Men, ‘Do not Approach the Dangerous!’: Japanese Life in Java from Medical Reports and Living Guidebooks

• In Event: Medicine Talks: Perceiving Society and Individuals in Japanese Occupied Singapore and Indonesia

Abstract

Male sexuality and VD have been among the most troublesome issues for modern militaries. The efforts of military authority to address the “male nature” have led to creation of different forms of essentially military licensed prostitution, from the First World War British Army maisons tolerėes to brothels for US troops in Subic Bay during the Cold War. From twenty years of political discourses on the Japanese military comfort women system during World War II, it is clear that need to control or minimize spread of VD between soldiers and civilians was a trigger for creation of a comfort women system. Reflecting this concern and military battlefield and territorial administration strategies, the range of characteristics suggests varied “comfort women systems.” Military correspondence from March 1942 between Borneo and Taiwan clearly shows loss of checks and balance in management of comfort women, even in recruitment and transfer overseas, resulting in total dependence on each military unit’s decisions.
This presentation focuses on the comfort women system in Java, building on our knowledge of military control/governing in this specific area, and exploring descriptions and definitions of comfort women by the 16th Army medical corps. This study will explore medical reports and a handbook for living in Java published for military personnel as well as “Japanese” civilians, and seeks to provide answers from a military source to the hoary questions of who comfort women were, what conditions they lived in, where they served, and the nature of Japanese military involvement in Japanese occupied Java.

Author

• Mayumi Yamamoto, Miyagi University