The Twenty-fourth Asian Studies Conference Japan(ASCJ) 2022年7月3日
Session 41: Confined but Illuminative Marginality in the Japanese Empire: Perspectives
from Prisons, Hansen’s Disease Sanatoriums, Licensed Prostitution Quarters, and Coal
Mines
Organizer: Kazumi Hasegawa, Nagoya Gakuin University
Chair: Akwi Seo, Fukuoka Women’s University
Discussant: Curtis Anderson Gayle, Waseda University
This presentation analyzed international emancipation movements for Japanese prostitutes that took place around 1900. In the late 19th century Japan, although movements against licensed prostitution had begun, there was a lack of concrete methods on how to rescue licensed prostitutes being treated like sex slaves.
This presentation was based on the following historical materials: books by U. G. Murphy, Japanese and British periodicals of the Salvation Army, Japanese periodicals of Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and Japanese newspapers. This introduced types of international efforts made for these movements, and how the situation of Japanese prostitutes changed.
The aim of this presentation was to analyze the definition and limitations of these movements and to further the current discussions regarding the history of sex-slavery issues.
International Conference ‘Women’s Histories: : the Local and the Global’, International Federation for Research in Women's History & Women's History Network 2013年8月31日