Gender and Justice
For my final project for Gender and Justice, I choose to explore the similarities and differences between Kim Soom's One Left and Shiori Ito's Black Box, highlighting the stories of oppressed individuals fighting for their rights toward equity and justice amidst sexual abuse and rape.
Main Themes
Intersections between Shiori Ito and Kim Soom's Pieces
Sexual Assault and Consent
One similarity between Kim Soom's One Left and Shiori Ito's Black Box is the theme of sexual assault and consent, repeatedly displayed throughout each powerful personal account of intimate sexual violations.
Gender Inequality
Gender Inequality repeatedly dominates the narratives of sexual assault and rape, exacerbated in Asia, highlighted throughout Shiori Ito's memoir and Kim Soom's account of Comfort Women in Japan. A dominating male patriarchy limits the opportunities for women and girls in each.
Courage and Resilience
While suffering under brutal post-traumatic stress disorder and haunted by countless cases of abuse of human rights, both the comfort women in Kim Soom's One Left and Shiori Ito in Black Box persevere and find courage and strength amidst hardship and struggle
Shiori Ito's Black Box
Shiori Ito's Black Box recounts a personal narrative of an intimate and grueling account of sexual abuse and violence from a first-hand perspective. Ito details her relationship with her abuser, Mr. Yamaguchi, throughout her journalism career, working between New York and Asia. She grapples with the difficulty of making change and fighting for legal reform against her oppressor while dismantling the hierarchy of a male-dominated career. Black Box includes highly personal details of the rape, leading the reader through a step-by-step encounter of the exact events that occurred, bridging the gap between the reader's imagination and reality.
Key Moments
Stigmatization surrounding rape culture
“When people hear the word “rape,” many probably imagine a situation in which a woman is suddenly attacked by a stranger in a dark alley” (3)
Shock and Disbelief
“Even in my state, in that moment when I had just awoken, with no memory of how I had ended up in that reality, it was unimaginable-impossible to accept-who the person was who could be doing this to me” (37)
Systemic Gender Inequality
"It makes sense-in Japanese, there is no register for a woman to use in protest that puts her on equal footing with a man who is her superior” (40)
Fear and Inner Reflection
"Until I became a victim, I did not comprehend how violent sexual assault is. Something had been brutally obliterated” (42)
Kim Soom's One Left
1
History of Comfort Women
"Comfort Women" refers to women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II. The victims were subjected to physical and sexual abuse in military brothels at "comfort stations." Innocent women were manipulated through deception, coercion, or abduction, enduring horrific conditions. The issues surrounding comfort women lead to diplomatic and historical contention as the Japanese government continues to deny the accounts of thousands of women.
2
Individual vs. Mass Experience
Kim Soom details the story of a young woman kidnapped while innocently gathering snails for her starving family in Korea. She later becomes a sex slave and is brutally abused and raped multiple times a day by Japanese soldiers. While this is an individual experience, there were thousands of comfort women across Asia during multiple wartime scenarios. Upon researching comfort women, the media regards this as a historical event involving thousands of people instead of the individual stories of women. Comfort women are often referred to in the plural context rather than the individual stories and personal accounts.
3
PTSD & Mental Health Implications
Throughout Kim Soom's One Left, there are repeated signs of PTSD and long-lasting mental health disorders that have plagued the lives of once innocent young women. The anti-chronological description of the event, bouncing from current time, future to past, denotes the mental fog and haze that endures after extreme and traumatic experiences. The protagonist sometimes believes that she is still a young woman who must find food for her family, while in reality, she is an older woman who has been returned from a comfort station years prior.
01
Mass Experience of Comfort Women vs. Individual Story
In Sarah Soh's The Comfort Women, she draws on the mass experience of women who suffered as sex slaves under Japanese imperial rule during World War II. Although she interviews a variety of women and reveals the horrors of gang-based prostitution and sexual slavery at a high level, she makes a broader commentary about the historical context of the event rather than focusing specifically on one woman and her individual experience for the entirety of her book. Soh draws on historical research and interviews, exposing the forces of Japanese colonialism and the Korean patriarchy through an analytical and perceptive lens. Soh additionally examines the factors and influences surrounding the women's human rights movement that have contributed to the half-truth that circulates today. Contrastingly, in Black Box Ito tells her story from a first-hand perspective and focuses only on the accounts of her personal story, not on all victims of rape in Japan. Does this diminish the validity of her story?
02
Historical Perspective of Sexual Abuse in Asia
It is important to note that both pieces I have examined have occurred in Asia, specifically Japan and Korea. The significance of shame-based culture, rooted explicitly in ancient beliefs that one can disgrace the entirety of one's family based on an individual's actions, dominates the experience of comfort women in Japan and Shiori Ito's story. Additionally, the hyper-sexualization and fetishization of Asian women perpetuate the stigma surrounding sex culture and rape, making it even more difficult for victims to have open conversations surrounding their experiences in fear of embarrassing themselves and their families, guilt, and shame for having been put in difficult situations. Frequently, this leads to victim blaming culture, which places the victim as the recipient of the blame for actions that were not in their control. Specifically, Ito notes, "It makes sense in Japanese, there is no register for a woman to use in protest that puts her on equal footing with a man who is her superior.” (40) While this specifically does not refer to sexual interaction, it highlights the minimal power that women have in terms of situations involving men, even regarding their own bodies and personal freedoms.
03
Path Towards New Life & Liberation
Shiori Ito continues to trailblaze her industry as an influential female journalist working to dismantle power dynamics within the workplace and expose systems of unfair sexual abuse and violence. Although at first she recounts being debilitated and set back initially by her oppressor, she reclaims her future and her power by becoming an outspoken activist and source of energy and hope for women suffering through similar circumstances globally. Her trial with her oppressor allowed her to change her future, illuminate the hypocrisy of the situation, and reveal the validity of her story that already existed. Throughout the public trial of her rape, she gained followers and supporters who were invested and hopeful that she would receive the support and justice that she rightfully deserved.
Comfort Women
The term "Comfort Women" refers to the women and girls who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in countries and forced into sex against their will. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu which literally means "consoling or comforting woman"
Individuality
Throughout these horrific experiences in which young girls were taken and kidnapped from their families, as explained in Kim Soom's Comfort Women, the women would lose their sense of self and belonging, blending into the masses of thousands of other women who were being oppressed at the same time. Are the individual experiences of these girls as crucial as the over arching mass atrocities that thousands of women suffered? Do the personal details still carry weight?
Justice
Women were brought to comfort stations as symbols of sexual abuse and prostitution for the soldiers to "use" at their own willing, stripping innocent young women and girls of their dignity and liberty. Despite the atrocities, Japan continued to deny responsibility for their actions and avoid the immense guilt and horror that spawned. How do we uncover the truth in a world where shame and fear plague our society? What are the ways that we can bring validity and light to stories and truth?
Systemic Violence
Military correspondence with the Imperial Japanese Army shows several aims for facilitating comfort stations. Precisely, in the Rape of Nanking, a monumental turning point in the exposure and sexual exploitation and abuse of young women, solider used force and their patriarchal dominance to control young women against their will. Is it possible to ever erase the inherent male dominance that structures Asian and American societies?