15 - Sexuality and sexual violence

Summary

Prior to the inroads made by scholars of gender and sexuality, particularly since the 1990s, historians noted a wartime taboo on talk about sexuality, in general, and sexual violence in particular. Violence and sex have been relentlessly linked in wartime in manifold and sometimes contradictory ways. This chapter explores this linkage by focusing on two major sites of the Second World War, Japan's clash with the rest of Asia and Germany's aggression toward most of Europe. The historiography of sex and sexuality during the Second World War in Asia has focused on sexual violence rather than romance. The Second World War history of sexuality and sexual violence under Japanese imperialism in Asia in many ways echoed how sex and war intersected in Europe while substantially differing in others. Since the Second World War, one has gained a better understanding of how the militarization of sexuality in wartime and beyond continues to sustain hegemonic masculinity.