Media

HKU weekly notice

13 Oct 2017

 

HKUL Book Talk - Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves

Speakers:       Professor Peipei Qiu 丘培培 (Vassar College, USA)
Moderator:      Professor Clara Wing-chung Ho 劉詠聰 (Hong Kong Baptist University)
Date:              19 Oct. 2017 (Thursday)
Time:              6:30 - 8:00 pm
Venue:           Special Collections, 1/F, Main Library, The University of Hong Kong
Language:     English

About the Speakers

Peipei Qiu is The Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Chair Professor of Chinese and Japanese, and Chair of the Department of Chinese and Japanese, Vassar College, USA. Qiu is the recipient of a number of honors and grants, including a Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship, Columbia University President’s Fellowship, and The Japan Foundation Fellowships. She is the author of Bashô and the Dao: The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai (Hawaii University Press, 2005), Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves (with collaborating researchers Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei, University of British Columbia Press, 2013; Oxford University Press, 2014; Hong Kong University Press, 2014), and many research articles in English, Japanese, and Chinese

About the Book

During the Asia-Pacific War, the Japanese military forced hundreds of thousands of women across Asia into "comfort stations" where they were repeatedly raped and tortured. Japanese imperial forces claimed they recruited women to join these stations in order to prevent the mass rape of local women and the spread of venereal disease among soldiers. In reality, these women were kidnapped and coerced into sexual slavery. Comfort stations institutionalized rape, and these "comfort women" were subjected to atrocities that have only recently become the subject of international debate.

Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves features the personal narratives of twelve women forced into sexual slavery when the Japanese military occupied their hometowns. Beginning with their prewar lives and continuing through their enslavement to their postwar struggles for justice, these interviews reveal that the prolonged suffering of the comfort station survivors was not contained to wartime atrocities but was rather a lifelong condition resulting from various social, political, and cultural factors. In addition, their stories bring to light several previously hidden aspects of the comfort women system: the ransoms the occupation army forced the victims' families to pay, the various types of improvised comfort stations set up by small military units throughout the battle zones and occupied regions, and the sheer scope of the military sexual slavery-much larger than previously assumed. The personal narratives of these survivors combined with the testimonies of witnesses, investigative reports, and local histories also reveal a correlation between the proliferation of the comfort stations and the progression of Japan's military offensive.

The first English-language account of its kind, Chinese Comfort Women exposes the full extent of the injustices suffered by and the conditions that caused them.

The book was named a Best Book of the Year by the Chinese American Librarians Association.

The Chinese edition of the book (日本帝國的性奴隸：中國「慰安婦」的證言) is also published in 2017.

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Media Contact:  Mr. Gary Chin, Tel: 2859 2211 / Ms. Marina Yeung, Tel: 2859 8903

UMAG exhibitions
1. Fibres of Life: IKAT Textiles of the Indonesian Archipelago Following the footsteps of a vanishing craft

Period: Now till November 26, 2017 (Sunday)

Looking at Peter Ten Hoopen’s Pusaka Collection from a scholarly point of view, it is worth acknowledging how it illustrates the concept of ‘unity in diversity’, which the young state of Indonesia chose as its motto upon independence. Here, the interwoven-ness of styles from its islands matter, as do their marked individuality and idiosyncrasies. Moreover, it allows for the study not just of the people’s finery, but also of their daily attire, which is lamentably absent in most collections.

An ironic illustration of the effect of this collecting method comes from Ili Mandiri on Flores. As its dark red bridewealth sarongs have been prized and venerated by the local population, this is what most sophisticated collections have aimed to obtain. The simple but lovely indigo sarongs for everyday use have been almost entirely ignored by collectors. Hence they nearly always end up worn to shreds and very few survive — rarer now than the precious and respected, hence eagerly collected, bridewealth sarongs.

What knowledge is conserved about ikat textiles and their use in the Indonesian archipelago consists primarily of the records of missionary and scientific fieldwork, predominantly compiled by non-Indonesians. The coverage is thin— many weaving regions are covered by only one or two sources, and several regions have never been studied in any detail. Much traditional knowledge is being lost, especially in the more remote island regions in the Indonesian archipelago, which require concerted effort if any trace of their culture is to survive.

Venue: 1/F T.T. Tsui Building, UMAG, HKU, 90 Bonham Road, Pokfulam

2. Hong Kong by Guo Zhiquan: Cityscapes in Ink

Period: Now till November 12, 2017 (Sunday)

Born in Leshan (Sichuan Province, China) in 1942, Guo graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and has exhibited widely in China. This is his first solo show in Hong Kong. Guo is a member of the Henan Artists Association, the Chinese Academy of Poetry, Painting and Calligraphy, and he is affiliated with the Ministry of Culture, as well as the East & West Artists Association. He worked as the Dean of the Fine Arts Department of Luoyang University in 1986, where he specialised in landscape paintings, as well as bird-and-flower work and art criticism.

Guo is regularly the subject matter of art critics. For example, in 1993 Muxun LU, a renowned Chinese contemporary theorist, wrote an article titled ‘Boundless World Shaped by the Soul of Mountains and Rivers’, engaging with the artist’s exemplary landscape paintings. Subsequently, Guo exhibited at the National Art Museum of China and Tsinghua University, among other more academic institutions, and his work has been reviewed and praised by many established critics.

Venue: 2/F Fung Ping Shan Building, UMAG, HKU, 90 Bonham Road, Pokfulam

Opening Hours:
09:30 – 18:00 (Monday to Saturday)
13:00 – 18:00 (Sunday)
Closed on University and Public Holidays
Tel/Email: (852) 2241 5500 (General Enquiry) / museum@hku.hk
Admission: Free
Website: www.umag.hku.hk/en/

Media enquiries:
UMAG Communications Officer Miss Elena Cheung, Tel: (852) 2241 5512, Email: elenac@hku.hk
UMAG Programme Assistant Miss Chelsea Choi, Tel: (852) 2241 5509, Email: cchelsea@hku.hk