Comfort Girl The Adams Theater in Adams By Stephanie Chou “Half happy, half ashamed, my heart beats.” In the era of World War II, more than 22,000 girls and young women were abducted by the Japanese army to serve as “Comfort Women” in hotels throughout the region, women whose job was to service Japanese soldiers sexually. Musician and composer Stephanie Chou has chosen to focus on one such girl, a 16-year-old bride abducted from her wedding and taken to a Manchurian hotel, still a virgin, to be raped and assaulted multiple times.
Lian, the girl around whom composer Chou as based her story, is innocent, fragile, and yet determined to end her misery at any cost. Her determination flies in the face of reality, and yet her urgent need for redemption and return provides a symbolic look at the emotional and physical needs of the women of that time. Chou has set this all to jazz-inflected music on an Asian scale.
Manchuria, in 1942, was a Japanese state on the Asian continent to the northeast of Mainland China (it was restored to China in 1945), so the actual nationality of Lian is in question here. But at least the final quest of the girl, her need to return home, is made more credible since she doesn’t have to cross the sea to return to Japan. The story is a personal one that doesn’t delve deeply into the plight of the women forced into unpaid profligacy by the government.
As public prostitutes, these women were terribly mistreated. With only a few survivors left, it i.