During most of the history of the country, the practice of
slavery in Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
involved only indigenous Japanese, as the export and import of slaves was significantly restricted by isolation of the group of islands from other areas of Asia. However, with the expansion of the
Empire of JapanThe Empire of Japan was a Japanese political entity that existed during the period from the...
in the first half of the Shōwa era, millions of people from the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity SphereThe Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a concept, created and promulgated during the Shōwa era by the government and military of the Empire of Japan, to represent the desire to create a self-sufficient "bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers".The Sphere was...
were abducted and used to improve the industrial production and the war effort.
The export of a slave from Japan is recorded in 3rd century
ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
historical record, but it is unclear what system was involved, and whether this was a common practice at that time.
During most of the history of the country, the practice of
slavery in Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
involved only indigenous Japanese, as the export and import of slaves was significantly restricted by isolation of the group of islands from other areas of Asia. However, with the expansion of the
Empire of JapanThe Empire of Japan was a Japanese political entity that existed during the period from the...
in the first half of the Shōwa era, millions of people from the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity SphereThe Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a concept, created and promulgated during the Shōwa era by the government and military of the Empire of Japan, to represent the desire to create a self-sufficient "bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers".The Sphere was...
were abducted and used to improve the industrial production and the war effort.
Indigenous slavery
The export of a slave from Japan is recorded in 3rd century
ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
historical record, but it is unclear what system was involved, and whether this was a common practice at that time. These slaves were called
Seikō (生口) (lit. "living mouth"). The export of slaves from Japan ceased, in part because they were more expensive than those transported overland into China.
In the 8th century, slaves were called
Nuhi (奴婢) and laws on slavery were issued. These slaves tended farms and worked around houses. Information on the slave population is sketchy. In one area of present-day
Ibaraki Prefectureis a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region on Honshū island. The capital is Mito.- History :Ibaraki Prefecture was previously known as Hitachi Province. In 1871, the name of the province became Ibaraki...
around 2,000 individuals, out of a population of 190,000, were slaves, but this is believed to have been a relatively low proportion. Numbers are believed to have been significantly higher in western Japan.
By the
Sengoku periodThe was a time of social upheaval, political intrigue, and nearly constant military conflict in Japan that lasted roughly from the middle of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th century....
(1467-1615) the attitude that slavery was anachronistic seems to have become widespread.
In late 16th century
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, slavery was officially banned; but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor. Somewhat later, the Edo period penal laws prescribed "non-free labor" for the immediate family of executed criminals in Article 17 of the
Gotōke reijō (Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711
Gotōke reijō was compiled from over 600 statutes promulgated between 1597 and 1696.
Foreign involvement
Oda Nobunaga was a major daimyo during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. He was the second son of Oda Nobuhide, a deputy shugo with land holdings in Owari province. Nobunaga lived a life of continuous military conquest, eventually conquering a third of Japanese daimyo before his death in 1582...
is said to have had an African slave or former-slave in his retinue.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Portuguese traders and their South Asian (and sometimes African) crew members often engaged in slavery when visiting Japan, where they bought or captured young Japanese women and girls, who were either used as
sexual slavesSexual slavery is the organized coercion of unwilling people into different sexual practices. Sexual slavery may include single-owner sexual slavery, ritual slavery sometimes associated with traditional religious practices, slavery for primarily non-sexual purposes where sex is common, or forced...
on their ships or taken to
MacauThe Macau Special Administrative Region , commonly known as Macau or Macao , is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, the other being Hong Kong...
and other
Portuguese coloniesThe Portuguese Empire was the first global empire in history, with territories in South America, Africa, India and South East Asia...
in
Southeast AsiaManila
Bangkok
Ho Chi Minh City
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore
Yangon
Bandung
Hanoi
Surabaya
Taichung
Kaohsiung
Medan|-|}...
,
the AmericasPortugal was the leading country in the European exploration of the world in the 15th century. The Treaty of Tordesillas split the New World into Spanish and Portuguese zones in 1494...
, and
IndiaPortuguese India was the aggregate of Portugal's colonial holdings in India.The government started in 1505, six years after the discovery of sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, with the nomination of the first Viceroy Francisco de Almeida, then settled at Kochi...
, where there was a community of Japanese slaves and traders in Goa by the early 17th century. Later European East India companies, including those of the
DutchThe Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. It was the first multinational corporation in the world and the first company to issue stock...
and
BritishEast India Company was a historical English company, founded in 1600, and chartered with the monopoly of trading with Southeast Asia, East Asia, and India...
, were also involved in
prostitution in JapanProstitution in Japan has existed through the country's history.While the Anti-Prostitution Law of 1956 states that: "No person may either do prostitution or become the customer of it", various loopholes, liberal interpretations of the law and loose enforcement have allowed the sex industry to...
.
World War II
In the first half of the Shōwa era, as the
Empire of JapanThe Empire of Japan was a Japanese political entity that existed during the period from the...
annexed Asian countries, from the late 19th century onwards, archaic institutions including slavery were abolished in those countries. However, during the
Second Sino-Japanese WarThe Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany and the Soviet Union...
and the
Pacific WarThe Pacific War was the part of World War II—and preceding conflicts—that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia. The war began as a conflict with the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China on July 7, 1937, but by December 1941, became part of the greater World War II,...
, the Japanese military used millions of civilians and prisoners of war as forced labor, on projects such as the Burma Railway.
According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and
Mark PeattieMark R. Peattie is an American academic and Japanologist. Peattie is a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history.-Career:...
, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the
Kōa-inThe was a cabinet level agency in the Empire of Japan, created on 1938-11-18 under the first Konoe administration to coordinate the government's China policy....
(East Asia Development Board) for forced labour. According to the Japanese military's own record, nearly 25% of 140,000 Allied POWs died while interned in Japanese prison camps where they were forced to work (U.S. POWs died at a rate of 37%). More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the
Burma-Siam RailwayThe Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway, the Thailand-Burma Railway and similar names, is a 415 km railway between Bangkok, Thailand and Rangoon, Burma , built by the Empire of Japan during World War II, to support its forces in the Burma campaign.Forced labour was used in its...
. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million
romushawere forced laborers during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in World War II. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between four and 10 million romusha were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas...
(Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%. (For further details, see
Japanese war crimesJapanese war crimes occurred during the period of Japanese imperialism. Some of the incidents have also been described as an Asian Holocaust and Japanese war atrocities...
.)
Approximately 5,400,000 Koreans were conscripted into forced labor from 1939 to 1945. About 670,000 of them were taken to Japan, where about 60,000 died between 1939 and 1945 due mostly to exhaustion or poor working conditions. Many of those taken to
Karafuto Prefecturewas the Japanese administrative division corresponding to Japanese territory on Sakhalin from 1905 –1945. Through the Treaty of Portsmouth, the portion of Sakhalin south of 50°N became a colony of Japan in 1905. In 1907 the prefecture of Karafuto was established, with its capital at Ōtomari and...
(modern-day
SakhalinSakhalin , also Saghalien, is a large elongated island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N. It is part of Russia and is its largest island, administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast. The indigenous peoples of the island are the Sakhalin Ainu, Oroks, and Nivkhs...
) were trapped there at the end of the war, stripped of their nationality and denied repatriation by Japan; they became known as the
Sakhalin KoreansSakhalin Koreans are Russian or residents of Korean descent living on Sakhalin Island who trace their roots to the immigrants from the Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces of Korea during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the latter half of the Japanese...
. The total deaths of Korean forced laborers in Korea and
ManchuriaManchuria is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria either falls entirely within China, or is divided between China and Russia...
for those years is estimated to be between 270,000 and 810,000.
As many as 200,000 "
comfort womenComfort women is a euphemism for women working in military brothels, especially those women who were forced into prostitution as a form of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II....
" mostly from
KoreaKorea is a civilization and formerly unified nation currently divided into two states. Located on the Korean Peninsula, it borders China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait....
and
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, and some other countries such as the Philippines, Taiwan, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Netherlands, and Australia were forced into
sexual slaverySexual slavery is the organized coercion of unwilling people into different sexual practices. Sexual slavery may include single-owner sexual slavery, ritual slavery sometimes associated with traditional religious practices, slavery for primarily non-sexual purposes where sex is common, or forced...
during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
to satisfy Japanese Imperial Army and Navy members.