'Sisters' details Japan's sex slave trade

'Sisters' details Japan's sex slave trade

TOKYO, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- The upcoming Chinese film "Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters" is set to shed light on the Japanese sex slave trade that only ceased at the end of World War II.

The film from director Ban Zhongyi will launch in February and follow the troubles China endured in the 1930s and 1940s during a Japanese occupation, with countless women forced into sexual slavery by their oppressors, the Japan Times said.

Ban said he had no regrets when looking back on the decade he spent researching the film or the untimely death of the film's title character, who had suffered the atrocities firsthand.

He claimed that in creating the film recounting how Imperial Japanese Army soldiers kidnapped Chinese women for their own sexual bidding, he was revisiting an ignored history that needed to be told.

"I wanted to spread the story of Gai Shanxi, who had to live through pain and ultimately take her own life," he told the paper. "Understanding what really happened in the past is the first step in rebuilding friendship between the two countries."