Up to now, I have written the genealogy, analyzed the rhetoric, and exposed the double standard in policy. But to speak honestly of how far back this pattern reaches, and what it has actually led to, requires going one level deeper still\u2014down to the record of where people were actually harmed, without looking away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Group psychology recognizes a phenomenon called group polarization: homogeneous groups, the more they deliberate, tend to swing toward more extreme positions rather than moderate ones. In groups that are closed, unaccountable to any outside party, and where status is decided entirely by internal approval, the standard for judgment tends to become “how does this look to the people around me” rather than “is this right.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This dynamic is not unique to male groups. But male-dominated closed groups carry one condition that female groups do not: historically, as a matter of fact, the output of that dynamic has had physical force available to it as an option.<\/strong> Whether the drive for approval and status escalates from verbal exchange into actual violence depends heavily on whether the group has force available as an option in the first place. The military is an institution in which these two conditions\u2014a closed male group, and an organized instrument of force\u2014are fused in their most complete form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not an abstraction. In February 1942, following the Malayan Campaign, the Japanese military police in Singapore selected Chinese residents for execution under the pretext of “rooting out anti-Japanese elements”\u2014the so-called Sook Ching, or “purification through purge.” The gap between Japan’s official casualty figures and Singapore’s own postwar estimates is itself telling of who has controlled, and who has been able to verify, the record. Similar massacres were recorded across the Malay Peninsula. This was not the deviance of individual soldiers at the margins; it was organized violence carried out under a clear chain of command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the form in which this pattern was directed most directly at women was the comfort women system, along with the organized sexual violence carried out in occupied territories, Nanjing among them. The existence of the comfort women system, documents showing military involvement, victim testimony across multiple countries, and international review\u2014these are corroborated by independent, overlapping bodies of evidence. Where dispute remains, it concerns details\u2014the degree of coercion or the scale, varying by country and region\u2014not the core fact that the system existed and that the military was involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the coda of the previous piece, I wrote that in 1945 the nation was stopped only once it had been physically destroyed. That sentence’s “destruction” should have been read to include not only the damage Japan suffered at home, but also the record Japan left behind, as a perpetrator, in the territories it occupied. To speak honestly of where this pattern, the kokutai, ultimately led abroad, the record of victimhood and the record of perpetration ought to be set down side by side, as consequences of the same pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Forces aligned with Nippon Kaigi have, historically, repeatedly campaigned to roll back textbook descriptions of the comfort women issue, and to advance historical-revisionist claims that deny or narrow the definition of “coercion.” The all-purpose explanatory device identified in the earlier piece\u2014the GHQ-imposed historical narrative\u2014functions, in this context, not merely as a tool of historical interpretation but as a device for nullifying the record of organized sexual violence against women as “a product of a self-flagellating view of history.”<\/strong> Much of this denialism works by exploiting genuinely disputed academic details to cast doubt on the undisputed core itself. The same structure as an irrefutable dogma is at work here as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why does this denial happen? Several explanatory frameworks exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that one’s own nation or ethnic group carried out organized sexual violence wounds, directly, the self-image that “the group I belong to is fundamentally good.” Research on collective memory has repeatedly shown that, faced with this kind of threat, people are more likely to doubt the facts themselves than to accept them. The asymmetry by which memories of perpetration are forgotten and denied more readily than memories of victimhood is common across the histories of perpetrator nations generally, not unique to Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Further, when unfavorable information emerges about a group to which one strongly belongs, people tend not to evaluate its truth neutrally but to evaluate it in a way biased toward protecting the group’s reputation. Experimental research in political psychology has confirmed that this tendency grows stronger the more partisan the identity. Where the denial serves not the verification of an individual fact but the protection of a larger narrative\u2014”Japan was made into a unilateral villain”\u2014then even if one piece of evidence is dismantled, another rationalization will simply appear. This is the hallmark of dogmatic denial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One important question remains. No small number of women support this denialist movement. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Social psychology offers a framework called system justification theory: people tend to believe that the system they live under is legitimate, even when it places them at a disadvantage, because doing so provides psychological stability. The predictability, sense of belonging, and status security gained by supporting an existing order operate regardless of gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When national or ethnic belonging takes priority over gender as an axis of identity, the issue of “sexual violence against women” gets overwritten by the issue of “the nation’s honor.” This is not ignorance; it can be explained as a matter of priority among competing loyalties\u2014choosing, between two loyalties that cannot both be honored, one’s own nation’s honor over the memory of one’s own nation’s perpetration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That said, precision of language matters here. Complicity in the sexual violence itself, at the time, and support today for a movement that denies or minimizes the record of that violence, are entirely different acts. The former was impossible for anyone not yet born at the time. The latter is happening now, and is a legitimate target of criticism. And it is, more accurately, not mere indifference or “looking away,” but something closer to actively choosing<\/strong> a narrative that nullifies the record as “self-flagellating history,” as part of one’s partisan or national identity. If it is an active choice rather than a passive failure to act, that is heavier than simply looking away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Up to this point, I have explained the mechanisms: in-group loyalty, defense of self-image, preservation of a national narrative, system justification. These show how something comes to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But being able to explain something and being able to accept it are not the same thing. Even when a mechanism can be explained, from the standpoint of the victim, that explanation offers almost no comfort at all. That there are people who, faced with clear evidence, will discard it for the sake of their nation’s honor\u2014that fact itself is not the kind of thing that can be settled by reasoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever answer emerges to “why do people do this,” the line “and yet, this must not be done” does not move an inch. This piece is written not to blur that line through explanation, but to make it clearer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If this feels incomprehensible, I don’t think that is dullness\u2014I think it is a sound ethical response. Just as the previous piece closed with the question “is this really all right?”, I want to close this one, too, without forcing a resolution. A pattern can be named. A mechanism can be explained. But standing still before the fact that this happened, and continuing to say that it is incomprehensible, is also part of what it means to write this honestly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Up to now, I have written the genealogy, analyzed the rhetoric, and exposed the double standard in policy. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":726,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions\/726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Recorded Consequences of the Pattern<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Denial, as Another Pattern<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Why Do Conservative Women Also Support This Pattern?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
And Yet, It Remains Incomprehensible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n