User:Miwa Steve/sandbox

"Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War"

The following is a brief description of the paper. The professor's paper is 8 pages long, with 68 citations, and is an economic paper that applies game theory to the contracting of prostitutes. The majority of the paper consists of statistical data which carefully summarizes the contract terms, income and treatment of prostitutes (licensed and private) in Japan (including the Korean Peninsula) at that time by era. It also shows the status of prostitutes on the Korean peninsula before the setting up of military comfort stations, and the ratio of licensed and private prostitutes and their income. This knowledge provides a broader perspective for the discussion of the "Japanese military comfort stations and associated comfort women" that occurred in a short period of more than a decade (1937-1945). However, from the latter half of page 6 onward of the paper, specific evidence that comfort women of the time were licensed prostitutes based on contracts is cited.

1. Interrogation report of Japanese POWs in Burma by the U.S. military, No. 49
2. Diary of a comfort station employee (in Burma and Singapore)
3. Malay military government's rule book on comfort women (Military Government Rule Book on p. 21, Malay Military Government Office, 1943/11/1 ).

The three sources cited above coincidentally overlap regionally.

1. describes the salaries, treatment, and working conditions of twenty comfort women, and concludes in the final conclusion (preface) that they were "nothing but prostitutes following the military.
2. was found in a used bookstore in Seoul in 2013 and contains descriptions far removed from sex slavery, such as returning home after a short period of time (a few months), sightseeing in the city, and the fact that comfort women had bank accounts and sent money regularly.
3. includes the obligation to remit 3% of income as a retirement fund reserve (Article 3 on p. 37) and the agreement on the distribution of profits between comfort women and comfort station managers (Article 4 on p. 37). As for the employment contract that Professor Andrew Gordon of Harvard University took issue with.

In the case of employment contracts, as discussed by Andrew Gordon of Harvard University, there is an obligation to submit a copy of the contract to the competent regional director (Article 6 of the Supplementary Provisions). It can be seen that there are measures to maintain the treatment and economic conditions of comfort women in occupied areas overseas.

What is "licensed prostitute" in the Paper

In pre-war Japan (including Korea), prostitutes who obeyed the following laws were considered licensed prostitutes.

娼妓取締規則の概要

The Regulations for the Control of Prostitutes (Shogi Torishimari Kisoku) is a set of regulations for the control of prostitutes. It was promulgated on October 2, 1900 as Ordinance No. 44 of the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1903, and was repealed on February 2, 1946[1]. The main contents are as follows.

No woman over 18 years of age(17 years of age in Korea and Taiwan) may engage in prostitution unless she is registered in the register of prostitutes maintained at the police station having jurisdiction over the location of the prostitute (Articles 1 and 2). The person who wishes to become a prostitute must personally appear at the police station and apply for the registration in the prostitute registry with a document that contains the following items (Abbreviated below)

for more information, go to the site

婦人及児童ノ売買禁止ニ関スル国際条約

The International Convention for the Prohibition of Traffic in Women and Children was adopted by the League of Nations in 1921 to prohibit prostitution (ugly business) and the resulting trafficking of women and children. It entered into force on June 15, 1922. It entered into force on June 15, 1922, and was amended by a protocol adopted in 1947 to be succeeded as the law of the United Nations. It is also mentioned as a source of law in the preamble of the Convention on Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and Exploitation of Prostitution of Others, adopted in 1949. (Abbreviated below)

for more information, go to the site

The International Convention for the Prohibition of the Traffic in Women and Children was enacted to strengthen the agreements and conventions of 1904 and 1910 that restricted prostitution and trafficking in persons from a humanitarian perspective.

2.1 Member States At the time of signing, there were 28 member countries[7]. Albania, Austria, Australia, Canada, Chile, Republic of China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Estonia, Germany (Weimar Republic), Greece, Hungary, British India, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Netherlands, Persian Empire, Poland and Danzici, Portugal, Romania, Siam, Spain, and Sweden. The Empire of Japan deposited its instrument of ratification on December 15, 1925, and it entered into force on the same day, and was promulgated on December 21, 1925.

The United States of America (a non-member of the League of Nations), the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, among other powers of the time, did not become members.

English description of the source

"the 1943 military regulations regarding the stations in Malaya." of the paper is also taken from the following

source: Japanese Ministry of Defense related public materials (Volume 2)

The followings are English translation of old Japanese

①Page21 Malay Military Rules on Comfort Women, November 11, 1943 軍政規定集(collection of military regulations)　昭和十八年十一月十一日(November 11, 1943)　馬來軍政監部(Malaysian Ministry of Military Affairs)

②Pge37 Deposit 3% of income for retirement and comfort women and owner's share 第三條 雇主ハ稼業婦ノ毎月ノ稼高ノ百分ノ三ヲ地方長官ノ指定スル郵便局ニ稼業婦本人ノ名義ヲ以テ貯金シ稼業婦廃業ノ時本人ニ交付スルモノトス

Article 3. The employer shall deposit three hundredths of the prostitute's monthly earnings in the name of the prostitute herself at a post office designated by the District Commissioner, and shall deliver the money to the prostitute when she goes out of business.

一（省略） （イ）

稼業婦稼高ノ配當歩合

債務残額	雇主所得	本人所得
千五百圓以上	六割以内	四割以上
千五百圓未満	五割以内	五割以上
無借金	四割以内	六割以上

（ニ） 前借金及び別借金ハ總テ無利息トス

1（Abbreviated） （イ）

Prostitutes' income distribution percentage

Remaining amount of debt	Employer's income	Personal income
Over 5,000 yen	Within six cuts	More than four cuts
less than 5,000 yen	Within five cuts	More than five cuts
No loan	Within four cuts	More than six cuts

（ニ） Advance loans and separate loans shall be interest free.

③④Page25 Enlarged image of Article 6 第六條　営業者稼業婦ヲ雇入レタルトキハ別途芸妓、酌婦、#雇用契約 規則ニ基キ雇用契約ヲ定メ所管地方長官ノ認定を受クルベシ

Article 6. When a business operator hires a prostitute, the business operator shall be obliged to establish an employment contract with a 芸妓、酌婦 in accordance with the rules of employment contract. The business operator shall be obliged to obtain the approval of the district director in charge of the business. ("芸妓"and "酌婦" are euphemism for prostitute)

Criticism of the paper and argument

One of the few criticisms of the paper was made by Harvard colleagues Professor Andrew Gordon and Professor Carter Eckert, who issued a statement of criticism . The two main points are: 1) the paper is about contracts, yet not a single citation to the required employment contract is given as evidence; and the paper itself does not make sense. 2) In Korea at that time, "IANFU[慰安婦]" comfort women did not have the meaning of prostitutes, so even if there were contracts, those would be considered employment fraud.

However Korean expert Mr. Gim Byung Hun, In a series of articles recounting how poor Korean women of the time became prostitutes (MediaWatch Gim Byung Hun's Time Travel (3) (2021-04-09), revealing a comfort woman employment contract(酌婦稼業契約書) published in a newspaper at the time. And since there were advertisements for military comfort women（軍慰安婦募集） in the newspapers published in Korea at that time, it is clear that they meant prostitutes.

Tetsuo Arima, Professor at Waseda University, criticizes Professor Gordon as follows

Professor Gordon has issued an extremely strong statement when the McGraw-Hill history textbook issue arose. The statement was quite emotional and the content seems to be full of one-sided assumptions that are not typical of a scholar.

As for this statement. It seems that he has not read the Japanese laws and orders written in old Japanese. he criticize Professor Gordon for his lack of basic knowledge, which leads him to the wrong conclusion.

McGraw-Hill textbook issue

There was a time when Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested the deletion of the description of comfort women in the history textbook (for American high school students) published by McGraw-Hill. At that time, The professors in North America made an extremely strong statement of opposition. 　 The textbook contained the following statement. "The Japanese military forcibly recruited as many as 200,000 women between the ages of 14 and 20 to serve in the armed forces and forced them to work in military brothels called 'comfort stations. The Japanese military massacred many of the comfort women to cover up their activities. These theories have now been rejected. "200,000 comfort women theory," "forced conscription theory," "comfort woman sex slave theory," and "Korean comfort woman massacre theory. The reason is that no evidence has been presented to date to support any of these theories. The official position of Japan, an ally of the U.S., is that there is no basis for these theories.

Academic controversies

In 2021, controversy followed the online publication of an article in the International Review of Law and Economics regarding the comfort women coerced into sexual servitude in Japanese military brothels in the 1930s and 1940s. Ramseyer described the comfort women as prostitutes, arguing that they "chose prostitution over those alternative opportunities because they believed prostitution offered them a better outcome." Over a thousand economists signed a letter stating that the article gave "cover to legitimize horrific atrocities". Economists and Nobel laureates Alvin Roth and Paul Milgrom wrote that the article "reminded [them] of Holocaust denial." Several academic historians of Japan affiliated with a peer-reviewed journal, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, checked Ramseyer's sources and found that "he cites, as supporting evidence, historical scholarship which argues the opposite of his claims", arguing that the paper should be retracted for academic misconduct.