'We resolve our own sorrows': screening comfort women in Chinese documentary films

The paper defines the term "comfort women" and situates the subject within contested historiographies and limited archival records, noting divergent estimates of the number of victims. It highlights that scholarship has largely focused on Japan, South Korea, and the United States, with comparatively less attention to Chinese cases, especially filmic representations. In Chinese cinema, the female body has long served as a site for projecting national trauma and memory, and representations of Chinese comfort women track shifts in PRC politics and diplomacy from Maoist amnesia to post-1978 re-emergence. The article sets two research questions: (1) to critically examine the shifting public remembrance of comfort women in the PRC and the oscillating representations in Chinese documentary films; and (2) to argue that Guo Ke’s aesthetically appealing, politically non-confrontational, and ethically provocative approach helps constitute survivors’ private and gendered memories while encouraging spectators to reflect on narrative blanks and fissures concerning the interplay between female bodies and entrenched gender norms in the PRC. The study aims to contribute to broader discussions of gender, nationalism, war remembrance, and documentary filmmaking in contemporary China.

The review traces the PRC’s evolving remembrance of comfort women: post-1949 amnesia; limited early mentions (e.g., People's Daily 1962, 1992/1999 references); grassroots activism and research in the 1980s–2000s amid diplomatic sensitivities with Japan; and a watershed in 2014 with state-led memorialization aligned with deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations. It outlines how official narratives oscillate between “national victimization” and “national greatness,” with female chastity and racial purity complicating public discourse and marginalizing survivors. In cinema, Mao-era war films sidelined violated women within paradigms of nationalism and heroism; the 1973 sexploitation Bamboo House of Dolls set a template later echoed in 1990s docudramas, which often eroticized the figure and foregrounded transnational sisterhoods. 2000s films such as Zhenzhen (2003) and City of Life and Death (2009) brought trauma and controversial depictions of rape to the fore. Documentary treatments include Ban Zhongyi’s Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters (2007), using talking-head testimonies juxtaposed with unrepentant perpetrators, and state-produced works like the CCTV series Revealing the Atrocities of the Japanese Military’s “Comfort Women” System (2017), which deploy voice-of-God narration, archival materials, and an internationalized frame. Parallel scholarship on Chinese independent documentaries emphasizes “on-the-spot realism,” minimal narration, and the everyday as an alternative archive for gendered, private memories.

The study employs qualitative narrative and textual analysis informed by theories of documentary aesthetics and ethics (e.g., Grierson; Nichols; Renov). It analyzes the interplay between female bodies, nationalism, and patriarchy across media representations, focusing closely on Guo Ke’s Thirty Two (2014) and Twenty Two (2017). The analysis considers formal features (long takes, scenery shots, frame-within-a-frame, zero commentary, minimalist narrative), interview practices (unscripted spontaneity, stopping when participants are uncomfortable, embedding with subjects), and exhibition/distribution contexts (social media mobilization, crowdfunding, box office performance). It contrasts Guo’s approach with official WWII zhuantipian conventions (linear, archival-driven, male voice-of-God) and with earlier sexploitation/fictional films. Quantitative descriptive details (e.g., 14.3% scenery shots in Twenty Two) complement the qualitative reading of ethics, affect, and spectatorship.

• Public remembrance in China has shifted from decades of silence to state-led memorialization post-2014, navigating tensions between discourses of national victimization and national greatness, and constrained by entrenched gender norms of chastity and racial purity.
• On screen, violated female bodies both bolster nationalist narratives and open spaces for alternative, gendered storytelling that challenges patriarchy.
• Guo Ke’s documentaries replace politicized/sexualized bodies with aged survivors, shifting from evidentiary, univocal historical narratives to intimate, fragmented everyday memories. His aesthetics—long takes, scenery shots, lack of commentary/historical footage, frame-within-a-frame—foreground ethical spectatorship and avoid re-traumatization by cutting away when discomfort arises.
• Ethical stance: Guo’s embedded relationships and practice of ceasing filming upon distress seek to prevent exploitation, privileging survivors’ comfort over exhaustive testimony. This yields narrative gaps that invite audience reflection.
• Reception and impact: Twenty Two became a box office milestone despite initial marginalization (initial <1.5% screen shares, later rising to ~9%), grossing ~170 million yuan with ~5.6 million admissions and an 8.9/10 Douban rating. Crowdfunding via social media garnered over 1 million yuan from 32,099 donors; their names appear in end credits. Guo donated 10 million yuan to the Chinese Comfort Women Research Center. These dynamics demonstrate how documentaries can mobilize public engagement and reshape memory politics.
• Formal observation: In Twenty Two, scenery shots comprise ~14.3% of runtime, conveying solitude, aging, and mortality across varied Chinese landscapes and reinforcing survivors’ marginalization and impending erasure.
• Contrast with state media: The CCTV series Revealing the Atrocities adopts an authoritative, internationalized, evidence-driven frame aligned with PRC global narratives, distinct from Guo’s minimalism and ethical provocations.

The findings address the research questions by showing how cinematic representations of comfort women both inhabit and destabilize PRC nationalist paradigms. The analysis demonstrates that the female body in Chinese films functions as a communicative site where nationalist symbolism can eclipse women’s specific experiences, yet Guo Ke’s documentaries counter this by centering survivors’ everyday lives and embracing gaps, silences, and ethical restraint. This approach reframes remembrance from national humiliation/victory toward intimate, gendered memory, prompting ethical spectatorship and reflection on stigma and patriarchal norms. The public trajectory of Twenty Two—netizen mobilization, crowdfunding, and theatrical success—underscores the capacity of independent-leaning documentary aesthetics and ethical practices to influence broader cultural memory and discourse beyond state-produced zhuantipian. Simultaneously, continued stigmatization, strategic ambiguities (e.g., the sex-spy narrative of Madam Lin), and censorship boundaries reveal the limits and compromises entailed in mainstream circulation. The comparison with the CCTV series highlights divergent modes—minimalist, ethically reflexive versus authoritative, globally framed—coexisting in China’s evolving memory regime.

The remembrance of Chinese comfort women evolved from prolonged oblivion to renewed prominence after 2014, intertwined with changing politics, diplomacy, and media strategies. Gender normativity in official discourse situates women as embodiments of the nation, reinforcing masculinist protectionism and complicating efforts to center survivors’ experiences. Documentary filmmaking has provided an alternative venue to voice marginalized women and mobilize public attention. Guo Ke’s Thirty Two and Twenty Two, characterized by zero commentary, long takes, scenic interludes, and fragmented narratives, invite viewers to occupy the ethical space of the unsaid and the everyday, differentiating them from mainstream WWII zhuantipian. While Twenty Two’s box-office surge proved singular, state television’s Revealing the Atrocities advances an authoritative, internationalized account. Overall, the article shows how gendered bodies of comfort women both stabilize and unsettle nationalist WWII memory in Mainland China and how documentary form and ethics mediate that tension. Future inquiries may further explore how evolving digital mobilizations, censorship constraints, and transnational feminist frameworks shape ongoing representations and public memory.