What do you think?
Rate this book
Sandakan Brothel No.8: Journey Into the History of Lower-Class Japanese Women
This is a pioneering work on "karayuki-san", impoverished Japanese women sent abroad to work as prostitutes from the 1860s to the 1920s. The narrative follows the life of one such prostitute, Osaki, who is persuaded as a child of ten to accept cleaning work in Sandakan, North Borneo, and then forced to work as a prostitute in a Japanese brothel, one of the many such brothels that were established throughout Asia in conjunction with the expansion of Japanese business interests. Yamazaki views Osaki as the embodiment of the suffering experienced by all Japanese women, who have long been oppressed under the dual yoke of class and gender. This tale provides the historical and anthropological context for understanding the sexual exploitation of Asian women before and during the Pacific War and for the growing flesh trade in Southeast Asia and Japan today. Young women are being brought to Japan with the same false promises that enticed Osaki to Borneo 80 years ago. Yamazaki Tomoko, who herself endured many economic and social hardships during and after the war, has devoted her life to documenting the history of the exchange of women between Japan and other Asian countries since 1868. She has worked directly with "karayuki-san", military comfort women, war orphans, repatriates, women sent as picture brides to China and Manchuria, Asian women who have wed into Japanese farming communities, and Japanese women married to other Asians in Japan.
262 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
5 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 7, 2024
Osakiˋs Story only
November 10, 2019
I strongly suggest to watch the movie first and read the book as supplement, which may render a better understanding. I admire the spirit and devotion of Yamazaki and the kindness and love flowed in her writing but I have to say her perspective is much narrower and even shallower than the one Kei Kumai presented in the movie, and the book trilogy is generally mediocre. But what I don't like about Kei Kumai is that he failed to deliver Okiku as a more powerful character - it's either he failed to understand a woman like her, or he sacrificed her to his own artistic purpose.
It, in fact, is very strange. Despite strictly speaking neither the book nor the movie in fact does those ladies of karayuki-san perfect justice, still the suffocating pain and hardship of their life remain valid and powerful to everyone who gaze upon it even from distance -- It would be blasphemous to categories either of them into simply the realm of feminism because feminism is a too petty word.
I can't say Kei Kumai understand every character he chooses to appear in his movie but I cannot bear to watch for the second time the scene, before Keiko's departure, Osaki asked her for her used towel, for every time when she saw it, she will think of Keiko, she will remember and she will remember till her death. Keiko agreed. When this old amicable lady took over the towel, she thanked her then just turned around and weep, then the weep turned into wail.
She cried because everything she wanted to say is too much for words.
Her life is too much for words.
Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil once mentioned that those who set onto the lonely journey into the dangerous labyrinth that multiplies thousandfold of hardship of life, might lose his way and become isolated, being torn into pieces by monsters of conscience. Then she's a stranger to the warmth of life, to sympathy. That's a life of heavy grief and loneliness for people neither understand it nor feel it.
What Osaki and all the other ladies taken upon their shoulder were something they never willingly take. When power takes action at the risk of being morally judged it established an arbitrary connection between some signifer and signified to diverse the judgement. The shame of un-civilized human traffic and sex market resolved by connecting the laziness and low-moral standard to prostitutes; the way the impotence and ill-wished method of governing can be redeemed by connecting the notion famine strictly to the implication of natural disasters. Either the prostitutes and the Nature is reluctantly scarified.
That's the reason Okiku, the respected "Lady Consul" of Sandakan, a highest class courtesan who spoke different languages and a politically talented woman chose and urged every other oversea prostitute not to return to Japan, even built her grave in Sandakan facing the opposite direction of Japan. Yamazaki depicts Okiku much more charming and smart than Kei Kumai's adaption: a calm and passionate female patron and protector, though not very successful commercially due to her lack of concept of her money (how could people blame her? She once was in relationship with a rich English man who treated her like a princess when she was young and beautiful. The English man left her a great sum of money before he went back). She never lament or lost her temper like the way the movie shows, dramatic "louse" accusation is out of her character and incompatible to her wisdom.
But there's a detail added by Kei Kumai that Okiku collected rings rather than currency during her early days being highly interesting. The rings, made from either gold or silver, keep their value much more stable than currencies. This is in fact echos what most of the female socialites who play with wealth and power do even today, just they now mostly don't collect rings from men anymore, they collect other jewelries and bags of designer's limited edition in case of rainy days. I suppose this shows Kei Kumai truly underestimated Okiku - she was a socialite for sure but she would make way better self investment, and she did.
But despite of his failure of understanding Okiku-san properly, Kei Kumai shows how the connection between the hygiene and moral cleanliness worked in the whole situation neatly. In Sandakan where karayuki sex (immoral) business went, every brothel chamber remained clean and neat; but back to Japan, especially when Osaki came back from Kyoto when she was already aged and no longer had any sexual activities anymore, her house is run down and un-dwell-ably filthy. People not just impose moral explanation to certain phenomenon, they will even force the phenomenon to happen in order to match that moral judgement. This can be referred in the book that, Osaki said her clients were of various nationalities and races, but Japanese, her own countrymen, were the rudest. Within the culture community of one's own, when Power hold every right of interpretation, this is her life. She once lived as a currency resource of her country, then lived as a symbol, an pharmakos, to take all the blame for elites' Will to Power. Her name shan't been spoken, she must be forgotten, be erased from memories like as any filthy dirt: "She is filthy, not the Power."
She sat in silence for fifty years and finally when those past winged into sentences and the sentences had an audience, when the warmth of life reached out to her once again, all she could do was just bursting out into weep and cry. She couldn't write, she couldn't make fancy speech, she had no respondent vocabulary at her disposal, but when history went on it's without her consensus, whatever she had done by her own choices she did it beyond good and evil for she always wanted and ready to live, to love and to remember. Thus when the warmth of life touched her again, the joy and pain was still fresh, she knew she would never forget.
Feminism and Marxism approaches are blasphemous to such solemn and noble soul. There's too much in that weep, too much. Her house will always remain unclean, untidy, unhealthy if without Keiko's help. For she just can't. And even it's clean, tidy and healthy, just like Sana's, nothing really changes. For there's too much she cannot do, she can't turn into a lion.
She just can't.
It, in fact, is very strange. Despite strictly speaking neither the book nor the movie in fact does those ladies of karayuki-san perfect justice, still the suffocating pain and hardship of their life remain valid and powerful to everyone who gaze upon it even from distance -- It would be blasphemous to categories either of them into simply the realm of feminism because feminism is a too petty word.
I can't say Kei Kumai understand every character he chooses to appear in his movie but I cannot bear to watch for the second time the scene, before Keiko's departure, Osaki asked her for her used towel, for every time when she saw it, she will think of Keiko, she will remember and she will remember till her death. Keiko agreed. When this old amicable lady took over the towel, she thanked her then just turned around and weep, then the weep turned into wail.
She cried because everything she wanted to say is too much for words.
Her life is too much for words.
Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil once mentioned that those who set onto the lonely journey into the dangerous labyrinth that multiplies thousandfold of hardship of life, might lose his way and become isolated, being torn into pieces by monsters of conscience. Then she's a stranger to the warmth of life, to sympathy. That's a life of heavy grief and loneliness for people neither understand it nor feel it.
What Osaki and all the other ladies taken upon their shoulder were something they never willingly take. When power takes action at the risk of being morally judged it established an arbitrary connection between some signifer and signified to diverse the judgement. The shame of un-civilized human traffic and sex market resolved by connecting the laziness and low-moral standard to prostitutes; the way the impotence and ill-wished method of governing can be redeemed by connecting the notion famine strictly to the implication of natural disasters. Either the prostitutes and the Nature is reluctantly scarified.
That's the reason Okiku, the respected "Lady Consul" of Sandakan, a highest class courtesan who spoke different languages and a politically talented woman chose and urged every other oversea prostitute not to return to Japan, even built her grave in Sandakan facing the opposite direction of Japan. Yamazaki depicts Okiku much more charming and smart than Kei Kumai's adaption: a calm and passionate female patron and protector, though not very successful commercially due to her lack of concept of her money (how could people blame her? She once was in relationship with a rich English man who treated her like a princess when she was young and beautiful. The English man left her a great sum of money before he went back). She never lament or lost her temper like the way the movie shows, dramatic "louse" accusation is out of her character and incompatible to her wisdom.
But despite of his failure of understanding Okiku-san properly, Kei Kumai shows how the connection between the hygiene and moral cleanliness worked in the whole situation neatly. In Sandakan where karayuki sex (immoral) business went, every brothel chamber remained clean and neat; but back to Japan, especially when Osaki came back from Kyoto when she was already aged and no longer had any sexual activities anymore, her house is run down and un-dwell-ably filthy. People not just impose moral explanation to certain phenomenon, they will even force the phenomenon to happen in order to match that moral judgement. This can be referred in the book that, Osaki said her clients were of various nationalities and races, but Japanese, her own countrymen, were the rudest. Within the culture community of one's own, when Power hold every right of interpretation, this is her life. She once lived as a currency resource of her country, then lived as a symbol, an pharmakos, to take all the blame for elites' Will to Power. Her name shan't been spoken, she must be forgotten, be erased from memories like as any filthy dirt: "She is filthy, not the Power."
She sat in silence for fifty years and finally when those past winged into sentences and the sentences had an audience, when the warmth of life reached out to her once again, all she could do was just bursting out into weep and cry. She couldn't write, she couldn't make fancy speech, she had no respondent vocabulary at her disposal, but when history went on it's without her consensus, whatever she had done by her own choices she did it beyond good and evil for she always wanted and ready to live, to love and to remember. Thus when the warmth of life touched her again, the joy and pain was still fresh, she knew she would never forget.
Feminism and Marxism approaches are blasphemous to such solemn and noble soul. There's too much in that weep, too much. Her house will always remain unclean, untidy, unhealthy if without Keiko's help. For she just can't. And even it's clean, tidy and healthy, just like Sana's, nothing really changes. For there's too much she cannot do, she can't turn into a lion.
She just can't.
December 3, 2020
This book is an excellent source for those who want to learn more about the karayuki-san, Japanese women who were sold into overseas prostitution between the 1860s and 1930s. Yamazaki Tomoko records the oral testimony of one of these women, Osaki. By telling the story of Osaki’s experience as a karayuki-san, Yamazaki provides insight into the lives of women who have existed at the lowest tier of the socioeconomic hierarchy. Throughout the chapters, readers see the economic status, a woman’s various roles, gender relations, class differences, and foreigner influence all through the eyes of a karayuki-san.
February 7, 2017
If you are researching the histories of the sexual use of women in Asia, for militarism and colonial expansion, this is a must-read, especially if one is reading about the current "comfort women" discussions and issues.
June 12, 2022
It's heartbreaking to read as a woman and saw how women were ditched by their family and the whole patriarchy society and seeing it is still happening nowadays.
"She chose it." Like she actually had a choice.
"She chose it." Like she actually had a choice.
April 28, 2025
意外翻到的一本書，半記實半文學地記述著自小被半賣半騙到南洋的日本女孩歷史，讀完只能說相當佩服作者的勇氣與堅毅，可說是頗有古代士大夫之風令人佩服再三，雖說作者本身是為了追求日本女權出發所寫的書，但很難讓人不聯想到台灣的慰安婦，當然在綠營的執政下，不僅台澎的慰安婦歷史被篡改，台南的慰安婦像被移除，就連台北的和平與女性人權館相信也是很辛苦地在經營中，經濟的問題註定會帶給人們價值觀的混亂，加上戰爭與仇恨更會把這種混亂扭曲到不成樣子，雖然我們現在算是身處承平之時，但如果承平之時都無法面對人性的黑暗面，那說我們的社會與教育沒有問題或前景可期那就真是說謊不打草稿了。
February 12, 2016
(Copies of this book are scarce, but can be had through the library system.)
A matter of fact biography of a Japanese woman, written as the core of a study on an entire cohort who underwent similar experiences.
Osaki was born into an extremely poor family in the late 1800s. About age 10 she was sold, providing food and tax money for the rest of the family, at least for a while. While not particularly mistreated, she and many other extra daughters were secretly shipped off, sometimes under deadly conditions, to Japanese-run brothels that had sprung up in nearly every city in East Asia. The book relates her career and her eventual auto emancipation.
The narrative is well structured, and pulls the reader along as though it were a novel rather than a biography. One caution is needed, as this was intended as an academic case study instead of a straightforward biography. This was written by a woman who visited with Osaki over the course of many months, in Japan after the war. It is hard to tell how much of Osaki's emotions and motives were understood, and then put down in the work. Also events may have forgotten, left out, embellished, and so forth.
While grim, I didn't feel this was story of victimization or pity, but of triumph. It describes a woman who endures a lot without ever, apparently, getting too depressed, and who eventually becomes a success, and her own person. She even rejects the chance to return to Japan, preferring the uncertain liberty of life in the South Seas, at least for much of her life.
A matter of fact biography of a Japanese woman, written as the core of a study on an entire cohort who underwent similar experiences.
Osaki was born into an extremely poor family in the late 1800s. About age 10 she was sold, providing food and tax money for the rest of the family, at least for a while. While not particularly mistreated, she and many other extra daughters were secretly shipped off, sometimes under deadly conditions, to Japanese-run brothels that had sprung up in nearly every city in East Asia. The book relates her career and her eventual auto emancipation.
The narrative is well structured, and pulls the reader along as though it were a novel rather than a biography. One caution is needed, as this was intended as an academic case study instead of a straightforward biography. This was written by a woman who visited with Osaki over the course of many months, in Japan after the war. It is hard to tell how much of Osaki's emotions and motives were understood, and then put down in the work. Also events may have forgotten, left out, embellished, and so forth.
While grim, I didn't feel this was story of victimization or pity, but of triumph. It describes a woman who endures a lot without ever, apparently, getting too depressed, and who eventually becomes a success, and her own person. She even rejects the chance to return to Japan, preferring the uncertain liberty of life in the South Seas, at least for much of her life.
September 4, 2018
This was a book given to me by my daughter, which would seem rather odd in that it's the account of Karayuki-san (girls sold into prostitution, sent out from Japan as children to work that trade in foreign lands), though when considered against Tomoko's research methods, work in tracking down the women, gaining their trust, and writing their accounts, not the least bit strange. The life of those women, primarily the reminiscences of Osaki but including others with whom she could recall or introduce as old women to Tomoko. The trials of these women could be horrific, but they were real people with values, complicate emotions, and prone to the hopes and sorrows of all who seek to go beyond mere survival and live a life with some kind of meaning. The dangers they faced were a given, and the benefits were few and often simply, to them, luck or tragic misfortune.
Though I did like the book, I felt it disorganized, arranged with redundant sections that could have been diced, prioritized, and planned out better. The read had the feel of a work run off with editing. This may have been by design or even a structural, cultural feature of the genre, but I found it rather annoying and a hinderance to the flow of narratives.
Though I did like the book, I felt it disorganized, arranged with redundant sections that could have been diced, prioritized, and planned out better. The read had the feel of a work run off with editing. This may have been by design or even a structural, cultural feature of the genre, but I found it rather annoying and a hinderance to the flow of narratives.
April 2, 2015
This was a very riveting and touching portrayal of one Karayuki-san's journey from Japan to beyond and back. In the book, Tomoko, a Women's History historian writes about the lengths she goes, to secure research material from a reclusive community that has been protected by the communities they live in. By a sleight of fate, she meets Osaki, a former Karayuki-san whom she moves in with for a period of time to find out all she can about the Karayuki-san. She furiously writes down Osaki's words in the day while Osaki is out, then immediately posts the material to Tokyo, so she would not be incriminated by villagers or found out by Osaki for her true intentions. Eventually, we find out that Osaki had, from the very start of her encounter with Tomoko, intuitively grasped her intentions but chosen to continue Tomoko under her confidence and recounting her stories of the past. We are told of Osaki's high values and fine spirits besides being forced to work in the lowest of jobs. Eventually, Tomoko and Osaki form an indelible bond of love and friendship, one that continued long after the manuscript's publication. In later correspondences, Tomoko even addresses Osaki as 'Mother'.
January 3, 2020
A very interesting read about Osaki, a karayuki-san from Amakusa. It is hard to imagine this life that thousands of women have themselves to, as well imagining the aftermath of such a life.
Tomoko Yamazaki did a good job organizing her notes from bits and pieces of conversations she had to form intersting narratives throughout the book. She also had extremely great luck in her quest to find people, even if she couldn’t answer all the questions she sought.
The first and last chapters were somewhat difficult to read as they were very informational on Japan’s history, as well as other popular research on the subject of karayuki-san.
Tomoko Yamazaki did a good job organizing her notes from bits and pieces of conversations she had to form intersting narratives throughout the book. She also had extremely great luck in her quest to find people, even if she couldn’t answer all the questions she sought.
The first and last chapters were somewhat difficult to read as they were very informational on Japan’s history, as well as other popular research on the subject of karayuki-san.
January 29, 2011
For a fresh jolt of "keepin' things in perspective," nothing beats this stiff shot of incredible poverty in an anti-woman world.
February 21, 2017
ความจริงอีกบทของโลกที่ผ่านมา ชีวิตที่แสนเศร้าไม่ว่าจในสถานะไหน ผู้หญิง, ลูกสาว, น้องสาว หรือแม่
Read
December 28, 2023Read for my Modern Japan class
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews