Painter captures pain of comfort women

NANJING - French oil painter Christian Poirot is visiting Nanjing, Jiangsu province, the city whose tragic wartime history inspired him to create a new series of works.

"Honestly, in the past, I knew nothing about the Nanjing Massacre or the history of forced comfort women during the Japanese invasion of China in World War II," the 56-year-old artist said. So-called comfort women were sex slaves for the Japanese military.

As he traveled through Nanjing several years ago, a friend told him that 300,000 Chinese people had been murdered after the city fell into Japanese hands. He was shocked, and decided to express his feelings in a painting.