Emotions in the making : sexual violence in the Japanese empire, 1937–1945

Journal article


Gao, Ming. (2024). Emotions in the making : sexual violence in the Japanese empire, 1937–1945. Women's History Review. pp. 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2024.2305502
AuthorsGao, Ming
Abstract

This article applies the history of emotions lens to study the emotions experienced by the ‘comfort women’ in the Japanese Empire. Emotions have been a long-neglected aspect in the study of military sexual violence. The article examines how a mélange of positive and negative emotions enabled those women to exercise some limited agency in a confined and tightly regulated space and, in some rare cases, a rather fair degree of autonomy outside of the confined space. By unravelling the varied textures of interactions between sexual violence and emotions, I argue that affective attachment and intimate relations developed in the confined sites of sexual exploitation formed a kind of strategic intimacy that enables those individuals to exercise limited forms, and a finite amount, of agency. Further, the article utilises sources produced from the perspectives of the victimised women and imperial regulators. Those angles investigate emotions expressed through, and embedded in, dynamic power relationships. The dual perspectives bring out gendered experiences of emotions and also reveal a disparate set of nuanced emotions due to positionality. The article therefore offers a critical analysis of the interrelationships among sexual violence, state power, and a particular set of emotions as a form of power and resistance.

KeywordsEmotions; positive emotions; sexual violence; comfort women; the Japanese empire
Year01 Jan 2024
JournalWomen's History Review
Journal citationpp. 1-23
PublisherRoutledge
ISSN0961-2025
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2024.2305502
Web address (URL)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09612025.2024.2305502
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
Research or scholarlyResearch
Page range1-23
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Print20 Jan 2024
Publication process dates
AcceptedJan 2024
Deposited20 Sep 2024
Additional information

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

Place of publicationUnited Kingdom
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