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Movie director Guo Ke was scrolling through Weibo， the popular Chinese microblogging site， five years ago when something caught his eye. It was a blog about a 92-year-old woman， Wei Shaolan， who was living in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China. Wei was a survivor of the brutal sex slavery that thousands of women in East Asia were forced into by the invading Japanese during World War II， and what went to Guo’s heart especially was the tragedy that continued beyond Wei’s generation.
In 1944， the Japanese arrived in Guidong， Wei’s village， slaughtering， looting and raping. Wei， then a young nursing mother， tried to fl ee with her baby daughter but was caught and dragged to a “comfort station，” Japan’s euphemism for the hundreds of prisons set up in East Asia to provide sex slaves for the troops. There， she was brutalized for three months， and her daughter died. When she managed to escape and rejoin her family， she found herself pregnant.
She gave birth to a son， Luo Shanxue， and his suffering has been as intense as his mother’s. Shunned and stigmatized by the village because of his Japanese blood， Luo lived the life of a pariah， with his mother as his only companion.
The report made Guo search out the village and begin to document the lives of the mother and son. Though reconciled to his life， Luo couldn’t help voice his occasional anguish. “My life is a tragedy because of the Japanese invaders，” he told Guo. “The locals despise me， and when I was young， six women refused to marry me. I am condemned to remain alone because of my Japanese blood.”
The interviews made Guo decide to shoot a documentary on the mother and son. The 43-minute film was called Thirty Two， a reference to the number of Japanese sex slavery survivors alive in China at that time. As he researched the dwindling community in China， he felt a sense of urgency. The average age of the women was around 90， and each year， their number was decreasing. As they were a part of history， it was necessary to record their lives and save them from oblivion.
So in 2014， Guo decided to create a collage of the lives of all the remaining survivors in China， and another documentary， Twenty Two， paid tribute to the community， which had been reduced to 22 at that time.
Twenty Two was released in China on August 14， which is now observed as the International Memorial Day for the Victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery. However， by that time the number of recorded survivors had gone down to just eight. To make the documentary， the 30-member team traveled to five provinces despite an acute funding shortage. The original financier withdrew， forcing the team to raise money through crowdfunding twice. Also， actress Zhang Xinyi stepped in as a Good Samaritan， contributing 1 million yuan（$147，400）. Finally， the documentary was shot on a tight budget of 3 million yuan（$453，800）.
As no one expected it to do well fi nancially due to the sensitive topic， the premiere was held in just 1.5 percent of China’s 45，000 cinema screens. At that time， Guo said he would be very satisfi ed if it brought in around 6 million yuan （$907，700）.
However， the low-budget documentary recorded a box-offi ce profi t of 150 million yuan（$22.69 million） within 10 days， becoming the fi rst Chinese documentary to do so.
Guo has promised to donate all the revenue from this documentary to the Research Center for Chinese Comfort Women at Shanghai Normal University and to the survivors and their offspring if they are living in abject poverty.
Yoneda Nishida is a young Japanese volunteer who has been trying to atone for the war crimes by visiting the survivors in Hainan and taking care of their daily needs. When victim Huang Youliang recounted her ordeal in a Tokyo court in 2008， Nishida sat in the public gallery listening. She said she was shocked by the details.
According to her， in its history education， Japan deliberately amplifi es its status as a victim by stressing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As for what Japan did to other countries during World War II， such as China， students know very little.
“There are two pages on ‘comfort women’ and the Nanjing Massacre in junior middle school history textbooks， but teachers always skip those two，” she said in the documentary.
In August 1993， Yohei Kono， then Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary， admitted on behalf of the Japanese Government that the government and army had established“comfort stations” and had forced women to become “comfort women.” Though this was an overdue apology， the Shinzo Abe administration of Japan later claimed that there was no solid evidence to prove that the Japanese army or government had forced the women to be sex slaves.
Zhang Shuangbing， a retired teacher in Shanxi， began to record the stories of more than 100 survivors in the 1980s. For 30 years， he helped these women with their lawsuits against the Japanese Government in the hope of winning an apology and compensation for them. However， today he regrets the fact that not only did the victims never get any justice， but bringing up their past lives before the public led to fresh trauma and humiliation for them. “If I could choose again， I would rather not have helped the survivors with the lawsuits，” he said in the documentary. “At least then their bitter memories would not have been raked up again， and their past， of which they are ashamed， would not have been exposed to the public， which led to further discrimination against them.”
Documentaries like Twenty Two supplement offi cial initiatives to keep the memory of the women alive. At a press briefing in 2014， Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said that UNESCO had accepted China’s application to register records of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and Japan’s wartime sex slaves on the Memory of the World Register， a record created in 1997 to preserve the world’s documentary heritage.
Having survived one of the worst periods in history， the remaining survivors have a powerful message to deliver. “I hope China and Japan can make peace with each other，” Chen Lintao， a survivor who passed away in 2014， said in the documentary. “No more wars. Once a war begins， many more people will die.”
Mei Ru’ao was a Chinese judge and author who attended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East， convened from 1946 to 1948， to try Japanese political and military leaders charged with war crimes. In his book on the Nanjing Massacre. Mei warned about the consequences of forgetting the past. “I don’t want revenge，” he wrote. “I have no intention to settle the blood debt incurred by the Japanese military with the Japanese people. However， I believe that forgetting the sufferings of the past may cause a calamity in the future.”
In 1944， the Japanese arrived in Guidong， Wei’s village， slaughtering， looting and raping. Wei， then a young nursing mother， tried to fl ee with her baby daughter but was caught and dragged to a “comfort station，” Japan’s euphemism for the hundreds of prisons set up in East Asia to provide sex slaves for the troops. There， she was brutalized for three months， and her daughter died. When she managed to escape and rejoin her family， she found herself pregnant.
She gave birth to a son， Luo Shanxue， and his suffering has been as intense as his mother’s. Shunned and stigmatized by the village because of his Japanese blood， Luo lived the life of a pariah， with his mother as his only companion.
The report made Guo search out the village and begin to document the lives of the mother and son. Though reconciled to his life， Luo couldn’t help voice his occasional anguish. “My life is a tragedy because of the Japanese invaders，” he told Guo. “The locals despise me， and when I was young， six women refused to marry me. I am condemned to remain alone because of my Japanese blood.”
The interviews made Guo decide to shoot a documentary on the mother and son. The 43-minute film was called Thirty Two， a reference to the number of Japanese sex slavery survivors alive in China at that time. As he researched the dwindling community in China， he felt a sense of urgency. The average age of the women was around 90， and each year， their number was decreasing. As they were a part of history， it was necessary to record their lives and save them from oblivion.
So in 2014， Guo decided to create a collage of the lives of all the remaining survivors in China， and another documentary， Twenty Two， paid tribute to the community， which had been reduced to 22 at that time.
Twenty Two was released in China on August 14， which is now observed as the International Memorial Day for the Victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery. However， by that time the number of recorded survivors had gone down to just eight. To make the documentary， the 30-member team traveled to five provinces despite an acute funding shortage. The original financier withdrew， forcing the team to raise money through crowdfunding twice. Also， actress Zhang Xinyi stepped in as a Good Samaritan， contributing 1 million yuan（$147，400）. Finally， the documentary was shot on a tight budget of 3 million yuan（$453，800）.
As no one expected it to do well fi nancially due to the sensitive topic， the premiere was held in just 1.5 percent of China’s 45，000 cinema screens. At that time， Guo said he would be very satisfi ed if it brought in around 6 million yuan （$907，700）.
However， the low-budget documentary recorded a box-offi ce profi t of 150 million yuan（$22.69 million） within 10 days， becoming the fi rst Chinese documentary to do so.
Guo has promised to donate all the revenue from this documentary to the Research Center for Chinese Comfort Women at Shanghai Normal University and to the survivors and their offspring if they are living in abject poverty.
Yoneda Nishida is a young Japanese volunteer who has been trying to atone for the war crimes by visiting the survivors in Hainan and taking care of their daily needs. When victim Huang Youliang recounted her ordeal in a Tokyo court in 2008， Nishida sat in the public gallery listening. She said she was shocked by the details.
According to her， in its history education， Japan deliberately amplifi es its status as a victim by stressing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As for what Japan did to other countries during World War II， such as China， students know very little.
“There are two pages on ‘comfort women’ and the Nanjing Massacre in junior middle school history textbooks， but teachers always skip those two，” she said in the documentary.
In August 1993， Yohei Kono， then Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary， admitted on behalf of the Japanese Government that the government and army had established“comfort stations” and had forced women to become “comfort women.” Though this was an overdue apology， the Shinzo Abe administration of Japan later claimed that there was no solid evidence to prove that the Japanese army or government had forced the women to be sex slaves.
Zhang Shuangbing， a retired teacher in Shanxi， began to record the stories of more than 100 survivors in the 1980s. For 30 years， he helped these women with their lawsuits against the Japanese Government in the hope of winning an apology and compensation for them. However， today he regrets the fact that not only did the victims never get any justice， but bringing up their past lives before the public led to fresh trauma and humiliation for them. “If I could choose again， I would rather not have helped the survivors with the lawsuits，” he said in the documentary. “At least then their bitter memories would not have been raked up again， and their past， of which they are ashamed， would not have been exposed to the public， which led to further discrimination against them.”
Documentaries like Twenty Two supplement offi cial initiatives to keep the memory of the women alive. At a press briefing in 2014， Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said that UNESCO had accepted China’s application to register records of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and Japan’s wartime sex slaves on the Memory of the World Register， a record created in 1997 to preserve the world’s documentary heritage.
Having survived one of the worst periods in history， the remaining survivors have a powerful message to deliver. “I hope China and Japan can make peace with each other，” Chen Lintao， a survivor who passed away in 2014， said in the documentary. “No more wars. Once a war begins， many more people will die.”
Mei Ru’ao was a Chinese judge and author who attended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East， convened from 1946 to 1948， to try Japanese political and military leaders charged with war crimes. In his book on the Nanjing Massacre. Mei warned about the consequences of forgetting the past. “I don’t want revenge，” he wrote. “I have no intention to settle the blood debt incurred by the Japanese military with the Japanese people. However， I believe that forgetting the sufferings of the past may cause a calamity in the future.”