Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T19:29:56.671Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Is Criminal and What Is Not: Prosecuting Wartime Japanese Sex Crimes in the People's Republic of China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2020

Xiaoyang Hao
Xiaoyang Hao*
Affiliation:
Kyushu University. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prosecuted Japanese military servicemen for war crimes committed during and after the Sino-Japanese War. This paper examines written confessions left by those Japanese war crimes suspects and considers to what extent they were used by the CCP to prosecute sexual violence during the trials. The historical analysis is contextualized by an examination of the representation of the CCP's legal approach to sexual violence in articles from the People's Daily. This paper finds that although accounts of sexual violence are found in the confessions written by suspected Japanese war criminals, the courts did not make rape a focal point of the prosecutions and did not pursue the so-called “comfort women” issue. Furthermore, no victim of rape was called to testify before the court. The CCP's approach to the issue of sexual violence in the 1956 trials closely corresponded to the discourse and propaganda in the People's Daily.

摘要

摘要

1956 年中国共产党进行了战犯审判，处理了日军在二战中国战场上所犯下的包括性暴力在内的罪行。本文聚焦于此战犯审判中对于性暴力的审判，对日军战犯嫌疑人的笔供自述进行考察，并探讨这些笔供在审判中如何被使用。此外，本文试图通过分析人民日报于 1946 至 1956 年间对性暴力问题的报道，来侧面理解和诠释共产党战犯审判中性暴力处理之问题。通过考察可以看出，尽管日军战犯嫌疑人在笔供中记录了性暴力罪行，但战犯审判并未以强奸作为重点且完全忽视了 “慰安妇” 问题，强奸受害者亦未被传唤出庭作证。而共产党在此战犯审判中对性暴力问题的处理方法，与同时期人民日报对性暴力问题的报道和宣传高度一致。

Keywords

sexual violence“comfort women”CCP trialsconfessionsPeople's Daily性暴力“慰安妇”共产党审判笔供自述人民日报
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 242 , June 2020 , pp. 529 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akiyama, Yōko. 2003. “Chūgoku josei ga kataru sensō” (Stories of war told by Chinese women). Sekai bungaku 98, 48–56.Google Scholar
Arai, Toshio. 1998. “Senpan jihitsu kyōjutsusho: kōgun no seihanzai” (War criminals’ confessions: sex crimes of the Imperial Army). Kikan chūkiren 6, 16–24.Google Scholar
Arai, Toshio. 2000. “Chūka jinmin kyōwakoku no senpan saiban” (The war crimes trials conducted in the People's Republic of China). In Aiko, Utsumi and Tetsuya, Takahashi (eds.), Senpan saiban to seibōryoku (War Crimes Trials and Sexual Violence). Tokyo: Ryokufū shuppan, 123–153.Google Scholar
Brook, Timothy. 2007. Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cathcart, Adam. 2018. “Resurrecting defeat: international propaganda and the Shenyang trials of 1956.” In von Lingen, Kerstin (ed.), War Crimes Trials in the Wake of Decolonization and Cold War in Asia, 1945–1956: Justice in Time of Turmoil. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 261–278.Google Scholar
Cathcart, Adam, and Nash, Patricia. 2009. “‘To serve revenge for the dead’: Chinese Communist responses to Japanese war crimes in the PRC Foreign Ministry Archive, 1949–1956.” The China Quarterly 200, 1053–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Kai. 2007. “‘Futatsu no sengo’ to kaizō jiken” (“Two post-war periods” and the matter of re-education) (Satō Ken (trans.)). Gendai shisō 35(10), 138–147.Google Scholar
Chiu, Hungdah. 1977. “Criminal punishment in mainland China: a study of some Yunnan province documents.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 68(3), 374–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, Chungmoo. 2001. “The politics of war memory toward healing.” In Fujitani, T., White, Geoffrey M. and Yoneyama, Lisa (eds.), Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s). Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 395–409.Google Scholar
Chu, Te-Lan. 2005. Taiwan sōtokufu to ianfu (The Government-General of Taiwan and Comfort Women). Tokyo: Akashi shoten.Google Scholar
Chūgoku kikansha renraku-kai. 1996. Kaettekita senpan tachi no kōhansei: Chūgoku kikansha renraku-kai no yonjū-nen (The Later Life of the Returned War Criminals: Forty Years of the Association of Returnees from China). Tokyo: Shinpū shobō.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jerome Alan. 1968. The Criminal Process in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1963: An Introduction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawes, James. 2013. Evil Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driscoll, Mark. 2010. Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Unread in Japan's Imperialism, 1895–1945. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Harriet. 2003. “The language of liberation: gender and jiefang in early Chinese Communist Party discourse.” In Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. (ed.), Twentieth-century China: New Approaches. London: Routledge, 193–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fujime, Yuki. 2015. “Ianfu” mondai no honshitsu: Kōshō seido to Nihonjin “ianfu” no fukashika (The Essence of the “Comfort Women” Issue: The System of Licenced Prostitution and the Invisibility of Japanese “Comfort Women”). Tokyo: Hakutakusha.Google Scholar
Gillin, Donald G., and Etter, Charles. 1983. “Staying on: Japanese soldiers and civilians in China, 1945–1949.” The Journal of Asian Studies 42(3), 497–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henriot, Christian. 2001. Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849–1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Henry, Nicola. 2011. War and Rape: Law, Memory and Justice. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hershatter, Gail. 1997. Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-century Shanghai. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ikō, Toshiya. 2010. “Kyōjutsusho ni tsuzurareta sankō sakusen” (The three-all policy exhibited in the confessions). In Yutaka, Yoshida (ed.), Chūgoku shinryaku no shōgensha tachi: ninzai no kiroku o yomu (Witnesses of the Aggression of China: Reading the Records of Confessions). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 117–136.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Justin. 2011. “Preparing the people for mass clemency: the 1956 Japanese war crimes trials in Shenyang and Taiyuan.” The China Quarterly 205, 152–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kawada, Fumiko. 1999. “Chūgoku senpan kyōjutsusho ni miru Nihongun no seibōryoku” (Sexual violence of the Japanese military as seen in confessions of war criminals detained in China). Kikan sensō sekinin kenkyū 23, 18–25.Google Scholar
Kumano, Naoki. 2015. “Kantōgun kokkyō yōsai to nanasanichi butai” (The Kwantung Army fortresses in the borderlands and the 731 Unit). Hōsei kenkyū 82(2–3), 363–397.Google Scholar
Kushner, Barak. 2015. Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lo, Jiu-jung. 2013. Ta de shenpan: jindai Zhongguo guozu yu xingbie yiyixia de zhongjian zhibian (Her Trials: A Study on Loyalty and Treachery through the Lens of Nationality and Gender in Modern China). Taipei: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Marukawa, Tetsushi. 2007. “‘Kaizō’ to ‘ninzai,’ sono kigen to tenkai” (The origins and developments of “re-education” and “confession”). Sekai 768, 243–252.Google Scholar
Marukawa, Tetsushi, and Shinichirō, Kumagai. 2007. “Shinyō saiban no genzaiteki imi o tou” (Inquiring into the present-day implications of the Shenyang trials). Kikan chūkiren 42, 2–16.Google Scholar
Mühlhahn, Klaus. 2009. Criminal Justice in China: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ōsawa, Takeshi. 2007. “Maboroshi no Nihonjin ‘senpan’ shakuhō keikaku to Shū Ōnrai: Chūka jinmin kyōwakoku gaikōbu tōan o tegakari ni” (Zhou Enlai and the illusory project of releasing the “Japanese war criminals”: an analysis of the diplomatic documents in the PRC's Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Chūgoku kenkyū geppō 61(6), 1–11.Google Scholar
Qiu, Peipei, with Zhiliang, Su and Lifei., Chen 2013. Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves. Vancouver: UBC Press.Google Scholar
Shaffer, Robert. 2000. “A rape in Beijing, December 1946: GIs, nationalist protests, and US foreign policy.” Pacific Historical Review 69(1), 31–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soh, C. Sarah. 2008. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Yuki. 2002. Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ueno, Chizuko. 2018. “Sensō to seibōryoku no hikakushi no shiza” (Perspectives on the comparative history of war and sexual violence). In Chizuko, Ueno, Shinzō, Araragi and Kazuko, Hirai (eds.), Sensō to seibōryoku no hikakushi e mukete (Towards a Comparative History of War and Sexual Violence). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1–31.Google Scholar
Wang, Zhanping (ed.). 1991. Zhengyi de shenpan: zuigao renmin fayuan tebie junshi fating shenpan Riben zhanfan jishi (Fair Trials: The Records of the Supreme Court's Special Military Trials for Japanese War Criminals). Beijing: Renmin fayuan chubanshe.Google Scholar
Xia, Yun. 2017. Down with Traitors: Justice and Nationalism in Wartime China. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Zhongyang dang'anguan (ed.). 2005. Riben qinhua zhanfan bigong I, II, III, IV, VI (Confessions of Japanese War Criminals). Beijing: Zhongguo dang'an chubanshe.Google Scholar