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“Our bodies, their battlegrounds”: the conservation of comfort stations in China

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“Our bodies, their battlegrounds”: the conservation of comfort stations in China

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“Our Bodies, Their Battlegrounds”
the Conservation of Comfort Stations in China

by

Hanyu Chen

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MATER OF HERITAGE CONSERVATION

August 2022

Copyright 2022 Hanyu Chen
ii

To the hundreds of thousand “comfort women” in the Second Sino-Japanese War.

iii
Acknowledgement
It took me years of preparation to write this thesis – a long journey that began in China
and continued in the United States. I have dreamed about the completion of this thesis many
times, and I thought it would be a moment full of excitement, but it is not. It is an ordinary
moment: now I am sitting in my apartment, in front of my desk, wearing my pajamas. But I
understand this accomplishment is built upon numerous unusual moments in the past and it
marks the beginning of the academic journey I will continue through my doctoral study at
UCLA.
This thesis starts from my internship at the Shoah Foundation, an organization affiliated
with the University of Southern California that advocates for recording oral histories of difficult
history survivors, including the Holocaust and Nanjing Massacre. My task was to process the
interview videos of Peng Zhuying, a victim of the Japanese military “comfort women” system
from Hunan Province, China. I was touched by Grandma Peng’s stories, but the stories of the
“comfort woman” seemed far away from my life. However, from a conversation with my
parents, I learned that there was a comfort station near my childhood school, but I knew nothing
about it. From that moment on, “comfort women” was no longer a term that only appeared on
news reports but was also part of the history of my hometown. My heart hurts thinking that most
of the “comfort women” were violated at my age, at a time when I am able to study abroad and
do what I enjoy. As a result, I decided to do something to help commemorate their lives, and this
is where my thesis came from.
This thesis would not have been completed without the encouragement and support of
Trudi Sandmeier, my thesis committee chair and the director of the Heritage Conservation
program. My original thesis topic was about the dangers of architecture-related lead poisoning in
iv
underprivileged communities. When I told Trudi I was thinking about switching my topic from
lead paint to “comfort women” issues, she encouraged me to do so without any hesitation, which
surprised me and made me confident. I deeply appreciate what she did for the Heritage
Conservation program and she was the reason I chose to study at USC. I was holding admissions
offers from different programs two years ago, and I hesitated to choose USC for several reasons.
First of all, I have never taken any architectural history classes in my undergrad studies. The
field of heritage conservation was something new to me, and I was afraid I could not handle it. In
addition to the fact that I was based in Long Island at that time, Los Angeles was too far away
from the East Coast and from my friends, so USC was almost my last choice although USC gave
me a considerable scholarship. However, after talking to Trudi over Zoom as a prospective
student, I decided to choose USC. She was so kind and patient in answering my questions,
believing that I could ace this field. Trudi is not only the most supportive professor I have ever
met but also the one who unites the whole MHC family.
I also need to say additional thanks to my thesis committee members, Alison B. Hirsch
and Peipei Qiu. Alison provided me with many constructive comments, and Professor Qiu, as an
expert on “comfort women” issues, ensured that my contexts were accurate. I am so glad to have
you all as my thesis committee members. In addition to my thesis committee members, I also
received help from Professor Su Zhiliang, who has studied the “comfort women” issues for
decades, Professor Zhao Chen, who participated in the the reformation of Nanjing Liji Lane
Comfort Station Museum, and Sha Jimin, a student of Professor Zhao Chen who wrote a masters
thesis on the Liji Lane comfort stations’ transformation.
Thank you to all other MHC faculty members, Vinayak Bharne, Kenneth Breisch, Peyton
Hall, Kathryn Horak, Jay Platt, and Meredith Drake Reitan, for teaching me and bringing me
v
here. And also, congratulations to my friends, Katie, Zongqi, Emi, Stacy, and Zining — we
finally made it!
Most importantly, none of this could have happened without my family’s support. Thanks
to my parents who always encourage me to do what I am interested in and support every decision
I make. I would also like to send my thanks to my little brother, who did not bother me during
my thesis writing. Thanks to my dog who has been my 24/7 emotional support.
And thank you, JJ, for always being on my side.

vi

Table of Contents
Acknowledgement ........................................................................................................................ iii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ viii
List of Table ................................................................................................................................... x
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... xi
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................................ 3
Difficult Heritage: Why and How to Conserve? ......................................................................... 3
Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 3
What Makes Difficult Heritage Difficult? ................................................................................... 4
Conserving Difficult Heritage: A Government Responsibility .................................................. 11
Missions of Memorial Museums ................................................................................................ 15
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 19
Chapter 2 ...................................................................................................................................... 21
“Comfort Women”: A Term that Conceals Women’s Sufferings .......................................... 21
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 21
Who are “Comfort Women” ...................................................................................................... 21
“Comfort Women” as a Part of Difficult Heritage ................................................................... 31
Classification of Comfort Stations ............................................................................................. 39
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 47
Chapter 3 ...................................................................................................................................... 48
Case Study: the Nanjing Museum of the Site of Liji Lane Comfort Stations ........................ 48
in Nanjing, China ......................................................................................................................... 48
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 48
Historical Background of the Liji Lane Comfort Station Museum ............................................ 48
Reshaping “Puqing New Village” into a Memorial Museum ................................................... 56
As a Memorial Museum ............................................................................................................. 62
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 69
vii
Chapter 4 ...................................................................................................................................... 70
Two Forgotten Comfort Station Historic Sites in Zhuji, China .............................................. 70
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 70
Historic Backgrounds of Two Comfort Stations in the Garden Hill Neighborhood ................. 70
On the Way to Reformation ....................................................................................................... 80
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 88
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 89
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 92

viii
List of Figures
Figure 1.1: Vietnam Veterans Memorial. ...................................................................................... 18
Figure 2.1: The First Comfort Women Station in Shanghai. ........................................................ 23
Figure 2.2: Today’s Dayi Saloon, .................................................................................................. 24
Figure 2.3: The Building of Dayi Salon on Dong-Baoxing Road in Shanghai Today, ................. 24
Figure 2.4: A Comfort Station Ticket ............................................................................................ 38
Figure 2.5: Yuan Zhulin Revisiting the Old Temple Where the Japanese Kept Her in 1940 as a
“Comfort Woman” ........................................................................................................................ 40
Figure 2.6: Comfort Station in Yangjiazhai, Shanghai ................................................................. 42
Figure 2.7: "Comfort Women" Travel in a Truck ......................................................................... 44
Figure 3.1: Location of Liji Lane Site, from Google maps ........................................................... 49
Figure 3.2: Location of Nanjing, from Google Maps .................................................................... 49
Figure 3.3: Liji Lane Site Bird View ............................................................................................. 52
Figure 3.4: Four Korean "Comfort Women," Park Young-Shim is the pregnant one (right most).
....................................................................................................................................................... 57
Figure 3.5: Park Young-Shim Visited 2 Liji Lane, Room 19 ....................................................... 58
Figure 3.6: Historic Liji Lane Site Used as a Landfill .................................................................. 60
Figure 3.7: Historical Photo of Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Station .............................................. 63
Figure 3.8: Today's Liji Lane Comfort Station Site ...................................................................... 63
Figure 3.9: The Circulation of Liji Lane Site ................................................................................ 65
Figure 3.10: Black Stones of Liji Lane Site .................................................................................. 65
Figure 4.1: Location of Garden Hill / Huayuan-ling Neighborhood ............................................. 71
Figure 4.2: Location of Zhuji City, from Google Maps ................................................................ 71
ix
Figure 4.3: Today's Hanazono Mineto .......................................................................................... 81
Figure 4.4: Potential Historic Grand Taimen Comfort Station Site .............................................. 81

x
List of Table
Table 1: Name List of “Comfort Women” at the Hanazono Mineto Comfort Station in Zhuji .... 77

xi
Abstract
Difficult heritage is usually connected with a country’s or a specific community’s painful
memories, not limited to wars and holocausts. In recent decades, conserving difficult memories
has become a more prominent topic in the field of heritage conservation. One of the most
common strategies to remember the painful past is to set up memorial museums. As a result, a
great number of memorial museums have been set up in memory of the painful past in recent
years. In 2015, the first “comfort women” memorial museum in China was opened in Nanjing.
The museum’s mission is to conserve the painful history of “comfort women,” who were forced
to become the Japanese military’s slaves during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The museum
was established on several previous comfort station sites, the war-time residences of “comfort
women.” Historic comfort station sites have always been an essential topic in research on
“comfort women” since they represent difficult memories. It can be difficult for people to
discover and conserve these already forgotten places
Focused on historic comfort station sites in China, this thesis will discuss and analyze the
conservation work of heritage with painful memories. The thesis will examine several examples:
the Nanjing Museum of the Site of Liji Lane Comfort Stations in Nanjing, and the “Grand
Taimen” and “Hanazono Mineto” in Zhuji, China, to show the public’s attitude toward these
sites, to understand the situation comfort stations are facing, and to study the conservation
strategies of “informal historic sites” in China. In addition, this thesis will give some suggestions
for improving the conservation of comfort stations.

1
Introduction
Though it is common knowledge that history should be unbiased and objective, the
focuses of history is on important events and significant people. Histories related to women and
difficult topics are easy to ignore. In recent decades, due to the feminist and civil rights
movements, those histories that were neglected by the public in the past have started to attract
more attention. The history of “comfort women” fits this category.
The “comfort women” system was set up during the Second Sino-Japanese War by the
Japanese military, aiming to “provide women for the sexual comfort of soldiers in war zones.”
1

The term “comfort women” was directly translated from the Japanese term ianfu. Because
women suffered greatly under the dehumanized “comfort women” system, it is inappropriate to
name them “comfort women” without quotation marks.
2

Many scholars have studied the history of “comfort women” and their studies are
inclusive, ranging from the personal history of each “comfort woman” to the system’s formation.
However, only a small number of these studies focus on comfort stations, where the crimes
occurred. As these comfort stations bear witnesses to the tragic history, it is important to
conserve comfort stations, which not only help to remember the painful history of “comfort
women,” but also provide spaces for educational purposes. By discussing the conservation of
comfort stations in China, this thesis tries to analyze how difficult heritage should be conserved.
The first chapter provides a theoretical base for the thesis. It introduces some basic
background knowledge on this topic from three aspects: What makes difficult heritage difficult?

1
George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War,
1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995), 16.
2
Peipei Qiu, with Zhiliang Su, and Lifei Chen, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex
Slaves. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1,
https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/273cgt/cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_9780199373901.
2
What should the government do to conserve difficult heritage? And finally, as the most common
approach to conserving difficult heritage, what should a memorial museum’s mission be?
The second chapter introduces the history of “comfort women” to readers since it is not a well-
known history, and there are many details that need to be explained. This chapter is divided into
three sections. The first section talks about the formation of the “comfort women” system and
who are “comfort women.” The second section echoes the contexts of the first chapter to further
explain why “comfort women” history is a difficult one. The last section focuses on the
classifications of comfort stations.
The final two chapters are two case studies. The third chapter is a historic site of comfort
stations in Liji Lane, Nanjing, China, or the Liji Lane Comfort Station Museum, which can be
regarded as a successful example of difficult heritage conservation. The chapter introduces the
historical background of the two comfort stations in Liji Lane, then explains how they were
reshaped into a memorial museum, as well as how it practices its role as a memorial museum.
Liji Lane Comfort Station Museum is a meaningful example for other existing comfort stations
in China. However, not all existing comfort stations are well conserved. The last chapter focuses
on two forgotten historic comfort station sites in Zhuji, China revealing their unknown histories
and discussing their unclear fates and some potential solutions.
Due to the limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was unable to do the field research
in person. As a result, this thesis is primarily based on other scholars’ research results, some
interviews with people in the field, and my own recollections of the sites in Zhuji.

3
Chapter 1
Difficult Heritage: Why and How to Conserve?

Introduction
Human rights have always been a well-studied concern for international affairs, public
history, and other related fields. After the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement became a
nationwide movement, the public began to pay more attention to human rights and
underprivileged communities. One of the most common approaches for the public is visiting
museums, which has made “atrocity tourism” a trend in recent years.
3
Take the National Civil
Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, as an example; the number of visitors has steadily
increased since 2015.
4
Why do people conserve painful memories? It might have already been a
common acknowledgment that difficult heritage is critical for history and public education, but
what makes difficult heritage difficult? Furthermore, what are the strategies to conserve difficult
heritage? Is a memorial museum the best way to conserve difficult heritage? Even though some
believe it is necessary to conserve the painful past, the questions mentioned above should not be
overlooked by the public and academia. This chapter aims to explore the broad perspective of
difficult heritage, trying to provide guidelines for the remaining chapters.

3
William Logan and Keir Reeves, “Introduction: Remembering Places of Pain and Shame,” in Places of Pain and
Shame: Dealing with Difficult Heritage, ed. William Logan and Keir Reeves (London: Routledge, 2009), 3.
4
Corey Davis, “National Civil Rights Museum Remains Huge Tourist Draw, Year after Year,” Bizjournals.com,
January 17, 2020, https://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/news/2020/01/17/national-civil-rights-museum-remains-
huge-tourist.html.
4
What Makes Difficult Heritage Difficult?
Difficult heritage can have various formats of representation; people usually connect
difficult heritage with a descriptive word such as violent, sensitive, sexual, discriminative, and
xenophobic. As a result, some scholars use words like sensitive past, violent past, difficult
knowledge, and traumatic past to describe difficult histories.
5
These indirect words suggest that
the term “difficult heritage” is not only painful but also hard to speak about. It is often sensitive
to discuss difficult heritage with people who have survived these historic events. All modern
countries have periods of sensitive and difficult history.
6
Few people are willing to discuss it
openly. Though the difficulty of difficult heritage originates from the history itself — as
discussed above, violence, sexism, discrimination, and xenophobia — other critical elements that
make difficult heritage become more difficult frequently happen in the period after the trauma
happened.
There is no commonly agreed definition for difficult heritage. Different people have
different definitions of “difficulty.” Even when a single huge traumatic event happens to a group
of people, it is highly possible for them to have different perspectives of the difficulty they
experienced. For example, during the second Sino-Japanese War, some Chinese women suffered
from sexual violence and were enslaved as “comfort women,” and some women were relatively
lucky to skip those difficulties. As a result, for the first group of women, sexual violence might
have a larger influence on their understanding of difficult histories. For the second group, sexual
violence might not be the first thing that comes to their minds when talking about difficult
histories. Since difficult heritage can be personal, it is impossible for scholars and other relevant

5
Magdalena H. Gross and Luke Terra, “What Makes Difficult History Difficult?,” Phi Delta Kappa 99, no. 8 (April
30, 2018): 53, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26552405.
6
Ibid., 52.
5
professionals to set up a system of standards to evaluate difficult heritage. Consistently, for each
traumatic historic event, it is inappropriate only to conserve a single angle of difficult history; the
difficult heritage is multi-perspective. Conserving difficult heritage requires scholars and
professionals to design conservation plans for each case, which increases the difficulty of
conserving difficult heritage.
Another fundamental characteristic of difficult heritage is that it is often unspoken.
Difficult heritage relates to trauma, which makes victims or survivors intentionally avoid talking
about their difficult heritage. It can be difficult for outsiders or people who have never
experienced the trauma to find a proper way to interview victims without risking re-
traumatization. As a result, for individuals who are directly involved in difficult histories, it is
natural and reasonable for them to stay away from the trauma to protect themselves.
Ignorance also plays an important role in difficult heritage’s unspoken characteristics.
The history textbooks and classes primarily focus on heroic and legendary events and figures,
giving the public a misleading impression that only monumental events and heroic people are
worthy of remembering. There exists a huge space for scholars to promote the concept of
difficult heritage to the public through history books and classes. Only after the public realizes
the importance of difficult heritage and starts to speak about them that hidden histories will have
the opportunity to be passed down across generations.
Some uncovered difficult histories might also be lost as the witnesses pass away. Then,
this difficult heritage remains silent. Even if scholars discover the unknown difficult history in
the future, nothing can replace the first-hand survivor or witness accounts. The witnesses are a
part of history; their experiences embody the historical past. Take the Holocaust that happened in
the last century as an example. Many Holocaust survivors are willing to talk about their
6
experiences, providing testimonies to the public. As a result, these testimonies create a
comprehensive view of the Holocaust, making it possible for scholars and the public to know this
difficult history.
Some unspoken difficult heritage is caused by traditional concepts, especially when the
difficult heritage is related to sexual violence. This thesis’ primary focus, the “comfort women”
system, is an example of how the patriarchal tradition has silenced the survivors. Influenced by
Confucianism, many people in East Asian countries held — and still hold — the opinion that a
woman’s virginity is the most important thing of her life. In pre-modern East Asian countries,
the dominant social bias is that a raped woman was unclean and brought shame to her family,
and people would laugh at her and her family. If a woman had sex with a man other than her
husband, even if it was a rape, she should end her life to prove her purity. A “comfort woman”
from Taiwan said she felt shameful because her sexual organs were touched by men other than
her husband.
7
Facing such a patriarchal social environment, “comfort women” did not speak out
about their sufferings until recent decades, when society gradually became less strict about a
woman’s sexual relationships.
National reasons for conserving difficult heritage are usually macroscopic, including
diplomatic relationships and social stability. Among all national-level concerns, the economic
factor is the primary one. As Marx said, the economic base determines the superstructure.
8
It is
hard to deny that heritage protection is more difficult in underdeveloped countries, especially in
the case of difficult heritage.
9
For less developed countries, economic development is the highest

7
Ching-Yuan Chou, “A Cave in Taiwan: “comfort women”’s Memories and the Local Identity,” in Places of Pain
and Shame: Dealing with Difficult Heritage, ed. William Logan and Keir Reeves (London: Routledge, 2009), 121.
8
Raymond Williams, “Raymond Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory, NLR I/82,
November–December 1973,” New Left Review, accessed February 13, 2022,
https://newleftreview.org/issues/I82/articles/raymond-williams-base-and-superstructure-in-marxist-cultural-theory.
9
Logan and Reeves, “Introduction,” 12.
7
priority for the nation. Compared with something that cannot directly boost the economy or feed
the people, under-developed nations would rather do something that can have immediate effects
on their economy.
However, some exceptions exist. The Lushun Russo-Japanese Prison Museum was
established at the site of a prison in 1971, at a time when heritage conservation was not a priority
in China. The Museum’s establishment is related to the Zhenbao Island Incidents—armed
conflicts between China and the Soviet Union from 1969 to 1971.
10
The Chinese government
hoped to use the Lushun Russo-Japanese Prison Museum to educate its citizens, helping them
remember the nation’s difficult history and tension with the Soviet Union. The Second-Sino
Japanese War (1931-1945) created numerous difficult histories for the Chinese people, including
the “comfort women” issue and the Nanjing Massacre. The concept of difficult heritage was not
popular in the first decades immediately after the war, and China was impoverished. Thus, it is
understandable that the Chinese government did not pay attention to conserving difficult
heritage. In 1972, China and Japan restored their diplomatic relationship. In their Joint
Communique, China renounced its right to war compensation from Japan.
11
More
disappointingly, the infamous Nanjing Massacre was regarded as an impediment to the
reestablished diplomatic relationship. Some Chinese people believed that restoring the
diplomatic relationship with the Japanese government was denying history; as a result, the two
governments chose to ignore the negative effects of the Nanjing Massacre temporarily.
12
Though

10
Shu-Mei Huang and Hyun-Kyung Lee, “Difficult Heritage Diplomacy? Re-Articulating Places of Pain and Shame
as World Heritage in Northeast Asia,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 25, no. 2 (May 22, 2018): 145,
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2018.1475410.
11
“MOFA: Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China,”
www.mofa.go.jp, accessed February 16, 2022, https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/joint72.html.
12
Yujie Zhu, “Hot Interpretations of Difficult Heritage: The Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre in China,”
Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development 12, no. 1 (2022): 37,
https://doi.org/10.1108/jchmsd-05-2021-0085.
8
in 1992, Chairman Jiang Zemin said that the Chinese government would not stop Chinese
citizens seeking compensation from Japan, this statement hurt survivors’ feelings, making them
question the importance of difficult histories they suffered.
13
For academia in China, the
ambiguous attitudes of the government toward these events made recording difficult histories
more challenging.
Additionally, other countries’ diplomatic relationships can also influence the difficult
heritage conservation work. In contrast to the Holocaust, the difficult heritage of the Second
Sino-Japanese War is less-known by Western countries. As Iris Chang analyzed in her book The
Rape of Nanking, in the post-war era, the United States was eager to have a dominant status in
the Cold War; thus, it expanded its control in Japan and fostered Japan’s development. The
United States also condoned the Japanese government’s denial of the difficult history. Hence, the
Japanese government never seriously acknowledged their mistakes like the German government
did. As a victimized country, China had been isolated from the global community for decades,
decreasing the possibility of telling these difficult histories to the world.
14
The erasure of difficult
history is secondary victimization.
Diplomatic relationships largely influence the process of difficult heritage conservation.
The Lushun Russo-Japanese Prison Museum was first established at the beginning of the
twentieth century when Tsarist Russia and Japan controlled the whole Lushun-Dalian region.
The museum itself has a deep connection with the Seodaemun Prison in Seoul, South Korea,
which was established during the Japanese colonial period in Korea.
15
China and South Korea

13
Zhiliang Su, !"#. “Rijun ‘Wei’an Fu’ Yanjiu” $%”&'(”)* [the Research on Japanese Military
“comfort women”]. Yuanjie chuban she +,-./ (2015).
14
Iris Chang, “The Forgotten Holocaust: A Second Rape,” in The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of
World War II (Boulder: Basic Books, 2012), 199–214,
https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/273cgt/cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_9780786727605.
15
Huang and Lee, “Difficult Heritage Diplomacy,” 144.
9
had deep cooperation on the two prisons’ issues, including holding a joint exhibition and
protesting the Japanese’ denial of their brutalities.
16
According to some materials, the two sites
planned to have a joint world heritage nomination.
17
However, in 2016, the U.S. Terminal High
Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system was established in South Korea, which ruined the
peaceful and cooperative diplomatic relationship between China and South Korea.
18
Not
surprisingly, the nomination plan was postponed, and there have been no recent updates. In the
cases of Lushun and Seodaemun prison museums, it is not hard to see that the fates of
international difficult heritage are tightly connected with diplomatic relationships. When a
diplomatic relationship is good, the fates of difficult heritage are clear and positive; otherwise,
their future is blurred. Difficult heritage conservation is a reflection of politics and international
affairs.
Besides international political influence, domestic politics sometimes can be another
burden for conserving difficult heritage. A major concern of difficult heritage is that it might be
far away from the widely accepted history versions.
19
Japanese history textbooks seldom
mention the Nanjing Massacre or similar difficult histories since the Japanese government
always tried to create a relatively positive image of Japan during the war. Moreover, difficult
heritage can reflect current social problems, which may potentially disrupt the stability of a
society. At the beginning of 2022, a video of a chained woman was widely circulated on Chinese

16
Huang and Lee, “Difficult Heritage Diplomacy,” 155.
17
Ibid., 150-1.
18
Ibid., 143.
19
Gross and Terra, “What Makes Difficult History Difficult?,” 54.
10
social media.
20
Many internet users put the video together with the “comfort women” issue that
happened decades ago and questioned the government’s credibility, as well as women’s rights
changes in the past decades. A huge number of commenters believe that Chinese women’s rights
have not improved after the “comfort women” issue and ask for more attention to gender
equality.
After all, since difficult heritage is hard to speak about in public and usually unknown, it
is highly possible that difficult heritage has fewer written documents to prove it, which increased
the difficulty for officials to have a formal record. For example, the Japanese military left few
written documents related to their “comfort women” policies since they understood these policies
were against universal morality and they therefore intentionally concealed the facts. As for the
Kuo Ming Tang government who ruled wartime China, there was a lack of proof because of their
corruption and ignorance; many written documents are lost and not well-organized. As a result,
scholars today need to discover useful information from numerous but incomplete historical
documents. In addition, ordinary people may not realize the importance of difficult heritage
because of the lack of difficult heritage education in the long term. Thus, sometimes the
community may refuse the public's interest in their difficult past.
21

What makes difficult heritage difficult is the difficult history itself: violence,
discrimination, xenophobia, and other issues. However, these post-traumatic elements mentioned

20
In January 2022, a TikTok video of a chained woman attracted Chinese internet users’ attention. The living
condition in the video is horrible, and the woman probably has a mental problem. People widely believe the woman
was trafficked and forced to have eight children with her “husband,” or better described as the buyer. According to
some news, the buyer’s brothers and father also violated her, and they might also be her children’s biological
fathers. Even worse, there exist other trafficked women in the village as well as the whole city. However, the local
government provided four contradictory announcements to explain this, which disappointed many people.
More: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/02/17/1080115082/the-mystery-of-the-chained-woman-in-
china.
21
Logan and Reeves, “Introduction,” 12.
11
above, no matter from the individual perspective or the national level, make the difficult heritage
more difficult to conserve and to access by the public.

Conserving Difficult Heritage: A Government Responsibility
As discussed above, conserving difficult heritage is not a simple task. It is usually large
scale (which can be national or worldwide), needs sufficient budget and labor, and takes years to
achieve. Whether a person has professional training or not, an individual has a very limited role
in such a large-scale activity. Individuals' functions and abilities can only be maximized when
the government takes responsibility to provide basic support, such as providing public history
education and help to the victims. For example, public history education aims to make more
ordinary people engage in the process of conserving difficult heritage. With more people paying
attention to the preservation of difficult heritage, there are more opportunities for the public to
discover related historical items and materials, thus providing greater possibilities to conserve
difficult heritage. As a result, in the cases of conserving difficult heritage, people should focus
more on the government’s responsibilities rather than individuals. However, this is not to deny
that some responsible and great individuals, such as Steven Spielberg and his Shoah Foundation,
have made huge contributions to the conservation of difficult heritage.
22
Conserving difficult
heritage is a complicated task. If the government takes more responsibility, it will encourage
more people to join this program, thus, creating a better environment for difficult heritage
conservation.

22
The Shoah Foundation is an organization affiliated with the University of Southern California. It was founded in
1994 by director Steven Spielberg, and the name was from his documentary Shoah. The foundation is established to
preserve interviews with survivors and victims from the Holocaust. Today, the Shoah Foundation has nearly 55,000
audio-visual testimonies in sixty-five countries and in forty-three languages. More: https://sfi.usc.edu/about.
12
One thing that should be on the government’s priority list is encouraging the victims to
tell their sufferings. Though victims have suffered a lot from difficult histories, and it might take
a long time for them to open their hearts, it is still necessary for the government to have
professionals, like psychologists and social workers, to provide mental help for the victims. The
victims’ willingness to tell their stories does not mean their trauma has healed; professional
psychologists could help the victims to face their nightmares better. Also, for those who are
concerned about telling their stories, social workers can encourage victims to share their stories.
Psychological support or mental health counseling is essential for survivors of sexual-
crime-related difficult histories, especially when the victims are in a community that has
patriarchal social norms on female virginity. It is reasonable that the victims might worry about
being bullied and laughed at by others after talking about their past in public. Zhuying Peng, a
“comfort women” system survivor, stated in an interview that she worried that her experiences as
a “comfort woman” would bring her family shame and be laughed at by the neighbors; as a
result, she kept the secret for decades. Grandma Peng did not tell her stories until her elder sister
and social workers invited her to tell her stories several times. However, Grandma Peng has
never received any professional therapy from psychologists.
23
On the one hand, the government
should provide mental help for survivors to untie the knots in their hearts. On the other hand, if it
is necessary or is requested by the survivors, the government or other institutions should not
disclose any personal information of victims. The government should have relevant policies to
protect the victims’ privacy. In 2019, the Beijing News, a newspaper in China, interviewed two
“comfort women.” The journalist ignored the two women’s requests to use fake names and
insisted on using real names in his reports. Not surprisingly, the article brought attention to the

23
Zhuying Peng, Interview 766439. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 2020. Accessed February 16,
2022.
13
peaceful lives of the two “comfort women.”
24
Since China does not have relevant laws in
protecting victims’ privacy, even though the journalist was blamed by the public, he did not
receive any punishment.
Besides mental help, another thing worth mentioning is that the government could
provide some material help for the victims. Providing material help for people who are willing to
tell their difficult histories not only can encourage more people to stand out but also can help
those who are in need.
Additionally, it is the government’s responsibility to educate the public in various ways.
Public history education, especially the history textbooks and classes, should not only focus on
heroic figures and historical events. They are undeniably important to history, but they are not
the only items worthy of study by the students. The education of difficult histories is absent in
current educational systems, no matter in which country. In the United States, schools teach
about the history of slavery, but many teachers use the word “slaves” instead of “enslaved
people,” which may cause potential secondary victimization to the relevant communities. In
China, history classes usually focus on a particular period of history rather than a comprehensive
one. A comprehensive educational system that includes difficult history can help the young
generation better understand the country’s development and provide a basic concept of difficult
heritage.
Oral history projects are another critical method which the government should support to
conserve difficult heritage. Oral history projects use video to record the victims’ testimonies. It is
an effective way to preserve difficult heritage, providing scholars first-hand materials for future

24
Jianhua Zhu, “‘ Xinjingbao Jizhe Beizhi Xujia Baodao Zhongguo “Wei’an Fu” Shijian Rezhongnu ’012345
67829:;‘&'(’<= >?@ [Beijing News Journalist Was Blamed for an Unreliable ‘“comfort
women” ’Report, the Public Was Angry about It”,” Dwnews.com, March 19, 2019, https://www.dwnews.com/.
14
studies. More importantly, some oral history projects can be exhibited in museums, creating a
realistic atmosphere for visitors — the victims are so close to their lives. Displaying oral history
projects in museums is a great way to attract the public’s attention to difficult histories.
Establishing a memorial museum is a method widely used to remember difficult history
today. Generally, memorial museums carry out an educational function on behalf of the
government, providing a physical space for the public to learn about difficult history. They make
up something lost in the current educational system. As discussed earlier, visiting memorial
museums has become a trend in recent decades. A considerable number of people flood into the
museums for education or just for relaxation, which brings an economic boom for the museums,
as well as the local community. Though “atrocity tourism” might retraumatize some
communities, with the revenue brought by “atrocity tourism,” the government has more
opportunities to help conserve difficult heritage. In addition, a great number of memorial
museums are built at the sites where the events occurred, and the architecture is usually
historical. Establishing a memorial museum in a meaningful historical building can bring a more
immersive experience to the visitors.
25
Also, setting up a memorial museum on the original site
can help protect historic buildings, especially those that are meaningful to a specific community
but are not eligible for national-level or regional-level registered historic status. The Nanjing
Museum of the Site of Lijixiang Comfort Stations in China is such an example. Historically the
buildings were occupied by several comfort stations; after the war ended, they were used as
residential houses. Since it was not recognized as historical architecture, the site was facing
demolition in the 2000s. Fortunately, several scholars suggested modifying the building into a

25
This is also an environmentally friendly way to re-use a historical structure; modifying an existing architecture is
more energy sufficient than constructing a new building.
15
memorial museum to conserve it. The site first opened as a memorial museum in 2015, then
became a national registered historic architecture in 2018.

Missions of Memorial Museums
Generally, memorial museums provide exhibitions, education, and tourism. Dr. Yujie
Zhu, a researcher at Australian National University with a concentration on difficult heritage,
stated in his research “Hot Interpretations of Difficult Heritage: the Memorial Hall of the
Nanjing Massacre in China” that there are four primary missions of memorial museums:
knowledge and fact sharing; imagination and reflection; understanding and recognition; and
peace-building and reconciliation.
26

The most fundamental and important function of a memorial museum is to tell a clear and
non-biased story of what once happened in this place. As a result, the essential mission of the
memorial museum is to create a space for knowledge and fact sharing. To achieve this mission,
most memorial museums use chronological displays to tell the story, providing visitors an
organized order to understand the history.
27
Since the visitors are from all ages, social status,
cultural backgrounds, and educational levels, using a chronological order is the easiest and most
accessible way for people with different backgrounds to understand the contexts, especially
historical materials. In order to make the exhibition more convincing, the displays related to
historical facts usually use written documents, which requires cooperation from the museum,
academia, and the local community. The knowledge and fact-sharing mission are based on
credible historical documents.

26
Zhu, “Hot Interpretations,” 35.
27
Ibid.
16
Unlike the mission of knowledge and fact sharing, imagination and reflection do not
focus on rigorous historical documents. Instead, in order to achieve this goal, memorial museums
also widely employ items that can activate visitors’ sensibility in exhibitions. Displayed items
belonging to the victims, especially personal items, not only provide emotional access for
visitors to imagine the suffering but also create an immersive atmosphere. In the section related
to feelings, memorial museums prefer to use visual exhibits rather than texts. Velvet Nelson gave
an example in her essay “Liminality and Difficult Heritage in Tourism” - a museum used
lynching photographs in the Southern United States to describe the brutalities of the slave
system. Although these images received some complaints from visitors, the majority of people
who view the exhibit have an intense visual and emotional experience with these visual
materials.
28

Some memorial museums also use oral history projects so that the visitors can have more
direct and straightforward conversations with the victims. The Shoah Foundation has cooperated
with multiple memorial museums all over the world, including the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing
Massacre. In Nanjing, they interviewed Madam Shuqin Xia, a survivor of the Nanjing Massacre,
and put her answer clips in a computer system. When visitors ask Madam Xia questions, the
system will automatically find the best answer for the visitors. Visitors can interact with the
survivors with the system and the project, which is immersive and reflective. The visitors can
imagine what they would do if they faced the same issues as the victims. The mission of
imagination and reflection is also to make people reflect on themselves, especially on the
questions of what they can do for world peace. After all, exhibiting trauma is not to open the

28
Velvet Nelson, “Liminality and Difficult Heritage in Tourism,” Tourism Geographies 22, no. 2 (September 16,
2019): 300, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2019.1666161.
17
victims’ vulnerabilities but rather ask more people to remember the sufferings the victims have
experienced.
29

A critical reason for establishing a memorial museum is to visualize the trauma, making
it no longer an abstract concept in historical documents. For example, it is widely believed that
over 300,000 people were killed during the Nanjing Massacre; the number is huge but abstract,
so the public might not be able to imagine how large the number is. To address this problem, the
Memorial Hall designed a large space, filling it with 300,000 black stones to represent the
victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
30
[Figure 1.2] For people who are from the United States, when
introducing the number of 300,000, it is easier for them to have a more practical understanding
by telling them the population of Pittsburgh is around 300,000.
31
Such design is common in
memorial museums or monuments’ designs; the Vietnam Veterans Monument in Washington,
D.C. inscribed the names of dead soldiers’ on it. [Figure 1.1] This kind of design provides a
practical and straightforward impression for the visitors rather than an abstract concept,
providing a better method for them to understand difficult histories. And thus, it can help
memorial museums to reach the goal of education.

29
Wang Siyi, “Memorials and Memory: The Curation and Interpretation of Trauma Narratives—Using the
Examples of Exhibitions on the Theme of ‘“comfort women” ’in East Asian Society,” Chinese Studies in History
53, no. 1 (December 31, 2019): 66, https://doi.org/10.1080/00094633.2019.1682405.
30
A video about the black stones:
http://www.19371213.com.cn/information/news/202008/t20200818_2335310.html.
31
“ U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Pittsburgh City, Pennsylvania,” www.census.gov, accessed February 23, 2022,
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/pittsburghcitypennsylvania.
18

Figure 1.1: Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Photo by Barry Winiker, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, online Image, accessed May 8, 2022,
https://www.tripsavvy.com/vietnam-veterans-memorial-in-washington-dc-1039289.

19
In “Hot Interpretations of Difficult Heritage” Dr. Zhu also mentioned that memorial
museums have a minor mission in China since the majority of memorial museums are under
government control. Dr. Zhu believed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses the
memorial museums to stabilize their authority.
32
China has an idiom saying that “call to mind
past sufferings and think over the good times;” remembering the past sufferings is an important
activity for Chinese people. As a result, the CCP believes that having memorial museums can
help the citizens to remember the miseries of the past and make people appreciate its leadership.
And thus, memorial museums help stabilize their power.

Conclusion
Since difficult heritage comes from difficult history, what makes difficult heritage more
difficult is what such heritage means to us and how people deal with it.
33
However, the
government should take responsibility to conserve difficult heritage, since the help that
individuals can provide is generally limited. In an idealized scenario, the government would help
the victims to speak about their sufferings, and support large projects like recording oral
histories. Among all approaches available, establishing a memorial museum is a method used
most widely to conserve difficult heritage. Memorial museums can educate a large number of
visitors while also helping the local economy, which can directly influence the region and bring
more opportunities to conserve difficult heritage. Memorial museums should follow four primary

32
Zhu, “Hot Interpretations,” 36.
33
Erica T. Lehrer and Cynthia E. Milton, “Introduction: Witness to Witnessing,” in Curating Difficult Knowledge:
Violent Pasts in Public Places, ed. Erica T. Lehrer, Cynthia E. Milton, and Monica Patterson (Houndmills,
Basingstoke Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 7.
20
missions: knowledge and fact sharing; imagination and reflection; understanding and
recognition; and peace-building and reconciliation.
34

34
Zhu, “Hot Interpretations,” 35.
21
Chapter 2
“Comfort Women”: A Term that Conceals Women’s Sufferings

Introduction
The difficult history of “comfort women” was not noticed by the international community
until the end of the twentieth century and is still not as known as well as the Holocaust by the
world, especially in Western countries. This chapter will first discuss the concept of “comfort
women” and then explain why the history of comfort women is difficult heritage. Additionally,
the nature of comfort stations, where “comfort women” were confined and the place where
brutalities happened, will be explored. Finally, the chapter will introduce three classifications of
comfort stations, based on location, the relationship with the Japanese military, and the purpose
of the comfort stations.

Who are “Comfort Women”
35

Japan and China had their first war in July of 1894. The war lasted until the next year,
and Great Qing (1636 - 1912), the Chinese emperor at the time, lost the war. The Great Qing had
to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan. Imperial Japan not only required a huge amount of
compensation through the Treaty but also asked the Great Qing to give up its sovereignty in the
Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. The Korean Peninsula and Taiwan, as a result, became Japanese
colonies after that.
36

35
Since the primary focus of this thesis is “comfort women” in China, in the following texts, if there is no other
further information, the term “comfort women” will refer to “comfort women” in China.
36
“Treaty of Shimonoseki, 1895 | US-China Institute,” china.usc.edu, accessed June 1,
2022, https://china.usc.edu/treaty-shimonoseki-1895.
22
Japan continued trying to control China in the following years; minor but multiple
harassments and conflicts were seen between the 1890s and the 1930s, especially after the Great
Qing’s fall. Japan officially started its invasion in China on September 18, 1931, which also
marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War, or the Anti-Japanese Resistance War.
37

The war lasted for fourteen years, resulting in countless deaths and astonishing economic losses
to the two nations. However, one of the most infamous legacies of the war was the “comfort
women” system set up by the Japanese military to “provide women for the sexual comfort of
soldiers in war zones.”
38
The word “comfort women” itself is directly translated from the
Japanese word ianfu, which was far away from these women’s terrifying sufferings under the
comfort women system.
39
As a result, though the term is widely known and acknowledged by the
international community, it is inappropriate to directly use the term to refer to those females who
have endured traumas. Therefore, quotation marks are necessary when using the term “comfort
women.”
40

The origin of the “comfort women” system can be traced back to the 1880s, after the First
Sino-Japanese War.
41
The first comfort station that was directly controlled by the Japanese
military was not built until 1932 in Shanghai.
42
The site was one of the biggest and earliest
comfort stations in Shanghai. Today, located on East Baoxing Rd, Hongkou District, Shanghai,

37
Both of them refer to the war that happened between China and Japan from 1931 to 1945. The first phrase is more
commonly used in the Western world, while the later terminology, “Anti-Japanese Resistance War,” is more
frequently used in China. In the following contexts, the two terminologies may be used alternatively.
38
George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War,
1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995), 16.
39
Peipei Qiu with Zhiliang Su and Lifei Chen, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex
Slaves. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1,
https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/273cgt/cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_9780199373901.
40
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 1.
41
Zhiliang Su, Rijun “Wei’an Fu” Yanjiu $%“&'(“)* [the Research on Japanese Military Comfort Women]
(Beijing: Tuan Jie Chu Ban She, 2015), 29.
42
Hicks, The Comfort Women, 45.
23
China, it is used as a residential building and faces demolition and conservation problems. The
establishment of the Dayi Saloon, one of the first major comfort stations established by the
Japanese, served the purpose of lowering international criticism about the rising rape crimes by
the Japanese military.
43
From the Japanese official perspective, establishing comfort stations
helped to maintain the good reputation of the military by legalizing sexual crimes.
44
And a good
reputation was essential for them to take control over China with less controversy.

Figure 2.1: The First Comfort Women Station in Shanghai.
Online Image, accessed December 11, 2021, http://world.kbs.co.kr/special/kfuture/chinese/women/truth.htm.

43
Su, Research on “Comfort Women”, 34.
44
Ching-Yuan Chou, “A Cave in Taiwan: Comfort Women’s Memories and the Local Identity,” in Places of Pain
and Shame: Dealing with Difficult Heritage, ed. William Logan and Keir Reeves (London: Routledge, 2009), 118.
24

Figure 2.2: Today’s Dayi Saloon,
Today’s Dayi Saloon, n.d., Image, “Erzhan Shiqi Riben Qiangzheng ‘Wei’an Fu’ Zuixibg Caifang Jishi” [⼆战时期
⽇本强征“慰安妇”罪⾏采访纪实] Interview Documentary of “Comfort Women” System Survivors, n.d., accessed
April 25, 2022.

Figure 2.3: The Building of Dayi Salon on Dong-Baoxing Road in Shanghai Today,
Zhiliang Su, 2012, Book Print, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves, 2012,
https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/hs9vaa/alma991043224786003731.

25
Although comfort stations sometimes were also open to non-Japanese, another important
reason to establish a military “comfort women” system is to stabilize the regime’s authority and
thus increase the Japanese military’s cohesion.
45
This purpose was achieved by two approaches:
the relief of soldiers’ fear and stress of the war and venting their anger toward the enemy
countries’ women. In Japanese cultures, it is widely believed that having sex before fighting will
bring good luck to soldiers, and they will not get injured during the battle.
46
It is believed that if
someone suppresses his or her libido for an overlong period — though this statement might only
refer to males in some East Asian cultures — driven by deprivation, it is highly likely that the
person will make a wrong and impulsive decision during the war.
47
The Japanese military had
strict rules and tough training. For most ordinary soldiers, inexpensive sex in comfort stations
was the only entertainment. It was an efficient method to relieve their fear of war and death.
48

According to several testimonies from different “comfort women,” every time the troop had a
break, soldiers would line up in front of comfort stations to get some “recreation.”
Additionally, most of the comfort stations in occupied regions were staffed by abducted
local women.
49
In the case of occupied China, enslaving Chinese women was a way that
Japanese soldiers could vent their anger toward China.
50
During the conflict, Japanese men as
occupiers had superior status in China; they felt that they were entitled to “enjoy” everything on
this land, including women that were regarded as important sexual resources. On the other hand,
the enslavement of Chinese females shamed all Chinese people, as it suggested that the nation

45
Chou, “A Cave in Taiwan”, 118.
46
Hicks, The Comfort Women, 32-3.
47
Ibid.
48
Chou, “A Cave in Taiwan”, 118.
49
“Comfort women” were mainly from China, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asian countries, and even some Pacific
Islands and European countries.
50
Chou, “A Cave in Taiwan”, 118.
26
was too weak to protect their people. The Japanese, especially the military men, put themselves
in a higher psychological status through the “comfort women” system.
Another traditional Japanese concept worth mentioning was that Japanese males should
have at least one sexual interaction before their deaths.
51
Comfort stations, as a result, became
places to save those young soldiers from regrets. Besides, the Japanese soldiers also held a belief
that amulets could bless them during the war. They believed that their amulets should include
something belonging to “comfort women,” like pubic hairs; the Japanese collected pubic hairs
from “comfort women” and braided them into amulets.
52
Ironically, when Japanese officials first
transported women from Japan to China as “comfort women,” they were listed as “war supplies”
rather than “women,” because the soldiers, as well as the officials, believed women on board
would bring bad luck to the warship.
53

For the Japanese officials, in an ideal situation, a “comfort women” system could prevent
the spread of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) among the military.
54
STDs could
significantly influence the soldiers’ health and eventually lead to the decrease of troops’ combat
powers. However, the first “comfort women” were primarily prostitutes from Japan; a great
number of them were already infected by STDs. Combined with the lack of the use of condoms,
STDs soon became common among the military. Some veterans even brought STDs to their
hometowns after the war. As a result, in subsequent “comfort women” recruitment, the Japanese
preferred to abduct inexperienced women rather than hiring prostitutes. As the “comfort women”
system evolved, doctors were supposed to check the health conditions of “comfort women”

51
Hicks, The Comfort Women, 33.
52
Ibid., 32-3.
53
Ibid., 17.
54
Chou, “A Cave in Taiwan”, 118.
27
regularly, and condoms were required. An infected “comfort woman” would not be allowed to
“provide” sexual services until she was recovered.
55

Finally, for higher military officers, comfort stations were safe places for them to relax
and socialize without worrying about secrets leaking.
56
The majority of “comfort women” were
uneducated Chinese women who did not speak Japanese. Because of their social status before
being abducted in comfort stations, it was almost impossible for ordinary Chinese women to get
in touch with any Chinese ranked officers and become spies. On the other hand, it was also hard
for Japanese or Korean “comfort women” to contact Chinese military men. Though some
intelligence might be leaked by prostitutes before the appearance of comfort stations, it would be
very difficult for the women confined in the comfort stations to contact people outside after the
“comfort women” system was established.
As Japan expanded its occupied territory in China, the need for “comfort women” was
greatly increased; countless comfort stations popped up. It is widely believed that “comfort
women” were primarily from Japan, Korea, and China. Some scholars, including George Hicks,
an Australian scholar in the field of East Asian Studies, believe that Korean Peninsula once had
the largest number of “comfort women,” while others believe it was China, since China had over
200,000 victims.
57
It is difficult to prove which claim is true. It is impossible to count each
country’s real number of victims due to the lack of historical records. What made it more
difficult to estimate is that in most cases, the personal identities of “comfort women” were
removed. They were regarded as figures rather than objects. However, all “comfort women” are
victims of the atrocity; it means nothing to argue which country is the biggest victim. By

55
Su, Research on “Comfort Women”, 253-6.
56
Chou, “A Cave in Taiwan”, 118.
57
Hicks, The Comfort Women, 18; Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 38.
28
studying the nationalities and “recruitment” of “comfort women,” people could uncover more
historical details.
As discussed above, the Japanese recruited a great number of domestic prostitutes from
Japan to work as “comfort women” in China. Japan had a history of licensed prostitution before
the war. A “comfort women” issue expert Professor Su Zhiliang believed that Japan once had
250,000 to 300,000 legal prostitutes and it was not hard for the Japanese officials to export a
satisfying number of “comfort women” to China.
58
Japan also has a tradition of karayuki, or, the
traveling prostitutes.
59
The Japanese official soon abandoned this idea due to STDs. The
Japanese turned to young, inexperienced, and unmarried women, because these women were less
likely to be infected by STDs. On the other hand, the Japanese military, especially those higher-
ranked officers, believed that women’s virginity could bring them good luck during the battle.
60

However, the recruitment of Japanese women resulted in an unstable social environment, and the
public questioned the government’s motivation for doing so.
61
In order to maintain their regime
in Japan, the Japanese authorities shifted their recruitment to Korea and Taiwan, two of their
colonies.
Compared with Taiwan, Korea has a larger population and is adjacent to mainland China,
which was convenient for the Japanese to transport women to China. Thus, Korea became
another major place where the Japanese military drafted “comfort women” to China. Unlike
Japanese “comfort women,” Korean “comfort women” were primarily recruited by three
different approaches. First, Korean “comfort women” were threatened by the ruling class,
including police, the chief of the village, and even local gangsters. Facing superior and absolute

58
Su, Research on “Comfort Women”, 239.
59
Hicks, The Comfort Women, 28.
60
Su, Research on “Comfort Women”, 254.
61
Ibid., 239.
29
public power, most Korean “comfort women” had no choice but to agree. Second, a considerable
percentage of Korean “comfort women” were tricked by false offers of “well-paid jobs” out of
their hometowns. The person tasked with recruitment usually told these naïve women that they
would work as support staff in the military, such as nurses and waitresses, to lower their guard.
The third commonly-used recruitment method was human trafficking — the recruiter directly
bought women from traffickers, then transported them to China.
62
Sometimes, the recruiters used
combined methods to abduct women. Park Young-Shim was a Korean “comfort woman.” When
she was seventeen years old, a policeman forced her to board a train, telling her there was a high-
paying job in China. She struggled to refuse, but it did not work. She was taken into a comfort
station in Nanjing, China, which was one of the comfort stations in Liji Lane, which will be
discussed later in this thesis.
63

Another thing worth mentioning is that in many cases the Japanese were not directly
involved in the recruitment of “comfort women” in Korea, either. They appointed a great number
of Korean males to complete this task. This behavior could avoid potential stains on the
government’s good reputation, helping the Japanese to stay away from the illegal and unethical
activity if it was noticed by the public. Such behavior, however, suggested that a great number of
Korean men came to China to open comfort stations in China for a living. Unsurprisingly, these
comfort stations largely employed Korean women.
64
The rape of “comfort women” was not only
done by the Japanese. It was a crime made by the whole patriarchal system of society.

62
Su, Research on “Comfort Women”, 239.
63
Joseph Joh, “The Seoul Times,” theseoultimes.com, accessed March 23, 2022,
https://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php%3Fidx=1846.
64
Chunghee Sarah Soh, The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan
(Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2008), 3-4.
30
At the same time, the Japanese abducted Chinese females as “comfort women.” They
primarily used violence to abduct and force Chinese women. Peng Zhuying, a “comfort women”
system victim in China, was forced to be a “comfort woman.” When she was nine years old, she
lost her sight after a gas bomb attack. Years later, when the Japanese military invaded her
hometown, she was unable to flee from the Japanese without other people’s help. She struggled
but failed; the Japanese used violence to stop her and took her to a comfort station nearby.
65

Offering “job opportunities” was also very common in Chinese “comfort women”
recruitment. These job opportunities were usually located in an unfamiliar environment so that
the Japanese or comfort station owners could better control “comfort women.” Yuan Zhulin was
another victim from Wuhan, China. In 1940, when Yuan Zhulin was eighteen years old, she
heard that another local woman was seeking cleaners for a hotel in other cities. Yuan Zhulin was
hired and transported into a comfort station near Wuhan. She did not realize that she was
recruited as a “comfort woman” until she arrived at the comfort station. The woman who posted
the job information was a Chinese who was married to a Japanese; she used her identity as a
Chinese woman to trick other females.
66
From some perspectives, in a patriarchal society,
females can be accomplices of males to suppress other women. Again, crimes like the “comfort
women” system should not be simply blamed on a specific community or a group of people; it is
a brutality by the whole society.
The third recruitment approach in China was different from that of Korea. During the
Second Sino-Japanese War, there were many local collaborators, or Chinese citizens who served

65
Zhuying Peng, Interview 766439. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 2020. Accessed February 16,
2022.
66
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 102-7. For Yuan Zhulin’s story, there is a non-fictional novel Yanhua
Sanyue (Foggy and blossoming March) written by Lilian Lee Pik-Wah. The novel tells Yuan Zhulin’s life, from
childhood to her late days, in detail. The words are so touching that readers could experience Yuan Zhulin’s struggle
among her sufferings. So far, the book is only printed in simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese.
31
the Japanese military. Helping the Japanese deal with unpleasant jobs was one of the most
important functions of local collaborators. Thus, many Chinese “comfort women” were selected
and forced into the system by local collaborators rather than the Japanese. There did not exist a
standard rule for local collaborators to choose “comfort women;” the selection of “comfort
women” was highly dependent on the local collaborators’ personal preferences and dislikes.
Peng Renshou, Peng Zhuying’s older sister and another victim of the “comfort women” system,
was noticed by a local collaborator when she was in a market. The local collaborator asked her to
be his concubine and promised her good fortune. Peng Renshou rejected the offer, stating that
she would rather beg for food than become his concubine. Later, the local collaborator told the
Japanese military that Peng Renshou was a good choice as a “comfort woman” and led them to
Peng Renshou’s home. The Japanese gang-raped her and took her back to the comfort station.
67

Classifying “comfort women” by nationalities and the way they were abducted would
oversimplify the sufferings they have experienced. Due to various reasons, for example the loss
of historical materials, “comfort women” are less mentioned as individuals; they are more like a
group of people. As mentioned above, the “comfort women” issue is a crime that happens in a
patriarchal society. They were not simply raped by the Japanese military men; in fact, they are
victims of the patriarchal system. And being forgotten by the public — no matter on purpose or
unconsciously — is secondary victimization from the whole society.

“Comfort Women” as a Part of Difficult Heritage
It is undeniable that the story of the “comfort women” is important and difficult heritage.
They experienced terrible suffering, and their stories were not noticed by the public until the late

67
Zhuying Peng, Interview 766439. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 2020. Accessed February 16,
2022.
32
twentieth century. What is worse, there are numerous controversies around “comfort women;”
some extreme and irrational nationalists in Japan even claim that the “comfort women” issue is a
lie made up by other countries. Such statement shows great disrespect to the sufferings of the
“comfort women.”. People cannot travel back to fix a past mistake, but it is still possible to
prevent it from happening again by learning from history.
The difficulties of “comfort women” can be divided into three major types: their
sufferings during the war, their encounters after the war as an unknown history, and the long-
time controversies as well as misunderstandings around them.
The sufferings of “comfort women” when they were in comfort stations were both
physical and mental. The most apparent suffering they had was the enforced sexual interaction
with the Japanese military. A “comfort woman” was forced to serve forty to fifty soldiers at peak
times; the Japanese soldiers usually lined up outside of comfort stations during their breaks or
before a battle started.
68
They had no time to clean themselves after each sexual encounter or
even wear clothes. Even during training days, a “comfort woman” might still serve ten soldiers
on average.
69
In addition, the Japanese military had a set of general and strict rules to better
control comfort stations and “comfort women,” including the enforced regular STDs check,
condom use, opening hours, and sanitary requirements.
70
These rules were for the Japanese
soldiers and seemed to partly protect the “comfort women,” but in fact, they were essentially
aimed to protect the Japanese soldiers’ rights, and they were not always practiced. Comfort
stations that were in large cities or were larger scale sites might have had spaces for “comfort
women” to clean themselves after sexual interactions, while most comfort stations did not have

68
Soh, The Comfort Women, 123.
69
Ibid.
70
Qiu, Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 59-60.
33
sanitary facilities for “comfort women.” They could only clean themselves in small wooden
bowls.
71
Lin Lindi’s father was a carpenter, and her family lived close to the Dayi Saloon in
Shanghai. When she was a child, the staff of the Dayi Saloon frequently came to her father and
purchased wooden bowls, which were for “comfort women” to clean themselves.
72
However, in
a comfort station located in Wuhu, a mid-sized city near Shanghai, “comfort women” were only
allowed to take showers three times per month.
73

The actual use of condoms was also far away from the regulations. Everything was in
short supply during the war, including condoms. The Japanese soldiers would choose either not
to use condoms or use the used ones. The used ones were cleaned with water, which actually
could not protect anything. Besides, some soldiers claimed that they did not like using condoms
because they thought this was uncomfortable for sex. The condoms provided free in comfort
stations were not good qualities either, which led to permanent damage to the health conditions
of “comfort women.”
74

Thus, combining the two reasons mentioned above, it was not surprising that healthy
women were soon infected by STDs after being forced to be “comfort women.” According to the
general regulations, once a “comfort woman” was confirmed with STDs, she should immediately
stop providing services for the soldiers to receive treatments. However, this was seldom obeyed
in real life due to the lack of “comfort women” and “economic consideration.”
75
For the Japanese
military, since their “comfort women” were primarily abducted with little to zero cost, it was not
worth it for the military to cure a “comfort woman” with unpredictable costs. The common way

71
Qiu, Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 61.
72
Zhiliang Su, Lifei Chen, and Fei Yao, Zhengju: Shanghai 172 Ge Wei’an Suo Jiemi ABCDE 172F&'GH
I [Evidence: Reveal 172 Comfort Stations in Shanghai] (Shanghai: Shanghai Jiaotong University Press, 2018), 90.
73
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 61.
74
Ibid., 60.
75
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 61.
34
was to abandon or kill the infected woman or just not to give any treatments to them.
76
In some
situations, “comfort women” were able to receive treatments, official or unofficial. In some
regions, the “comfort women” were sent to a hospital for STD treatment, but the costs were not
paid by the Japanese military or the comfort station owners; “comfort women” had to pay for
their treatments after they were raped and became ill. If they were abandoned by the Japanese
and could not afford the money, they would seek treatment from herbal remedies.
77
In order to
control the STDs’ spread, the Japanese military also took another strategy: they injected the
“comfort women” with Salvarsan. Salvarsan contains arsenic and is harmful to human bodies;
the injection results in pain and potentially damages the reproductive system.
78

In addition, though comfort stations were supposed to have limited opening hours, in
actual practice, “comfort women” had to serve the Japanese soldiers — especially higher-ranked
officers — at any time. The conditions were worse if the Japanese military men were drunk,
which usually meant violence for “comfort women.” “Comfort women” were commonly beaten
by the Japanese military men. The Japanese never treated “comfort women” as individuals; they
were vessels, containing the Japanese’ fits of anger to the enemy countries’ women.
Besides physical violence, verbal violence was another issue every “comfort woman”
encountered. The Japanese usually used the character “p” to refer to “comfort woman.” They
divided “comfort women” by nationalities: Japanese “comfort women” were “Japanese p,”
Koreans were “Korean p,” and Chinese were “Chinese p.” There are two explanations of “p.”
One believes that “p” is short for prostitution; the other argues that “p” is from the Chinese slang

76
Hicks, The Comfort Women, 95.
77
Ibid.
78
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 61.
35
“pi,” an extremely dirty word referring to vagina.
79
The Japanese also referred to comfort
stations as “public toilets.” The Japanese believed that, unlike brothels, comfort stations were no
place for the military to enjoy sexual behaviors. Indeed, comfort stations were more like spaces
for the soldiers to release their desires, like using a restroom.
80
On the other hand, “public toilet”
is a common slut shaming phrase in China, suggesting a woman can be “used” by everyone for
free.
Accordingly, the basic human rights for “comfort women” were brutally violated when
they were in comfort stations. Some comfort stations even set up additional strict rules for
“comfort women,” such as:
• “Comfort women” were not allowed to leave the comfort station, or their family would
be killed;
• “Comfort women” should unconditionally follow the order of the Japanese;
• “Comfort women” should obey comfort station operators’ words, or they would be
punished;
• “Comfort women” should provide services to the Japanese at any time.
81

It is not hard to conclude that “comfort women” experienced dehumanized treatments in
comfort stations, both physically and mentally. None of the regulations and the terms the
Japanese used treated them as human beings. The Japanese applied various methods to lower
“comfort women’s” self-esteem, so to achieve their goals of manipulating these women. An
enormous number of “comfort women” died—they were killed, died of illness, or committed
suicide because of these torments. For survivors, these dehumanizing treatments resulted in huge
shadows on their mental health, which discouraged them from speaking out about their
experiences after the war. The majority of “comfort women” never had a chance to do therapy;
they have no idea how to reconcile with themselves.

79
Soh, The Comfort Women, 39. The pronounce of “pi” is close to “pea.” In fact, “cunt” will be a better translation
for “pi.”
80
Soh, The Comfort Women, 40.
81
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 58-9.
36
Another burden that has stopped them from telling their sufferings is the traditional
concept of chastity in East Asian countries, which requires women to be virgins before marriage
and maintain fidelity after marriage. Their family will be shamed if women are unchaste. Most
“comfort women” were born in poverty and most of them were uneducated or received little
education. Chastity as a social norm was still deeply rooted in society during the war, especially
in the underprivileged regions. Even though feminism and the women’s liberty revolution began
to appear in the first half of the twentieth century in China, it advanced slower outside the major
urban sites. The victims of the “comfort women” system were afraid to speak their experiences
in public.
The period immediately after the war would have been the best time to invite survivors to
tell their stories, but society’s atmosphere was too conservative for “comfort women.”
Additionally, in the post-war period, the Kuomingtang government (1925-1948), the ruling
government of China at that time, did not ask for compensation from Japan. Decades later, in
1972, when the People’s Republic of China re-established her diplomatic relationship with
Japan, the Chinese government stated that they would no longer ask for compensation from a
national perspective. The ignorance from the government level also discouraged some victims
from telling their stories. Though society became more open to women’s sexual activities before
marriage and victims of rape after the end of the war, a great number of victims had already died
due to disease or old age. In some respects, the best time to ask “comfort women” to speak about
their suffering has passed since the majority of them are no longer alive.
However, it is never too late to start something to address the problem. In recent decades,
encouraged by other “comfort women,” researchers, activists, and legal specialists, more
“comfort women” began to tell their sufferings. However, their testimonies were frequently
37
questioned in Japan for various reasons, including the lack of supportive historical documents.
Influenced by some right-wing politicians and ultranationalists, a considerable number of
Japanese do not admit the existence of “comfort women;” indeed, they believe “comfort women”
were “volunteers” or “paid prostitutes,” which deeply hurt the feelings of “comfort women” and
discouraged them from speaking in public.
A very common false portrayal of “comfort women” is that they were paid prostitutes.
This description is inaccurate. First, the majority of “comfort women” were never paid; only a
small number of them were paid a small amount of money, which did not even cover their living
expenses in the comfort station. The Japanese procurers usually paid a cash advance to those
“comfort women” who were recruited from Japan and its colonies and thus required them to
work in comfort stations to pay back the debt. Thus, for these “comfort women,” they were
supposed to receive 40% to 60% of their incomes. However, “comfort women” were required to
save three yen per one hundred yen to their savings and use two-thirds of the remaining to pay
their debt.
82
The remaining balance had to cover the living expenses of “comfort women;” the
Japanese charged for food, clothes, and cosmetics.
83
Besides, as discussed in previous contexts,
“comfort women” needed to pay for their treatments if they were ill.
84
Even if a “comfort
woman” was lucky to save some money from such strict conditions, her saving might be
valueless due to post-war inflation. In the so-called “formal” military comfort stations, what the
“comfort women” received was usually a “military ticket” (junpiao). The tickets could be
regarded as the common currency among the Japanese military and the areas they occupied,

82
Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2002), 145, quoted in Peipei Qiu with Zhiliang Su and Lifei Chen, Chinese Comfort
Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 62.
83
Su, Research on “Comfort Women”, 361-2.
84
Hicks, The Comfort Women, 95.
38
while it was worth nothing after Japan surrendered.
85
In fact, many “comfort women” claimed
they never received any money.
86

Figure 2.4: A Comfort Station Ticket
A Comfort Station Ticket, n.d., Image, “Erzhan Shiqi Riben Qiangzheng ‘Wei’an Fu’ Zuixibg Caifang Jishi” [⼆战
时期⽇本强征“ 慰安妇” 罪⾏采访纪实] Interview Documentary of “Comfort Women” System Survivors, n.d.,
accessed April 25, 2022.

The other common controversy around “comfort women” is that they were volunteers.
The recruitment approaches were discussed earlier, and it is clear that a significant percentage of
“comfort women” were abducted and enforced. They were never “volunteers.” In the case of
Chinese women, judging from Chinese traditional cultures and social atmosphere, there does not
exist a tradition that permits female bodies to be regarded as rewards to the military. In other
words, Chinese women will not use their bodies to “comfort” their national military, not to
mention the enemy’s soldiers, therefore it makes no sense to say “comfort women” volunteered
to serve the Japanese military.

85
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 63.
86
Soh, The Comfort Women, 123.
39
The difficulty of the “comfort women” issue is closely connected to three features: their
sufferings in comfort stations, unspeakable experiences in the post-war period, and the long-
standing controversies and rumors around them. It is regretable that the number of surviving
victims of the “comfort women” system is decreasing, and it is inevitable that one day all
survivors will become history. Besides recording as many of the survivors’ oral history and
testimonies as possible, it is also essential to conserve comfort stations as important evidence;
they witnessed the traumatic history.

Classification of Comfort Stations
The term “comfort station” is directly derived from Japanese ianjo, referring to facilities
that housed “comfort women.” Most crimes related to “comfort women” happened in comfort
stations. The location of comfort stations, their relationship with the military, and motivations
behind comfort stations are focused on by scholars.
The formats of a comfort station could vary, but due to its function, a comfort station
usually required multiple individual rooms to host large volumes of Japanese men at the same
time.
87
The Japanese military usually occupied already-existing facilities when they successfully
controlled or arrived at a new place; their choices included school buildings, religious centers,
and private residences.
88
On some occasions, established properties might be unable to be
accessed, especially in frontlines, then the Japanese would choose to build temporary barracks or
tents to host “comfort women.” Generally, there are two types of comfort stations according to

87
Cheeyun Lilian Kwon, “Sexual Violence, Imperialism, and Museum Activism: The Case of the War & Women’s
Human Rights Museum.,” Museum International 72, no. 1–2 (2020): 48,
https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/273cgt/cdi_crossref_primary_10_1080_13500775_2
020_1743056.
88
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 50.
40
locations: pre-existing buildings and temporary facilities; pre-existing buildings can be further
divided by their ownership: public building and private residence.

Figure 2.5: Yuan Zhulin Revisiting the Old Temple Where the Japanese Kept Her in 1940 as a “Comfort Woman”
Book Print, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves, 2013,
https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/hs9vaa/alma991043224786003731.

Comfort stations set up in public buildings were usually in schools, temples, and
community centers. These usually had multiple and individual rooms to contain soldiers and
“comfort stations,” and were usually landmarks so that the Japanese troops stationed nearby
could find comfort stations easily. Besides, for the Japanese, establishing comfort stations on
enemy country’s public buildings — some of them even were sacred — was also a form of
psychological warfare. According to Yuan Zhulin’s testimony, the Japanese modified a temple
into a comfort station, and she was abducted in the temple for years.
89
Another victim in Jinhua
City, a city located in Southeastern China and approximately two hundred miles from Shanghai,

89
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 103-4.
41
stated that there were three comfort stations in Jinhua during the war; one of them was located in
a local elite family’s temple.
90

Besides public buildings, the Japanese military also largely occupied private residences
as comfort stations. The former Liji Lane Comfort Stations in Nanjing belonged to a
Kuomingtang officer, Yang Chunpu. The Liji Lane site was constructed between 1935 and 1937,
consisting of ten buildings. In 1937, after Nanjing fell into Japanese control, the Japanese, along
with Koreans, soon opened several comfort stations on the site, which lasted until the end of the
war.
91
Today, Liji Lane has become an important site for people to learn the “comfort women”
history. After several years of conservation work, the government established a memorial
museum for “comfort women” on Liji Lane comfort stations’ historic site.
Sometimes when the Japanese were unable to find a suitable established facility for a
comfort station, they would choose to build a temporary and simple barrack near where they
were stationed. Expecting the frontline conditions, the Japanese military might not be stationed
in this place for a long while; thus, a makeshift comfort station will be easier for them to travel
with. This type of comfort station, in fact, made up the majority of comfort stations.
92
A famous
example of a simply-constructed comfort station is Yangjiazhai Comfort Station in Shanghai,
which opened on January 13, 1938, and was the first military-controlled comfort station in
China.
93
Yangjiazhai Comfort Station had twelve individual wooden units for services, as well as

90
Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei, “A Valuable Document Revealing the Japanese Army’s ‘Comfort Stations’: Reading
the Jinhua Gyerim Association Articles and Register,” Chinese Studies in History 53, no. 1 (December 31, 2019):
24, https://doi.org/10.1080/00094633.2019.1682398.
91
Zhixiu Yuan, “"Nanjing Liji Xiang Wei’an Suo Jiuzhi Chenlie Guan Yu ‘Wei’an Fu ’Lishi de Guhua“ J1KL
M&'GNOPQRS‘&'(’TUVWX [the Museum of the Previous Site of Comfort Station in Liji Alley,
Nanjing and the Historical Solidification of ‘Comfort Women’],” Dang’an Yu Jianshe YZS[\, no. 2 (February
2016): 53, https://doc.paperpass.com/journal/20160075dayjs.html.
92
Qiu, with Su, and Chen, Testimonies, 54.
93
Su, Chen, and Yao, 172 Comfort Stations, 488.
42
other supporting facilities. They were single-story Japanese-style buildings and constructed in
pine from Northeastern China.
94
Compared with other temporary comfort stations, Yangjiazhai
Comfort Station had a larger scale; most temporary comfort stations usually only had very
simple facilities and shabby facilities.

Figure 2.6: Comfort Station in Yangjiazhai, Shanghai
Comfort Station in Yangjiazhai, Shanghai, 1943, Online Image, accessed December 9,
2021, http://www.williamandrewsbooks.com/PhotosofComfortWomen.html.
Though comfort stations that were completely controlled by the military, like the
Yangjiazhai Comfort Stations, were commonly seen after the Second Sino-Japanese War
expanded, in order to maintain a good reputation, the Japanese military frequently found some
representatives to manage comfort stations for them. Thus, based on the relationship with the
military, comfort stations could be divided into four categories. The first was completely
controlled by the military, like Yangjiazhai Comfort Station. Similarly, there were also
completely civilian brothels. Another two common types of comfort stations based on the
relationship with the military were 1) military-controlled but with a civilian front; 2) civilian-run
comfort stations but provided services to the military.
95
Under these two situations, the

94
Su, Chen, and Yao, 172 Comfort Stations, 496.
95
Chou, “A Cave in Taiwan”, 120.
43
representatives or the owners of the comfort stations usually had deep connections with the
military, like veterans. As discussed in previous contexts, a large number of Koreans worked for
the Japanese military and recruited young women in Korea, and they also started comfort
stations in China to finish the whole “supply chain.” For the Japanese, people from their colonies
were easier to control.
The third classification system was first proposed by Professor Sarah Soh in her book The
Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. In this book,
Professor Soh divided comfort stations according to their establishment motivations. She
believes that comfort stations had three motivations: concessionary, paramilitary, and crimes.
96

Though they were not profitable all the time, the concessionary comfort stations were primarily
established for profit reasons by the Japanese or Koreans. In contrast, the paramilitary comfort
stations were non-for-profit and had a closer relationship with the military. The criminal comfort
stations were more casual, usually established by soldiers on the battlefields or the frontlines.
97

In Professor Soh’s book, according to the difference of targeted consumers, she further
divided the concessionary comfort stations into two subgroups: the House of Entertainment and
the House of Prostitution. The House of Entertainment primarily served ranked officers,
providing spaces for them to socialize and recreate. Thus, besides sexual services, the House of
Entertainment also served food and alcohol. The “comfort women” of House of Entertainment
were also selected. A comfort station, which belonged to this category, near the China-Russia
border, only admitted “comfort women” who had been trained as kisaeng or geisha. It is
noteworthy that some Houses of Entertainment in China not only provided services to ranked
officers but also for general soldiers. The comfort station operators would divide different

96
Soh, The Comfort Women, 117-132.
97
Ibid., 118.
44
service time periods for soldiers and officers to make sure the officers had better experiences. As
for the Houses of Prostitution, though they were usually owned and managed by civilians, they
had a closer relationship with the army; they were monitored and regulated by the Japanese
military.
98
A major function of the Houses of Prostitution was to control the troop’s access to
sex.
99
As a result, the Houses of Prostitution usually had to report which “comfort woman”
provided services to which soldier daily.
100
Like the House of Entertainment, the House of
Prostitution also ranked officers as their priority; the overnight service was only provided to
officers.
101

Figure 2.7: "Comfort Women" Travel in a Truck
“Comfort Women” Travel in a Truck, n.d., Image, “Erzhan Shiqi Riben Qiangzheng ‘Wei’an Fu’ Zuixibg Caifang
Jishi” [⼆战时期⽇本强征“ 慰安妇” 罪⾏采访纪实] Interview Documentary of “Comfort Women” System
Survivors, n.d., accessed April 25, 2022.

98
Soh, The Comfort Women, 120-1.
99
Ibid., 118.
100
Ibid., 121-2.
101
Ibid., 122.
45
Similarly, Professor Soh also divides the paramilitary comfort stations into two
subgroups: Maiden’s Auxiliary and Quasi-Brothel.
102
As the name suggested, “comfort women”
at the Maiden’s Auxiliary type comfort stations were supposed to provide other services besides
sex. The Maiden’s Auxiliary was generally run by the military for its exclusive use; they were
located somewhere hard to reach or frontlines. As a result, “comfort women” were supposed to
play traditional female roles for the military, including nurses and maids. “Comfort women”
were regarded as another kind of “necessity” under this condition.
103
One example of this type
can be seen in Zhuji. Japan occupied Zhuji City, a small city in Zhejiang Province, on May 17,
1942. In June, they transported six Korean women and five Taiwanese females to Zhuji for their
comfort stations.
104
Since Zhuji was not as busy as Hangzhou, an adjacent city and the principal
of Zhejiang Province, it was highly possible that these “comfort women” also had to provide
manual labor. The Quasi-Brothels were usually located in relatively isolated places or frontlines.
Unlike the Maiden’s Auxiliary, the Quasi-Brothels generally did not require “comfort women” to
do manual jobs.
105
In most cases, the Quasi-Brothels only opened on specific dates and times to
control each soldier’s visits. These type of comfort stations became a trend in Central China after
1938.
106
“Comfort Women” in Quasi-Brothels, from some perspectives, became vessels to
contain the soldiers’ desires and anger; they completely lost their self-esteem as individuals.
A common feature of both concessionary and paramilitary comfort stations was their
claimed goals; they aimed to minimize the sexual crimes toward the locals, build the moral
character of the military, and prevent the STDs’ spread among the army.
107
Professor Soh

102
Soh, The Comfort Women, 124-30.
103
Ibid., 124.
104
Su and Chen, “A Valuable Document,” 18.
105
Soh, The Comfort Women, 124.
106
Ibid., 127.
107
Ibid., 118.
46
believes that the claimed goal and war situations were completely different when criminal
comfort stations began to appear, which were operated by soldiers on the battlefields. Professor
Soh believes that only a part of comfort stations were criminal, which is far away from the truth.
Since the “comfort women” system is criminal and unethical, comfort stations, as the “products”
of the “comfort women” system, are inherently criminal. The purpose of comfort stations was to
provide an authorized space for Japanese military men to practice their sexual violence. The
soldiers usually presumptuously raped and abducted enemy country’s women and imprisoned
them in garrisons.
108
There did not exist a “non-criminal” like Soh assumed in the previous two
categories. The sexual crimes happened in random places and hours from the very beginning of
Japan’s invasion of China. In some cases, when the Japanese were stationed somewhere, they
would look for some women and rape them anywhere — sometimes even in public. After the
crime, the Japanese would not imprison these women in a certain place like a comfort station.
The Japanese would let these women go home and call them back when they wanted sexual
interactions. They would repeat this again and again until the Japanese left the place. The
appearance of so called “criminal” comfort stations, on the one hand, suggested the brutalities of
the Japanese became increasingly worse. They lost their hypocritical masks to maintain a good
international reputation. On the other hand, it also indicated that the Japanese military began to
reach its limits. They had more anger that needed to be vented because they were unable to
conquer China as soon as they had wanted.
Again, the classifications of comfort stations are also rough and might be inaccurate.
Some comfort stations might meet multiple classifications, while some might meet none of them.
The classifications of comfort stations are tools for people to better understand and analyze the

108
Soh, The Comfort Women, 130.
47
brutalities that happened to “comfort women,” observing how they were dehumanized by the
Japanese.

Conclusion
This chapter provides some basic background of the “comfort women” issue so that
viewers can have a better understanding of it as a part of difficult history. “Comfort women” in
China were primarily abducted or kidnapped from areas under Japanese occupation. They are
neither “volunteers” nor “paid prostitutes.” They are the victims of the brutal and dehumanizing
“comfort women” system. By tracing the history of comfort stations, people can better
understand the history of the “comfort women” system and can advocate the importance of
conserving difficult heritage. Scholars have proposed different classification systems of comfort
stations for further studies. However, no classification of comfort stations can be comprehensive
and accurate. The classifications are just tools for people to study and preserve this difficult
history.

48
Chapter 3
Case Study: the Nanjing Museum of the Site of Liji Lane Comfort Stations
in Nanjing, China

Introduction
Establishing a memorial museum is an essential and effective way to conserve difficult
heritage. In recent decades, as public attention to “comfort women” has increased, several
“comfort women” related memorial museums have been established in Asia. Unlike other
“comfort women” memorial museums, Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Station Museum in Nanjing,
China, is established in a previous comfort station site, which helps conserve both the tangible
and intangible difficult heritage of “comfort women.” This chapter will trace the history of Liji
Lane Comfort Station Museum, discuss its conservation process, and analyze its performance as
a memorial museum. This chapter also hopes that the case of the Liji Lane Comfort Station
Museum can provide an example and solution for other similar historic sites.

Historical Background of the Liji Lane Comfort Station Museum
Liji Lane is located in one of the busiest neighborhoods in Nanjing, China. The history of
the Liji Lane site as a residential place can be traced back to 1910; early residents built
traditional Chinese courtyards around the site.
109
A vertical pedestrian alley divided the site into
two sections: the east side had a pond and several buildings, and the west had some traditional

109
Jimin Sha, “Transformation of the Genius Loci -- the Study of the Public Space of the Modification from
Chinese Modern City Small Residence and Its Street Blocks to the Memorial Place” (Master Thesis, Nanjing
University, 2016), 32. In the following texts, the “Liji Lane site” refers to the buildings from 2 Liji Lane to 18 Liji
Lane, which were used as comfort stations during the Japanese occupation.
49
Chinese residences.
110
The two-section structure of the Liji Lane site remained at least until 1934
or 1935, when the site first started its development.
111

Figure 3.1: Location of Liji Lane Site, from Google maps

Figure 3.2: Location of Nanjing, from Google Maps

110
Guangjian Liu and Zhixiu Yuan, “‘Yang Chunpu Yu Nanjing Liji Xiang Wei’an Suo Jiuzhi ---- Guanyu “Puqing
Xin Cun” de Kaozheng’ 杨春普与南京利济巷慰安所旧址 --- 关于‘普庆新村’的考证 [Yang Chunpu and Nanjing
Liji Lane Historic Comfort Stations -- a Study about "Puqing New Village],” Japanese Invasion of China History
Research, 2018, 81, https://d-wanfangdata-com-
cn.libproxy2.usc.edu/periodical/ChlQZXJpb2RpY2FsQ0hJTmV3UzIwMjIwMzIyEhByYnFoc3lqMjAxODAxMDA
5GghoZm81Yjk3Mw%3D%3D.
111
In fact, the structure even influenced today’s museum planning.
50
A great number of articles, whether academic or for the public, mention that the Liji Lane
site was purchased and developed by a Kuomingtang official named Yang Puqing. However, the
name “Yang Puqing” is a rumor; the real name of the person should be Yang Chunpu. Yang
Chunpu was born in Tianjin City in the late Qing Dynasty and served in the military for
decades.
112
He served the Qing court (1636 - 1912), the Beiyang Government (1912-1928), and
the Kuomingtang Government (1925 - 1948). It is unclear when Yang Chunpu purchased the Liji
Lane site since many historical materials have been lost. In a domestic political struggle that
happened in 1927, all properties of Yang Chunpu were confiscated. The confiscating list
suggests that Yang Chunpu owned dozens of properties in Liji Lane. Though the list did not
specify the exact amount and locations of his properties, it is reasonable to conclude that Yang
Chunpu already owned properties — at least some properties — in Liji Lane in 1927. After the
People’s Republic of China’s foundation, Yang Chunpu’s descendants submitted a report about
the Liji Lane site’s ownership, stating that Yang Chunpu used 4,000 yuan to purchase the Liji
Lane site. The most noticeable information about the report is that the amount and locations of
Yang Chunpu’s Liji Lane properties are as the same as those on the confiscating list.
113

Compared with the confiscating list and Yang Chunpu’s descendants’ words, it is clear that Yang
Chunpu purchased the Liji Lane site before 1927.
Yang Chunpu did not start the development of the Liji Lane site until 1935 when the
original buildings on the site were already broken and unsuitable for living.
114
Multiple factors
explained why Yang Chunpu did not develop the site until 1935; one possible reason might be a
lack of funds. In order to solve the insufficient funding problem, Yang Chunpu started

112
Liu and Yuan, “Yang Chunpu,” 81.
113
Ibid., 84-5.
114
Ibid., 85.
51
fundraising in the first stage of construction. After the first several buildings were completed, he
was able to make profits from them so that he had enough budget for further construction.
115

According to the words of the site construction contractor’s descendants, the original plan was to
have nine more buildings north of the current site.
116
The construction process was interrupted by
the Japanese invasion in 1937, which left the site with ten buildings as well as a not fully-paid
final payment to the contractor. Yang Chunpu named the Liji Lane site “Puqing New Village,”
and thus, many residents believed that his real name was “Yang Puqing.” In fact, Yang Chunpu
named the site by picking a character (“pu”) from his name and wishing this place could have
good luck (“qing”); “Puqing” is not his real name.
117

The “Puqing New Village” became a residential place after the early development. It was
close to the Presidential Palace, only approximately ten minutes’ walk. The Presidential Palace
was first built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and served as an important office building for
the Kuomingtang Government from 1927 to 1937.
118
It is reasonable to conclude that Yang
Chunpu decided to develop the site after he realized the increasing needs for the land around the
Presidential Palace and the site’s convenient location. As a result, the ten buildings of “Puqing
New Village” had different functions and clients: an L-shaped building for commercial and
storage uses, an apartment-like building with affordable rental apartments, and eight townhouses
that were more luxurious. The affordable apartment building at 2 Liji Lane is a rectangular two-

115
Liu and Yuan, “Yang Chunpu,” 85.
116
Ibid. In fact, the contractor of the Liji Lane site was Yang Chunpu’s nephew.
117
Liu and Yuan, “Yang Chunpu,” 85.
118
“The Presidential Palace | China & Asia Cultural Travel,” CHINA & ASIA CULTURAL TRAVEL, December
22, 2015, https://www.asiaculturaltravel.co.uk/the-presidential-palace/.
52
story building.
119
Each floor has fourteen rooms, and the two floors are symmetrical. Though
each unit only had 10 square meters (approximately 108 square feet), it was still an ideal and
affordable rental place for the ordinary employees of the Presidential Palace.
120
The townhouses
at 18 Liji Lane, primarily served higher-ranked officers, providing larger spaces for them in a
location close to their working spaces. Accordingly, Yang Chunpu lived in one of the
townhouses until he moved to Taiwan in 1949.
121

Figure 3.3: Liji Lane Site Bird View
Nanjing Liji Lane Historic Comfort Station Site Birdview, n.d., Image, “Erzhan Shiqi Riben Qiangzheng ‘Wei’an
Fu’ Zuixibg Caifang Jishi” [ ⼆战时期⽇本强征“ 慰安妇” 罪⾏采访纪实] Interview Documentary of “Comfort
Women” System Survivors, n.d., accessed April 25, 2022.

119
Chengshan Zhu and Guangjian Liu, “‘Wei’an Suo Jiuzhi Baohu Liyong Yu Lishi Jiyi Dangdai Chonggou ---- Yi
Nanjing Liji Xiang Wei’an Suo Jiuzhi de Baohu Yu Liyong Weili’ 慰安所旧址保护利⽤与历史记忆当代重构----
以南京利济巷慰安所旧址的保护与利⽤为例 [Conserving Historic Comfort Station Sites and Reconstructing
History Memory in Contemporary ---- Using Historic Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Station Site’s Conservation as an
Example],” Studies on the Historical Materials of Chin’s Resistance War against Japan, 2016, 32, https://d-
wanfangdata-com-
cn.libproxy2.usc.edu/periodical/ChlQZXJpb2RpY2FsQ0hJTmV3UzIwMjIwMzIyEg9renNseWoyMDE2MDEwMD
MaCGNwN2x4aTZ0.
120
Liu and Yuan, “Yang Chunpu,” 85. Some articles said the second floor has sixteen rooms.
121
Ibid.
53
Unlike the earlier traditional wood-structure Chinese residences on this site, all buildings
of “Puqing New Village” were constructed in contemporary styles; they were built in masonry-
timber structure.
122
All buildings used Chinese blue bricks and cement grade 32.5 during
construction.
123
Both of them are stable materials for housing construction, making it possible to
preserve the properties during the war. The cement was also applied to buildings’ exteriors and
was broom-finished to increase the texture of the exterior walls.
124

Since the “Puqing New Village” was newly-built buildings of good quality, after the
Japanese military invaded Nanjing in 1937, they soon occupied and transformed the Liji Lane
site into two comfort stations. Dongyun Comfort Station was opened in 2 Liji Lane and managed
by a Korean brothel operator whose last name was Matsuda, and Guxiang Comfort Station was
established in 18 Liji Lane.
125
The two comfort stations were different.
Dongyun Comfort Station mainly provided services to the ordinary Japanese soldiers;
thus, the tiny but individual rooms of the apartment fitted this requirement. Matsuda added some
simple but essential furniture to each room, including a desk, a chair, and a tatami, which also
provided a nostalgic atmosphere to the soldiers.
126
The sanitizing facilities, which were supposed
to be equipped in each room, were not available. Most “comfort women” in Dongyun Comfort
Station were Korean; as a result, the local people gave it the nickname “Korean Hall.”
127
If all
units hosted one “comfort woman,” Dongyun Comfort Station was able to maintain at least

122
Sha, “Transformation of the Genius Loci,” 2.
123
Liu and Yuan, “Yang Chunpu,” 85.
124
Ibid. Generally, broom-finished concrete surface was served for further ceramic tiles additions, it is unclear that
whether buildings of “Puqing New Village” planned to use ceramic tiles.
125
Japan once colonized the Korean Peninsula for decades; the colonial Japanese government required the Koreans
to use Japanese names to stabilize their controls. Thus, though Matsuda was a Korean, he had a Japanese name.
Matsuda also had comfort station business in Shanghai. And the operator of Guxiang Comfort Station is unclear.
Dongyun means “cloud in the east,” and “guxiang” refers to “hometown.”
126
Liu and Yuan, “Yang Chunpu,” 86.
127
Zhu and Liu, “Conserving Historic Comfort Station Sites,” 31.
54
twenty-eight “comfort women.” Considering the surprisingly high death and disease rates of
“comfort women,” during the eight years of Japanese occupation, the total number of “comfort
women” who had once confined in 2 Liji Lane should be an astronomical figure. As discussed in
Chapter 2, Korean “comfort women” had a relatively lower status compared to Japanese women
in the “comfort women” system and were supposed to serve ordinary soldiers; they were unlikely
to be treated as humans. Dongyun Comfort Station had several additional rooms to imprison
“comfort women” who did not meet the required discipline.
128
Dongyun Comfort Station also
had an attic that was open only to higher-ranked officials. Once the comfort station abducted new
“comfort women” who were virgins, they would be placed in the attic first. After they were
forced to have their first sexual intercourse with higher-ranked officials, who believed having sex
with virgins would bring good luck, these women would “officially” become “comfort women”
to serve other ordinary soldiers.
129

Although Dongyun Comfort Station had a Korean supervisor, the real operator was the
Japanese military; it was a military-run comfort station with a civil front. Dongyun Comfort
Station was guarded by the Japanese military police with weapons to intimidate the ordinary
people. If drunk soldiers did not behave properly, the managers would blow the whistle to get the
gendarmeries’ help. The whistle is effective; once drunk soldiers heard the whistle, they would
immediately leave to avoid having records on their profiles.
130
Since the military police was part

128
Zhu and Liu, “Conserving Historic Comfort Station Sites,” 31.
129
Ibid.
130
Guangjian Liu and Ling Zhu, “‘Rijun “Wei’an Fu” Zhidu Zai Nanjing Shishi de Zai Kaocha’ ⽇军‘慰安妇’制度
在南京实施的再考察 [Re-Examination of the Implementation of Japanese ‘Comfort Women’ System in Nanjing],”
Japanese Invasion of China History Research, 2021, 111, https://d-wanfangdata-com-
cn.libproxy2.usc.edu/periodical/ChlQZXJpb2RpY2FsQ0hJTmV3UzIwMjIwMzIyEhByYnFoc3lqMjAyMTAxMDE
wGgg2ZnhuNjFhcA%3D%3D.
55
of the military, Dongyun Comfort Station received long-term and stable support from the
military.
Compared with Dongyun Comfort Station, Guxiang Comfort Station is more mysterious
and more scholarly attention has been drawn by Dongyun Comfort Station. The relationship
between Guxiang Comfort Station and the military is unclear, but it is highly possible that
Guxiang Comfort Station once had a close connection with the Japanese military. The Guxiang
Comfort Station occupied the townhouses of “Puqing New Village,” which were constructed to
host higher-ranked Kuomingtang officers; the environment was better than that of Dongyun
Comfort Station. As the name suggested, Guxiang Comfort Station aimed to create a sense of
home for overseas Japanese; it only had Japanese “comfort women” onsite, suggesting that the
Guxiang Comfort Station served ranked officers.
131
As a comfort station for high-ranking
officers, Guxiang Comfort Station would also receive protection from the gendarmeries.
The Japanese military once had a military camp close to the Liji Lane site; the Liji Lane
site was the most convenient entertaining place for them.
132
As a result, the two comfort stations
were in operation until the Japanese surrendered in 1945. After that, the “Puqing New Village”
was returned to Yang Chunpu’s descendants. In the 1950s, after the PRC’s foundation, they
refurbished all buildings and transferred the right of use to the government. “Puqing New
Village” functioned as multifamily residences and employee dormitories until 2003.
133

131
Zhu and Liu, “Conserving Historic Comfort Station Sites,” 31.
132
Shenghong Jing, “‘Nanjing Liji Xiang Er Hao ---- Qinhua Rijun Wei’an Suo Yizhi Kaozheng’ 南京利济巷 2 号-
---侵华⽇军慰安所遗址考证 [2 Liji Lane, Nanjing -- Research on Japanese Military Comfort Station],” Archives
and Construction, August 15, 2004, 38, https://oversea-cnki-
net.libproxy2.usc.edu/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2004&filename=DAJS200408015&
uniplatform=OVERSEAS_EN&v=yL3KipnozrU_RzHXLF1e5ojIR3UJo7wHVJPyCRtFX09Xu8EELBRLEuTxeF3
qmQMW.
133
Liu and Yuan, “Yang Chunpu,” 82.
56
Reshaping “Puqing New Village” into a Memorial Museum
As the public began to notice the history of “comfort women” in the 1990s, more
questions came up during the process: who were “comfort women”? Where were comfort
stations? Among all victims of the “comfort women” system who had ever talked about their
sufferings in public, Park Young-Shim was one of the most famous “comfort women,” and her
story was tightly connected with the fate of the Liji Lane site.
Park Young-Shim was born in Korea in 1921, when Korea was under Japanese control.
In 1938, when she was seventeen years old, she was abducted by a Korean policeman, who told
her she would be given a well-paid job opportunity in China. Though she tried to refuse the job
opportunity, the police forced her onboard a train to Nanjing.
134
After arriving in Nanjing, she
soon realized that her job was as a “comfort woman.” She was imprisoned in Nanjing as a
“comfort woman” for over three years. In 1942, after Japan started the Pacific War with the
United States, the Japanese military stationed in Myanmar asked the troops in Nanjing to support
them with “comfort women.” Park Young-Shim was one of the selected “comfort women.”
Along with other “comfort women,” she started her travel from Nanjing, then transferred to
Shanghai and Singapore, arrived in Myanmar, and was finally imprisoned in a comfort station in
Yunnan Province, China, which is adjacent to Myanmar.
135
Park Young-Shim served in
Myanmar and Yunnan until the Pacific War ended. She was pregnant when she was in Yunan
and was captured in a world-famous “comfort women” picture there. Rumiko Yoshino, a
Japanese “comfort women” issue scholar, found out accidentally that Park Young-Shim was the
pregnant woman in the 1990s. Since Park Young-Shim lived in North Korea and kept this

134
Joseph Joh, “The Seoul Times,” theseoultimes.com, accessed March 23, 2022,
https://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php%3Fidx=1846.
135
Jing, “2 Liji Lane,” 37.
57
experience a secret after the war, Rumiko Yoshino and other scholars did not find Park Young-
Shim until 2000.
136

Figure 3.4: Four Korean "Comfort Women," Park Young-Shim is the pregnant one (right most).
Charles H. Hatfield, Four Korean Comfort Women after They Were Liberated by US-China Allied Forces Outside
Songshan, Yunnan Province, China, September 7, 1944, Online Image, Association for Asian Studies, September 7,
1944, https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/teaching-about-the-comfort-women-during-world-
war-ii-and-the-use-of-personal-stories-of-the-victims/.

After Park Young-Shim’s story was discovered, she hoped that she could visit where she
was imprisoned in Nanjing and Yunnan again.
137
However, she was unfamiliar with Nanjing and
only provided several fragmented clues about the location to scholars. After meticulous research,
in 2003, scholars in Nanjing could almost confirm she was once imprisoned in either Dongyun
Comfort Station or Guxiang Comfort Station. Park Young-Shim was invited to visit Nanjing in

136
Jing, “2 Liji Lane,” 37.
137
Ibid., 38.
58
November 2003, and she immediately recognized that she was once imprisoned in the two-story
apartment-like building — Dongyun Comfort Station.
138
Thus, the Liji Lane site became the
largest existing comfort station which was confirmed by a “comfort women” system victim.
139

Figure 3.5: Park Young-Shim Visited 2 Liji Lane, Room 19
Park Young-Shim Visited 2 Liji Lane, Room 19, Where She Was Stationed, November 2003, Online Image,
November 2003, https://m.krzzjn.com/show-403-48698.html.

2003 was also a critical year for the Liji Lane site from another perspective: the Nanjing
government made a plan to demolish this site and put it into other uses. In 2004, the government
officially gave permission to demolish the Liji Lane site.
140
Though a great number of scholars
and international organizations tried to block the government’s decision, and the government
held a conference to discuss the Liji Lane site’s fates with a recommendation to keep the site,

138
Jing, “2 Liji Lane,” 39.
139
Zhu and Liu, “Conserving Historic Comfort Station Sites,” 31-3.
140
Ibid., 33.
59
two townhouses were torn down.
141
After strong opposition to Liji Lane site’s demolition both
from domestic and overseas sources, the Nanjing government finally stopped the demolition.
However, the situation of the Liji Lane site was not improved; it was used as a landfill for years.
In the Spring Festival of 2008, a fire resulting from fireworks burnt part of 2 Liji Lane’s ceilings
and windows, making the architectural conditions even worse. The Nanjing government did not
take any action until 2012; the local district administration planned to modify the Liji Lane site
into a memorial museum, but the plan was interrupted by other issues.
142
In November 2013, ten
years after Park Young-Shim’s confirmation, several scholars submitted another statement to
demand the Nanjing government conserve the Liji Lane site. In 2014, the Nanjing government
finally approved Liji Lane Comfort Stations Historic Site as a municipal cultural relic protection
unit. After detailed discussion with professionals and scholars, the Liji Lane site’s conservation
work started on May 1, 2015, and opened to the public as a memorial museum on December 1,
2015.
143

The twelve-year gap in the Liji Lane site’s conservation work reflects a great number of
problems that every difficult history site faces. The buildings on the Liji Lane site were once
precarious and not recognized as a protection unit. In China, if a historical site is not
acknowledged as a protection unit by the government, even if it has a great historical value, it
can be removed with permission. Since the existing buildings of the Liji Lane site were not in

141
Zhu and Liu, “Conserving Historic Comfort Station Sites,” 33.; Hanyu Chen to Guangjian Liu, “Demolition of
the Liji Lane Site,” WeChat, April 8, 2022. There is a controversy around the number of the townhouses that were
torn down. No newspaper article or academic paper mentioned the exact number. According to some descriptions
written before or in 2004, the most common description is that the Liji Lane site had nine or ten buildings related to
“comfort women” at that time. While most descriptions after 2004 only mentioned that the Liji Lane site has eight
buildings. Thus, some assumed that one or two townhouse(s) of the Liji Lane site was/were torn down during the
demolition. After consulting with Liu Guangjian, a researcher at Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum,
before construction, the Liji Lane site had ten structures, and nine of them were related to “comfort women” history;
two of the total ten were removed during demolition.
142
The supervision institutions of Liji Lane site had been changed several times during that period.
143
Zhu and Liu, “Conserving Historic Comfort Station Sites,” 33-4.
60
good condition, compared with conserving the site, demolishing the old buildings and
constructing new ones would be a more economical choice for the local government. Not to
mention that the Liji Lane site is in one of the busiest neighborhoods in Nanjing. For the
government, selling the site to the real estate developers could make a huge amount of money
rather than just simply conserving the site. Some scholars asserted that the government tried to
devert people’s attention from the difficult history by ignoring it.
144
Some people believe that
removing the Liji Lane site could help relieve the tense relationship between China and Japan,
signalling to the Japanese that Chinese people have forgiven them. This concept is shortsighted:
the Right-Wing Japanese will not even acknowledge the “comfort women” history with Chinese
people’s forgiveness, and the difficult history will face more serious conservation problems in
the future.

Figure 3.6: Historic Liji Lane Site Used as a Landfill
Historic Liji Lane Site Used as a Landfill, n.d., Image, “Erzhan Shiqi Riben Qiangzheng ‘Wei’an Fu’ Zuixibg
Caifang Jishi” [⼆战时期⽇本强征“ 慰安妇” 罪⾏采访纪实] Interview Documentary of “Comfort Women” System
Survivors, n.d., accessed April 25, 2022.

144
Huijun Wang, “‘Hepingxue Shijiao Xia Liji Xiang Wei’an Suo Yizhi Quliu Wenti Zhi Zheng’ 和平学视⻆下利
济巷慰安所遗址去留问题之争 [Argument about the Liji Lane Historic Comfort Station’s Conservation from Peace
and Conflict Studies’ Perspective],” China Neoteric and Modern History, October 20, 2011, 97, https://oversea-
cnki-
net.libproxy2.usc.edu/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2011&filename=XXBL201110078&
uniplatform=OVERSEAS_EN&v=2mfjmzbTWcmNfav9ns-
hZQ58fatDHspYJSYHFDbMtmieYFcSz_sRI2WVc4GHnCPp.
61
Though it is unclear what made the local government decide to conserve the Liji Lane
site after putting it on hold for twelve years, the current Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum
is a successful example of the memorial museums in China. The conservation process of Liji
Lane site was discussed by professionals. Alterations made by later residents were removed,
providing an immersive environment for visitors by restoring important and real historical
details. Additionally, in general, there are two genres of heritage conservation in China:
“conserve as old” and “conserve as new.” As their names suggest, the major difference between
them is whether conserved buildings will look like new buildings or old ones. Liji Lane Comfort
Station Site Museum applied “conserve as old;” the new materials applied to the building were
intentionally made to look like the old original ones.
145
As a result, the historic atmosphere of
Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum was restored as much as possible. For untrained visitors,
the old-looking materials not only make the building closer to their understanding of heritage but
also bring them back to that age once they step in.
The conservation work also considered the building purposes’ change. Since the Liji
Lane site had been used as multifamily residences for decades, the circulation was complex and
did not meet the requirements of a museum. As mentioned in earlier texts, the Liji Lane site once
was divided into two sections by a vertical alley. Based on this division, the Liji Lane Comfort
Station Site Museum planned to conserve historic buildings on the west side and construct new
facilities on the east side. Buildings on the east side include research spaces, a garage, and utility
rooms, and the west side would be used as the main display space.
146
As a result, the circulation

145
Sha, “Transformation of the Genius Loci,” 22.; Hanyu Chen to Guangjian Liu, “Demolition of the Liji Lane
Site,” WeChat, April 8, 2022.; Hanyu Chen to Jimin Sha, “Question about Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum’s
Conservation,” email, April 9, 2022.
146
Sha, “Transformation of the Genius Loci,” 34.
62
of visitors and staff are separated, and the functions of each section are clearer as a memorial
museum.
147

As a Memorial Museum
On December 1, 2015, Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum first opened to the public.
As a memorial museum, the space and exhibition design were carefully considered and planned
to attract visitors’ sympathy and to provide accurate and unbiased history education to the public.
The Museum also aims to expose the past dehumanized behavior, arousing visitors’ sympathetic
feelings for victims and Chinese patriotism.
148
Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum primarily
used two approaches — architecture and exhibition — to achieve its missions.
Heritage hosts memories, providing essential spirit and atmosphere to the space.
Memorial museums that are designed based on heritage should maximize the influence of
architecture itself. Thus, it is necessary for designers and museum staff to develop a new story-
telling frame based on the heritage space so that the museum can better serve for remembering
difficult memories.
149
Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum restored the buildings’ comfort
station period appearance to provide visitors with an immersive environment. A comfort station
ticket office was set up at the entrance of the Museum, with a board with names of “comfort

147
So far, the east side construction is postponed.
148
Hongfang Sun, “‘Bowuguan Yujing Xia Chuangshang Jiyi Chonggou ---- Yi Nanjing Liji Xiang Wei’an Suo
Jiuzhi Chenlieguan Weili’ 博物馆语境下创伤记忆重构----以南京利济巷慰安所旧址陈列馆为例 [the
Reconstruction of Traumatic Memory in the Case of Nanjing Museum of the Site of Lijixiang Comfort Stations
from the View of Museum Context],” Museum, March 27, 2020, 124, https://oversea-cnki-
net.libproxy2.usc.edu/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2020&filename=BOWY20200
1023&uniplatform=OVERSEAS_EN&v=Hqcd0FRVB9Ql-sdjcsOe0KLOunBfZ2Djw5-
nY44wmyFGJ0RVI4UAfzJE2bbN0hrc.
149
Ibid., 125.
63

Figure 3.7: Historical Photo of Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Station
Historical Photo of Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Station, Online Image, accessed December 11,
2021, http://www.guoxue.com/?p=34758.

Figure 3.8: Today's Liji Lane Comfort Station Site
Dongxu Fang, Today’s Nanjing Comfort Stations Liji Lane Site Museum, December 1, 2015, Online Image, Online
Image, December 1, 2015, http://www.cngongji.cn/2015-12/01/c_134873400_6.htm.

64
women” and a panel of comfort station regulations in Japanese.
150
The names of “comfort
women” also can be found on the door of 2 Liji Lane’s every unit. In Room 19 of 2 Liji Lane,
the unit where Park Young-Shim was imprisoned for over three years, the interior design is
displayed according to Park Young-Shim’s description and other historical materials.
151
The
display provides visitors a more realistic picture of how “comfort women” lived here. Visitors’
circulation was designed to follow the same route as the Japanese soldiers’ had walked in the
comfort station decades ago. This design helps the visitors understand how a comfort station
operated. On the other hand, the circulation also demonstrates the miserable lives of “comfort
women” by comparison: visitors are free to move around in the building as the Japanese soldiers
once did, but “comfort women” were unable to leave their tiny room.
The landscape of Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum has also been carefully
designed. A sunken memorial plaza is placed on the east section for large activities. The
Museum is bounded by three roads; to create a relatively close space and quiet atmosphere for
visitors to learn the history, two sides of the Museum are planted with approximately three feet
tall bushes. Pedestrians are able to see activities happening and part of the historic buildings, but
visitors on the sunken plaza are not distracted by curious pedestrians.
152
Some walkways of the
Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum are decorated with

150
Yan Zhu, “‘Lun Wenhua Weidu Xia Chuangshang Bowuguan de Jiyi Biaozheng Meixue ---- Yi Nanjing
Lijixiang Wei’ansuo Jiuzhi Chenlieguan Weili’ 论⽂化维度下创伤博物馆的记忆表征美学----以南京利济巷慰安
所旧址陈列馆为例 [Study about Memories Representation Aesthetic in Traumatic Museums from Cultural
Perspective -- Using Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum as an Example],” Aesthetics, February 25,
2019, 45, https://oversea-cnki-
net.libproxy2.usc.edu/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2019&filename=MYSD20190
2010&uniplatform=OVERSEAS_EN&v=dAGk1Psj9nueMPtzLC8-
rUQs0dzbiSakoU6TCQZCbI2sStFEy7UJG_y5fz3xd_qh.
151
Sun, “the Reconstruction of Traumatic Memory,” 126.
152
Sha, “Transformation of the Genius Loci,” 40-1.
65

Figure 3.9: The Circulation of Liji Lane Site
Jimin Sha, The Circulation Changes in Liji Lane Site, 2016, Image, Transformation of the Genius Loci -- the Study
of the Public Space of the Modification from Chinese Modern City Small Residence and Its Street Blocks to the
Memorial Place., 2016.

Figure 3.10: Black Stones of Liji Lane Site
Zhang Yu, Black Stones of Liji Lane Comfort Station Museum, 2017, Online Image,
2017, https://dgxg.njust.edu.cn/_t217/7b/76/c6432a162678/page.htm.

66
irregular stones, referring to the skulls of “comfort women” system victims.
153
The stone
metaphor can also be found in the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre near the Liji Lane
Comfort Station Site Museum.
Unlike traditional museums, items displayed in memorial museums usually do not have
any connection with art history or archaeology.
154
The meanings of displays are given by humans
and history. For example, the Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum exhibits a tube of
potassium permanganate solution donated by Lei Guiying, another “comfort women” system
victim. “Comfort women” were supposed to use potassium permanganate solution to sanitize
themselves in comfort stations. The physical formats of memorial museums’ displayed items
have never been changed, but when people give them specific definitions and historical
backgrounds, they have further meanings, just like the potassium permanganate solution means
little without the given background.
Since visitors might be unable to learn information directly from some displays, the text
becomes an essential and critical method to introduce displayed items in memorial museums. For
art museums, texts are usually appeared in the format of wall labels, providing basic information
about each item and leaving large spaces for visitors to appreciate artworks. However, in
memorial museums, texts should be comprehensive. Texts in the Liji Lane Comfort Station Site
Museum are divided into three categories. Some texts introduce an unbiased historical
background to visitors as basic knowledge. Thus, visitors can better immerse themselves into the
atmosphere created by the architecture. Some texts are presented as wall labels and annotations.

153
Sha, “Transformation of the Genius Loci,” 52.
154
Zhu, “Memories Representation Aesthetic,” 43.
67
Similar to the first category, this classification of texts also has an explanatory function but is
closer to the function of wall labels in art museums.
155

The Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum also widely applied images in exhibitions.
The majority of images are historic. Since many comfort stations have been demolished, historic
images prove the existence of comfort stations and help visitors learn the history. Visitors can
study sites that no longer exist from old photos.
156
On the other hand, unlike texts, appreciating
images is more straightforward. A memorial museum faces visitors of all social status and ages;
using images can help visitors to better understand the historical context. Another exhibition
element that is designed for all visitors is video. Videos complement images and texts. As a
major component of the documentation of public history, in some people’s ideas, a video
recording might be more powerful and close to the truth. Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum
displays journalistic reports from China Central Television, the biggest governmental-controlled
media institution, a documentary supervised by Professor Su Zhiliang, and other documentaries
related to “comfort women.”
157
Videos and images visualize the scenarios provided by texts so
that people can establish a comprehensive acknowledgment of the history of comfort stations.
Texts, images, and videos are traditional approaches to displaying the history of the Liji
Lane site. The Museum also uses up-to-date technologies to tell the difficult history: an AR
(Augmented Reality) map mobile application is used in the Liji Lane Comfort Station Site
Museum. Since there are a considerable number of comfort stations in Nanjing that are not
reshaped into memorial museums or have disappeared in urban development, the application also

155
Zhu, “Memories Representation Aesthetic,” 44.
156
Ibid.
157
Ibid., 44-5.
68
includes these sites’ histories.
158
With this GIS-based application, users can scan QR codes in
any comfort station — not only limited to Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museums — to read
about the difficult histories on their phones.
159
The application breaks the limitation of spaces to
allow the public to learn the “comfort women” history even beyond the Liji Lane Comfort
Station Site Museum. Additionally, an augmented reality (AR) map application also helps to
solve two problems the “comfort women” studies are facing. First, the traditional historic
material-based research method does not work for “comfort women” issues because many
written documents and “comfort women” are lost. Second, for the public, the topic is too heavy
and specific to find accurate information. The details are buried in academic research.
160
The AR
technology has its born advantage to solve the two problems. People are naturally interested in
new technologies; as a result, using an AR map application in the museum and in Nanjing can
activate their motivations to learn history. An AR map provides an immersive feeling to its users
so that people can have completely different experiences with the “comfort women” history.
161

Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum also considers aesthetic expression to
demonstrate the sufferings that “comfort women” once had. A statue of a “comfort women”
stands at the outdoor entrance of the Museum. The statue is inspired by the famous picture of
Park Young-Shim, capturing the helplessness and depression of a pregnant “comfort woman.”

158
See the application’s website: https://armapper.cn/en/map. The application has two branches. One is developed
based on Park Young-Shim’s experiences, tracing her life from Korea to China to Myanmar. The other is an
interactive map in Nanjing; users can check the location of comfort stations in Nanjing.
159
Yunzhu Peng et al., “‘“Wei’an Fu” Gonggong Chuangshang Jiyi de Shuzihua Jiangou ---- Yi “Nanjing Diqu
Qinhua Rijun Wei’ansuo de AR Gushi Ditu” Weili’ 慰安妇公共创伤记忆的数字化建构----以南京地区侵华⽇军
慰安所的 AR 故事地图为例 [Digital Memory Construction of Public Trauma Arising from ‘Comfort Women’——
Taking the AR Map of Japanese-Built Comfort Stations in Nanjing as a Case Study],” Library Tribune, June 29,
2020, 72-3, https://oversea-cnki-
net.libproxy2.usc.edu/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2020&filename=TSGL202011
013&uniplatform=OVERSEAS_EN&v=4i6Uxm7jrONS954hUy89jkbDPGQHPGgNsvHvknB4iO8YjFRY3AT_I3a
s5O3lmZOR
160
Peng et al., “Digital Memory Construction,” 70.
161
Ibid., 75-7.
69
Also, the statue prompts the visitors’ curiosity about the “comfort women” victims. The
exhibition also displays the historical images and videos of Qiuzi, an opera related to “comfort
women.” Qiuzi was finished in 1941 and is based on a true story. Qiuzi and her husband were
married three months. Her husband was conscripted due to the Second Sino-Japanese War, and
Qiuzi was tricked into working as a “comfort woman.” They unexpectedly meet each other in a
comfort station in China and then committed suicide together.
162
The statue and opera both apply
art techniques to activate visitors’ sympathy to “comfort women” to reach the Museum’s
educational mission.

Conclusion
All displays, as well as architectural designs in Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum,
aim to create an immersive space for its visitors. Reshaping a difficult heritage in a memorial
museum does not simply equal putting all relative items in the museum; the reshaping process
requires professional knowledge in heritage conservation, and museum studies, as well as other
related fields. It is also necessary to consider the historic design of architecture.

162
Zhu, “Memories Representation Aesthetic,” 45.
70
Chapter 4
Two Forgotten Comfort Station Historic Sites in Zhuji, China
Introduction
Though Liji Lane Comfort Station Museum in Nanjing, China is a great example of
comfort stations’ conservation, in China, a great number of comfort stations have been forgotten
by the public. The majority of them disappeared during city development; only a small number
of historic comfort station sites remained. This chapter will explore two comfort station historic
sites in Zhuji City, China, and analyze how conservation might work for relatively small-scale
comfort stations.
163

Historic Backgrounds of Two Comfort Stations in the Garden Hill Neighborhood
Compared with the comfort stations lost to history, the two comfort station historic sites
in Zhuji, Da Taimen (the Grand Taimen) and Hanazono Mineto (the Top of the Garden Hill), are
relatively lucky: they were noticed by the government before demolition.
164
The two historic
comfort station sites are both located in Xiangdian Alley, which was named after a religious
goods store (“xiangdian” in Chinese), and Xiangdian Alley is located in Huayuan-ling, or the

163
Before introducing the two historic comfort stations sites, it is better to give some brief introductions to Zhuji
City. Zhuji is a prefecture-level city in Zhejiang Province, Eastern China, a one-hour drive from Hangzhou, the
capital of Zhejiang Province, and a three-hour driving from Shanghai. Zhuji is a part of Shaoxing City geologically.
Zhuji is famous for its hosiery and pearl industries, as well as its long history.
164
Taimen (台门 in Chinese) is a traditional residence style in Zhuji City and neighboring cities. The term Taimen
originally referred to the privileged class’ residences. Eventually, it became a style of residence; different branches
of a large family clustered living in a Taimen. Taimen residents will not disturb each other unless there is an
important event, like the Spring Festival or a family member’s marriage. The Taimen Style is close to Siheyuan, the
famous Chinese courtyard, but serves more residents with more privacy. “Grand Taimen” is a nickname for the
comfort station; the real name is unclear. In the following texts, the two comfort stations will be called “the Grand
Taimen” and “Hanazono Mineto” for convenience.
71

Figure 4.1: Location of Garden Hill / Huayuan-ling Neighborhood

Figure 4.2: Location of Zhuji City, from Google Maps
72
Garden Hill Neighborhood.
165
Containing hundreds of residential buildings that were constructed
during the late Qing Dynasty (1840 - 1912) and the Republic of China (1912 - 1949) period,
people who once lived in Garden Hill Neighborhood were upper-middle class. The Garden Hill
Neighborhood was once one of the busiest residential neighborhoods in Zhuji, and the former
government building was only a short distance away from the Garden Hill Neighborhood. In
fact, the surrounding district of the Garden Hill Neighborhood is the city center of Zhuji today.
The Garden Hill Neighborhood includes a considerable number of Taimens, as well as some
large-scale private residences. Most architecture in the Garden Hill Neighborhood includes
multiple individual rooms, which is an essential element of comfort stations.
The Japanese military completely controlled Zhuji on May 17, 1942.
166
Since the
majority of Garden Hill Neighborhood residents fled to the suburbs in a rush, furniture and other
large items were left in the neighborhood. With the convenient location, the Garden Hill
Neighborhood became the Japanese target soon after they conquered Zhuji; they kicked out the
remaining residents and occupied the whole Garden Hill Neighborhood.
167
The Grand Taimen
and Hanazono Mineto were established soon after.
The two comfort stations of the Garden Hill Neighborhood served different clientele. The
Grand Taimen, as its name suggested, was located in a Qing Dynasty Taimen.
168
Local people

165
Yin Zhu, “‘Xiangdian Longtang Wei’an Suo’ [ ⾹店弄堂慰安所] Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” in ‘Xue
Yu Lei de Sushuo—Huiyi Qinhua Rijun Zai Zhuji de Baoxing’ [ ⾎与泪的诉说 ---- 回忆侵华⽇军在诸暨的暴⾏]
Tales of Blood and Tears—Recalling the Atrocities of the Invading Japanese Army in Zhuji, ed. Zhuji City CPC
Committee Party History Research Office (Zhonggong Dangshi Chubanshe (Chinese Communist Party History
Publisher), 2010), 39. Yin Zhu is a local historian. “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley” was written based on his
interviews with people who once lived next to Xiangdian Alley’s comfort stations. Currently, it is the most
comprehensive research on the two comfort stations of Xiangdian Alley. Other research is based on this source.
166
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 39. Since 1941, the political situation in Zhuji City was stalemated
between three parties: the Japanese military, the Communist Party, and the Kuomingtang.
166
In the spring of 1942,
China and the United States cooperated, and air attacked Tokyo. To avoid further cooperation from China and the
U.S., the Japanese started the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign to fight China and the U.S. joint forces.
167
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 39-40.
168
Some newspaper accounts said the Taimen belonged to the Jin Family.
73
called the Grand Taimen Comfort Station “Chinese Hall,” indicating that all “comfort women”
of the Grand Taimen were local Chinese women. The Grand Taimen was a middle-to-large scale
comfort station. There were around twenty-five to thirty Chinese women imprisoned in the
Grand Taimen Comfort Station; they primarily served ordinary Japanese soldiers and ordinary
Chinese men.
169
As a result, each of them was forced to serve at least five people every day, and
sometimes the number could even reach over thirty.
170

Most “comfort women” in the Grand Taimen Comfort Station were from suburban areas
of Zhuji; they were kidnapped directly by the Japanese troops.
171
The Japanese military required
not only living essentials but also a considerable number of “comfort women” from the local
government.
172
The youngest “comfort woman” of the Grand Taimen Comfort Station, who was
only fourteen years old at that time, was caught by the Japanese military when she was doing
farm work in the countryside. The Japanese soldiers did not treat her gently; in contrast, she was
popular because of her age. She was so young that she screamed a lot when the Japanese soldiers
forced her into sexual intercourse. The Japanese soldiers then beat her fiercely. She died after she
was imprisoned in the Grand Taimen Comfort Station for three months.
173
Besides women
drafted from the rural areas, some “comfort women” of the Grand Taimen Comfort Station were
students, workers, and teachers before they were imprisoned. A junior high school girl was
kidnapped by the Japanese on her way back home from school. Since she attended a boarding
school and asked for an absence, her parents did not realize she was abducted until one week
later.
174

169
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 39-40.
170
Ibid., 41.
171
Ibid.
172
Ibid., 42.
173
Ibid., 44.
174
Ibid., 42.
74
The Japanese military also used the offer of job opportunities to attract and trick local
women. A newly married couple was separated because the husband was conscripted. One of
their relatives noticed that a wealthy family was hiring maids in the city center with a satisfying
salary, which s/he thought would be a great job opportunity for the wife. The wife went for the
job, only to find that she and her relative were tricked by the Japanese military. The “job” was to
be a “comfort woman” rather than a maid.
175

Since none of these “comfort women” were “voluntary,” the operator of Grand Taimen
Comfort Station created strict rules to control them. The operator first confiscated their
traditional Chinese style outerwear and forced them to wear Japanese clothes as well as
hairstyles.
176
Considering that China and Japan were at war at the time, if a “comfort woman”
succeeded in escaping, the local people might be unwilling to help her due to her apparel. More
importantly, a woman in Japanese style apparel was noticeable and easy to be located. The
Grand Taimen Comfort Station operator also invited Hanazono Mineto’s Korean “comfort
women,” who were able to speak Japanese and were very familiar with Japanese cultures, to
teach the Chinese “comfort women.”
177
These cultural influences were intended to “domesticate”
Chinese “comfort women.” On the other hand, the operator also used this approach to improve
the Grand Taimen Comfort Station’s customer experiences. In addition, Chinese “comfort
women” were not allowed to use their own names in the Grand Taimen; they used either “floral
names” or numbers as identifications.
178
The identities of Chinese “comfort women” —
psychologically and socially — were blurred under the domestication process. They were no

175
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 41-2.
176
Ibid., 41.
177
Ibid.
178
“Floral names” are fake names used by prostitutes or geishas in ancient China but using “floral names” does not
mean “comfort women” are prostitutes.
75
longer individuals but a number or a “floral name.” The harsh regulations also prevented
“comfort women” from escaping since the Grand Taimen’s “comfort women” were locals.
The manager of the Grand Taimen Comfort Station was a Japanese woman. It was widely
believed that she was a geisha in Japan before she came to China to “comfort” the Japanese
military.
179
This was very common among the first groups of the “comfort women” brought to
China from overseas. As discussed in Chapter Two, the Japanese military would loan “comfort
women” some money. Once a “comfort woman” paid off her debts, she would be free. As a
result, a great number of the first wave of “comfort women” chose to stay in China, using their
connections in the military to start comfort station businesses.
180
They were the “comfort
women” system’s victims and perpetrators, but also victims of the patriarchal society.
Considering the relationship between the operator and the Japanese military, Grand Taimen
Comfort Station was a civil-run comfort station with strong connections with the military. As a
result, “comfort women” of the Grand Taimen Comfort Station were supposed to circulate
around the neighboring suburbs to fulfill the desires of rural-based Japanese soldiers.
181
Despite
that, many Japanese units stationed in Zhuji’s suburbs also abducted and imprisoned local
women. A group of Japanese soldiers was stationed in a village in Northwest Zhuji and required
the chief to hand over one female as their “comfort woman.” A widow was chosen, and she also
had to provide manual labor during her three-year imprisoned life.
182

179
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 40. Her name is unknown.
180
Zhen Zheng and Wei Song, “‘Changhen Dangbei Hangcheng Salei ---- Ji Rijun Qinhua Qijian Chuxian Zai
Hangzhou de Wei’an Fu’ [ ⻓恨当悲杭城洒泪 ---- 记⽇军侵华期间出现在杭州的慰安妇] Remembering the Hate
Tearing in Hangzhou ---- in Memory of ‘Comfort Women’ in Hangzhou during the Japanese Invasion Period,”
ZHEJIANG ARCHIVES, July 25, 1997, 17.
181
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 40.
182
Qunxian Liu, “‘Xue de Jiyi’ [ ⾎的记忆] Memories in Blood,” in ‘Xue Yu Lei de Sushuo—Huiyi Qinhua Rijun
Zai Zhuji de Baoxing’ [⾎与泪的诉说 ---- 回忆侵华⽇军在诸暨的暴⾏] Tales of Blood and Tears—Recalling the
Atrocities of the Invading Japanese Army in Zhuji, ed. Zhuji City CPC Committee Party History Research Office
(Zhonggong Dangshi Chubanshe (Chinese Communist Party History Publisher), 2010), 69.
76
Similar to the Grand Taimen Comfort Station, Hanazono Mineto Comfort Station was
also operated by a civilian. The operator was a young male named Kaneshiro Reikon, who was
from Uiju, Korea.
183
Local people gave two nicknames to the Hanazono Mineto. One was “high
steps” because the architecture had several steps for people to climb and enter. The other one
was “the Japanese Hall,” although it did not have any Japanese “comfort women” at all.
184

In June 1942, one month after the Japanese controlled Zhuji, they transported six Korean
“comfort women” and five Taiwanese “comfort women” from Hangzhou to Zhuji to serve the
Hanazono Mineto Comfort Station.
185
Though there was no direct evidence that could clarify
whether Kaneshiro Reikon was just a representative of the Japanese army or the real owner of
Hanazono Mineto, it was confirmed that they had connections. According to a historical
document revealed in recent years, there were seven Korean women who lived in Hanazono
Mineto in 1944, and Professor Su Zhiliang believed that they were all “comfort women.”
186

Professor Su Zhiliang made a name list of Korean “comfort women” in Hanazono Mineto in
1944 from the historical document (Table 1). All places of origin on this list are on Korean
Peninsula, which proves that these women were all from Korea.
187
But Kaneshiro Tamasaki was
probably not a “comfort woman.” She shared the same family name as the operator of Hanazono
Mineto, Kaneshiro Reikon, and both of them were from Uiju. Considering the traditional chastity

183
Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei, “A Valuable Document Revealing the Japanese Army’s ‘Comfort Stations’: Reading
the Jinhua Gyerim Association Articles and Register,” Chinese Studies in History 53, no. 1 (December 31, 2019):
17, https://doi.org/10.1080/00094633.2019.1682398. Today’s Uiju is a part of North Korea. Kaneshiro Reikon was
born in 1920. When he started Hanazono Mineto Comfort Station in 1942, he was only twenty-two years old.
184
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 39.
185
Ibid. Hangzhou is the capital of Zhejiang Province, approximately fifty-five miles from Zhuji.
186
The document is the registration of the Gyerim Association in Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, during the Second
Sino-Japanese War. People who were on this list were all from Gyerim, Korea. Some Korean men’s occupations on
this list were comfort station owners. Some Korean women lived at the same address as these men, while their
occupations were blank. As a result, Professor Su believes that these Korean women were “comfort women.”
Hanazono Mineto is also listed on the registration.
187
Su and Chen, “A Valuable Document,” 18.
77
philosophy of East Asian countries, it was almost impossible that a man was willing to see his
family members become “comfort women.” As a result, she might be a relative or even the wife
of Kaneshiro Reikon.
188

Table 1: Name List of “Comfort Women” at the Hanazono Mineto Comfort Station in Zhuji
189

No. Name Age (years) Place of Origin Current Residence
1
Sim Ruibun 沈瑞粉
22 Jinju Hanazono Mineto
2
Jang Malsun 张末顺
30 Jungyeong Same
3
Baek Woljeong ⽩⽉净
24 Hwangju Same
4
Bak Aeji 朴爱基
30 Seoheung Same
5
Geum Chunja ⾦春⼦
22 Haeju Same
6
Geum Geumdo ⾦今道
23 Yeongil Same
7
Kaneshiro Tamasaki ⾦城⽟先
21 Uiju Same

“Comfort women” of Hanazono Mineto Comfort Station were completely “Japanized”
because they were trained to serve ranked Japanese officers and businessmen; they wore
Japanese style clothes and hairstyles and only spoke Japanese.
190
Since these “comfort women”
were unable to communicate with the local people and knew nothing about Zhuji, they were less

188
Korea does not have the tradition to change their last names after marriages, but Japan does. Considering Korea
was under Japan’s control during that period, it is possible if they were a couple.
189
Su and Chen, “A Valuable Document,” 18.
190
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 39.
78
likely to escape from the system. Even though they were supposed to do manual labor
sometimes, Hanazono Mineto’s “comfort women” had better treatment compared to the “comfort
women” in the Grand Taimen Comfort Station. These Korean “comfort women” of Hanazono
Mineto were even allowed to go outside freely.
191

However, the freedom was surficial. The Hanazono Mineto had a set of strict regulations
and systems to maintain its operation. As with many other comfort stations, the hours of
Hanazono Mineto Comfort Station were also divided into different periods for different ranks of
officers. The night hours were usually reserved only for higher-ranked officers, and they were
allowed to stay overnight at the comfort stations. Jeong Giyeong was born in 1922 in the South
Gyeongsang Province of today’s South Korea. In 1944, when he was a student at Tokyo Imperial
University (today’s University of Tokyo), Jeong Giyeong was forced to join the Daegu Infantry
80th Regiment as a “special student volunteer soldier.” His unit arrived in Zhuji in the July of
1945, one month before the Japanese surrender. One night, Jeong Giyeong went to the Hanazono
Mineto Comfort Station as an officer cadet and met Kanasaku Sachiko, a “comfort woman” who
was also from South Gyeongsang Province. They had a long talk because of nostalgia until a
regiment captain came to the comfort station. The regiment captain visited Kanasaku Sachiko
frequently, so he called Kanasaku Sachiko’s name loudly even though he knew she already had a
client. Jeong Giyeong would get in trouble if he was found — he was only an officer cadet and
was prohibited from visiting comfort stations at night. Kanasaku Sachiko decided to hide Jeong
Giyeong because they were from the same place and had a warm conversation, even if it might

191
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 39.
79
cost her life. The regiment captain did not know what happened; Kanasaku Sachiko saved his
life.
192

One year later, in 1946, Jeong Giyeong had already left the army and was planning to go
back home. He accidentally met Kanasaku Sachiko and hundreds of other “comfort women” in
Shanghai; they were abandoned by the Japanese military and tried to go back home.
193
Jeong
Giyeong and other people who were sympathetic to “comfort women” decided to write a letter to
Captain Taylor of the United States to seek help.
194
On March 6, 1946, two warships set out for
Busan from Shanghai, and one of them was used to send these “comfort women” home. After the
war, Jeong Giyeong became a professor at Jinju Agricultural College (today’s Gyeongsang
National University) in South Korea.
195

The story happened between Jeong Giyeong and Kanasaku Sachiko reflected multiple
layers of the “comfort women” system. Comfort stations had strict hour rules for different ranked
officers, and the punishments were severe. Even an officer cadet from a top university needed to
follow the strict rule; otherwise, he would be killed. Moreover, a considerable number of
“comfort women” in China were recruited from Korea and abandoned by the Japanese at the end
of the war. Also, Jeong Giyeong recalled that there were around thirty “comfort women” in the
Hanazono Mineto Comfort Station in his story. According to Professor Su Zhiliang’s table, a

192
Kimi Kawana, ed., “Kanasaku Sachiko,” Asahi Shimbun (Japan, Osaka), September 2,
1991, http://database.asahi.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/library2e/main/top.php.
193
Kimi Kawana, ed., “Kanasaku Sachiko,” Asahi Shimbun (Japan, Osaka), September 2,
1991, http://database.asahi.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/library2e/main/top.php.
194
Some translated the captain’s name into Captain Terra. After further research, the United States military did not
have a Captain Terra. The original text of this story is in Japanese, and the pronunciation of the captain’s name is
closer to “Taylor.” Another letter from the Consul General at Shanghai to the Secretary of State in 1945 also
mentions someone named “Captain Taylor.” (See: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v07/d452)
The two Captain Taylor should be the same person. As a result, here used “Captain Taylor” instead of “Captain
Terra.”
195
Kimi Kawana, ed., “Kanasaku Sachiko,” Asahi Shimbun (Japan, Osaka), September 2, 1991,
http://database.asahi.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/library2e/main/top.php.
80
potential list of “comfort women” at Hanazono Mineto, there were only six or seven “comfort
women” listed in 1944; not to mention that Kanasaku Sachiko’s name was not on the list.
196

Thus, the real number of “comfort women” in the Hanazono Mineto is unclear.
Kanasaku Sachiko was lucky to get back to her hometown. In fact, many “comfort
women” were sold by the Japanese to ordinary Chinese men after the war at low prices.
197
Their
voices were lost after that. As important witnesses of their sufferings, the two comfort stations in
Xiangdian Alley, the Garden Hill Neighborhood, were modified into multifamily residences until
the 2010s.

On the Way to Reformation
Starting in 2006, the Zhuji government started the “Historic City Center Reformation
Plan.” As a part of the historic city center, the Garden Hill Neighborhood was also included in
the plan in the late 2010s. By 2020, all Garden Hill Neighborhood residents moved out. In 2016,
before the residents of the Garden Hill Neighborhood started moving out, scholars confirmed
there were two historic comfort station sites in the neighborhood.
198
As a result, some residents
worried about the fates of two comfort stations. Since the two buildings were still in good
condition and had significant historical meanings, it is important to conserve the two comfort
stations carefully. The local government noticed the controversy and decided to reshape the two
former comfort stations into a memorial museum as well as an educational center. At the same

196
Su and Chen, “A Valuable Document,” 24.
197
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 46. A great number of “comfort women” were brought to
Hangzhou for sale after the war. The Japanese troops would cover their face and numbered them, so the buyers –
most were Chinese men -- could not pick them from their outlooks. Once buyers paid, they were allowed to pick a
woman by number.
198
Zhuhua He, “‘Zhuji Shouci Queren Yichu Rijun Wei’an Suo Jiuzhi’ [诸暨⾸次确认⼀处⽇军慰安所旧址]
Zhuji Confirmed a Historic Japanese Comfort Station Site for First Time,” Shaoxing Ribao (Shaoxing, Chia),
January 20, 2016, http://epaper.sxnews.cn/sxrb/html/2016-01/20/content_6_2.htm.
81

Figure 4.3: Today's Hanazono Mineto
Xuemin Zhang, “Hanazono Mineto,” the Historic Comfort Station Site in Zhuji, 2020, Online Image,
2020, http://www.shaoxing.com.cn/xinwen/p/2813856.html.

Figure 4.4: Potential Historic Grand Taimen Comfort Station Site
Photo by author in 2020.

82
time, the historical environment of the Garden Hill Neighborhood will be conserved as much as
possible. Some news articles published in 2020 said that the Architectural Design and Research
Institute of Zhejiang University would take responsibility for the Garden Hill Neighborhood’s
design.
199
According to an announcement for the result of the Garden Hill Neighborhood
Planning Project published in January 2022, architect Guo Weihong and his team from the
Architectural Design and Research Institute of South China University of Technology will
oversee the neighborhood’s reformation.
200

Though the local government has made decisions, many concerns about the Garden Hill
Neighborhood’s future need to be clarified. The most critical one is the current condition of the
two comfort stations. Since some architecture of the Garden Hill Neighborhood is in unstable
condition, it is not possible to enter the neighborhood without permission. Thus, the current
conditions of the two buildings are unclear. The two historic comfort station sites were both built
between the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century with wood, mud, and bricks.
The two sites were empty for over two years, and it is possible that they have had some damage.
The design team should check the building conditions as soon as possible and make a
comprehensive plan to conserve them. If the two historic comfort station sites have some parts
damaged or fallen, they should be carefully collected and stored for further studies.

199
“‘Huayuan-ling Yuan Rijun “Wei’an Suo” Jiuzhi, Yi Naru “Laocheng Yinxiang” Zhengti Baohu’ [ 花园岭原⽇
军‘慰安所’旧址，已纳入‘老城印象’整体保护] the Historic Comfort Station Sites of the Garden Hill
Neighborhood Have Been Included in the ‘Historical City Center Impression’ Conservation Plan,”
www.zhuji.gov.cn, June 29, 2020, http://www.zhuji.gov.cn/art/2020/6/29/art_1659200_49311154.html.
200
“‘Zhujishi “Jiyang Yinji” Lishi Wenhua Jiequ (Huayuan-ling Qukuai) Gaizao Gongcheng Sheji Zhaobiao’ [ 诸暨
市‘暨阳印记’历史⽂化街区（花园岭区块）改造⼯程设计招标] the Tender Results of the Garden Hill
Neighborhood Reformation Plan,” www.zhuji.gov.cn, January 20, 2022,
http://www.zhuji.gov.cn/art/2022/1/20/art_1388404_59066827.html. According to some other governmental
documents, the masterplans should be finished in seventy calendar days after signing the contract. The public
announcement of tender results was released on January 20, 2022. Unfortunately, until April 20, 2022, no
masterplan is released. I also wrote an email to the lead architect Guo Weihong, but have not received any responses
yet.
83
Though they are empty now, the two buildings were both built as vernacular architecture
and were primarily used as multifamily residential houses for decades. As a result, the
circulations around the two buildings serve residents rather than visitors. In addition, unlike the
Liji Lane site, the two historic comfort station sites of the Garden Hill Neighborhood are not
neighbors; they are on the two ends of the Xiangdian Alley. It is critical for the designers to
develop reasonable circulation for visitors — inside and between the two buildings. Moreover,
the interior spaces of the two buildings might not be large enough to function as a museum. The
designer could try to restore the architecture to the comfort station period; on the other hand, the
interior space is limited and requires reasonable space planning. If new buildings are going to be
built to extend the museum’s space, the design team should also consider the environmental
harmony of the neighboring buildings.
The adjacent districts of the Garden Hill Neighborhood have already been reshaped into
large commercial spaces. Though no master plan has been released, it is highly possible for the
new Garden Hill Neighborhood to have some commercial spaces: the whole neighborhood has
23,700 square meters (approximately 5.86 acres).
201
The team should find a way to balance the
relationship between the commercial and other formats of public spaces and the museum,
creating a relatively closed space for visitors. By doing so, the museum will not only provide
visitors with an immersive environment to learn the history but also maintain a serious
atmosphere for the difficult history. Like the Exhibition Hall of Evidence of Crime Committed
by Unit of 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army in Harbin, China, the other project finished by the

201
“‘Zhujishi “Jiyang Yinji” Lishi Wenhua Jiequ (Huayuan-ling Qukuai) Gaizao Gongcheng Sheji Zhaobiao’ [ 诸暨
市‘暨阳印记’历史⽂化街区（花园岭区块）改造⼯程设计招标] the Tender Results of the Garden Hill
Neighborhood Reformation Plan,” www.zhuji.gov.cn, January 20, 2022,
http://www.zhuji.gov.cn/art/2022/1/20/art_1388404_59066827.html.
84
Architectural Design and Research Institute of South China University of Technology, the design
team should use elements like fences, sunken plazas, and even the location of architecture itself
to achieve the privacy requirement of the museum.
202

Most essentially, the members of the design team are unknown yet, so the public might
have some concerns about the future of the Garden Hill Neighborhood. Guo Weihong is the only
architect that is publicly announced. Though Guo Weihong is an experienced architect and
planner with hundreds of finished projects, he had never participated in a historic neighborhood’s
transformation project. His past projects include some memorial museums and campus designs,
which partly fit the Garden Hill Neighborhood reformation plan’s situations.
203
As a result, it is
hard to imagine Guo Weihong and his team members’ design styles and preferences. Some may
worry about the Garden Hill Neighborhood’s fate since, once the master plan is released to the
public, it is hard to make any further changes. The government, as well as the design team,
should try to make the design process more accessible for the public to resolve their concerns.
The exhibition of the museum also needs to be carefully designed. The biggest problem
that the two historic comfort station sites are facing is the lack of historical materials, but the
displayed historical items should be comprehensive, including but not limited to governmental
documents, items that once belonged to “comfort women” or the Japanese troops, and images.
Since Zhuji was a small town during the Second Sino-Japanese War, so far, no historical images
related to the two comfort stations have been found. Some Chinese citizens who once worked for
the Japanese burned many documents after the Japanese military surrendered to avoid

202
“The Exhibition Hall of Crime Evidences in Harbin / Architectural Design & Research Institute of SCUT,”
ArchDaily, June 16, 2017, https://www.archdaily.com/873464/the-exhibition-hall-of-crime-evidences-in-harbin-
china-architectural-design-and-research-institute-of-south-china-university-of-technology.
203
“Guo Weihong,” www2.scut.edu.cn, accessed April 16,
2022, http://www2.scut.edu.cn/sklsbs/2022/0107/c31650a457087/page.htm.
85
punishment.
204
The majority of the official documents from Zhuji’s Japanese-controlled period
are lost, including those related to comfort stations. In other words, the current authority might
not have any physical text documents of the two comfort stations. They should ask for help from
the public to gather historical relics and to enrich the museum’s exhibitions.
Also, in the twentieth century, the administrative districts of Zhejiang Province changed
several times. The Zhuji government could cooperate with neighboring cities’ local governments
to find more evidence for the two historic comfort station sites in the Garden Hill Neighborhood.
It is hard to find other well-conserved historic comfort station sites in the whole Zhejiang
Province, and Zhejiang Province does not have any “comfort women” memorial museum.
205
As
a result, instead of only focusing on Zhuji’s “comfort women” history, the museum could
function as a “comfort station” memorial museum for the whole Zhejiang Province, which will
solve the problem of lacking historical evidence. If it is possible, the Zhuji government should
also try to find the seven Korean women on the list and the Korean operator of the Hanazono
Mineto or their offspring as they may have more information that the museum lacks so far. This
can also provide a different angle for visitors to understand the history, creating an unbiased
atmosphere for the exhibition.
Providing a high-quality and unbiased exhibition to its visitors is one of the most
important standards for a memorial museum.
206
The information, especially the texts, given by
the museum should be well-organized and as actual as possible. Additionally, the memorial

204
Zhu, “Comfort Stations of Xiangdian Alley,” 46.
205
Zhuhua He, “‘Zhuji Shouci Queren Yichu Rijun Wei’an Suo Jiuzhi’ [ 诸暨⾸次确认⼀处⽇军慰安所旧址]
Zhuji Confirmed a Historic Japanese Comfort Station Site for First Time,” Shaoxing Ribao (Shaoxing, Chia),
January 20, 2016, http://epaper.sxnews.cn/sxrb/html/2016-01/20/content_6_2.htm.
206
“International Memorial Museums Charter,” IHRA, accessed April 18,
2022, https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/international-memorial-
museums-charter.
86
museum is open to all kinds of people. To better serve this purpose, the information delivery
methods should be inclusive. It is also important for the museum operators to seek help from
scholars in this field and from professional curators to design the exhibition. They can also learn
from other “comfort women” memorial museums in China, like the Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort
Station Site Museum, to curate an exhibition for people with different backgrounds.
Since the museum will be developed on the historic comfort station sites, the location
becomes its most unique character. By applying this character to the museum properly, it can
help better achieve the museum’s educational and memorial missions. Visitors can have an
immersive atmosphere by visiting a museum reshaped from former comfort stations. The
museum can also restore space to restore the historical look of the two comfort stations, which is
largely applied by other “comfort women” memorial museums. Thus, the visitors are able to
better understand the history that happened inside the building.
However, this requires the Guo Weihong and his team to have the strong professional
knowledge to practice. For the design team, due to the lack of historical materials, it is hard to
leave a space for restoring the comfort station as it was during the wartime period. They should
consult local people who know the history, historians in this field, and colleagues who designed
other “comfort women” memorial museums in China to better understand the project. Moreover,
the historic buildings built a century ago are far away from the architectural standards of a
modern memorial museum. Take displayed items as an example, some historic paperwork needs
specific temperature and humidity for better conservation. A modern memorial museum should
also include facilities like air conditioners and restrooms for meeting the visitors’ basic needs.
Thus, the design team is responsible for putting contemporary facilities in the memorial museum
with minimized potential damage to the building. As for the curators, according to the
87
International Memorial Museums Charter, if a memorial museum is developed based on the
historic site where the crime happened, the museum should focus more on universal principles,
including being against war and respect all people.
207
In other words, developing a memorial
museum on the criminal site might evoke strong emotional reflections from the visitors, which
will be in contrast to the unbiased standard. The planners should find a balance between the
immersive atmosphere of the architecture and the exhibition itself. After all, the most essential
elements of memorial museums are reflection and education.
Another important approach for achieving the museum’s educational purpose is to use
new technologies, like the AR map used in Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Station Site Museum and
the interactive oral history system in the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by
Japanese Invaders. Currently, the majority of local Zhuji people know little about the two
comfort station sites, especially the younger generations. A new technological system inside the
museum might be attractive so that some of them are willing to visit the museum. The
technology could not only focus on the two historic comfort station sites in the Garden Hill
Neighborhood. There are other former comfort station sites in Zhuji. Though they no longer
exist, with new technology’s help, users are still able to learn the history of them from electronic
devices. In addition, technology also helps to conserve the difficult history without worrying
someone will burn the documents again.

207
“International Memorial Museums Charter,” IHRA, accessed April 18,
2022, https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/international-memorial-
museums-charter.
88
Conclusion
It is rare to find well-conserved historic comfort station sites like the two in the Garden
Hill Neighborhood in Zhuji. Histories of the Grand Taimen Comfort Station and the Hanazono
Mineto Comfort Station explain the classification of comfort stations as well as the sources of
“comfort women.” Though the master plan has not been announced by the design team, and
there are many concerns related to the conservation process, it is fortunate that the two historic
comfort station sites can be preserved to tell their stories, whereas many other former comfort
station facilities have already been torn down during the city development.

89
Conclusion
The thesis hopes to make more people learn about the invisible history of “comfort
women” and the importance of conserving difficult heritage. It is critical for us — females,
males, and non-binary genders — to learn the long-invisible women's histories and their
sufferings, especially under the recent Roe v. Wade controversies.
208
The voice of women should
not be ignored in history primarily written by men. More importantly, “our bodies are not their
battlefields”; human beings should reflect themselves through the “comfort women” history and
respect the fact that women are not “resources.”
209

Every modern country has difficult history and numerous heritages related to the difficult
history. The “difficult” is from multiple perspectives, including traditional social concepts and
long-term ignorance. Luckily, the public has already started to realize the importance of difficult
history, encouraging the government to take responsibility to conserve the difficult heritage. It is
a challenge for the government to conserve difficult heritage since the difficult history might be
highly sensitive for some groups of people. The government should be very careful in dealing
with the conservation of difficult heritage. Among all strategies that are frequently practiced in
difficult heritage conservation, establishing a memorial museum is an important and effective
one. A historic site with difficult history can be reshaped into a memorial museum, which not
only achieves the goal of heritage conservation but also helps to educate the public.
This thesis focuses on the difficult history of “comfort women,” which did not come into
the public's sight until the 1990s. Though many people have seen the word on the news, few
people understand the further histories behind it. The “comfort women” were not volunteers nor

208
In May 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade making abortion illegal in many states. More see:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/05/05/what-is-roe-v-wade.
209
From the title of Christina Lamb’s book, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women.
90
“military prostitutes”; they were enslaved by the Japanese military and raped by the patriarchal
society repeatedly. As witnesses to their sufferings, comfort stations are an important part of
difficult heritage. Comfort stations have been categorized by their locations, their relationship to
the Japanese military, and their motivations. China once had the largest number of “comfort
women” and an incredibly large number of the “comfort” facilities were set up by the Japanese
military in mainland China. However, many comfort stations have already been demolished
during the urban development after the war. As a result, it is critical for the government to take
action immediately to conserve them as difficult heritage.
Reshaping them into memorial museums is an effective strategy. However, a memorial
museum built on the original historic site must be carefully designed by professionals. The
Nanjing Museum of the Site of Liji Lane Comfort Stations is a great example of memorial
museums on the topic of “comfort women.” It is established on the two historic comfort station
sites in Liji Lane, Nanjing, China. The museum restores the architecture's comfort station period
based on historical materials. Instead of using the site’s residential and vernacular circulations,
the circulation is re-designed to meet its function as a museum, as well as represented how the
Japanese military men would have moved after entering the comfort station. On the one hand,
visitors are able to know the real situation and operation of comfort stations. On the other hand,
the two comfort stations in Liji Lane were private residences; the reformation could better meet
its function as a public space.
Although the reformation of the Liji Lane site took over ten years to complete, it sets a
great example for other cities' governments to deal with the difficult heritage related to “comfort
women” history. The sites of two comfort stations, the Grand Taimen and Hanazono Mineto, in
Zhuji, China, were confirmed by historians in recent years, before the government decided to
91
demolish its surrounding neighborhoods for city development. Though the local government has
not published a detailed reformation plan for the neighborhood, according to the information that
can be accessed by the public, the two historic comfort station sites will be conserved as a
memorial museum. There are still more questions to be answered about this plan: how will these
small comfort station sites be reorganized as a memorial museum? How will the government
deal with the problem of lacking historical materials? Can the local government cooperate with
nearby cities to enrich the contents of the exhibition by gathering more historical relics? These
questions, unfortunately, cannot be answered in this thesis so far; the author believes that they
will be answered in the near future.
When people talk about history, most people focus on important historicevents and
significant figures; the difficult history is often ignored by the public. The “difficulty” of
conserving difficult heritage could because of the architecture itself, for example, its rare
materials and fragile structures; the reason should not be that the mainstream society hopes to
remove the structure. The difficult history, as well as the difficult heritage, should not be left in
the dark.

92
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Asset Metadata

Creator Chen, Hanyu (author)

Core Title “Our bodies, their battlegrounds”: the conservation of comfort stations in China

School School of Architecture

Degree Master of Heritage Conservation

Degree Program Heritage Conservation

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/22/2022

Defense Date 06/23/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag china,comfort station,comfort women,difficult heritage,difficult history,dissonant heritage,gender,heritage and gender,Heritage Conservation,ianfu,informal heritage,Japan,Korea,memorial museum,Nanjing,OAI-PMH Harvest,painful history,Restoration,Second Sino-Japanese War,urban heritage,Urban Planning,Vernacular architecture,war crime,women's history,WW II,Zhuji

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sandmeier, Trudi (committee chair), Hirsch, Alison (committee member), Qiu, Peipei (committee member)

Creator Email chenhany@usc.edu,chenhanyu0302@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111373916

Unique identifier UC111373916

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Source 20220722-usctheses-batch-961 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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