Talk:Rape during the occupation of Japan

References

The "Rape" of Japan

The editors of this article are going to have to come to terms with Brian Walsh's The "Rape" of Japan: The Myth of Mass Sexual Violence During the Allied Occupation, Naval Institute Press, 2024. Here is a list of general themes (I won't repeat the ones already listed in this Wiki article and cited from his 2018 work:

  1. Many Japanese perceived any relationship between Japanese women and American men as rape, including marriages. Their motive appears to be based on nationalistic "purity"
  2. Many Japanese used rape as metaphors for non-sexual interactions with Americans, including negotiations with SCAP, delousing with DDT, and the overall postwar US-Japan strategic relationship
  3. Many Japanese resented the dictated legal equality of women and the ending of licensed prostitution, which the Americans saw as debt-based sexual slavery and a human rights violation
  4. Japan had a major problem with venereal disease: ninety percent of skeletons from the Edo period show evidence of syphilitic bone deformation. Japanese culture of the time considered syphilis to be natural and unavoidable. The rate of syphilis only began to decline with the introduction of European medicine (the cited influences are German, British and American) in the 19th century. By WW2 the rate of syphilis in the general population had been reduced to 30-60% depending on the metric. Yet some Japanese parliamentarians would charge that it was the Americans who introduced venereal diseases
  5. Japan had a long-standing subculture of violent and misogynistic literary pornography; Walsh terms this as panpan literature. The first written explicit (that is, from the "victim's" viewpoint) accounts of American rape look like they were written by men for the enjoyment of men; Walsh shows that the authors were in fact men, some with a history of brothel ownership, financial scams, and even postwar pro-Nazi propaganda. These authors added and often misquoted official crime statistics (Walsh shows that official numbers for total crimes are cited as rapes) to give a facade of reputability, claimed mass rapes on dates in which less that 200 Americans were in the country and rapes by British Commonwealth soldiers months before they arrived
  6. After the Communist Party of Japan came under criticism from Moscow for failure to oppose 'American imperialism' (a failure likely caused by their release from prison and legalization under pressure by SCAP), the first thing they did was to reprint and distribute anti-American panpan literature as fact; a couple of their leaders had personal connections to the panpan authors
  7. Walsh conclusively demonstrates how almost all modern academics' and journalists' citations of mass rapes can be directly traced back to the panpan literature of 1946-1948. This includes a large number of sources cited in the present version of this Wiki article, including Dower, Takemae, and Tanaka. He also shows how these sources truncated quotes from official documents or from previous academics to shift their meanings

Walsh's writings are a series of smoking guns. I must confess that I cannot imagine how bullet #7 can be easily handled in an article like this because the chain of evidence while conclusive is long and convoluted. A paraphrase of the article currently reads "On the one hand Dower, Takemae, and Tanaka...on the other hand Walsh..." If Walsh is correct, and I see no reason to say he's not, then a fair re-write of this article would require admission of the existence of this "myth" and a description of how it came to be incorporated in academic and journalistic accounts. I think this is beyond the ability of one individual editor.

BTW if any of what I wrote sounds fantastical I can in some cases cite supporting text from William Manchester's American Caesar

Thank you for your consideration Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 03:26, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"if any of what I wrote sounds fantastical" It does not sound fantastic, because there is nothing fantastic about propaganda and smear campaigns, or their use by political parties. Dimadick (talk) 04:59, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The 'editors' of the article are just random people, like you. Please feel free to add material from that book, though note the Wikipedia policy WP:NPOV means that other views also need to be acknowledged. Nick-D (talk) 05:49, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But this is not entirely a NPOV issue. If Walsh is correct on the panpan origins and the altering of quotations then the 'other views' are not RS with regards to the Occupation, they are only RS with regards to the myth. I am loth to attempt any rewrite without a consensus on this matter. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 12:32, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is quite a dilemma, and I think you are right that, if this new book is correct, it would require a rewrite of the article approved by broad consensus. However, doing so based on one revisionist history is risky. Looking at my University's library catalog, I can't seem to find any academic reviews of Walsh's book (I don't know how long it generally takes for those to come out and be listed). My opinion is that you should leave the article in the admittedly imperfect "on the other hand" form so long as we don't have a good idea on how other experts have received this book. If a clear mass of positive reception at some point emerges then a rewrite would be in order, but doing so before then would probably be WP:UNDUE. If, however, reviews seem to be mainly negative, then Walsh's book should be consigned to a few mentions as a minority view. Nicknimh (talk) 07:12, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mostly agree. Since we must use citable sources, hopefully such sources will confirm Walsh's research and help with citations that support a rewrite. However, many people are invested in the 'majority' viewpoint (Walsh states that Dower was always opposed to the postwar Japan-US alliance), and it remains possible that we may see a number of negative reviews that are motivated by ideological rather than factual opposition that simply restates the 'facts' that Walsh demolishes. IMO the middle road seems most likely: a simple refusal to deal with Walsh's research, a silence which would preserve the "one the one hand, on the other hand" approach for some time to come. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 05:22, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, I should point out that this isn't Walsh against the world. Michael S. Molasky came to similar conclusions, and Walsh actually credits Molasky with putting him onto the evidence that led to his 2024 book. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 03:13, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since this is quite the dilemma, and as such should not be forgotten, can we turn off auto-archive for this Talk page, at least for now? Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 20:50, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Problematic citation - Masanori Mizuma

I was in the middle of some clean-up, with the goal of moving citations (if possible) to the list of Sources. I was surprised by this:

水間政憲 (2007-04-11). "封印されていた占領下の米兵「日本人婦女子凌辱事件」ファイル(The Sealed File of U.S. Soldiers' Rape Incidents Against Japanese Women and Girls During the Occupation)". Sapio. 19(8). 小学館: 63–65.

It turns out that the name 水間政憲 translates to Masanori Mizuma. Who is Masanori Mizuma? Well, it turns out he is the Japanese equivalent of a Holocaust Denier. For example, he denies that the Nanking Massacre ever happened.[1] I suspect that whoever added this citation (User:Meteru) did not translate the name because they knew who Masanori Mizuma is and didn't want any questions raised. It might be possible that it was Mizuma himself.

I propose to delete this citation as not NPOV and as a violation of WP:No Nazis. It really doesn't add anything, the text has other citations to support it. If I hear nothing to dispute my proposal it will be gone by the end of the month. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 19:14, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly one work by Mizuma is also cited or listed as a source in the following Wiki articles: Collaboration with Imperial Japan, Daehanjiji, Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, Naval Base Borneo, and US Naval Base New Guinea. In all of these but Daehanjiji he describes the Japanese as liberators. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 19:33, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see User:Vivianedupont12 removed the citation. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 03:22, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Who is Yoo and why is their work cited as fact when virtually every other claim is attributed to someone?

Jia Yoo's work is cited several times, but attribution is not given in text, compared to the likes of Walsh, Dower, et al, whose work is cited and claims contained therein are attributed to them by name. Given how contentious this topic is, that is unacceptable. Who is this person, why are they important, and why do they enjoy this unique privilege? WP Ludicer (talk) 11:58, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you think that the views should be attributed to the individual, I'd suggest editing the article to do so. It looks like the reference here is in Korean if this is correct. The journal article doesn't seem to have been widely cited. Nick-D (talk) 02:27, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would certainly do so if I could both verify them (I'm not purchasing access to an article I would have to machine translate) and confirm that this person is notable. What is this Korean Association for Japanese History which appears to publish this journal? WP Ludicer (talk) 21:15, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In one sense it really does no harm. Yoo merely regurgitates the studies of others. Svoboda does the same. Edwards likely does it as well. As I argued earlier on this Talk page, it is likely that a scholarly consensus will not develop for decades.
OTOH the Korean Association for Japanese History might be a propaganda outlet for Japanese revisionists, much like Masanori Mizuma. So I think you are right to question this. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 00:03, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ "Apple Town".
allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Japan