Dai-Ichi Salon(大一沙龍), Japan’s first comfort station
Dai-Ichi Salon, Japan’s first comfort station located in 125 Nong in Dongbaoxing. This is a military comfort station operated directly by military after remodeling restaurant in Hong Kouchi, Shanghai two months before ‘1.28 Incident’, which Japanese military conducted armed invasion to Shanghai, China on January 28, 1932.
The Japanese military built comfort stations exponentially not only in Shanghai but also places wherever their army moved, centering on Hong Kouchi, a Japanese concession at that time. But there is no trace at all due to the rapid urbanization.
Compared to this reality, the building of Dai-Ichi Salon, the first comfort station, was relatively well preserved. Since the building has been built more than 80 years ago, it was quite old and shabby. Light didn’t goes into the building well and wooden corridor and stairs was making a loud noise as if they were about to collapse. There is no one who can remember the time more than 80 years ago any more in this place which became so-called dosshouse where about 40 household live in one building. They just tell the story they has been heard. Only buildings that witnessed the situation at that time deliver the story of the past, not people.
Chrysanthemum pattern in the entrance that symbolizes Imperial House of Japan and Mount Fuji pattern engraved on the window frame of the room tell that Japanese military were stationed in the past.
And the narrow rooms that are attached very closely each other show blood red as if proving that it was the place where Japanese soldiers who enjoyed the victory of the Sino-Japanese War were drunk and ‘excreted’ their sexual desires. It is heartrending to think of the horror they felt in this place where was unfamiliar to them who was teenagers 80 years ago. The sore wound of our history that made Korean peninsula as logistical base after going to war with the ambition of invasion of Japan, which young man was compulsorily commandeered and that requisitioned young women to comfort station are completely left even in Shanghai, a foreign land.
