Cold comfort

A new film exploring the misery inflicted on Chinese women forced to work as wartime sex slaves by Japanese troops confronts the horrors of the past. Xu Fan reports.

Before penning the movie Great Cold, scriptwriter Lyu Pinpin collected all the books and documents she could find about the plight of "comfort women" - the female victims from China, South Korea and the Philippines who were forced into sexual slavery by invading Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.

While researching the brutality of Japanese soldiers against Chinese women during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), Lyu says she was so sickened and distressed by what she read that she found it difficult to fall asleep night after night. And as the mother of a 6-year-old boy, the writer was consumed with anger when she read about the rape of Chinese women and the killing of their infants by Japanese troops.