China pointedly adds Japan’s WW2 ‘comfort women’ house as protected historic site
The designation comes as China seeks to increase attention on Japanese imperial aggression
A Japanese military brothel in China has been declared a protected historic site, state media said yesterday, as Beijing highlights old grievances amid modern-day tensions with its long-time rival.
The seven-building complex in the eastern city of Nanjing housed more than 200 “comfort women” forced to serve Japanese soldiers during the second world war, and was the largest such facility in Asia, the official news agency Xinhua reported.
The former Chinese capital had 40 such stations run by Japanese troops, it cited Nanjing Normal University historian Jing Shenghong as saying.
The designation comes as China seeks to increase attention on Japanese imperial aggression during the early 20th century, while at the same time acting more assertively over disputed islands in the East China Sea controlled by Tokyo.
Relations between the two Asian giants soured in 2012 when Tokyo nationalised a few of the long-disputed islands, known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan.
Japan invaded China in the 1930s and the two countries fought a full-scale war from 1937 until Tokyo’s defeat in the second world war in 1945.