香港在西九的討論中, 每次談論博物舘, 都以一些大型 shopping mall式的古今漢為藍本, 總之要夠大夠威夠搶眼, 地標嘛, 這就是香港的文化! 沒有了本土, 沒有了歷史, 失去了自我 ! 又話者說要以西九構作一個非歷史, 非本土, 擁抱發展主義的自我.
東京最近新建立一個二次大戰慰安婦的博物舘, 把二次大戰期間, 日方於東南亞和中國的慰安婦制度, 以圖片, 文獻, 口述史和影像的方法紀錄下來, 透過這個方法要求群眾和政府面對歷史和戰爭對女性帶來的苦難.
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報導來自 women's enews
TOKYO (WOMENSENEWS)--The doors to the Women's Active Museum on War
and Peace in Tokyo open to an entryway decorated with fresh flowers and
a large panel of black-and-white photographs of elderly women.
This is a portrait gallery of women who were used as sex slaves by
the Japanese Imperial Army from 1932 to 1945 who are euphemistically
called "comfort women."
In a country still coming to terms with a legacy of atrocities
committed during World War II, the idea of an institution that would
comprehensively record Japan's history of sexual slavery is highly
controversial.
"There is regular hate mail posted on the Internet against us,
calling us liars and trouble-makers," said Rumiko Nishino, curator and
director of the Women's Fund for Peace and Human Rights, which seeks to
raise awareness about the perils facing women in wartime. Nishino said
people have threatened to burn the museum down.
But the planners of the museum, which opened Aug. 6 on the 60th
anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II, say they will not buckle
under the pressure.
"There are many reasons why the new museum means so much to us, as
well as to other women in Asia," Nishino said. "We are sending a
message to the world that we will not tolerate this violence anymore."
On Friday, the women's case was bolstered by Amnesty International,
which renewed its appeals for compensation and an official apology from
Japan in a report, "Still Waiting After 60 Years." The Oct. 29 report
documents the brutal treatments inflicted on an estimated 200,000
comfort women held captive before and during World War II.
Evidence Destroyed
Despite the lack of official documentation on the comfort-women
system--Japan destroyed most of the evidence after its surrender in
World War II--private surveys by researchers have estimated there were
160 "comfort stations" operated by the Imperial Army throughout Asia.
Women were taken from occupied countries, including the Korean
peninsula, the Philippines, Indonesia, China and Taiwan.
The women--often as young as 12 years old--were forced to have sex
with up to 50 soldiers a day, according to the Amnesty report, and were
beaten if they refused, sometimes to death.
"I was taken to China when I was 16 years old," Lee Ok-sun, a Korean
woman who was forced into sexual slavery in a comfort station, is
quoted as saying in the Amnesty report. "It was a painful experience.
There was not enough food, not enough sleep and I couldn't even kill
myself. I desperately wanted to escape."
Ok-sun, now 79 years old, was not able to return to Korea for 58 years after she was enslaved.
Japan Says Rape Was Not War Crime
The government has argued that rape was not a war crime before 1945
and that its colonization of Asian countries was a pre-emptive effort
to protect them from Western colonialism.
Japanese officials have claimed that comfort women were really
prostitutes who offered their services willingly and some conservative
politicians continue to repeat the assertion. The government did not
begin to recognize the system of sexual slavery until the mid-1990s.
Other women have filed lawsuits in Japan, but have been rejected by
judges who ruled that the government has already paid war reparations
to other countries and individual compensation is not included.
Amnesty also charges that the Asian Women's Fund--established in
1995 to compensate victims--does not meet international standards for
war reparations and is perceived by survivors as an attempt to buy
their silence. The fund paid about $20,000 in "atonement money" to 285
survivors before 2002.
Japan's first apology to the comfort women was delivered in South
Korea in 1992 by the prime minister, but has been criticized as
inadequate by survivors, according to the Amnesty report. Comfort women
still want an official apology from the Japanese Diet, which represents
the people of Japan and the emperor.
Hundreds of Testimonials
The rooms of the Tokyo museum contain hundreds of testimonial records from former comfort women.
In one, a woman describes a regimented schedule in which afternoons
were reserved for visits from mid-ranking officers and evenings for
high-ranking officers. Women were held inside barbed-wire fences and
were only sent out to wash the soldiers' uniforms or do hard labor.
When the war ended most comfort women were simply abandoned. Many
never attempted to return home because they did not know how or were
afraid to meet their families out of shame and humiliation.
Other exhibits in the museum document violations against women in
conflicts around the world, including Rwanda, East Timor and Iraq.
Nishino said that the examination of how women are affected by current
conflicts helps the museum nurture discussion and advocacy.
The museum designers have done much to soften disturbing subject
matter. The walls are painted a warm, rust color and the rooms are
softly lit. Documentaries, news stories and books about the comfort
women system are available to visitors.
For the women in Japan who have been working to help comfort women,
the museum has become a symbol of their persistent refusal to disappear
and be forgotten.
Nishino and others, however, recognize that they are still in an uphill fight.
Just a few kilometers from the museum stands a gleaming,
glass-and-steel concrete museum at Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan's
former military leaders are buried. Some of the men memorialized there
are the same men who established the comfort women system during the
war.
Suvendrini Kakuchi is a Sri Lankan journalist specializing in Japan-Asia relations.