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| Miki Dezaki, director of "Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of The Comfort Women Issue," speaks at a media conference held on Monday in Gangnam, Seoul. Yonhap |
Filmmaker says info gap is source of lingering dispute
By Lee Gyu-lee
Japanese American filmmaker Miki Dezaki's film "Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of The Comfort Women Issue" will hit local theaters next week amid escalating tensions between South Korea and Japan over a trade dispute that has gone from bad to worse.
Dezaki said he hopes to provide an impartial introduction to one of the most controversial issues ― Japan's sex slavery during World War II ― between the two countries, and that a third-party standpoint can help the two sides narrow the information gap to make progress toward a constructive solution.
"Being Japanese American I think gave me the privilege to interview the people that I interviewed," Dezaki said at a media conference, Monday, held in Gangnam, Seoul. He added that if it weren't for his background, he would not have been able to meet the core figures to discuss the issue.
The film covers his three years of research on comfort women ― a euphemism for the victims of sex slavery ― and interviews with 27 scholars and experts from Korea, Japan, and the United States.
There have been several films dealing with the same issue but his film is different in that he interviewed activists fighting for the wartime sex slaves as well as far-right Japanese people who deny the Japanese government's involvement in the recruitment of the war slaves.
The filmmaker tries to provide a balanced view regarding the touchy issue by presenting their views.
Among others, the two sides reveal a clear difference regarding the nature of comfort women. Korean activists claim the victims were forced to provide sexual services against their will and that the Japanese government was involved in their recruitment.
Meanwhile, Japanese right-wingers, including politicians and journalists, dismiss their claims, insisting the comfort women were not slaves but prostitutes, selling sex willingly. They claim those women did not complain and had their own lives at comfort stations. "They were going to movie houses and some had the privilege of attending luxurious events along with Japanese soldiers, to which they could never have gone as regular civilians," one interviewee said in the film.
The film points out that the revisionists are raising questions on consistencies in victims' testimonies about their traumatic experiences at the comfort stations. They scrutinized the fact that a victim's testimony changed from being forcefully abducted to being recruited without knowing she would be sent to a comfort station.
"Koreans are trained to be liars since a young age," a politician said in the film. She added that Korea is jealous of Japan, which has great power and advanced technology and that Koreans are trying to defame Japan by finding faults.
Director Dezaki said insufficient information about the issue prevents both countries from having productive discussions.
"I noticed there was a gap in information between Korean and Japanese people," he noted. "I thought that with the two-hour film that gives a comprehensive introduction to the issue, both Koreans and Japanese would understand that they didn't know about certain information."
He said he was curious about the issue and started to wonder why nationalists in Japan react so strongly to the comfort women issue.
While he was living in Japan to teach English in 2007, he produced a video about racism and discrimination in Japan. He was bashed by Japanese internet users, especially nationalists.
Later, he came across Takashi Uemura, a former reporter for Asahi Shimbun who covered the comfort woman issue. He said he came to sympathize with Uemura because they both were under attack from the right-wingers.
"It was really through that my own experiences and hearing about him getting bashed that I became interested in why the Japanese neo-nationalists wanted to respond to this issue."
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| A poster for the movie. Courtesy of CinemaDAL |
As the title says itself, the film sets the context of the battle between the two sides. The filmmaker put together claims and refutations from both sides back-to-back to show their differences.
Throughout the film, Dezaki tries to balance out the two arguments by attempting to hear the logic behind the right-wingers' denial of the victims. He covers where the term for the wartime sex slaves came from and the revisionists' reasons to deny using the term.
The film doesn't hesitate to uncover the flaws and the double standards of the far-rightists' arguments, as well as arguments of the supporters that leave room for revisionists to refute. As the comfort women issue has been omitted in Japanese education in an apparent effort to whitewash the heinous deeds of the past, the movie points out that the younger generations in Japan are not aware of the issue.
It further zooms out on a larger picture to discuss Japan's efforts to prevent the issue from becoming an international issue, especially in the U.S.
When the movie was released in Japan in April, before it hit Korea, some Japanese right-wing interviewees threatened to sue him, claiming they did not agree to be filmed under the understanding the film would be commercialized.
"Instead of talking about the content of the film, they are trying to divert the attention to this idea that I deceived them so people will not see or trust the film," the director said.
He noted that what Japanese people should be asking is why these people are trying to boycott his film. "The fact that they are telling people not to see the film is a great advertisement for it," he said.
Dezaki emphasized that the hatred between the sides won't resolve the issue which has remained unsettled for decades since some victims began to break their silence in the 1990s. "I think once the hatred decreases between the two countries, that's when they can have a productive discussion."
The film first drew people's attention when it was selected to screen at Busan International Film Festival in October 2018. It made its official theatrical debut in Japan in April and will hit local theaters on July 25.
