts to downplay them, the UN report clearly states "These regulations are some of the most incriminating of the documents to have survived the war. Not only do they reveal beyond doubt the extent to which the Japanese forces took direct responsibility for the comfort stations and were intimately connected with all aspects of their organization, but they also clearly indicate how legitimized and established an institution the stations had become. Much attention seems to have been paid to see that the "comfort women" were treated correctly. The prohibition of alcohol and swords, the regulation of hours of service, reasonable payment and other attempts to impose what would appear to be a sense of decorum or fair treatment are in stark contrast with the brutality and cruelty of the practice. This only serves to highlight the extraordinary inhumanity of a system of military sexual slavery, in which large numbers of women were forced to submit to prolonged prostitution under conditions which were frequently indescribably traumatic". In other words, the UN concluded that, contrary to the legitimization of the comfort women system, it did not happen in practice, with many comfort women forced to provide sexual services. There was a clear difference between what was said in the documents and what happened in reality. Continued reference to them to say that the majority of comfort women were not coerced would go against what the source directly states.

In any case, Ramseyer's own article seems to be discredited. Yuji Hosaka states that Ramseyer's arguments are "flawed for mentioning only certain documents as evidence, and questioned his intentions in publishing the article at this time when tension over the issue runs high between the two countries" and "the documents that Dr Ramseyer used in his article do not tell the full story, including the 1938 regulation by the Home Ministry on recruiting women for the overseas comfort station". It should therefore be deleted. NettingFish15019 (talk) 06:13, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I addressed some of these points above, in the Lead sentence section, so I'll do my best to avoid making redundant arguments here. Going point by point:

1. It is mentioned in the Apologies and compensation section of the main article that many comfort women accepted financial compensation, and that three South Korean women explicitly demanded monetary compensation for forced prostitution. In addition, one of the testimonies was later changed, seemingly in an effort to falsely incriminate members of the Imperial Army; originally the woman testified that she had been taken to work at a brothel by her father (who operated said brothel) but she later changed her story, now claiming that she had in fact been kidnapped by Japanese soldiers―which clearly seems unnatural; why, then, would she have decided to "falsely incriminate" her own father in the first place? It seems much more logical to assume that she fabricated the allegations out of to financial motivations or due to pressure by the activists. Either way, all of this is strong circumstantial evidence to indicate that the 16 testimonies by former comfort women are less neutral than, for instance, Ramseyer's paper or the books by Soh and Park.

2. The UN 1996 paper only mentions the 16 testimonies as evidence of forced prostitution. The "hard evidence" such as official documents mentioned in the report only proves that the Imperial Army was responsible for establishing the brothels and that they ensured hygiene and safety. I address this point in more detail above and in my posts in the Lead sentence section, but this possibility of non-neutrality, combined with the age of the report, means that the UN 1996 paper should be deprioritized relative to newer studies based on Age matters, Biased or opinionated sources and WP:UNDUE. "The large number of victims" in this case refers to 16 testimonies, which is by no means a large number when we consider that the ianfu system, by some estimates, must have indirectly affected millions, if not tens of millions of people. This would be akin to Nazi concentration camps being "proved" by testimonies by 16 former prisoners out of hundreds of thousands of survivors. This is neither realistic nor logical, and runs directly against the rules delineated in WP:RELIABILITY and WP:UNDUE.

3. I agree, however, in that the testimonies do seem to indicate that forced prostitution and rapes did occur to some extent. None of the sources support the notion that this problem affected more than 1% of comfort women, however. And I'm not asserting that 99% of the women had been voluntary, either; I'm pointing out the fact that, according to the sources currently cited in the article, we have no way to determine whether 99% of the comfort women served voluntarily or involuntarily, and that all sources that claim otherwise are purely based on opinion, not facts. There is no indication that the majority had been forced to work in the comfort stations, nor that the majority had served voluntarily, and hence, all conjecture should be removed from the definition, as I suggested above in the Lead sentence section.

4. The only argument the UN 1996 report makes to delegimitize the official documents is, again, the 16 (potentially financially motivated) testimonies and has since been challenged by newer, more neutral sources. Again, for all we know, 99% of comfort women could have been sold to the brothels against their will by their parents and henceforth been forced to work until they had paid off their debt. This notion is not supported by any solid evidence, however, nor would it incriminate the Imperial Japanese Army as much as it would if we assumed that girls had indeed been kidnapped by members of the military itself.

5. If you examine the sources cited in this article, you'll notice that most, if not all, of them ultimately converge on a few primary sources dating to the 1990s and exhibit noticeable Confirmation Bias, drawing conclusions based on one-sided cherry-picking of evidence and unsubstantiated leaps of logic. As I pointed out above, most of them ultimately rely on the 16 testimonies, plus, apparently, testimonies regarding three isolated cases of abuse of authority by military personnel in Southeast Asia (Source: Books by Yoshiaki Yoshimi published in 1995, 2000; mentioned in more detail in my first post in this section). If we write the article based on old, seemingly biased sources (16 financially motivated testimonies) while refusing to give equal weight to neutral sources that question the original narrative, this in itself would be in direct violation of Wikipedia's policy regarding Biased or opinionated sources.

6. The Straits Times article states that Ramseyer's paper goes against victim testimonies (which does nothing to refute it, given that victims presumably had little knowledge of how the system as a whole worked outside of their personal experience) and that it does not "tell the full story". No source is provided in the article, and for all we know this view is purely based on the opinion of the interviewee. It's also worth noting that Media Bias Fact Check lists The Straits Times as a somewhat biased, right-leaning news outlet, so I'm unsure why you feel it (or even a hundred similar articles) would somehow counterbalance an academical article that actually cites its sources. The interviewee himself is a political science professor teaching at a South Korean university, so he himself seems to be both potentially biased as well as unqualified to refute Ramseyer's claims, especially given that he fails to cite any evidence that would support his claims.

In summary, based on all the evidence presented thus far, there seems to be little room for doubt in that the article, as it currently stands, is strongly biased in favor of a skewed, pro-activist interpretation. This issue must be rectified by consulting neutral sources from other viewpoints as per WP:NPOV in order to restore historical accuracy, and Ramseyer's article (alongside the books by Soh and Park and other sources cited in the Lead sentence section here) does seem to fit the bill perfectly. ■ Bavio the Benighted (talk) 08:19, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Now that I've seen the published opposition to Ramseyer's scholarly journal article, I am removing my support for that piece. As a result, my stance is now that Ramseyer is completely WP:UNDUE and should be removed entirely. Binksternet (talk) 22:12, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Either you missed my post above or you're unwilling to engage in logical debate. The published opposition is irrelevant as per WP:NPOV, Biased or opinionated sources and WP:VERIFY, as I note above. It's also very clearly stated in the rules that Wikipedia is not a platform for opinion pieces, which the "published opposition" amounts to in this case.

I accused you previously of uncritically parroting the claims of sources that confirm your own bias in favor of the activists' interpretation. You now seem to embrace that label. Either way, do realize that your stance is irrelevant unless someone counters the points I presented above, so you should start there if you want Ramseyer's piece removed. Wikipedia is not a democracy, so an editor's "vote" means nothing unless backed by reliable sources and/or a solid argument. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 06:03, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

You're the one who was picking and choosing parts of the UN report, ignoring the perfectly clear conclusion statement they published at the very top to help people digest all the interviews and research. You wanted to reject the UN conclusion and take only those portions that confirmed your bias. Me, I'm seeing that a scholarly paper by Ramseyer has been challenged for misrepresenting the topic, so that makes me reject the scholarly paper as a reliable source. Now the paper stands as Ramseyer's opinion, requiring attribution if we wanted to tell the reader about the scholarly disagreement between Ramseyer and others, which seems like undue emphasis. The Ramseyer dispute doesn't appear to be critically important at this time. Binksternet (talk) 06:29, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I didn't misrepresent the 1996 UN report in any way or form; on the contrary, I read through it critically to pin-point exactly where they got their evidence from, and questioned the validity of their claims by pointing out that the evidence they themselves cite did not support their own conclusions. This is what we are supposed to do with all of the sources we cite, as per WP:VERIFY.

As for why I feel the published opposition to Ramseyer's paper is irrelevant in this context, please see point 6 of my post above. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 06:45, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but Wikipedia:Reliable sources says nothing at all about your method of examining the source's own research documents to see whether the source made the right conclusions. Nothing at all in Wikipedia supports your stance on that. The closest thing to that is WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, which allows us to judge whether the source is reliable for the particular statement it is making. There's nothing in CONTEXTMATTERS that would allow you to question the comfort women–related conclusions of a United Nations commission on comfort women, who are the highest placed experts in the world on the issue, and are clearly the most reliable source that we can ever find. CONTEXTMATTERS is more about whether a popular author can be trusted for scientific facts, or a sports reporter writing about politics; stuff like that. But with the UN group, the experts of the world put their best effort at understanding the issue, and they concluded that the comfort women program involved sex slavery on a massive scale.

Because you are not abiding by Wikipedia policy on reliable sources, your arguments here have no leverage. Binksternet (talk) 07:20, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

See Sources that are usually not reliable. Quote: "Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that (...) rely heavily on unsubstantiated gossip, rumor or personal opinion. They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others."

In particular, the 1996 UN report relies heavily on the rapporteur's personal opinion, and exhibits strong confirmation bias in drawing its conclusions. It presents little to no factual evidence corroborating the content of the victim testimonies, and this lack of fact-checking is directly reflected in its conclusion. In addition, a "UN rapporteur" is never as reliable a source as a peer reviewed article is (simply for the reason that their report is not subjected to a rigorous process of peer review) especially if they make sweeping generalizations based on old, disputed and/or financially motivated anecdotes.

You seem to be trying to argue that editors should neither read their sources nor exercise critical thinking before citing them. I.e. you seem to literally endorse parroting views instead of citing actual evidence. As said, this goes directly against the rules delineated in WP:VERIFY, not to mention that it beats the point of citing any evidence to begin with.

Also, you mention that the UN report was based on an investigation by "the experts of the world", and that these experts somehow came to the conclusion that "the comfort women program involved sex slavery on a massive scale". This is an interesting statement, since the UN report itself suggests nothing of the sort. Indeed, its conclusions seem to be purely based on the 16 victim testimonies. So, would you care to elaborate on what sort of investigation was performed by which experts, exactly? Bavio the Benighted (talk) 08:38, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

You are out of scope here. Wikipedia does not encourage editors to engage in their own original research, which is what you persist in doing. If you think the UN report is flawed, publish your own analysis to challenge them in print. Don't fool yourself thinking you can challenge them here on a talk page. That's not how it works on Wikipedia. Binksternet (talk) 08:59, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

You have cited WP:V a couple of times now, as a notional support for your stance, but you should actually read what it says. It does not tell us to dig into a published document from a reliable source to perform our own analysis on their data, to see whether their conclusions were accurate. Not at all. You apparently think that WP:Verifiability means WP:Please verify every fact and every conclusion, which is wrong. Rather, it means that the source you are citing should be reasonably available for others to verify that it contains what you say it contains. Binksternet (talk) 09:10, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I see you willfully ignored all of my actual arguments. In that case all I need to do to counter everything you just wrote is to quote the very arguments you deliberately ignored:

"See Sources that are usually not reliable. Quote: "Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that (...) rely heavily on unsubstantiated gossip, rumor or personal opinion. They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others."

In particular, the 1996 UN report relies heavily on the rapporteur's personal opinion, and exhibits strong confirmation bias in drawing its conclusions. It presents little to no factual evidence corroborating the content of the victim testimonies, and this lack of fact-checking is directly reflected in its conclusion. In addition, a "UN rapporteur" is never as reliable a source as a peer reviewed article is (simply for the reason that their report is not subjected to a rigorous process of peer review) especially if they make sweeping generalizations based on old, disputed and/or financially motivated anecdotes.

Also, you mention that the UN report was based on an investigation by "the experts of the world", and that these experts somehow came to the conclusion that "the comfort women program involved sex slavery on a massive scale". This is an interesting statement, since the UN report itself suggests nothing of the sort. Indeed, its conclusions seem to be purely based on the 16 victim testimonies. So, would you care to elaborate on what sort of investigation was performed by which experts, exactly? "

If you insist on ignoring these points, you are effectively admitting that you are unable to come up with a rational counterargument and are forced to pull a straw man to salvage your case (which, again, only goes to show that what you're really trying to do here is to confirm your own biased viewpoint, rather than attempting to establish a truly neutral point of view based on the available evidence).

The 1996 UN report is clearly an unreliable source given the discrepancy between the evidence it cites and the conclusions it draws (see the arguments above). It's an opinion piece, and therefore―in line with WP:VERIFY―it should be given less weight than peer reviewed articles. It's also old and based on potentially financially motivated testimonies, which means it should be deprioritized further relative to newer research in accordance with Age matters, as well as relative to sources that are less obviously affected by ulterior motives as per Biased or opinionated sources and WP:NPOV. Ramseyer's paper fills both requirements, given that none of the accusations regarding his potential connection to Mitsubishi have been substantiated, merely amounting to argumenta ad hominem at this point. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 10:20, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

The Harvard Crimson is publishing more challenges to Ramseyer from top scholars, including Harvard professor of Korean history Carter J. Eckert and Harvard historian Andrew Gordon, University of Connecticut professor of Japanese and Korean history Alexis Dudden, and comfort women topic expert Pyong Gap Min, a sociology professor at Queens College, New York. All of these have leveled serious accusations of flawed research. And Ramseyer says again he does not understand the Korean language, which is damning. Binksternet (talk) 09:29, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

The article mentions Ramseyer's own counterarguments: namely, that the critics fail to cite any actual evidence supporting their claims. Unverifiable statements, i.e. opinions, have little value compared to peer-reviewed articles, as per WP:VERIFY (see above). And him not citing Korean sources is unlikely to affect his results, given that all of the "hard evidence", namely military documents, government documents and official documents kept by brothel owners, were written in Japanese at the time. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 10:20, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I strongly believe that Ramseyer's article should be included, though I agree that the scholarly article is much preferable the website Japan Forward. Sources vary on whether Ramseyer's views represent a majority of the scholarly community, but they're at least a major point of view, not much different from the views of other mainstream historians like Professors Hata Ikuhiko, Choi Kilsong, Tsutomu Nishioka, etc... The fact that a few other scholars have criticized Ramseyer's views doesn't make them illegitimate. In that case, this article would have no sources at all, because, due to the controversial nature of the subject, every book on the comfort women is heavily criticized from one angle or another. The most heavily used source in the article currently is the book by George Hicks, whose information was mostly based on his interviews with Seiji Yoshida, who later admitted to having lied about what he said. It's fair to include controversial material in this article, since it's all controversial, as long as no proveable falsehoods are included. Hicks has received far more criticism for his use of fabricated testimonies that Ramseyer has, but no one objects to using Hicks in this article. YUEdits (talk) 22:06, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

• I get your point YUEdits and agree with it partially in terms of how the controversial nature of this topic makes it such that there will be strong criticism for many viewpoints. But I think the difference with Ramseyer's article is that his research methods were questioned by several academics, like Yuji Hosaka, who says ""Ramseyer made the error of completely ignoring the fact that these recruiters were working under Japanese military or government orders", rather than the stance that Ramseyer is taking in particular. It's also being investigated by the journal which was originally planning to publish his article (source) and may plan not to in the future. Maybe it'd be best for the article not to be included, at least until the investigation is finished? NettingFish15019 (talk) 04:41, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Source without public confidence cited in the section 'Treatment of comfort women'

On the first paragraph, the line "... although the validity of this statement has since been brought into question as the number does not seem to be based on an actual investigation on the matter." cites a webpage of Japanese fund AWF as its basis of assertion. That webpage claims that statements from Korea-Japan Treaty negotiations, which were cited by Representative Seijuro Arahune of the Japanese Diet as evidence of his report of death toll, do not exist. However, that webpage does not provide any citation data to support such claim. Mmmmmmmg0 (talk) 12:57, 19 February 2021 (UTC)