“Military Comfort Stations” and “Military Comfort Women” as Recorded in Official Imperial Army Daily Records

Abstract This research reconsiders the true nature of Japanese military comfort stations and comfort women. To summarize the discussion in this paper, comfort stations were military facilities, and comfort women were the third unit of the Japanese military, after soldiers and direct civilian employees of the Army and Navy. The Japanese military recognized the comfort stations as an essential element of military operations, and institutionalized and formalized their comfort stations by incorporating them into innumerable detailed regulations.