From "Comfort Women" to "Survivors": Politics and Performativity of Naming in Jan Ruff O'herne's Fifty Years of Silence
Abstract
The acts of naming and labelling have emerged as contesting cultural practices that have persistently shaped the narratives and discourse surrounding the history of Japanese military comfort women. Terms such as comfort women, sex slaves, victims and survivors are interchangeably used to identify the Asian women subjected to the system of sexual slavery under the Japanese military regime during the Second World War. Such terminological homogenization, however, not only obscures the violence underpinning the system, but also erodes individuality, by regulating public memory and socio-political recognition. Drawing primarily on Butler's theory of injurious speech and performativity, this study undertakes a critical discourse analysis of Jan Ruff O'Herne's memoir Fifty Years of Silence, positing that the politics of naming is a performative and cultural phenomenon, which is neither inherently injurious nor emancipatory, rather conditioned by discursive practices through which euphemistic labels are imposed and institutionalized. The study further examines the counter-discourse enabled by reiterative acts of public testimony, reclamation of proper name and self-assertion as survivor, in resistance against historical and cultural erasure within the discourse of comfort women.
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Introduction
Naming is essential in the sense that it attributes identity and recognition to the unidentifiable. Primo Levi observes "To give a name to a thing is as gratifying as naming an island", while citing the risks that accompany such acts of naming, particularly when the "phenomena so named" (Levi, 126) becomes essentially defined by the very name. Indeed, naming or christening becomes a part of the identity and renders a sense of belonging and context to the bearer of the name. However, it may also be employed to impose stereotypes and shatter the sense of belonging, dignity and identity when corrupted through unethical and derogatory practices, as is to be found in the case of comfort women.
The origin of the comfort woman system can be traced back to the Japanese military imperialism during the Second World War, when the comfort stations were established with the motif to engage as many women as possible for the sexual gratification of the soldiers, following the tragedy of Nanjing massacre, which resulted in mass genocide and rape of Chinese civilians between 1937 and 1938 (Tanaka, 1999). The public testimony of the former comfort woman Kim Hak Soon in 1991, revealing her identity as a comfort woman as well as her former identity, brought into limelight the lost history of these women who appeared in glimpses of the war history as labelled prostitutes. This euphemism formally appeared in the seminal work of Yoshimi Yoshiaki in 1992, making its course into the mainstream public, academic and media discourse, with the surge of activism, testimonies by former victims and advocacy drives by Korean NGOs and feminist welfare associations such as the Korean Council in the early 1990s (Ward and Lay, 2018). While initially the system was strictly restricted to the recruitment of professional prostitutes of Japanese and other nationality, with the territorial expansion the procedure developed into a systematic state sanctioned drive as women aged between 12 to 21 years were recruited through coercion, deception, or were simply sold to the military brothels named "comfort stations". However, these women have been denied recognition and justice by Japan and their native nations ever since, framed as legally and consensually recruited prostitutes in the political discourse. After 50 years of oblivion, misinterpretation and stigmatization since the end of the war, the former victims as well as their supporters denied the tag of 'comfort woman' and demanded that the victimized comfort women be addressed as “sex slaves”, “war victims” or “survivors” in recognition of their traumatizing experiences during World War II, under the Japanese military imperialism.
The primary issue that forms the focal aspect of this study lies in the homogenization effected through linguistic and cultural practices which are made apparent through the stereotypical classification of all the comfort women as prostitutes, regardless of whether their involvement was voluntary or coerced (UCLA, 1944; Seaton, 2006). This study critically scrutinizes the layered nuances of naming as a cultural practice, analysing its performative force.
Conclusion
This inquiry ultimately points out that language itself becomes a part of the traumatic apparatus, while simultaneously providing the means of resistance, recovery and emancipation. The final movement from "comfort women" to "survivors" signifies a movement from mere terminological alteration; it maps the trajectory of transformation in the politics of naming itself, revealing the dynamic capacity of language as a contested space for the enactment of violence, power, resistance and emancipation. In the memoir Fifty Years of Silence, language does not appear as a passive witness to wartime sexual violence and trauma. It becomes a contested political terrain with active agential force where history, identity and power are constantly performed, challenged and negotiated. This demonstrates writing as a creative and effective medium, capable of facilitating the performative force of language.
At a broader level, this study may be situated within linguistic and discourse-oriented critical studies by foregrounding naming as a significant analytical mode of inquiry in understanding the reciprocal relation between history, politics and subjectivity. This framework further contributes to the broader field of postcolonial inquiry by demonstrating how naming operates as an active agential force paradoxically facilitating subjugation as well as resistance, and by substantiating the significance of politics of naming in understanding the relationship between language, power, and historical memory in postcolonial and post-conflict contexts.
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