"Myth can only work through a neglect of politics and the forgetting of history."
-- Roland Barthes, Mythologies

From 1932 to 1945 the Japanese Imperial Forces systematically enslaved hundreds of thousands of women in military brothels referred to as "comfort stations" where they were subjected to daily rape and violence at the hands of Japanese soldiers and officers.

The so-called "comfort women" were pressed into service from Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Singapore, Japan, and elsewhere throughout Asia and the Pacific.

By 1942, 400 comfort stations were operating in Japan's various war zones and occupied territories.

After nearly half a century of official denial, Japan in 1993 grudgingly offered an official apology to South Korea (an estimated 80 percent of comfort women were taken from the Korean Peninsula).

Yet despite growing bodies of documentary and testimonial evidence detailing the participation of both the state and military, the Japanese government continues to keep relevant official documents secret, refuses to compensate survivors or their families, and stubbornly suppresses the facts surrounding military comfort women in the nation's history textbooks. In November, 2000, On Taiwan, a revisionist history of Taiwan in manga form, was published by Japanese cartoonist Kobayashi Yoshinori, a member of the Japanese Society for Textbook Reform, which promotes an exonerating version of Japan's history in which the Pacific War was fought to liberate Asia from Western imperialism.

The Japanese edition of On Taiwan sold 250,000 copies in its first month of publication and the first printing of 30,000 copies in Taiwan also quickly sold out.

Kobayashi's work, based upon his observations and interviews with several prominent Taiwanese politicians and businessmen, has stirred great controversy in Taiwan, especially for alleging that Taiwanese comfort women were volunteers who were fortunate to have had the opportunity to serve the Japanese military.

In this presentation I intend to accomplish three tasks. First, I will summarize On Taiwan, particularly as it relates to the issue of comfort women.

Next, we will discuss reactions to Kobayashi and his manga in Taiwan.

Lastly, we will refute Kobayashi's allegations about Taiwanese comfort women by reviewing the research of Yoshimi Yoshiaki, George Hicks, Alice Yun Chai and others, and the testimonies of survivors. Ultimately, my goal is to demythologize Kobayashi's manga so that the dignity of Taiwan's comfort women may be restored and this shameful period in Japan's history may not be forgotten.