Karayuki-san
Karayuki-san (唐行きさん) was the name given to
History
Karayuki-san (唐行きさん, literally "Ms. Gone-to-China" – the meaning later evolved during the Meiji era to mean "Ms. Gone Abroad")
Many of the women who went overseas to work as karayuki-san were the daughters of poor farming or fishing families, or were burakumin. The mediators, both male and female, who arranged for the women to go overseas would search for those of appropriate age in poor farming communities and pay their parents, telling them they were going overseas on public duty. The mediators would then make money by passing the girls on to people in the prostitution industry. With the money the mediators received, some would go on to set up their own overseas brothels.[citation needed]
Near the end of the
After the Pacific War, the topic of karayuki-san was a little known fact of Japan's pre-war underbelly. But in 1972 Tomoko Yamazaki published Sandakan Brothel No. 8 which raised awareness of karayuki-san and encouraged further research and reporting.[citation needed]
The main destinations of karayuki-san included
The role of Japanese prostitutes in the expansion of Meiji Japan's imperialism has been examined in academic studies.[10]
In the Russian Far East, east of Lake Baikal, Japanese prostitutes and merchants made up the majority of the Japanese community in the region after the 1860s.
The Sino-French War led to French soldiers creating a market for karayuki-san Japanese women prostitutes, eventually prostitutes made up the bulk of Indochina's Japanese population by 1908.[14]
In the late 19th century Japanese girls and women were sold into prostitution and trafficked from Nagasaki and Kumamoto to cities like Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore and then sent to other places in the Pacific, Southeast Asia and Western Australia, they were called Karayuki-san.[15] In Western Australia these Japanese prostitutes plied their trade and also entered into other activities, a lot of them wed Chinese men and Japanese men as husbands and others some took Malay, Filipino and European partners.[16]
Japanese girls were easily trafficked abroad since Korean and Chinese ports did not require Japanese citizens to use passports and the Japanese government realized that money earned by the karayuki-san helped the Japanese economy since it was being remitted,[17][18] and the Chinese boycott of Japanese products in 1919 led to reliance on revenue from the karayuki-san.[19] Since the Japanese viewed non-Westerners as inferior, the karayuki-san Japanese women felt humiliated since they mainly sexually served Chinese men, Korean men or native Southeast Asians.[20] Borneo natives, Malaysians, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, American, British and men from every race utilized the Japanese prostitutes of Sandakan.[21] A Japanese woman named Osaki said that the men, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, whites, and natives, were dealt with alike by the prostitutes regardless of race, and that a Japanese prostitute's "most disgusting customers" were Japanese men, while they used "kind enough" to describe Chinese and Korean men, and the English and Americans were the second best clients, while the native men were the best and fastest to have sex with.[22] The nine Japanese managed brothels of Sandakan made up the bulk of brothels in Sandakan.[23] Two Japanese brothels were located in Kuudatsu while no Chinese brothels were to be found there.[24] There was hearsay that a Chinese man married the older sister of Yamashita Tatsuno.[25]
During the American period, Japanese economic ties to the Philippines expanded tremendously and by 1929 Japan was the largest trading partner to the Philippines after the United States. Economic investment was accompanied by large-scale immigration of Japanese to the Philippines, mainly merchants, gardeners and prostitutes ('karayuki san'). Davao in Mindanao had at that time over 20,000 ethnic Japanese residents.
Between ca. 1872 and 1940 large numbers of Japanese prostitutes (karayuki-san) worked in brothels of the Dutch East Indies archipelago.[26]
In Australia and Singapore
The immigrants coming to northern Australia were Melanesian, South-East Asian, and Chinese who were almost all men, along with the Japanese, who were the only anomaly in that they included women. Racist Australians who subscribed to white supremacy were grateful for and condoned the immigration of Japanese prostitutes since these non-white labourers satisfied their sexual needs with Japanese women instead of white women since they didn't want white women having sex with the non-white males. In Australia the definition of white was even narrowed down to people of Anglo-Saxon British origin.[27] Italian and French women were also considered "foreign" prostitutes alongside Japanese women and were supported by the police and governments in Western Australia to ply their trade since these women would service "coloured" men and act as a safeguard for British white Anglo-Saxon women. The Honourable R.H. Underwood, a politician in western Australia, celebrated the fact that there were many Italian, Japanese, and French prostitutes in western Australia in an address to the Legislative Assembly in 1915.[28]
In Western and Eastern Australia, gold mining Chinese men were serviced by Japanese Karayuki-san prostitutes. In Northern Australia in the sugarcane, pearling and mining industries, the Japanese prostitutes serviced Kanakas, Malays, and Chinese. These women arrived in Australia or America via Kuala Lumpur and Singapore where they were instructed in prostitution. They originated from Japan's poor farming areas and the Australian colonial officials approved of allowing in Japanese prostitutes in order to sexually service "coloured' men, since they thought that white women would be raped if the Japanese prostitutes weren't available.[29]
Port towns experienced benefits to their economies from the presence of Japanese brothels.[30]
Japanese prostitutes were embraced by the officials in Queensland since they were assumed to help stop white women having sex with nonwhite men. Italian, French, and Japanese prostitutes plied their trade in Western Australia.[31]
On the goldfields Japanese prostitutes were attacked by anti-Asian white Australians who wanted them to leave, with Raymond Radclyffe in 1896 and Rae Frances reporting on men who demanded that the Japanese prostitutes be expelled from gold fields.[32]
Japanese women prostitutes in Australia were the 3rd most widespread profession. The Queensland Police Comiissionee said that they were "a service essential to the economic growth of the north", "made life more palatable for European and Asian men who worked in pearling, mining and pastoral industries" and it was written that "the supply of Japanese women for the Kanaka demand is less revolting and degrading than would be the case were it met by white women".[33]
Between 1890 and 1894 Singapore received 3,222 Japanese women who were trafficked from Japan by the Japanese man Muraoka Iheiji, before being trafficked to Singapore or further destinations. For a few months, the Japanese women would be held in Hong Kong. Even though the Japanese government tried banning Japanese prostitutes from leaving Japan in 1896 the measure failed to stop the trafficking of Japanese women and a ban in Singapore against importing the women failed too. In the 1890s Australia began receiving immigration in the form of Japanese women working as prostitutes. In 1896, there were 200 Japanese prostitutes in Australia. In Darwin, 19 Japanese women were found by the Japanese official H. Sato in 1889. The Japanese man Takada Tokujiro had trafficked 5 of the women via Hong Kong from Nagasaki. He "had sold one to a Malay barber for £50, two to a Chinese at £40 each, one he had kept as his concubine; the fifth he was working as a prostitute".[34] Sato said that the women were living "a shameful life to the disgrace of their countrymen'.[35]
Around areas like ports, mines, and the pastoral industry, numerous European and Chinese men patronized Japanese prostitutes such as Matsuwe Otana.[36]
During the late 1880s to the 20th century Australian brothels were filled with hundreds of Japanese women. Those Japanese overseas women and girl prostitutes were called karayuki-san, which meant 'gone to China'.[37]
Japanese prostitutes initially showed up in 1887 in Australia and were a major component of the prostitution industry on the colonial frontiers in Australia such as parts of Queensland, northern and western Australia. The British Empire and Japanese Empire's growth were tied in with the karayuki-san. In the late 19th century, Japan's impoverished farming islands provided the girls who became karayuki-san and were shipped to the Pacific and South-East Asia. The volcanic and mountainous terrain of Kyushu was bad for agriculture so parents sold their daughters, some of them as young as seven years old to "flesh traders" (zegen) in the prefectures of Nagasaki and Kumamoto. Four-fifths of the girls were involuntarily trafficked while only one-fifth left of their own will.[38]
The voyages the traffickers transported these women on had terrible conditions with some girls suffocating as they were hidden on parts of the ship or almost starved to death. The girls who lived were then taught how to perform as prostitutes in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore where they then were sent off to other places including Australia.[39]
A Queensland Legislative Assembly member in 1907 reported that Japanese prostitutes in the small town of Charters Towers lived in bad conditions while in 1896 in the larger town of Marble Bar in Western Australia, Albert Calvert reported that the conditions in Japanese brothels were good and comfortable.[40]
After the First Sino-Japanese War a celebration was held at an open-air concert by Japanese prostitutes who performed a dance in Broome in 1895.[41]
The development of the Japanese enclave in Singapore at
Around nine o'clock, I went to see the infamous Malay Street. The buildings were constructed in a western style with their facades painted blue. Under the verandah hung red gas lanterns with numbers such as one, two or three, and wicker chairs were arranged beneath the lanterns. Hundreds and hundreds of young Japanese girls were sitting on the chairs calling out to passers-by, chatting and laughing... most of them were wearing yukata of striking colours... Most of them were young girls under 20 years of age. I learned from a maid at the hotel that the majority of these girls came from Shimabara and Amakusa in Kyūshū...[43]
During the
The vast majority of
Most early
However, even with these changes in their official status, the community itself remained prostitution-based.[51] Prostitutes were the vanguard of what one pair of scholars describes as the "karayuki-led economic advance into Southeast Asia".[52] It was specifically seen by the authorities as a way to develop a Japanese economic base in the region; profits extracted from the prostitution trade were used to accumulate capital and diversify Japanese economic interests.[47] The prostitutes served as both creditors and customers to other Japanese: they loaned out their earnings to other Japanese residents trying to start businesses, and patronised Japanese tailors, doctors, and grocery stores.[52] By the time of the Russo-Japanese War, the number of Japanese prostitutes in Singapore may have been as large as 700.[47] They were concentrated around Malay Street (now Middle Road).[43] However, with Southeast Asia cut off from European imports due to World War I, Japanese products began making inroads as replacements, triggering the shift towards retailing and trade as the economic basis of the Japanese community.[51]
In film and literature
The Japanese film studios shot a
The 2021 award-winning novel 'The Punkhawala and the Prostitute' written by Wesley Leon Aroozoo and published by Epigram Books followed the life of Oseki, a Karayuki-san in Singapore. The novel is a Singapore Books Award Winner and finalist for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize.
The 1975 film
by Kohei Miyazaki were about the karayuki-san.The memoir of Keiko Karayuki-san in Siam was written about Karayuki-san in Thailand.[56] Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore, 1870–1940 was written about karayuki-san in Singapore.[57]
Postcards were made in French colonial Indo-China of Japanese prostitutes,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65] and in British ruled Singapore.[66][67][68]
Harry La Tourette Foster wrote that 'in years past, old-timers say, the entire Orient was filled with Japanese prostitutes, until the Japanese had much the same reputation as the French have in foreign cities elsewhere'.[69]
The experience of Japanese prostitutes in China was written about in a book by a Japanese woman, Tomoko Yamazaki.[70][71][72][73][74][75][76]
During her years as a prostitute, Yamada Waka serviced both Chinese men and Japanese men.[77]
See also
References
- ^ Mihalopoulos, Bin (1993). The making of prostitutes: The Karayuki-san. p. 42.
The term karayuki is derived from two words: kara, an archaic term referring generally to mainland China, and yuki, meaning "going" or "one who goes." San is an honorific suffix attached to personal nouns or certain professions (like oishasan [doctor], omawarisan [policeman]) to show respect or courtesy.
- ^ 来源:人民网-国家人文历史 (2013-07-10). "日本性宽容:"南洋姐"输出数十万". Ta Kung Pao 大公报.
- ^ Fischer-Tiné 2003, pp. 163–90.
- ^ Yamamoto 2004, pp. 124–127; Mayo, Rimer & Kerkham 2001, p. 315.
- ^ William Bradley Horton, "Comfort Women in Indonesia: A Consideration of the Prewar Socio-Legal Context in Indonesia and Japan." Archived 2012-02-22 at the Wayback Machine Ajiataiheiyotokyu 10 (2008): 144–146.
- ^ Warren 2003, p. 86.
- ^ Warren 2003, p. 87.
- ^ League of Nations (1933). Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People: Traffic in women and children committee. Minutes …. The Committee. p. 69. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ League of Nations; Bascom Johnson (1933). Commission of Enquiry Into Traffic in Women and Children in the East: Report to the Council. Series of League of Nations publications: Social. League of Nations. p. 69. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ James Boyd (August 2005). "A Forgotten 'Hero': Kawahara Misako and Japan's Informal Imperialism in Mongolia during the Meiji Period". Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context (11). Retrieved 21 July 2015.
- ^ Narangoa & Cribb 2003, p. 45.
- ^ Narangoa & Cribb 2003, p. 46.
- ISBN 978-1135765958. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ Saigoneer (15 July 2015). "[Photos] The Japanese Prostitutes Of Colonial Vietnam". Saigoneer.
- ^ Frances 2004, p. 188.
- ^ Frances 2004, p. 189; Frances 2007, p. 57.
- ^ Warren 2003, p. 83.
- ^ Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 62, Issue 2. Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Malaysian Branch (illustrated ed.). The Branch. 1989. p. 57. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015, p. xxiv.
- ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015, p. 8.
- ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015, p. 63.
- ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015, p. 67.
- ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015, p. 57.
- ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015, p. 88.
- ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015, p. 51.
- ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015.
- ^ Boris & Janssens 1999, p. 105.
- ^ Boris & Janssens 1999, p. 106.
- ISBN 978-1409491972. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ Mayne & Atkinson 2011, p. 213.
- ]
- ISBN 978-1443875790. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ISBN 978-9400772113. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ Christopher, Pybus & Rediker 2007, p. 212; Frances 2007, p. 49.
- ^ Historical Studies, Volume 17. 1976. p. 331. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ Frances 2007, p. 95.
- ^ Frances 2007, p. 46.
- ^ Frances 2007, p. 47.
- ^ Frances 2007, p. 48.
- ^ Frances 2007, p. 51.
- ^ Mayne & Atkinson 2011, p. 212; Frances 2007, p. 52; Hunt 1986, p. 125.
- ISSN 0219-8126.
- ^ a b Warren 2003, p. 41.
- ^ "Singapore's Japanese prostitute era paved over". Japan Times. Retrieved 28 May 2007.
- ^ Ho Ai Li (7 April 2014). "Tragic fate for the unwanted daughters". Asia One.
- ^ Shimizu & Hirakawa 1999, p. 25
- ^ a b c Warren 2003, p. 35.
- ^ Shimizu & Hirakawa 1999, p. 26
- ^ Shiraishi & Shiraishi 1993, p. 8
- ^ Tsu 2002, p. 96
- ^ a b Shiraishi & Shiraishi 1993, p. 9
- ^ a b Shimizu & Hirakawa 1999, p. 21
- ^ Baskett. The Attractive Empire, pp. 99–100
- ^ Baskett. The Attractive Empire, pp. 94–97
- ^ 陳碧純. "「山打根的八番娼館」之讀後心得" (PDF). 國立暨南國際大學東南亞研究所碩士 本院亞太研究計畫九十一年度碩士論文獎助得獎人: 309–315. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - )
- ^ Warren 2003.
- ^ Une Horizontale à Saïgon (Prostitution une Horizontale à Saigon Indochine prostituée cochinchine Vietnam) (photograph) (in French). Saigon: Collection Phénix Mottet et co, éditeurs à Saigon. Archived from the original on July 24, 2015. Alt URL
- ^ SAIGON. – Un Groupe d'Horizontales Japonaises (Carte postale Saigon Vietnam, Un groupe d'Horizontales japonaises, Geishas) (photograph) (in French). Saigon. Alt URL Archived 2015-07-24 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ VIET-NAM – Saigon : A Japanese prostitute (photograph) (in French). Saigon. Archived from the original on 2003-06-04.
- ^ 154. Cochinchine – Saïgon – Gorupe de juenes Japonaises (CPA VIET NAM COCHINCHINE SAIGON 1912 JEUNES JAPONAISES) (photograph) (in French). Saigon. 1912. Archived from the original on 2015-07-24. Retrieved 2015-07-25.
- ^ 149. Cochinchine – Saïgon – Trois Juenes Mousmées (CPA Viet Nam COCHINCHINE SAIGON Trois Jeunes Mousmées animé !!! ETAT Trace visible !!! VOIR SCANS et Descriptions) (photograph) (in French). Saigon. 1910 [1900]. Archived from the original on 2015-07-24. Retrieved 2015-07-25.
- ^ 235. Cochinchine – Saïgon – Jeune Maman Japonaise et son Enfant (Rare CPA Viet Nam COCHINCHINE SAIGON Jeune Maman Japonaise et son Enfant animé VOIR SCANS et Descriptions) (photograph) (in French). Saigon. 1910 [1900]. Archived from the original on 2015-07-24. Retrieved 2015-07-25.
- ^ 231. Cochinchine – Saïgon – Types de Japonaises (CPA Viet Nam COCHINCHINE SAIGON Type de Japonaises animé VOIR SCANS et Descriptions) (photograph) (in French). Saigon. Archived from the original on 2015-07-24. Retrieved 2015-07-25.
- ^ 146. Cochinchine – Saïgon JAponaise demi-mondaine (VIETNAM INDOCHINE VIETNAM COCHINCHINE SAIGON JAPONAISE DEMI MONDAINE PROSTITUTION EROTISME GEISHA) (photograph) (in French). Saigon. Archived from the original on 24 July 2015. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
{{cite AV media}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ Japanese Woman (A Japanese Karayuki-san (Prostitute) in Singapore). Singapore. Archived from the original on 2012-06-16.
- ^ Japanese Girls (photograph). Singapore. 1904.
- ^ "Karayuki-san". Pinterest.
- ^ Journal of studies of Japanese aggression against China, Issues 5–8. 日本侵華研究學會. 1991. p. 64. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ISBN 978-0870117336. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ISBN 978-3891294062. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ Shōichirō Kami; Tomoko Yamazaki, eds. (1965). Nihon no yōchien: yōji kyōiku no rekishi. Rironsha. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ISBN 978-0821444900. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ Ameyuki San no uta. Bungei Shunjû. 1978. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ Yamazaki & Colligan-Taylor 2015; Yamazaki 1985; Warren 2003, p. 223; Yamazaki 1974, p. 223.
- ^ Yamazaki 1985, p. 62.
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