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Comforting Woman: Focusing on Consolation Letters from the 1930s and 1940s

  • 아시아여성연구
  • 2024, 63(2), pp.151-178
  • DOI : 10.14431/jaw.2024.8.63.2.151
  • Publisher : Research Institute of Asian Women
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Gender Studies
  • Received : June 11, 2024
  • Accepted : July 25, 2024
  • Published : August 30, 2024

LEE JIN-A 1

1동아대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examines the practice of writing consolation letters from the 1930s and 1940s by women as a source of comfort. These letters were not written at an independent or individual level but at a collective and organizational level. The practice involved a triangular structure consisting of the military, newspapers, and girls’ schools. The volume of consolation letters typically ranged from hundreds to tens of thousands. The primary senders were female school students who comforted Imperial Army soldiers, white-coated soldiers, and frontline soldiers within the discursive space of girls’ schools. These letters conveyed prayers, good luck, and victory in the war to the soldiers. Despite never having met, the senders and recipients were connected at a social level as members of “Oriental, Donga, Imperial Kingdom, and Heunga” through consolation discourse. Female students were asked to demonstrate various aspects of femininity by creating comfort bags or consolation bags that included consolation letters. These creations reflected thrift, delicacy, cooperation, frugality, diligence, gratitude, humility, and cuteness. They were speaking about the subject position of women who were comforting each other under the name of ‘we’. During the wartime period, girls’ schools served exclusively as spaces where women engaged in the consolation of men.

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