Wei Shaolan was a Chinese woman forced into sex slavery by Japan in the 1940s. Until 2015, she was one of the only eight such women still alive - euphemistically called "comfort women" by wartime Japan.
She died on 5th May in Guilin at the age of 99 years.
This was a significant event. Only eight such women are known to be alive throughout China - and one of them just passed away. One would've imagined the western media - which otherwise is obsessed (with an Orientalist gaze) with every aspect of life in China - to at least give it a passing mention, if not devote a whole article or two.
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| Wei Shaolan |
This was a significant event. Only eight such women are known to be alive throughout China - and one of them just passed away. One would've imagined the western media - which otherwise is obsessed (with an Orientalist gaze) with every aspect of life in China - to at least give it a passing mention, if not devote a whole article or two.
However, they have almost completely ignored any reporting on her death, almost like a Boycott by Omission. There is not a single mention of it. Not a single one. Zero percent. An almost complete boycott by negligence. Literally the only news about it comes from Chinese media.
This raises an important question: why was this death ignored?
And in general, why is the entire issue of sex slavery during the Japanese invasion of China not covered as much as, say, China's human rights violations? After all, the death of a Chinese dissident would be covered extensively and they would be eulogized to death - no pun intended.
There are three reasons for this:
If only a Tiananmen veteran had died, the western media would be all over it. They would lament the state of human rights in China, and how Xi Jinping has lead the "widest crackdown on free speech in decades", along with all the standard clichés. Its easy to forget Japan's human rights violations - its a US ally after all.
There are three reasons for this:
- It doesn't fit in with the current narrative about Chinese women in the western mainstream press, which has to be negative in general. Chinese women may be portrayed as the victim, but only if they are victims of the Chinese government. Thus, their sufferings under the more brutal Japanese government of WWII have to be downplayed (just like their current achievements), when not downright ignored. For example, hypothetically, if the situation was reversed - i.e. if China had Japanese sex slaves - their deaths today would be front-page news.
- Japan is a US ally and a "democracy". Thus, Japan's WWII savagery has to be downplayed. After all, the reason why "Germany remembers too much, and Japan too little", is that Germany's crimes were committed against white people. Japan, on the other hand, killed Asians, so its crimes are considered less reprehensible in the West.
Moreover, Japan has been a more indispensable ally to the West than Germany - both during the Cold War (against the USSR) and after it (against China). - The incidents in question occurred more than 75 years ago. The media largely has the attention span of a toad - and is more comfortable focusing on what's in fashion today. (This standard is not applicable to China of course, which is still blamed for crimes - real or imagined - committed during the Mao era.)
If only a Tiananmen veteran had died, the western media would be all over it. They would lament the state of human rights in China, and how Xi Jinping has lead the "widest crackdown on free speech in decades", along with all the standard clichés. Its easy to forget Japan's human rights violations - its a US ally after all.
(A documentary on Wei Shaolan and "comfort women", released in 2013)
