Trojan Women – An Asian Story

One of the recent hits of this year’s Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival), this powerful piece examines the long tradition of violence against women in times of war and the phenomenon of Comfort Women. Trojan Women – An Asian Story blends the classic Euripides tale with the true stories of the exploitation of ‘comfort women’ in Korea during World War II when thousands of women were forced to work in ‘comfort stations’ for the benefit of Japanese soldiers. The end of conflict is never the end of trauma and suffering for women continues to this day in places like Rwanda and Bosnia. The comfort women issue is still a hot button issue as evidenced this month in Japan with the sudden resignation of Prime Minster, Shinzo Abe. One of the reasons for his diminishing popularity was his insistence that there is no documentation proving that the Japanese Army forced Korean and other Asian women into prostitution.