Our solutions will be pragmatic. Our solutions will be at the scale of the city, furniture, handheld or other. Wherever possible, we will prototype our solutions. And if possible, we will deploy them in our territory. We are interested in the concrete contribution to solutions, The Architecture Of Activism.
“Comfort Women” is the Japanese Imperial government’s euphemism for the women and children they trafficked as sex slaves between 1932 and 1945, until the end of World War II. Most of the victims were Korean and Chinese, although many others were from the Philippines, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia, East Timor, Hong Kong, and Macau. While some were recruited by false advertisements promising work as house maids, factory workers and nurses, the majority were abducted and violently coerced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers at government sponsored “comfort stations” intended to improve army morale, as a strategy of war. It is estimated that some 400,000 women and children were forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers and officers at these government-sponsored rape camps. The “Comfort Women” were often kept in sub-human conditions and suffered from starvation, physical and psychological abuse, disease, infections, and rampant STD’s. Many committed suicide. monuments for the “Comfort Women” are being built around the world to memorialize the victims and their communities and to educate new generations of the dangers of warfare and a global responsibility to protect human rights.
-"COMFORT WOMEN JUSTICE COALITION-
Establishment of Japanese 'Comfort Stations' and Scale of the Conscription
After instigating the Manchurian Incident, Japan continued to expand their invasion front.
The Japanese military set up ‘comfort stations’ under the pretext of 1) preventing the rape of local women, 2) preventing sexually transmitted diseases through prostitution, and 3) to provide sexual consolation to army soldiers. There is a record which states that an early form of the Japanese military’s ‘comfort station’ was initially established in Shanghai in January of 1932. With the start of Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the number of Japanese ‘comfort stations’ grew rapidly; and, the area from which ‘comfort women’ were conscripted also expanded alongside the expansion of Japanese occupied territories. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the entire process of establishing ‘comfort stations’, managing them, recruiting ‘comfort women’, and transporting them was primarily undertaken by the Japanese military. A system of active cooperation was set up between the Japanese government agencies such as the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the Governor General of Korea and Taiwan.
At present, it is not possible to know the total number of women conscripted as Japanese military ‘comfort women’ since no systematic data revealing their number. Some scholars have speculated on the total number of ‘comfort women’ victims based on data from Japanese military plans of how many ‘comfort women’ were to be assigned per Japanese soldier or from testimonial records. However, there seems to be a great differences among researchers due to a variety of assertions placing the total number between a range of 30,000 to 400,000.
In the early days of ‘comfort station’ installations, the Japanese conscripted mainly women from Japan and their colonies of Joseon (Korea) and Taiwan. As the war became prolonged and the front lines expanded, women from other occupied territories such as China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Dutch women living in Indonesia were forced to serve as ‘comfort women’. Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a researcher who has long studied the issue of ‘comfort women’ in the Japanese military, estimated that the number of ‘comfort women’ in the Japanese military was at least 80,000 to 200,000 and that more than half of them were women from Joseon (Korea).
Comfort Women Survivors in Asia
Activist Group
"COMFORT WOMEN" JUSTICE COATINION
Founded in 2015
Located in San Francisco
The “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition is a multi-ethnic, multi-interest human rights coalition formed to support the passage of the “Comfort Women” resolution in September 2015. To date, members include dozens of organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area plus others in Southern California and Japan. The emphasis of our movement is on the tragic history of the “Comfort Women,” a unprecedented and heinous war crime of the 20th century. What we are doing is to help bring justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims and survivors. Join us to right the wrongs for a belated redress.
Their Movement
As time goes on, more victims are passing away and the history is dropping into oblivion.
Art and Activism
Artistic Activism is a dynamic practice combining the creative power of the arts to move us emotionally with the strategic planning of activism necessary to bring about social change. Art and activism do different work in the world. Activism, as the name implies, is the activity of challenging and changing power relations. There are many ways of doing activism and being an activist, but the common element is an activity targeted toward a discernible end. Simply put, the goal of activism is action to create an Effect.
"Comfot Women" San Francisco Memorial
MEMORIAL SITE : Saint Mary's Square
The “Comfort Women” Monument at St. Mary’s Square is a culturally and historically significant public space in the greater Chinatown community and within the heart of Downtown San Francisco. With mature trees, many benches and a small children’s playground it serves as a nice area to relax and now learn about and remember these brave women.
The Making of the Monument
“Comfort Women” Column of Strength statue
by Steven Whyte
The “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition hosted a public exhibition of the submissions from the international art community for proposals for the “Comfort Women” Memorial built in Saint Mary’s Square in September of 2017. The exhibition was free and opened to the public. Proposals from Artists from around the world were on display. An expert jury of arts professionals, community organizers and citizens selected the three finalists from the works submitted. A final, winning proposal by Steven Whyte from Carmel, California was approved and unveiled on September 22nd, 2017.
“Comfort Women” San Francisco Memorial
ARTIST PROPOSAL
Other Memorials in United States
A rally on Capitol Hill, April 2015, to advocate for a formal apology from the Japanese government for the comfort women system it ran in World War II. The rally coincided with a visit to Washington, D.C. from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
A memorial peace garden to World War II comfort women located in Fairfax, Virginia.
South Korean supporters of former so-called comfort women hold up pictures of deceased former comfort women during a rally near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, in 2015.
Power of Media
In the study of mass communication, there has been a continuous debate about the more or less powerful effects of the media on the public. Instead of reviewing these positions and their empirical claims, this project examines in more general terms some properties of the social power of the media. This power is not restricted to the influence of the media on their audiences, but also involves the role of the media within the broader framework of the social, cultural, political, or economic power structures of society.
Media power is generally symbolic and persuasive, in the sense
that the media primarily have the potential to control to some extent the
minds of readers or viewers, but not directly their actions. Except in
cases of physical, coercive force, the control of action, which is usually
the ultimate aim of the exercise of power, is generally indirect, whereas
the control of intentions, plans, knowledge, beliefs, or opinions that is, mental representations that monitor overt activities is presupposed.
Movements by MEDIA
"Herstory" Comfort Women Animation
"The Flowers of War"
"Turning Fork"
Architectural Projection
If you extract keywords from above three topics, you can see that a lot of them are in common. Architecture constructs structure from the common area in Activism, Art and Media, then deliver messages to the public as a single house.
The role of metaphors in architecture
As is the case in every other field of art, the purpose of architecture is to reveal a unique situation which has never been experienced before and broaden the feelings, thoughts and imagination of human beings. Considering that the concepts of identity and uniqueness are close enough to be used for the same meaning, the main purpose of architecture can be defined as designing a building which has a certain identity. Metaphors seem to be quite beneficial instruments compared to several other methods and approaches applied by architects in order to achieve this purpose. Design problems are defined as “wicked” problems which are too complex to be solved with completely linear, rational, logical methods and with a certain algorithm and require considering both objective and subjective aspects of the problem at the same time and with creativity. Metaphors, defined as “imaginative rationality” appear to be quite appropriate tools for solving such problems since they unite rationality and imagination.
The Modular House Pavilion by Michael Jantzen
Stair-Scape Cube by Michael Jantzen
Wrapping Reichstag by Christo and Jeanne-Claude
The Umbrellas by Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Baltic Way by Jin Young Song
Target
The ultimate goal of this project is to make the right history known to many people in the language of architecture, and to send a message to the next generation so that this tragedy will never happen to mankind again.
