From Shanghai To Shanghai

From Shanghai to Shanghai (Shanhai yori Shanhai e) is a most unusual, grass-roots level diary of the Sino-Japanese war. The author, Dr. Aso (1910?1989), served as a medical officer in the Japanese Imperial Army in China. A gynecologist with varied interests and talents, Aso takes us with him on his travels and work in China from late 1937, when he first arrived in Shanghai, to 1941, when he was repatriated in the same city after tours of duty there, in Nanjing, and in other parts of central China. As he points out in his introduction: While most accounts of land war are about the battlefield, ?my war records are of military comfort women, cabaret dance girls, the military secret service, missionaries, and . . . the ?incident?.? The ?incident?, often referred to in books about comfort women, alludes to the fact that Aso became the first Japanese medical officer to perform health examinations on military comfort women. While treating the wounded in Shanghai, he was ordered to perform examinations on a group of comfort women who had arrived to serve the military, the first such measure taken by Japan to reduce venereal diseases among the troops. This duty continued and dovetailed with his other activities in China.Aso was literally born into a world of gynecology and prostitution. His father was a gynecologist with a practice in the entertainment quarters of Fukuoka. His home was also a school for midwives and a clinic for treating prostitutes from the neighboring teahouses and brothels. When Aso was a child, the prostitutes became his big sisters. It was only natural, Aso later wrote, that when he grew up he would become a gynecologist and attend to the health of women.After 1945 he was frequently accused of forcing women into prostitution during the war, which made him finally decide to tell his side of the story by compiling this book from his wartime diary.On the original Japanese edition??Researchers describe ?Shanhai yori Shanhai e? as first-rate historical testimony?? ? Japan Times