Comfort Women.

[Chjoey]

Just another example of Japanese history text books leaving out the dirty details of Japan's past:

However, the term ‘‘comfort women’’ was wiped away in the 2006 versions of history textbooks from all eight publishers, although two referred to them by merely noting that young women were dispatched to the war fronts for Japanese soldiers, according to the leaflet, ‘‘Bringing Back Reference to ‘Comfort Women’ in Junior High School History Textbooks.’‘

http://www.japantoday.com/category/l...-comfort-women

So what do you think? Should junior high school students learn about this?

[Mothy]

Is there a news article this is coming from?

[Chjoey]

OOPS.

[Pablo668]

Yeah, certain factions in Japan with friends in high places (some of them are in high places I suppose) that don't want to acknowledge past atrocities.
I personally think that if this is taught in Junior high it should probably be in the final year. No need to traumatise the little darlings to early.
Also, it's the kind of thing that needs to be taught 'in context' ie: with strong background so people can see how these things happen and what led up to the events being studied.
This whole section of history (WWII, Sino-Japanese wars) is from what I can tell, very weak in Japanese History education. I've had more than a couple of Japanese people ask me about that time period because they either weren't taught it at school or it was not taught very thoroughly.

eta: some of the poeple who have posted responses to that article are absolute fuckknuckles.

[Mothy]

I think it's important for Japan to be open in their history textbooks about the crimes against humanity they committed during WWII, but it's not so important to specifically mention the comfort women. If they said everything they did wrong during the war there would be no room left to talk about anything else.

[vertigo_stick]

I personally think that if this is taught in Junior high it should probably be in the final year. No need to traumatise the little darlings to early.

Agree with this totally. You can't just tell JHS students about sex slavery with no training wheels.

I guess the issue here is that if it is not taught in JHS, it is not technically taught in the 'compulsory education' (but almost every JHS student goes to HS.)

[Sciby]

I wouldn't even tell this to my first year SHS kids. It could be covered in current events/topical clases in 3rd year senior, but not JHS.

[kraM]

comfort women comfort men.

[Mothy]

Agree with this totally. You can't just tell JHS students about sex slavery with no training wheels.

I guess the issue here is that if it is not taught in JHS, it is not technically taught in the 'compulsory education' (but almost every JHS student goes to HS.)

I wouldn't even tell this to my first year SHS kids. It could be covered in current events/topical clases in 3rd year senior, but not JHS.

Exactly how naive and innocent do you think these kids are? They can't handle the idea of someone 60 years ago being forced into prostitution? Bullshit. The Japanese are pussies enough, you don't need to coddle them anymore than they're already being.

[Sciby]

I've taught current events/jiji-eigo over all three SHS levels and watched the younger ones get visibly upset (even cry) at the more confronting things such as AIDS and child slavery - explaining that some of the greatest war crimes against humanity was commited by their own people before they're mature enough to comprehend and process it effectively isn't coddling.

Wiping it from text books and never telling them is coddling.

[Mothy]

Maybe why they were so upset is that they've been trotting along with their heads in the clouds not realising reality is a bitch and it's not just those evil "other countries" that can do bad things. If you're in Japan and you teach World War II and you don't talk about some of the shit they did you're doing a disservice to the students and to humanity.

[Sciby]

I agree that if you're going to teach WW2 here, you should talk about all of it - not just the glorious stuff - but I think some things have to wait until the kids are mentally mature enough to deal with the finer, more graphic details.

[Mothy]

Well sure you don't have to show pictures of exploded heads to teach about war. It's a history class though. The history as it happened should be taught. You don't need to get into graphic details about how the Japanese penis was violently inserted into the poor helpless young girls who had been forced into sex slavery to do that. And them just learning the basic facts shouldn't end up giving them nightmares.

[Meatball]

I wouldn't even tell this to my first year SHS kids. It could be covered in current events/topical clases in 3rd year senior, but not JHS.

if you are in SHS you are old enough to know about this stuff.....Japanese people are seriously emotionally unstable, but that is no excuse for not getting to know this kinda of stuff...back home they show ww2 concentration camp movies to JHS kids.....come on if you are in SHS you are almost an adult

[Chjoey]

if you are in SHS you are old enough to know about this stuff.....Japanese people are seriously emotionally unstable, but that is no excuse for not getting to know this kinda of stuff...back home they show ww2 concentration camp movies to JHS kids.....come on if you are in SHS you are almost an adult

No kidding. We learned about concentration camps in 6th fucking grade. I was 11.

The only time that shit makes me cry is when I watch a documentary and some old dude is crying b/c he's telling the story of how he got separated from his mother and she went into the oven line.

But reading about it in a history book doesn't make me cry. It's called being able to suppress all emotions whilst in public.

[Mothy]

Also you can impact people with news in various ways. Just a straight forward telling of the facts doesn't make that big an impact. It's when you start combinging it with visuals and music that tugs at th heartstrings that it can be heartbreaking.

[krampus]

if you are in SHS you are old enough to know about this stuff.....Japanese people are seriously emotionally unstable, but that is no excuse for not getting to know this kinda of stuff...back home they show ww2 concentration camp movies to JHS kids.....come on if you are in SHS you are almost an adult

My thoughts exactly. Besides, they learn about the horrors of atomic bombings when they're in elementary school.

[Latrine]

To be perfectly honest, back home we didn't learn about any of the gritty stuff from the war until grade 10 (so 2nd yr here). I don't see any problem holding off on talking about comfort women or survivor stories of flesh melting off until they are old enough to understand it, appreciate it, and cope with it mentally. Even at 16 I was very disturbed by some of the things we watched/were shown. JHS is WAY too early. I don't blame them for taking it out of the JHS program one bit. It never should have been there in the first place.

[Mothy]

What do you mean by gritty stuff? I hardly consider comfort women that griity. And back home for me I learned about the holocaust in grade school. I learned about our mistreatment of the natives a little bit in grade school and a lot in JHS. I don't think I saw the most graphic depictions until HS but I have to wonder if it upset you so much to learn about at 16 it's because you had had too much hidden from you when you were younger. Knowing there have been bad events in the world isn't going to damage anybody unless they've been walking through life thinking the world is perfect for too many years.

[Chjoey]

Yeah. Learning about those things should start at a really young age. Of course the "gritty" details should be left until the kid is a bit older.

It's the same with sex. You give small kids a general idea and as they mature you can give them more information.

[Meatball]

To be perfectly honest, back home we didn't learn about any of the gritty stuff from the war until grade 10 (so 2nd yr here). I don't see any problem holding off on talking about comfort women or survivor stories of flesh melting off until they are old enough to understand it, appreciate it, and cope with it mentally. Even at 16 I was very disturbed by some of the things we watched/were shown. JHS is WAY too early. I don't blame them for taking it out of the JHS program one bit. It never should have been there in the first place.

because they never see that on tv, in movies, in newspapers or manga now do they?

[Latrine]

Fantasy vs. Reality. A differentiation that Japan seems to have perfected. I can't remember the last time a newspaper had a bloody, dismembered corpse splashed across the front page. They censor that shit even in the States where apparently everyone is desensitized to the point of apathy.

By gritty stuff I mean listening to survivor stories and seeing films of the effects of Agent Orange (like disturbing birth defects) in Vietnam (yes, I realize we are talking Japan but I'm giving an example of the "gritty stuff" I learned in school. I didn't learn shit about Japan till University). I don't know about you but hearing a German war suvivor's story about walking to school and seeing a paratrooper's burnt flesh hanging from the tree in her front yard will always make my stomach turn.