Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan: Appraisals after Sixty Years [1 ed.] 1443871974, 9781443871976

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Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan

Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan: Appraisals after Sixty Years Edited by

Rosa Caroli and Duccio Basosi

Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan: Appraisals after Sixty Years Edited by Rosa Caroli and Duccio Basosi This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Rosa Caroli, Duccio Basosi and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7197-4 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7197-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword ................................................................................................... vii Glenn Hook Introduction ................................................................................................ ix The editors Editors’ Note .......................................................................................... xxiv Part I: Politics, Society and Culture Japan and the US: An Odd Couple .............................................................. 2 Ronald Dore, London School of Economics Reconciling Asianism with Bilateralism: Japan and the East Asia Summit ...................................................................................................... 18 Noemi Lanna, University of Naples “L’Orientale” The Emperor and Kissing: Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation Censorship .............................................................................. 33 Kyoko Hirano, Independent Scholar Towards the Emergence of Mass Fashion in Post-war Japan: Assessing the Nature and the Extent of the American Influence ............... 44 Federica Carlotto, Regent’s University London In the Realm of Signs: Hybridism in Japanese Everyday Life .................. 57 Roberta Novielli, Ca’ Foscari University The American Occupation and Municipal Identity: Two Towns in Western Tokyo......................................................................................................... 66 Michael Molasky, Waseda University

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Part II: Memories, Identities and Perceptions Occupier, Occupied: The Double Reality of Japanese Identity after World War II ..................................................................................... 82 Marcello Flores, University of Siena Quoting the Past: Shinoda’s MacArthur’s Children .................................. 95 Eugenio De Angelis, Ca’ Foscari University The Other Occupation of Japan: The Case of Okinawa .......................... 109 Rosa Caroli, Ca’ Foscari University Love Among the Ruins: American Fictions of Occupied Japan in the 1950s ............................................................................................. 130 Alide Cagidemetrio, Ca’ Foscari University Sayonora, Teahouse of the August Moon, and the Cold War Re-“Opening” of Japan ............................................................................ 141 Alan Nadel, University of Kentucky Neoconservative Fantasies and the Japanese Analogy ............................ 155 Federico Romero, European University Institute Part III: Occupation, Occupations The U.S. Occupation of Japan: A Transnational Perspective .................. 166 Akira Iriye, Harvard University Redeemer Nation/Remedy Nation: American Studies and Military Occupation............................................................................................... 178 George Blaustein, Amsterdam University Occupation, Americanization, Westernization: Lessons from the German Case? ............................................................. 190 Giovanni Bernardini, Italian German Historical Institute- FBK Contributors ............................................................................................. 202 Index of Names........................................................................................ 205

FOREWORD GLENN HOOK

The year 2012 offered the contributors to this edited volume the opportunity to reflect on the impact of the occupation of Japan six decades after the San Francisco treaty of peace came into effect on 28 April 1952. The volume adds significantly to our appreciation of the complex nature of the U.S. legacy, with chapters by distinguished as well as emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities shedding a penetrating light on the way not only Japan, but also the United States, has been influenced by the historical conjoining of these two Pacific powers. The book is a cornucopia of fresh analyses, insights and understandings on a range of topics, including transnational and comparative views on the occupation, the influence of Japan on the United States as well as the reverse, international perspectives on this “odd couple”, and the memory of the occupation in both countries. It can be read profitably by all those with an interest in Japan. Indeed, the publication of Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan is perfectly timed. For the decision by Prime Minister Abe Shinzǀ’s government to commemorate 28 April as Sovereignty Restoration Day for the first time in 2013 has again brought into focus the way the occupation continues to provoke debate as well as to accentuate the deep divisions and discontent in society over the past and present role of the United States. Despite the formal restoration of sovereignty over six decades ago, neither the whole of Japan as we know it today, nor, as far as critics are concerned, full independence, was achieved as a result of the peace treaty. The sovereign borders of the new Japan were inscribed with the exclusion of Okinawa, Amami and the Ogasawara islands. While Amami reverted to Japan in 1953, the Ogasawara islands remained under the control of the U.S. navy until 1968 and Okinawa was governed by the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands until 1972. For critics, meanwhile, the signing of the U.S.-Japan security treaty at the same time as the peace treaty exemplifies how sovereignty was thereby constrained, not only truncated. Their bristling phrases referring to Japan as a “semi-colony” or “dependent state” capture the quintessence of the

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unrequited sovereignty expected following the occupation’s end. This is nowhere truer than in Okinawa, the site for the location of the vast majority of military personnel and outposts of U.S. power under the treaty. For many in Okinawa, 28 April is a day of national humiliation, not commemoration. Severed from the sovereignty enjoyed on the main islands for a further twenty years, America’s Japan is seen as being built on the sacrifice of Okinawa. So not only has the governor snubbed the invitation to attend the 2013 Sovereignty Restoration Day ceremony, sending his deputy instead, but the prefectural assembly, cities such as Naha and Itoman, and local residents have protested against the ceremony as well. In this way, Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan will help you to comprehend the complex relationship between the occupation then and now.

INTRODUCTION DUCCIO BASOSI AND ROSA CAROLI

The Japanese people since the war have undergone the greatest reformation recorded in modern history. With a commendable will, eagerness to learn, and marked capacity to understand, they have from the ashes left in war's wake erected in Japan an edifice dedicated to the supremacy of individual liberty and personal dignity and in the ensuing process there has been created a truly representative government committed to the advance of political morality, freedom of economic enterprise, and social justice. —Douglas MacArthur, 1951 In the summer of 1945, in our country, now war-torn, only the hills and rivers endured. Food was scarce, people starving. The seven subsequent years were the first and indeed the most profound disconnect and ordeal that Japan had ever experienced in its long history. —Abe Shinzǀ, 2013

It is hardly surprising that a U.S. Army general, speaking in 1951 before a joint session of Congress, and a Japanese prime minister, speaking in 2013 before the emperor, emphasized different aspects of the same historical events. Such differences are even less surprising when one considers that, at the time of their respective speeches, the U.S general had just been fired from his position as both commander of U.S. forces in the Korean War and supreme commander of the Allied occupation forces in Japan. The Japanese prime minister, in contrast, was commemorating the sixty-first anniversary of the end of the same occupation – the first prime minister ever to do so ̽ as “Japan's Restoration of Sovereignty and Return to the International Community”. What MacArthur represented as a triumphal march that had remade Japan into a wholly new country, Abe recollected as a problematic seven-year period that merely preceded Japan's return onto the international scene. Nevertheless, the two quotations above render vividly the range of interpretations which have been proposed, over time and across national borders, of the occupation of Japan. The occupation started with Japan's acceptance of surrender, which was broadcast by Emperor Hirohito to his “good and loyal subjects” on 15

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August 1945, and lasted until 28 April 1952. Legally speaking, the occupation was under the auspices of the Allied Powers, but in fact it was the United States that organized, staffed and directed all aspects of the post-war military regime in Japan. 15 August 1945, the day when Japan was “defeated, liberated, and occupied all at once”,1 soon became, both in Japan and in the U.S., a kind of metonymy, representing both the end of the war and the beginning of the post-war period; the end of Japan’s position as an occupier and the beginning of its role as an occupied country; the failure of Japan's effort to “emancipate” Asian countries from Western colonialism and the beginning of the American effort to “relieve” the Japanese people of wartime totalitarianism; the death of an old, “feudal” country and the birth of a new, “democratic” Japan. On the other end, 28 April 1952 was not only the day marking the end of the occupation in mainland Japan, but also the day when the Security Treaty between Japan and the United States went into effect, granting the latter the right to maintain military “forces in and about Japan [in order] to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East”.2 Such ambivalent meanings of these two symbolic dates help explain why the U.S. occupation of Japan has aroused so much interest over time – and why it has been defined as “a rich, complicated, and contradictory human story” and “a difficult period for many Japanese to come to grips with”.3 The contents and approaches of academic research on the occupation have often been acutely influenced by the coeval political context. MacArthur's words above might sound emphatic but, as noted by Laura Hein, early scholarship, both in the U.S. and Japan, did tend to interpret the changes undergone by Japanese society as both impressive and positive.4 In general, early accounts of the occupation emphasized the momentous discontinuity between a discredited imperialistic regime and a democratic and peaceful one. Japanese rearmament itself, including the presence of U.S. bases in post-occupation Japan and the American retention of Okinawa, was generally regarded as a response to the Korean War as well as to a perceived Soviet threat to Asia, while Japan's rapid economic growth and the political stability under the so-called “1955 system” helped to confirm this positive view of the U.S. role in creating the “new” Japan. In doing so, academic research directly or indirectly supported both the image of Japan's occupation as archetypical of enlightened “free world” policies and the belief in the exportability of the Western model of democracy beyond the frontier of the “West”. Since the very beginning, occupation policymakers viewed 15 August as a fissure separating occupied Japan from its previous status. On 2 September 1945, the day of Japan's formal acceptance of unconditional

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surrender, MacArthur declared his commitment “to see […] the Japanese people […] liberated from [the] condition of slavery”, and remarked that “freedom is on the offensive, democracy is on the march”.5 Implicitly, the assumption that 15 August was the beginning of a new era supported the postulation that the U.S. occupation was the sole agent of Japan’s democratization. Most Japanese themselves were inclined to accept the victors’ view of this date as a turning point in their country's history, although for different reasons. The first and most obvious was their wish to distance themselves from the bloody, devastating, and lost war, which made Japan what could “only be considered a vast concentration camp”.6 They tried to dissolve the humiliation of defeat into the enthusiasm for “liberation” – liberation from the past – and to dilute their experience of totalitarian rule with the foundational myth of a “new Japan”. Those who had been critical of the past totalitarian regime saw this discontinuity primarily as a means to attain their freedom of thought, speech, and action in order to contribute to building the “new” Japan. Those who instead were found to have been involved with the past regime were disgraced, purged or condemned in the initial phase of the occupation, which corroborated the alleged discontinuity between wartime and occupied Japan. Yet, the continuity between the periods before and after 15 August was far more real than the early commentators were willing to admit. The “orthodox” view described above has persisted over time, but in the 1970s new scholarship began to emphasize both the continuities between pre-war and post-war Japan, and the inconsistencies of U.S. occupation policy. As far as the continuities are concerned, they were sanctioned “by the relatively simple formula of preserving the existing Japanese Government, and utilizing its normal agencies”.7 As to the inconsistencies of U.S. policy, the mission of de-militarizing and democratizing Japan took place within the conservative framework of the old regime and produced what John Dower called an “oxymoronic democracy”. Indeed, SCAP (the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers, in practice MacArthur) governed in an authoritarian way through the existing Japanese bureaucracy, endowed the latter with huge power, and made the Shǀwa emperor – in whose name Japan's wars had been fought – the symbol of democracy and pacifism.8 This inconsistency became even more apparent in the wake of the so-called “reverse course” focusing on the economic rehabilitation of Japan rather than on the original objectives. In early 1947, the change in U.S. policy was announced by an order issued by MacArthur to cancel a general strike organized by the unions, which opened the way for the following backtracking on labor and antitrust policy. The effects of

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such change materialized in full between the end of 1949 and the end of 1950. On the one hand there took place a purge that “swept more than 20,000 union members, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, filmmakers and the like out of their job”.9 On the other, a parallel “depurge” brought those formerly linked to the wartime regime back to public life, and released and rehabilitated those who had been condemned as war criminals.10 In regard to the purge that should have eradicated all remains of the wartime regime, MacArthur himself later confessed that he “very much doubted the wisdom of this measure, as it tended to lose the services of many able governmental individuals who would be difficult to replace in the organization of a new Japan”.11 Besides, the reverse course also helped to strengthen the hegemony of conservative politicians, government bureaucrats and large industrialists, who in post-occupied Japan claimed to be both the guarantors of the “economic miracle” and the custodians of the new pacifist and democratic country. The climax was reached upon the outbreak of the Korean War, with the creation of a National Police Reserve (converted into the Self Defense Force in 1954), and the retention of Okinawa under U.S. military rule under article 3 of the Peace Treaty signed in San Francisco in 1951, which made even Japan's post-war pacifism seem oxymoronic. Contesting the “triumphal narrative of the occupation” as well as a “literature that assumes the whole story can be learned from Washington’s side”, research has progressively put new themes into focus.12 These include the concerns of occupation policymakers for the role of East and Southeast Asia in the post-war international economic system, the weight of such concerns in the making of the reverse course, the influence of the American and Japanese “middle-echelon leadership” and special interest groups, the Japanese contribution to the developments in occupied and post-occupied Japan, as well as its role in terms of balance-of-power thinking.13 At the same time, the changing perception of the U.S. role made it possible to trace the continuities between mutual perceptions across the Pacific before and after the transformation of the two counties from brutish enemies to close allies.14 In recent years, new interpretations have come from the use of innovative paradigms, such as post-colonialism and imperial history, providing us with a multifaceted picture.15 Nevertheless, six decades after the end of the occupation of mainland Japan (for Okinawa remained under occupation until 1972), several reasons invite us to approach the less investigated theme of the occupation's legacies. This was in fact the subject of a two-day conference held at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice in the spring of 2012, featuring scholars in the fields of Japanese studies, American studies,

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international relations, and twentieth century history. In particular, recent debates on issues such as “globalization”, the “rise of China”, and the modes of “Western” intervention in “other” societies (particularly after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq) provided the breeding ground for a thorough re-examination of several aspects of such legacies, including Japan’s role as an actor during and after the occupation; the evolutions of mutual perceptions across the Pacific; and the reciprocal influence in the creation of innovative cultural genres. The papers presented on that occasion, and the lively discussions that ensued, formed the basis of the articles collected in the three parts of this volume. Part I of the volume is dedicated to the occupation's legacy in Japan's politics, society and culture. In particular, the heavy legacy of the occupation in framing the politics of Japan across sixty years is the subject of Ronald Dore's article, which provocatively claims that the occupation of Japan has in fact not yet come to an end. Based on published sources as well as on personal recollections (he firstly landed in Japan in early 1950 with a fresh B.A. in Modern Japanese at the University of London), Dore highlights the paradoxes for which, on the one hand, U.S. authorities saw “SCAP dictatorship” as “the necessary prelude to the introduction of Japanese democracy”, and on the other, by the 1950s, the strongest supporters of the original U.S.-led reforms, were the Socialists and the Communists. Indeed, by the time Dore first got to Japan, the effects of the “reverse course” were apparent, and concerns about Japan’s position in the Cold War arena widespread among the Japanese: autonomy in foreign policy was an illusion and submission to the United States, Dore claims, the rule ever since. Yet, although the relationship was always characterized by frictions, rapid economic success in the 1960s and 1970s mitigated the popular frustration toward Japan’s subordination. Dore leaves it as an open question whether such a well-established pattern would change should China switch its strategy “from threatening Japan to wooing Japan”. Indeed, the post-Cold War scenario in East Asia is the framework in which Noemi Lanna develops her analysis of recent Japanese foreign policy. Also according to Lanna Japan's main tenet during the second half of the twentieth century has been “bilateralism”, in other words the privileged relationship with the United States inherited from the occupation. The escalation of the Cold War in Asia was the background of such a settlement, which marked the start of the so-called “San Francisco system”. Even when it was no longer an occupying force, the U.S. military continued to be a formidable presence in Japan. Lanna views the early Japanese attempts to conciliate bilateralism with a

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recovery of some elements of “Asianism” as rooted in the policy of separating politics from economics (seikei bunri) and in the “Fukuda doctrine” of cooperation with Southeast Asian countries announced in 1977 by the then Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo. However, the end of the Cold War and the “rise of China” have recently opened the way for a much greater emphasis on Asia, incorporated creatively into the “bilateral” framework by successive Japanese governments, as shown by the case study of Japan's participation in the East Asia summits. It remains to be seen whether the balancing out of “more Asia and more U.S.” can be feasible in practice, and not only in theory. Just as the studies on the occupation proper have progressively moved away from pure diplomatic history to embrace new fields of research, also our understanding of the legacies of the occupation would remain limited without enlarging our scope from politics to society and culture. As noted by John Dower, every field in Japan, from vaudeville to feuilleton, through the pages of yellow press magazines and the languages of journalism, was enriched by a new grammar, strongly “contaminated” by American elements. Indeed, after years of censorship of the use of English language, the occupation led to the enrichment of both gairaigo (words coming from abroad) and wasei eigo (Japan-made English) with new words and expressions which remained as a – mostly unconscious – legacy of the occupation experience in post-occupied society.16 Even if the occupiers considered these a part of the trousseau of exported democracy and a symbol of freedom and emancipation, these expressions were often the result of restrictions, impositions and bans imposed by the occupiers themselves. If anything, they contained potential cultural conflict. Hirano Kyoko contributes to our understanding of such processes with her article on U.S. censorship in cinema, which replaced the Japanese pre-war and wartime restrictions with the aim of eradicating “undemocratic” subjects and democratizing movie production. The story of a 1946 documentary by leftist director Kamei Fumio, suggesting that Emperor Hirohito was a war criminal, is considered emblematic of SCAP's policy regarding the emperor. Two films released on 23 May of that same year, a date still remembered in Japan as “kisu no hi” (kiss day), is taken instead as emblematic of SCAP's policy toward sexual expressions. The former was banned, turning Kamei into a director censored by both Japan’s militarist regime and American occupiers. The latter were the first Japanese movies including kissing scenes ever shown in Japan and came as a result of America censors’ encouragement of kissing as a symbol of democracy. However, as Hirano shows, the public performance of seppun (literally “the contact of proboscises”) was problematic even in a movie set,

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requiring different expedients to perform an act commonly reputed to be indecent, unaesthetic and unhygienic. While the legacy of the occupation reflected, to a certain degree, the disparity of power between occupier and occupied, the genesis and the semantic creation of post-war Japanese icons and aesthetic values can be understood better in terms of enriched hybridism, melting indigenous and “exotic” elements. Federica Carlotto's essay is a historical-sociological study providing meaningful insights into the nature and the extent of American influence on the development of concepts, models and practices related to clothing in post-war Japan. Whereas several studies have illustrated the topic, Carlotto does not limit the scope of her analysis to the styles that were created. Rather Carlotto uses fashion as a way to investigate the social and cultural factors of the occupation's legacy (democratization of the body, massification of the clothing market, stylistic popularization, widespread neophilia), which were assumed and articulated in Japan both as elements of continuity and rupture with the past, against the background of evolving clothing scenarios at the global level. What Carlotto analyzes in the fashion study case, Roberta Novielli detects in Japanese everyday life: hybridization, rather than passive acceptance of foreign models, was the rule. Focusing on the influence of the U.S. on various layers of Japanese culture, Novielli suggests that the relationship between “the conqueror and the conquered” was altered, in the cultural arena, thanks to an eclecticism that Japan had been experiencing for long time – from the pervasive syncretism of indigenous and foreign worships to the conciliation of the “native spirit” with Western technologies as a tool to modernize the country. Indeed, if the American way of life exerted a deep influence during and after the occupation, economic growth and the rising of living standards gave Japan the confidence to make use of American icons and expressions in order both to give an “exotic” touch to Japanese-made goods and to create and export its “third culture”. As an example of such eclecticism, Novielli refers to the aforementioned wasei eigo (Japan-manufactured English), now corresponding to up to ten percent of Japanese daily vocabulary and in large part actually “made in Japan”: here original sounds and meanings – and foreign ideas and concepts as well – are “translated” into signs which are created for the Japanese’s own exclusive use and only make sense to them.17 Michael Molasky's essay concludes the first group of articles and opens the way for the second. His careful reconstruction of the evolution over time of Tachikawa and Kunitachi, two paradigmatic areas in western

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Tokyo, allows us to better grasp the local specificities of both the occupation and its legacy. Molasky's essay focuses on the influence of the presence of U.S. bases in the urban context as well as on the ambivalent interactions of the American military presence with both locals and local movements in shaping the landscape and identity of these spaces. Thus it contributes not only to delineate the geography of occupation and its structural disparities, but also the persistence of the latter in post-occupied Japan. Molasky concludes with a reflection on the absence of any explicit reference to activities connected to the occupation in today's Tachikawa and Kunitachi, convincingly showing that such absence is symbolic of the way in which today inhabitants of these two adjacent towns wish to remember (or forget) the experience of the occupation – ostensibly in line with Abe's reluctance to even mention the word occupation in the speech quoted above. The second part of the book investigates the legacies of the occupation in identitarian and memory discourses, as well as in the imaginaries of both Japan and the United States.18 Carol Gluck defined the occupation as “an invasion of one country’s national history by another”.19 Indeed, the occupation soon became a filter through which the Japanese started to view, recall and recount the history of their own country. This filter long prevailed in Japan’s official history and public memory, thus conditioning all collective reflection on pre-occupied, occupied, and post-occupied Japan. In regard to this, Mire Koikari wrote that for the Japanese “the celebration of the occupation as Japan’s new beginning, its rebirth as a democratic and peace-loving nation has resulted in historical amnesia about its colonial violence prior to the occupation”.20 The Peace Problems Symposium (Heiwa Mondai Danwakai), born in the wake of the oncoming Cold War, was particularly eloquent in this regard. It was formed in the fall of 1948 by academics who gave “the most influential intellectual endorsement” to the Three Principles of Peace soon to be adopted by the Socialist Party, and whose statements were “the best-known manifestos of the Japanese peace movement”.21 Indeed, their third statement, published in December 1950, criticized both the United States and the Soviet Union and advocated Japan’s contribution to peaceful coexistence through an unarmed nonalignment under the United Nations, but also “adopted terms faintly reminiscent of Japan’s pan-Asian rhetoric in World War II” and appealed to the wartime sufferings of the Japanese in order “to nurture antiwar sentiments in Japan”.22 As Dower acutely notes, from “the perspective of Japan’s Asian victims”, this “would seem shockingly parochial rather than internationalist”, while in “the Japanese milieu [..] it

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tapped an almost instinctual strain of ‘victim instinct’ (higaisha ishiki) that cut across the political spectrum”.23 The ambiguities of Japan’s double role as “occupier” and “occupied” are the subject of the article by Marcello Flores, which takes the move from the assumption that the occupation was a watershed in both Japanese history and national identity precisely because it was “an experience which changed the interaction between the Japanese and the rest of the world”. Flores focuses on what Alexander Bukh identified as the “distinction between the state and the nation” that prevailed after the end of the war, with the former indicating the military and civilian elites as solely responsible for the war, and the latter a people of both civilians and soldiers considered the only victims of the state’s wartime policy.24 To be sure, this notion implies that Japanese “victimhood prevailed over victimization” by eclipsing the “other” victims of Japan’s war, and was largely shared – even if for different reasons and with different aims – by both the left and the right. The idea of the Japanese people as victims of the wartime regime was also crucial in the revival of ethnic nationalism. Indeed, under the occupation, the ethnic nationalism could be presented by its supporters as alien from the machinations of state apparatuses. It could also benefit from the shift of sovereignty from the emperor to the people, and ended up being tolerated by the occupiers themselves. As ironically noted by Kevin Doak, such U.S. tolerance could be ascribed to the fact that by viewing the Japanese as a different race, Americans tended to interpret this form of nationalism as a racial discourse with no political implications.25 Indeed, the riots accompanying the first revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty testified to the shaky bases of such assumption. As Eugenio De Angelis states in his essay on Shinoda Masahiro’s 1984 film MacArthur’s Children, the late 1950s and the year 1960 marked a period when “the political environment in Japan radically changed”, with wide-ranging repercussions. In a “climate of protest and defiance against the Authority and State” a new generation of young directors, among whom was Shinoda himself, began to approach “more directly the issues faced in postwar Japan”, including Japan’s submission to U.S. interests and the presence of American military bases. Yet, it was only with MacArthur’s Children, released more than thirty years after the end of the occupation, that Japanese cinema came to terms with it. As De Angelis notes, in a period of economic expansion, Japan found the confidence to emancipate itself from “the psychological subjection against the former invaders”, and even to look back at the occupation in a nostalgic and humorous mood.

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Yet, the use of the occupation as a lens through which to view Japan’s history did not completely eclipse the many “other” histories and stories that could have been told about occupied Japan. Indeed, many dissonant memories and histories of occupation as seen in the eyes of the occupied have been written and continue to appear. An emblematic case is Okinawa's “other occupation” which reveals the different ways in which the Okinawans remember, recollect and narrate their own history. Rosa Caroli’s essay examines the American wartime propaganda insisting that Okinawans were not Japanese, as part of a strategy aimed at transforming the archipelago into a base for attacking the homeland. After the end of the war, the same tactic was used first with the aim of placing Okinawa under the exclusive military control of U.S. forces, and then of preventing the spread of Communism in this so-called “keystone of the Pacific”. The “reverse course”, coinciding here with the victory of the Communists over the nationalists in China, produced a massive militarization of the islands – and created problems similar to those plaguing Tachikawa during the 1950s, as described by Molasky. Okinawans who had previously seen Americans as democratizers and liberators from Japan’s oppression and discrimination, came soon to be disenchanted and began to reclaim the reunification with mainland Japan, also by emphasizing their Japaneseness. As Caroli notes, the persistence of Okinawans’ vivid memories of the occupation can be explained in the light of the disproportionate burden carried by the archipelago under the U.S.-Japan security agreements until reunification in 1972 and beyond. Japan was not the only country where the experience of the occupation brought deep challenges to established ways of thinking. In recent years, in line with the “new international history” of the United States, the occupation of Japan has been fruitfully approached also for its influence on American culture. Indeed, Shibusawa Naoko's work has explained brilliantly how U.S. Cold War imperatives during the 1950s required and promoted a new image of Japan for the U.S. public. The occupation hence provided novelists, movie directors and magazine commentators with the basic setting for Japan's rapid shift from mortal enemy into “Geisha ally” – and an excellent example of how “citizens of a powerful nation can unwittingly or subconsciously perpetuate their nation's foreign policy”.26 The three essays that conclude this part of the volume problematize various cultural and political consequences of such a shift in Japan's representation. By analyzing some of the main works of literary fiction on the occupation published in the U.S. in the 1950s, Alide Cagidemetrio shows how American writers used the “exoticized” representation of occupied Japan not only as “a shortcut to transform the Japanese from

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previous enemies into friends”, but also as a shortcut to deal with issues of race and gender that were growing problematic at home. Most American writers, indeed, reproduced well-established stereotypes on the “Orient”, which appears overpopulated by “Butterflies” in search for Americanbrought happiness. Also an early manifestation of doubt, concerning the U.S.'s “particular way of spreading democracy among the ruins”, can be found, namely in Donald Richie's This Scorching Earth. Yet, emblematically, the novel was one of the least successful on the occupation, while the author spent most of his life afterward in Tokyo. In turn, Hollywood expressed few doubts on the official triumphalist view of the “new Japan” remade from scratch by MacArthur. Alan Nadel analyzes two major blockbusters of the 1950s on the occupation, Sayonara and Teahouse of the August Moon, coming to conclusions not dissimilar from Shibusawa on Hollywood's intent to re-form the American cultural imaginary about Japan during the Cold War. As Nadel notes, the transformation of Japan into a friend came with a sort of trade-off which catered to the official view of the occupation as a complete break with Japan's past: both movies in fact acknowledged “admiration for Japan in exchange for Japan's farewell, in its own words, to its own past”. It goes without saying that notions of the U.S. possessing the power “to begin the world over again” (and even a “manifest destiny” to fulfill such a mission) were not inoculated into U.S. culture by the occupation of Japan. Nevertheless, there was always a deep interconnection between the westward expansion of the country and the elaboration of such concepts. As noted by historian Bruce Cumings, it was in the continental west, and then in the Pacific, after all, that the U.S. could act unilaterally “with allies absent and little concern for what the people in the way of that advance had to say”: if seen from this perspective, not only can the U.S. seven-year rule in Japan be seen as the quintessential expression of such American “Pacificism”, but also as the model for more recent American policy toward the entire world.27 As Federico Romero shows in his essay, after the end of the Cold War U.S. neoconservative intellectuals unsurprisingly elected the “Japanese analogy” to their favorite instance to prove the exportability of American democracy at the point of gun. As the occupation of foreign countries and “state building” came to be considered again as usable foreign policy options by U.S. policymakers (particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq), the triumphalist view of the occupation thus reemerged forcefully in the public discourse, virtually unscathed by the problematic findings of historiography. The “lesson” drawn by the neoconservatives was possibly one of the most influential among the intellectual legacies of the occupation. In turn, the “nightmarish failure” of

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the occupation of Iraq, which ended in much less triumphalist tones in 2011, eventually contributed to the renewed attention with which historians have been looking at the occupation of Japan in recent years. The three essays of the third and final section undertake the study of occupations through a set of approaches which have come forth in recent years. Iriye Akira opens this section treating the history of the U.S. occupation of Japan from the standpoint of transnational history, that is a history concerned with “individuals, communities, themes, and movements that exist outside formal state apparatus, establish their networks, and even become part of shared experiences across national boundaries”.28 The focus on individuals, indeed, has greatly contributed to a more nuanced understanding of the occupation since the publication of Sodei Rinjirǀ's study of a selection of the more than half million letters sent by ordinary Japanese to General MacArthur.29 However, according to Iriye, a focus on stories of business and educational exchanges testifies to “a sense of interconnectedness” between Japan and the United States that might be a fundamental legacy of the occupation. At the crucible between transnational and comparative history, the essay by George Blaustein approaches the interactions between academic American Studies and occupation. By comparing the Salzburg seminar created by American non-state actors in occupied Europe with similar Japanese institutions, Blaustein highlights the inherent ambivalence of endeavors that can represent “the better angels of American internationalism” as well as “exquisitely subtle manifestations of American hegemony and cultural imperialism”. In turn, by focusing on the pre- and post-war histories of American Studies in Japan, Blaustein also brings to the fore the continuities between pre- and post-war American studies in Japan, which differentiates the Japanese condition from the German and Austrian ones. This volume on the legacies of the U.S. occupation of Japan ends, with what only apparently could seem a paradox, with an essay on the recent “Americanization vs. Westernization” debate among the historians of postwar Germany, which represented a collective attempt at reappraising the legacy of the American influence in Germany. As in a photographic negative, Giovanni Bernardini's article allows us to better visualize the “national specificity” of Japanese reflections on the legacies of the occupation. Indeed, even if largely questioned, in the German case the “westernization” paradigm – with its emphasis on a “Transatlantic community of values” being restored in Western Europe after World War Two – has emphasized the traces of a “usable past”, which was nurtured

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by the occupiers themselves and in turn has made the collective reflection on the reach of the American influence easier. The Japanese instead could not count on another Walter Lippmann – either American or Japanese – postulating their long-term contributions to an hypothetical “Transpacific” community of values. Had there been one, we cannot dismiss the possibility that Prime Minister Abe would have been able to give a name to those problematic “seven subsequent years”. Rather than just being a matter of administrative practices and international relations, the consequences of the U.S. occupation of Japan transcended both the seven years of its formal duration and the bilateral relations between the two countries. This volume aims at providing a greater understanding of the transtemporal, transnational and transcultural legacies of one of the crucial events of the 20th century.

Notes 1

Carol Gluck, “The Past in the Present”, in Postwar Japans as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 66. 2 The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty is reproduced in Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cold War. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 157-9. 3 Quotations respectively from John W. Dower, “Foreward”, in Dear General MacArthur. Letters from the Japanese during the American Occupation, ed. Sodei Rinjirǀ (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001), p. xxi; and Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ. The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy (New York: Continuum, 2002), p. xxvi. 4 Laura Hein, “Revisiting America's Occupation of Japan”, Cold War History 11, no. 4 (2001), pp. 579-599: 581. 5 Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), p. 276, emphasis added. 6 These words, used in a report sent by MacArthur's to the former President Herbert Hoover in May 1946, are quoted in Richard B. Finn, Winners in Peace. MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 173. 7 Reports of General MacArthur. MacArthur in Japan (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966, p. 118. 8 John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1999), pp. 27-8. MacArthur's adviser William Sebald described the general's authority as follows: “Never before in the history of the United States had such enormous and absolute power been placed in the hands of a single individual”. See Sebald, quoted in Toshio Nishi, Unconditional Democracy. Education and Politics in Occupied Japan, 1945 to 1952 (Stanford: Hoover

xxii

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Institution Press, 1982), p. 34. Emphasizing the “the shift of power from the Emperor to MacArthur”, Nishi also states (p. 82) that MacArthur “perpetuated more than he erased the prevalent attitude of obedience among the Japanese people toward authority”. 9 Dower, “Foreward”, p. xxii. 10 Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 272. 11 MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 298. 12 Quotations respectively from Mire Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy: Feminism and the Cold War in the U.S. Occupation of Japan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), p. 5; and Bruce Cumings, “Korean-American Relations: A Century of Contacts and Thirty-Five Years of Intimacy”, in New Frontiers in American-East Asian Relations: Essays Presented to Dorothy Borg, ed. Warren I. Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 237-82: 272. In this respect also see Carol Gluck, “Entangling Illusions. Japanese and American Views of the Occupation”, in New Frontiers in American-East Asian Relations, ed. Warren I. Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 177. 13 John W. Dower, “Occupied Japan and the cold war in Asia”, in The Truman presidency, ed. Michael J. Lacey, (Washington, D.C. and Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 366-409. 14 See, for example, Yukiko Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 15 Hein, “Revisiting America's Occupation of Japan”. 16 See Tanikawa Takeshi, Senryǀki no kƯwƗdo 100: 1945-1952 [One hundred keywords of occupation: 1945-1952] (Tǀkyǀ: Seikynjsha, 2011). 17 James Stanlaw, Japanese English: Language and Culture Contact (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), p. 4 18 Mark Caprio and Sugita Yoneyuki defined the occupation as a “watershed in Japanese history”: Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita, “The U.S. Occupation of Japan. Innovation, Continuity, and Compromise”, in Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society, eds. Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 2. 19 Gluck, “The Past in the Present”, p. 66. 20 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, p. 5. 21 John Dower, “Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflicts”, in Postwar Japans as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 9-10. 22 Ibid., p.10. 23 Ibid.. The statement was published in the magazine Sekai in December 1950. 24 Alexander Bukh, “Japan’s History Textbooks Debate. National Identity in Narratives of Victimhood and Victimization”, Asian Survey 47, no. 5 (2007), p. 691. 25 Kevin M. Doak, A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan. Placing the People (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 250-1. For a stimulating analysis of the role of the “nation” (minzoku) in post-war Japan's nationalism, see pp. 250-64.

Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan: Appraisals after Sixty Years xxiii

26 Naoko Shibusawa, America's Geisha Ally. Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) p. 11. 27 Bruce Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea. Pacific Ascendancy and American Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) p. 402. 28 On transnational history: Akira Iriye, “The Making of a Transnational World”, in Global Interdependence, ed. Akira Iriye (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 681-847. 29 Sodei Rinjirǀ, ed., Dear General MacArthur.

EDITORS’ NOTE

Following the standard convention of academic, English language publications on Japan, Japanese names are given in the text in East Asian name order, namely family names preceding given names, with the exception of Japanese who write their names in reverse order when writing in English. This also applies in the endnotes for Japanese language sources. When English-language sources by Japanese authors are referred to, their names are given as published. The romanization of Japanese follows the modified Hepburn system. Macrons over elongated vowels in well-known place names, such as Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, have been dropped. In quotations, the original spelling has been retained. The editors believe that the reproduction of the images contained in this volume falls under the "fair use" conditions. They apologize for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

PART I: POLITICS, SOCIETY AND CULTURE

JAPAN AND THE U.S.: AN ODD COUPLE RONALD DORE

The beginning, relief, resignation, deference Old age is my only excuse for offering to a serious academic publication a mixture of reminiscence and personal prejudice. The occupation of Japan began in September 1945. It will probably end before it has lasted a century. Looking at those 1945 photographs of the surrender ceremony on the battleship Missouri, it is hard not to feel sympathy for the, otherwise personally far from simpatico, Foreign minister Shigemitsu Mamoru. Despite all the bravura of his top hat and tails, the sense of personal and national humiliation must have been intense. At least, he was not required to kneel, which would have been difficult for him with his wooden leg, the result of some crazed ultranationalist’s bomb in the 1930s. One wonders how his sense of humiliation would measure up against that of Hatoyama Yukio, Japan's prime minister between September 2009 and June 2010, forced out of office by the jeers of a Japanese establishment, and the Japanese media, scorning his naïve belief that he could somehow stand up to Washington and negotiate the departure of the U.S. Marines from the Futenma air base in the Okinawa prefecture. Having earned further enmity by loose talk of an Asian union that excluded the U.S., he was left with no way of expressing his resentment at the United States except by visiting Iran, thereby being disowned by the party he had helped create and exaggerating his reputation as a maverick “man from outer space”.1 It all began much more happily as John Dower describes in his Embracing Defeat.2 The sense of enormous relief at no longer having to fear those B29s; later, the discovery that the victorious occupying troops were distributors of chewing gum to kids, not rapists endangering every Japanese woman – all that helped to create a lot of goodwill. There are doubtless many descriptions of the mood in those ten days between the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb and the surrender. A friend

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who was covering the Naval Headquarters in Osaka for the Mainichi newspaper wrote a diary which his grandson has recently edited. News from Tokyo made everyone in the newspaper world aware of the struggle between the army and its die-hard supporters on the one hand and those who wanted Japan to surrender and cut its losses on the other. He remarks on 10 August 1945, that there are hardly any genuine last-ditchers among his colleagues on the Mainichi newspaper: “Yet the newspaper we produce is full of exhortations to fight to the end. Empty words dancing on the page with no conviction behind them”. By 14 August “the issue is already settled, the Emperor had the deciding word and it was for surrender”.3 I was just about to arrive at the station to go to the office when the sirens went. No trains so I went back home. Heavy thuds that went to the bottom of your stomach coming from the direction of Osaka. And there in that lovely blue sky a couple of B29s, doubtless going home, sailing along in a leisurely fashion as if it were their sky. Got train after lunch but that was stalled three times by machine-gunning light aircraft, and in the end I had to thumb a ride in a navy truck and didn’t get to the office till 6 which was when I heard the news about tomorrow’s announcement. No papers to appear on the streets till the Emperor had done his speech. We got the full text of the Potsdam declaration at midnight. […] Great air of excitement in the office, aided by sake and beer. S, N and H had taken over the guest room and a drunken S insisted I should join them. The room still had black-out curtains. “Tear ‘em down! There’s no war any more!”. “The last night. Historic night! OK!”. The boisterous shouts gave way to battle marching songs. Much stamping of feet until word came from the Directors’ room below us to let up.4

A couple of weeks of anxious consultation as to whether nubile daughters should be hidden away in the countryside and then the Americans actually arrived. Careful preparations had been made. Within three days after the surrender, two weeks before the first troops arrived, the Home ministry had already instructed local police to be prepared to set up brothels and recruit comfort women for the Americans.5 As the occupation began there was a surprising amount of goodwill. And a lot of deference. Shigemitsu is credited with having negotiated the Americans out of an original plan to establish direct military rule, and got them to agree to rule through existing structures, but for the next few years it was generally accepted that nothing could be done by the Japanese government without the explicit approval of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, that is General Douglas MacArthur and the authoritarian military government which he commanded. Just as, in America’s Cold War competitor, Leninism was the dictatorship of the

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Japan and the U.S.: An Odd Couple

proletariat as a necessary prelude to the introduction of socialism, so SCAP dictatorship was the necessary prelude to the introduction of Japanese democracy. And there was censorship. British diplomat Hugh Cortazzi and I tried sending the left-wing New Statesman to Japanese friends, but the Post Office would accept only Bibles and sales catalogs. We complained in a letter to the Times, were summoned to the Foreign Office and told that that was how life was. So every government and political organization needed its shǀgaikyoku-bu-kakari-kan, its “liaison office” to deal with the Liaison Section of SCAP which was the channel through which SCAP authority was exercised. Self-confident Japanese who were perapera (fluent) in English were in great demand, though often regarded with a mixture of envy and suspicion by their tongue-tied colleagues. They were a sort of shaman, people with special, somewhat occult and powerful talents, to whom you had to have recourse in order to defend yourself against the unpredictable powers that decided men’s fate. The word shǀgai retains something of that same aura today. Shǀgai bengoshi in later decades, was a common word (a category with no formal, legal, definition) for the richer stratum of lawyers who dealt in contracts with foreign, largely American, corporations. More recently, the five prefectural governors with Osprey bases formed a joint shǀgai committee to deal with the American forces.

The mold of post-war politics set By the time I got to Japan in March 1950, the deference accorded to SCAP was attenuating. A certain degree of self-confidence was returning, though there was still a sharp division between those who were confident that Japan would soon be able to become its old self, suppress those subversive labor unions, give landlords back their land, rebuild a decently powerful army, etc., and their opponents on the left. The latter were rather less confident that the freedoms of speech and association, the right of unions to bargain with employers were now so deeply rooted that they could not be gainsaid. But they believed that their protests – their street demonstrations as well as their election performance – could prevent the conservatives’ reactionary gyaku kǀsu – reverse course – from going too far in undoing the post-war reforms. It was, of course, something of a paradox that by 1950, the chief defenders of what were universally seen as the American-inspired reforms of the early years of the occupation, including and especially the Constitution, were the Socialist Party, though split into left and right

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factions during the early 1950s, and the Communist Party after it recovered from the occupation’s purge and then prosecution of its leaders. They were, at the same time, the chief opponents of any Cold War line-up with the United States, and urged the need to maintain decently friendly ties with her new enemy, the Soviet Union.6 This was the issue which preoccupied public opinion from the summer of 1950 to the final signing of the twin treaties in September 1951. Should Japan remain neutral, or take sides, in the Cold War? It was obvious by the summer of 1950, that those who were opposed to Japan being integrated into the American camp in the Cold War had finally lost the battle. The Communist Party leadership had been formally purged. The Socialists and a large proportion of the university intellectuals rallied around the slogan zenmen kǀwa —i.e. a peace treaty that included the Soviet Union as a signatory, as opposed to a tandoku kǀwa with the U.S. and her allies alone. Yoshida Shigeru, the prime minister, taunted them with confident scorn: “Those who talk about a comprehensive peace treaty or permanent neutrality are just spinning fantasies”. He called one of the leaders of the Zenmen kǀwa movement, Nanbara Shigeru, the President of Tokyo University, a degenerate pseudo-scholar (kyokugaku asei).7 Three days later Nanbara made a speech in which he replied that “degenerate pseudo-scholar” was precisely the sort of insult with which the pre-war military right hounded Minobe Tatsukichi and the other liberal scholars out of universities.8 Under Yoshida, learning and scholarship were being defiled, and freedom of speech replaced by an oppressive authoritarianism. But Nanbara's was obviously a losing battle. There was a growing mood of celebration through 1951. In the spring, General MacArthur, sacked by his president because he wanted to polish off the Korean War by using an atomic bomb on China, was cheered by school-children all the way to Haneda airport.9 The International Christian University had plans to build a MacArthur Gate by way of memorial.10 Soon after, however, MacArthur, giving evidence to Congress, said: “Measured by the standards of modern civilization, [Japan] would be like a boy of twelve as compared with [the Anglo-Saxon] development of 45 years”. Translated into newspaper headings as “Japanese: mental age of 12 – MacArthur” these remarks led to a certain cooling of naïve Macartholatry, and no more was heard of ICU’s memorial gate.11 The Zenmen proponents had some sympathizers among supporters of the conservative parties but not enough to make an impact. In December 1949 an opinion poll which offered a straight choice between a Zenmen

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Japan and the U.S.: An Odd Couple

and a Tandoku peace treaty found the former much preferred – 59 to 21 percent. By September 1950, after the Cold War became a hot war on the neighboring Korean peninsula, and after a barrage of propaganda by the Yoshida government, the balance was reversed – 21 to 46 percent.12 And when the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed in September 1951 there was enough relief at the formal ending of the occupation and the disappearance of those carriages reserved for Americans on the Yamate line of the Tokyo metro, for the defeated Zenmen opposition to be muted. Meanwhile, the memories of the fascist-militarist state of the 1930s were fading and by 1951 the process had already began which has today given Japan, with an unamended Constitution which renounces the possession of military forces, the sixth largest defense budget in the world and prompted its reborn chauvinists of 2012 to talk tough to a quickly catching-up China. The embryo of Japan’s armed forces was called the National Police Reserve and was created at MacArthur’s insistence, to take on the Communist threat in Japan while all his troops were committed in Korea. (Though without any signs of unwillingness on the part of the conservative establishment, which had similar views about communist subversion). Within three years the Police Reserve was expanded into the Self-Defense Forces, also a move initiated by the U.S., which offered substantial aid and military equipment under its Mutual Security Act.

Settling in to subordination But of course the arrival of autonomy as far as foreign policy was concerned, was an illusion. The Security Treaty, which accompanied the Peace Treaty was the instrument by which the occupation was de facto prolonged while nominal sovereignty was returned to Japan. Japan became what the nineteenth century called a protectorate. U.S. President Harry Truman summed up the situation well when he said, in his speech in San Francisco: Japan, today, has no army. But in the light of the naked aggression which has taken place in its vicinity, the Japanese government has asked the United States to sign a Mutual Obligation Treaty as a means of guaranteeing the security of Japan. Under this treaty, the United States will continue to station its army in Japan in order to contribute to world peace 13 and to protect Japan from attack.

There were, indeed, many Japanese who argued that Japan, having made an historic contribution to mankind’s progress by being the first country to renounce war and armies, had a right to military protection in

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the interim period before her example was followed and the age of universal peace arrived. Whether this was a piece of sophistry or they naively believed that, one will never know. A more telling argument was that Japan was still full of lurking militarists. If Japan were seriously to rearm, there was a good chance that the whole fascist military regime of the 1930s might be revived. Continued American occupation was therefore the lesser evil.14

Slow to knuckle under Throughout the 1950s there was considerable evidence of a spirited refusal to accept orders from Washington, not just in the Socialist opposition but also in the two conservative parties. They for the first half of the decade were vying for power, and in the second half had amalgamated, thus inaugurating the “1955 regime”. That regime was to last for forty years until it began the process of progressive splintering which has produced the fragmented Diet of December 2012. One factor which made negotiations in the 1950s especially fraught was the fact that most of those in charge of Japan in the first decade after it became a nominally sovereign state, had a wealth of personal experience of being treated as second-class human beings during the occupation. Ikeda Hayato, the prime minister who presided over the income-doubling 1960s, and Miyazawa Kiichi, finally prime minister in the early 1990s, made their first visit to the United States in 1950 to begin consultations over the peace treaty – Ikeda as finance minister, the first cabinet minister to visit the U.S. after the war, and Miyazawa as his civil service secretary. They were given a living allowance of seven dollars a day, which was enough for a twin-bedded room in a scruffy Washington hotel, so small that the only way they could relax with their evening sake was sitting on their beds.15 The Yoshida government in its closing years dragged its feet under great pressure from the United States to rearm on a serious scale. In 1953, Yoshida sent Ikeda again as his emissary to Washington, and the talks the latter had with Assistant secretary of State Walter Robertson talks were counted as a sufficient success for Ikeda (he got American aid without promising more than a modest increase in the armed forces) for American planners to abandon hopes of substantial Japanese rearmament.16 There was enough frustration in the American government for Ikeda to report that there was a general hope that Yoshida would lose the next election and be replaced by Hatoyama Ichirǀ and Shigemitsu who were more in favor of a strong Japan.17

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Japan and the U.S.: An Odd Couple

When Hatoyama did in fact win they were not so pleased. One main plank of his platform was, indeed, reform of the constitution, which Americans were greatly in favor of, but the other was “an independent foreign policy”, and he immediately set about trying to get a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. He nearly succeeded and would have rid Japan for ever of the ulcer of its “Northern Territory Irredentism”, but for the famous intervention of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, threatening that if they made enough concessions to get a treaty with the Soviet Union, Japan would never get Okinawa back.18 Another source of friction was the recurrent negotiations over the agreement to regulate the status of the American forces in Japan which had been agreed in principle in San Francisco. Much of this led to fierce debate in the Diet in a period when the Socialist opposition was still using human barrier tactics to prevent Diet sessions from being opened or votes taken. Even within the conservative majority, however, although the dominant consensus was that nobody wanted the generals back in power, there were many who resented the surrender of sovereignty implied by, for instance, the fact that even for civilian crimes, U.S. soldiers were under the jurisdiction of their commanders, not of Japanese judges, an arrangement which suddenly hit the headlines when a farmer’s wife was shot near a firing range. Fifty years later the same sores are still festering after the most recent sailor rape.19 The problem of whether offenders should be handed to local or U.S. military jurisdiction occupied Foreign Minister Genba Kǀichirǀ at his press conference in November 2012.20 Constant friction, but, yet, no likelihood of divorce. The basis for the U.S.-Japan tie was a shared strident anti-communism, fueled by the hardening of the Cold War frontlines in Europe, and in Asia by the Communist Party’s takeover in China, and the marginalization of the Chiang Kai-shek government in what was still called Formosa. Japanese nationalism was muted. The national anthem could not be sung in schools. But the Japanese left applauded other people’s nationalism. They took comfort in the way that various nationalist movements in South-East Asia were cleaning out the last remnants of colonial power. For an English speaker familiar with the broad concept of “nationalism” it was remarkable that no one made any connection between minzokushugi (ethnic-autonomy nationalism, celebrated as the liberator of Asia) and kokkashugi (aggressive nationalism) the word used to describe the central Japanese ideology of the 1930s. The conservative establishment, on the other hand, was building strong ties with Chiang Kai-shek (to whom, they claimed, they owed special thanks for his renunciation of any claim to reparations). Their traditional antipathy to the

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Soviet Union was reinforced by its opportunistic declaration of war in the last days of the Japanese empire and its brainwashing of Japanese prisoners. Sympathy for the Soviet Union on the left was reinforced by academicideological trends. The Economics Departments of major universities became dominated by scholarly, some would say theological, Marxism. (Inherited, curiously enough, from those who as young assistant professors had taken their two-year study leave in Weimar Germany). Even now, when most of the exponents of postwar Marxism have been replaced by neo-classical economists with PhDs from American graduate schools, the earlier generation, or at least the pupils of the earlier generation, are still capable of public debate, albeit of little relevance to the age of the TransPacific Partnership.21 It should never be forgotten, though, that however much friction between the two governments, and whatever was taught in university classrooms, America remained, for the ordinary Japanese, the promised land, as the Garioa/Fulbright Commission boasted: Since 1952 over 6,000 Japanese and 2,300 Americans have been awarded a Fulbright grant to pursue academic and cultural activities in the other country as lecturers, researchers, graduate students and language instructors. GARIOA and Fulbright Alumni, known as Fulbrighters, play leading roles in a variety of fields including the Supreme Court, the government, the diplomatic corps, higher education the media and major corporations.22

But the culmination of that decade, the famous Anpo tǀsǀ, the massive demonstrations against the revision of the Security Treaty in 1960, marked the postwar peak of the “Japanese Resistance”. Some of the most anomalous features of the Security Treaty, and of the accompanying Status of Forces Agreement, were removed in the revision of the Treaty negotiated in 1960, but by this time dissatisfaction with Japan’s subordination had spread well beyond the hard-core opposition of Socialist and Communist politicians, Marxist students and labor unionists.

Settling in to symbiosis The demonstrations were massive, but began to fizzle when all the leaders were arrested, Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) withdrew the funds it had been providing as part of their secret war with the prime minister, and a girl student was crushed to death. Thereafter, it was all downhill for the resistance. The student movement which had been at the

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Japan and the U.S.: An Odd Couple

core of the demonstrations in 1960 fragmented into two main factions which competed both in turgid Marxist casuistry and in challenging bulldozers wherever runways were being extended. (The habit began with the runways of American bases extended to take B29s. It continued with the new civil airport at Narita, where the two factions entrenched themselves to the appreciation of a maverick American political scientist who wrote a book applauding their deadly seriousness).23 Popular sentiment against subordination to the U.S. was greatly alleviated by the super-success – continuous target over-reaching – of the income-doubling 1960s and the rapid recovery from the oil shock of the 1970s. But the “we’re the tops. They can do the military stuff, but when it comes to running an economy and manufacturing high-quality motorcars, nobody can beat the Japanese” was only partly consoling since the success was dependent on access to American markets, and that had to be bought at the price of an endless series of “trade friction negotiations” resulting in a series of VERs – “voluntary” export restraints – and culminating in 1989 in the so-called Structural Impediments Initiative, which gave American trade negotiators the opportunity to lecture the Japanese government on neoliberal deregulation, and de-cartelization. These talks spawned the practice of an annual exchange of letters in which the U.S. government, with some force and expectation of effect, lectured the Japanese government on some particular form of regulation which worked to the detriment of American firms, and, in a “not to be outdone” assertion of “between equals” reciprocity, the METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) told the American government how it could manage its economy better. This ritual persisted until Hatoyama Yukio's government stopped it in 2009. Meanwhile, the sparring over trade was matched by ever more brotherly ties being made between the Japanese and the U.S. armed forces. The Security Treaty arrangements came finally to be called an “Alliance” during the prime ministership of ƿhira Masayoshi who quite willingly dropped the “omni-directional foreign policy” slogan of his predecessor, Fukuda Takeo, and worked for closer ties with the U.S.. It did not get into the formal communiques issued at the end of president-prime minister conferences (the Washington-mairi which was de rigeur for any new prime minister until Abe Shinzǀ memorably broke the mold by visiting Beijing first) until the Washington visit of the hapless Suzuki Zenkǀ. He had taken over after ƿhira’s untimely death. Suzuki was very much a peace man. He had, before he became prime minister, been at a Shimoda U.S.-Japan conference (the model for many subsequent two-country conferences designed to promote mutual understanding and friendship

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between top leaders) at which he had stressed that Japan’s relations with Asia, being of an entirely un-military nature, were different from those of the United States.24 When he got to Washington as prime minister and the diplomats had worked out the joint statement he and Jimmy Carter would issue it included the word “alliance”. He did not reject it, but at his press conference afterward, made a point of saying that “alliance did not mean military cooperation”. The civil servant head of the Japanese Foreign Office went on record as saying that he had never heard such nonsense. Suzuki’s successor as prime minister, Nakasone Yasuhiro, embraced the alliance with open arms.25

A resurgent resistance? Ever since Natsume Sǀseki wrote frankly about his smoldering resentment at the way snobbish English gentlemen treated him as a lesser breed,26 there have been periodic undertones in Japan’s relations with Caucasian countries of what Tocqueville called ressentiment rooted in inequality. The book from which I took the anecdote about Ikeda and the twin bedroom, a quarter of a million best-seller of 2012, is a lengthy expression of that sentiment directed at the United States, and symptomatic of the recent souring of U.S.-Japan relationships. The author, Magosaki Ukeru, is an ex-diplomat of some standing, a former ambassador to both Iran and Iraq, and former head of the Foreign Office Information Department. His latest books are based not only on his personal experience, but on his reading and reflection as a professor at the National Defense College for the first six years of his retirement. His best-seller is a history of Post-War Japan entitled Sengoshi no shǀtai (The true history of post-war Japan), which is written overtly on a single axis: what Magosaki sees as the constant tug-of-war within the Japanese political-bureaucratic class, between what he calls the “submissive to America” faction and what I called above the “Japanese Resistance”, or in Magosaki terms, the “independence” faction. He records, as an insider, the way in which the Foreign Office at the time when he joined it in 1966 was predominantly independista, but steadily became more and more “submissivist”.27 The establishment dismisses Magosaki as a “conspiracy theorist”. It is true that he does describe many conspiracies and secret dealings which were not known about at the time they took place, but have subsequently become clear in memoirs and opened archives. For the most part, his command of the primary sources does not require the conspiracy theorist’s imaginative reconstruction. About more recent cases – such as his

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suggestion that the Tokyo prosecutor's move against Ozawa Ichirǀ that robbed him of his impending prime ministership in 2009 was American inspired – are more speculative. It is not clear whether he thinks that direct contact between the CIA and the prosecutors led to the attempted indictment, or whether it only required the powerful Richard Armitage to denounce Ozawa as anti-American for the prosecutors to know automatically where their duty lay.28 But in any case, one does not need much malevolent guessing to demonstrate submissiveness these days. Take, for instance, the press conference of Foreign Minister Genba after Japan had voted in favor of the recognition of the Palestinians as a non-member observer state of the UN General Assembly, a move that the U.S. had vigorously opposed. He reported that the matter had been coordinated with the State Department. It was a kind of division of labor. The U.S. would keep sweet its relations with Israel and Japan would avoid reducing its influence with the Arab countries. They even coordinated what Japan should give as the reasons for its vote.29 Magosaki has 56,000 “followers” on Twitter. In “normal times” one might have foreseen the possibility, albeit remote possibility, that Resistance sentiment might grow to the point at which the alliance begins to unravel. But for the moment the Senkaku fracas has precluded any such possibility. For forty years, ever since Tanaka Kakuei raised the issue of sovereignty over the Senkaku islands in the diplomatic recognition talks, and accepted Zhou Enlai’s suggestion that they leave such a contentious issue “to the wiser heads of later generations”, Japan had accepted the islands’ limbo state by not trying to colonize them, exercising its recognized “practical control” over the islands only by shooing off nonJapanese fishing boats. But in 2010, after one of the resultant scuffles between Chinese fishermen and Japanese patrol boats, the unexpectedly furious Chinese reaction prompted an alarmed Japanese government to climb down and release the fishing boat captain. The determination not to appear weak has dominated Japan’s dealings with China over those islands. Two years later, faced with the provocative behavior of the Governor of Tokyo who proposed actively to colonize the islands after buying land nominally owned by a Japanese citizen, the government headed by Noda Yoshihiko (from the Democratic Party) behaved with great ineptitude. It sought to nationalize the land in question in order to thwart him, not realizing that this amounted to an assertion of sovereignty which would break the tacit “later, wiser heads” agreement, and predictably arouse China’s anger. The result was widespread anti-Japanese riots and destruction of property in China, considerable economic loss, and

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a suspension of normal diplomatic relations, which, at the moment of writing shows no signs of being healed, and is viewed with foreboding by Japan’s uncle ally, the United States. It is hard not to recall the favorite phrase of the helmeted students of the 1970s, borrowed apparently from China, via the embryonic Korean Communist Party: “Japan is nothing but the running dog of American Imperialism”. Sometimes dogs can run too fast for their master’s comfort. It seems that a lingering sense of humiliation over the 2010 incidents and the general strength of the resultant anti-Chinese sentiment in the Japanese political-bureaucratic class precluded the obvious constructive response: “Alright. We are confident that by any principle of international law our sovereignty over the islands is unchallengeable, but if you think otherwise go to the International Court of Justice”. All they can offer instead is an unbending: “There is no dispute. The islands are ours. Keep out”. And the repeated assertion that the 1972 “wiser heads” suggestion of Zhou Enlai was never accepted by Japan – a clearly mendacious assertion, given that for thirty-six years that was the clearly established basis of Japan’s treatment of the islands. The current keynote Japanese word for the appropriate attitude towards China is kizen – steely, composed severity. Its constant invocation is a sign of fearful rather than confident nationalism – fear of being seen to be weak. In realist terms of deployable naval firepower, Japan may not actually be weak. It might be true that, as the cover of Shnjkan Gendai bragged in mid-October 2012: “Look out China. Japan would win!” but that is not likely to be the case in ten years’ time, however much an Abe government increases its military expenditure. The assurance of back-up American support is even now, and much more in the future as China’s military capabilities increase, a crucial condition for Japan’s kizen posturing towards China. American official statements have been limited to acknowledgment that the islands are part of the territory covered by the Security Treaty’s promise to help defend if they are attacked, while so far declaring America’s neutrality over the issue of sovereignty. This lukewarm back-up revives talk of “Japan-passing”, a word invented to express the fear that America’s economic “Japan-bashing” of the 1980s would be succeeded by a growing indifference as America sought deeper ties with China. Even now, some Japanese enviously believe that there is a richer understanding of and more goodwill for China in the United States than for its ally Japan. Terashima Jitsurǀ, who was point man for informal contacts in the United States for the recent Hatoyama government, said in

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a recent lecture that America’s relations with China involved “far deeper communication” than its relations with Japan.30

Future Trajectories At present the situation is best summed up in Hilaire Belloc’s verse about little Jim who slipped his nurse’s hand at the zoo and was eaten by a lion. Always keep ahold of nurse. For fear of something worse.

I began this paper by suggesting that the American occupation might end before if had lasted a century. There is clearly, as we have seen over the last few years, no likelihood of it ending soon. What I had in mind was shaped by the following considerations. Of the two cold wars inherited from the original U.S.-Soviet Cold War, namely the U.S.-Russian and the U.S.-China cold wars, the first is likely to simmer inconclusively indefinitely – first Ukraine, then possibly the Baltic states, with NATO expansionism as the driving force, but the second may well see a shift in the relative power-balance in favor of China comparable to the shift in favor of the U.S. and against the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. The relevant elements of “power” that I have in mind are: conventional naval power – number of aircraft carrier fleets, etc.; defense technology power – the race between ever better missile defense systems and ever better missiles; emotional power – the patriotic hearts and minds of their populations; economic power, including the ability to extract large sums from the private economy to fund military expenditure and foreign aid; international organizational power – the ability to command an automatic majority in United Nations General Assembly, for instance; moral high ground power – having a “Scandinavian” reputation for being willing to make sacrifices for the global good in order to tackle issues like global warming; cultural power – admired excellence in art, fashion, music, etc.. Such a power shift is the more likely because achieving it is, along with raising domestic income levels, the overt goal of the Chinese elite, driven by an acute and resentful consciousness that China is not treated as an equal by the major Caucasian nations. Particularly when America, by contrast, is at present at least, more complacent in its hegemony. In the competition, the allegiance of Japan will be an important factor, particularly its willingness to pay large sums to have American forces

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stationed in Japan, and to have its own military forces deeply integrated with – in effect under the command of – those of the United States. Given the above, there is a reasonable chance that China might change its line from threatening Japan to wooing Japan. That is precisely the about-turn its relations with Taiwan took after the presidential election in 2008 – with apparent success. To many people it seems just a question of time before some formal arrangement with Taiwan similar to that with Hong Kong results in a one-China-three-systems solution. From that two questions arise. Would the Beijing government think that strategy had enough chance of succeeding to be worth trying, and would it be able to implement it in the teeth of opposition from its more rabid nationalists in the Young Officers of the army, the People’s Daily and the Foreign Office? On the latter I have not enough knowledge to hazard a guess. On the former, much would depend on the unpredictable nature of happenings in the Japan-U.S. relationship, but also on China’s assessments of the strength of the ressentiment expressed in what I have called the “Japanese Resistance”, and its assessment of the degree to which educated Japanese feel any attachment to Japan’s Chinese cultural roots. As to the question whether the wooing would prove effective if it became Chinese policy, again the imponderables defy prediction. Japanese universities might fall over each other to host Confucian Institutes. There might be pay-off in a vast program for working holidays for Japanese youth in China and Chinese youth in Japan, or in subsidized publication in Japan, not only of Chinese classical poetry and philosophy, but also of the Chinese writings of Japanese Confucian scholars and poets of Tokugawa times – a reversal, ironically, of the “same script, same race” (dǀbun dǀshu) propaganda Japan used during the war to win over hearts and minds in the areas where their puppet governments in China had control! I should end before my speculations become more bizarre. The one thing I can safely predict is that the Japanese will continue to consider themselves to be unique and sui generis. And Western students of Japan will continue to encourage them in that belief.

Notes 1

“Hatoyama comes under fire for Iran visit, claims ambush”, The Japan Times, 10 April 2012. 2 John Dower, Embracing Defeat. Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton & Co., 2000).

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Fujita Nobukatsu, Haisen igo [After defeat] (Tǀkyǀ: Puresupuran, 2003 [1947]), pp. 23-5. 4 Ibid., p. 32-3. 5 See Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 124-5. 6 See Robert Scalapino, The Japanese Communist Movement 1920-1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). 7 “Yoshida shushǀ, Nanbara Tǀdai sǀchǀ no zenmen kǀwa ron o 'kyokugaku asei' ron to hinan” [Prime Minister Yoshida criticizes Rector Nanbara of Tokyo University as a 'degenerate pseudo-scholar' for his thesis on overall peace treaty”, Kurikku 20 seiki, 3 May 1950, available at http://www.c20.jp/1950/05yosid.html (accessed 15 December 2013). 8 Ibid. 9 “M'Arthur leaves Tokyo for Honolulu and home after triumphal good-by”, The New York Times, 16 April 1951. 10 On the links between MacArthur and the International Christian University, see Charles W. Iglehart, International Christian University. An Adventure in Christian Higher Education in Japan (Tokyo: International Christian University, 1964), pp. 54-5. 11 Quoted in Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 550-1. 12 “ETV tokushnj 'Nichibei anpo o unda reisen' tsuzuki” [ETV Special Issue 'The Japan-U.S. Security Treaty born in the Cold War'], Yonchǀme de CAN kaeru, 22 August 2010, available at http://d.hatena.ne.jp/cangael/20100822/1282441587 (accessed 15 December 2013). 13 Hisayoshi Ina, “Kǀwa kaigi kaimaku no kǀfun: kaette kita Nihon (1)” [Excitement for the opening of the Peace conference: Japan's comeback (1)], Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 8 September 2012, available at http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXNASFK0301N_T00C12A9000000/ (accessed 15 December 2013). This is a back translation from a Japanese translation of the English record. 14 I recall a discussion in one of the intervals of the Hakone Conference of 1960 with Maruyama Masao, Katǀ Shnjichi and Kawashima Takeyoshi, all of whom had played a leading part in the opposition to the revision of the Security Treaty – the Anpo tǀsǀ. (The Hakone conference was a prelude to Edwin Reischauer’s ambassadorship, an opportunity for him to get on frank discussion terms with some of Japan’s leading moderate left-wing intellectuals). I used this “Security Treaty at least stops Japanese rearmament” argument and was vigorously put down by the other three, most vociferously by Mr. Kawashima. 15 Magosaki Ukeru, Sengoshi no shǀtai, 1945-2012 [The true nature of post-war history] (ƿsaka: Sǀgensha, 2012), p. 154. 16 Kiichi Miyazawa, Secret Talks between Tokyo and Washington: The Memoirs of Miyazawa Kiichi, 1949-1954 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007), chapter 5. 17 Magosaki, Sengoshi no shǀtai, p. 168. 18 Matsumoto Shun'ichi, Nisso kokkǀ kaifuku hiroku: Hoppǀ ryǀdo kǀshǀ no shinjitsu [Confidential papers on the restoration of Japanese-Soviet diplomatic

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relations: the truth on the negotiations on the Northern territories] (Tǀkyǀ: Asahi shinbun shuppan, 2012). 19 See for example “Okinawa, gǀkan jiken” [Okinawa, the rape incident], Yahoo Japan, 19 October 2012, available at http://note.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/detail/n125754 (accessed 15 December 2013). 20 Ayako Mie, “U.S. Airman's home intrusion draws fire”, The Japan Times, 3 November 2012. 21 See for example Shibagaki Kazuo, Marukusu Uno keizaigaku to tomoni [Sharing Marx-Uno Economics] (Tǀkyǀ: Nihon keizai hyǀronsha, 2011). 22 Fulbright Japan, Alumni Activities, available at http://www.fulbright.jp/eng/alumni/index.html (accessed 15 December 2013). 23 David E. Apter, Against the State. Politics and Social Protest in Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 24 The Shimoda Conference was a series of unofficial dialogues between representatives of the United States and Japan that first began in 1967 and continued every two-four years until 1994. 25 Magosaki, Sengoshi no shǀtai, p. 281. 26 See, for example, Deguchi Yasuo, Sǀseki to fuyukaina Rondon [Sǀseki and mean London] (Tǀkyǀ: Kashiwa shobǀ, 2006); Suenobu Yoshiharu, Natsume Kinnosuke: Rondon ni kyǀseri [Natsume Kinnosuke: obsession for London] (Tǀkyǀ: Seidosha, 2004). 27 Magosaki, Sengoshi no shǀtai, pp. iii-iv. 28 Magosaki Ukeru, Amerika ni tsubusareta seijikatachi [Politicians whom America crushed] (Tǀkyǀ: Shǀgakukan, 2012), Chapter 2. 29 “Gaimudaijin kaiken kiroku (yǀshi)” [Press conference of Foreign Minister (Summary)], in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 30 November 2012, available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/kaiken/gaisho/g_1211.html#11 (accessed 15 December 2013). 30 “Terashima Jitsurǀ san no kichǀ kǀen ‘Jidai ninshiki no shinka: Nihon sǀsei no tame ni’ to ‘Amerika ni tsubusareta seijikatachi’” [Keynote speeches by Mr. Terashima Jitsurǀ on 'The evolution of time perception: for Japan’s creative activity' and 'Politicians smashed by America'], 2 November 2012, in Hatena Diary, available at http://d.hatena.ne.jp/ks9215/20121102/p2 (accessed 15 December 2013).

RECONCILING ASIANISM WITH BILATERALISM: JAPAN AND THE EAST ASIA SUMMIT NOEMI LANNA

Introduction “Just like the bushi after failing in expelling the barbarians [jǀi] learned the strength of the Western countries and promptly resolved to open up their country, so the Japanese who lost the war have recognized the merits of the enemy. Not that they thought that all the Occupation Forces were engaged in was good; nevertheless, the Japanese have acknowledged that the United States and England, on the whole, have a wonderful civilization. Undoubtedly, the Japanese have been ‘good loser’ [yoki haisha]”.1 In this revealing statement, the former premier Yoshida Shigeru summarized the gist of the doctrine that came to be named after him. The Yoshida doctrine was entirely premised on the acknowledgement of the “merits of the enemy” as it was based on bandwagoning with the United States, that is, on alignment with the former adversary. The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (1951) institutionalized this strategic choice, incorporating Japan into the “hub and spokes” system, the East Asian bilateral alliances framework centered on the United States. The rationale behind the highly remunerative (and yet extremely asymmetrical) alliance with the United States was perfectly consistent with the other principles underpinning the doctrine (abstensionism, antimilitarism, economism). Bilateralism, i.e. prioritizing the relationship with the United States, was conducive to a low profile foreign policy, extremely sensitive to American interests. On the other hand, the extended deterrence granted by alignment with the U.S. made of antimilitarism a viable option for Japan. Finally, it was precisely the pacifist option to underpin the primacy of economic power that became a distinctive feature of Japan’s behavior in the bipolarized international system.2

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One of the major implications of this U.S.-centered strategy that provided a durable framework for post-war Japan’s diplomacy was a comprehensive redefinition of Japan’s diplomacy in East Asia. For centuries, Asia had been the privileged target of Japanese diplomacy. Under the “Chinese world order” (to borrow Fairbank’s felicitous definition),3 the sphere of Japan’s interstate relations almost coincided with the borders of the Sino-centric world. In this period, spanning from the establishment of the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-906) to the mid nineteenth century, the tributary system created in East Asia a regional structure of hierarchical suzerainty, characterized by a China-centered centripetal order and a consistent degree of economic, political and security interdependence amongst the tributary states. As China entered the “century of humiliation” in the wake of the first Opium war (1839-42), its regional hegemony subsided and it was slowly replaced by an ephemeral (and yet destructive) nippo-centric order. The memory of Japanese colonialism in East Asia became a major constraint of Japan’s postwar diplomacy. The marginalization of East Asia was further facilitated by national division, by the fragmentation of the regional political economy and by alignment with the United States, which subordinated Japan’s East Asia relations to the organizing principles of Pax Americana.4 Despite these constraints, during the Cold War years, Asianism was not an insignificant element of Japan’s diplomacy. The “seikei bunri policy” (separation of politics and economics) and the “Fukuda doctrine” offer two significant examples of this. In the first case, while formally complying with the U.S. call for the containment of Communism, Japan did not renounce to pursue its China-based interests. A shrewd separation of politics and economics allowed Japan to negotiate trade agreements with the Communist neighbor, without normalizing diplomatic relations. The Fukuda doctrine, announced on the occasion of Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo’s visit to Southeast Asia (1977), provides further evidence of the way Japan combined the benefits of bilateralism and Asianism. The strengthening of Japan-Southeast Asia relations was carried on in a way that would maximize Japan’s economic gains, without undermining the U.S. security strategy in the region. In these two cases and, more generally, in formulating its Asian policy Japan pursued a basic pattern: promoting reintegration in the region without challenging the “bilateralism-first” principle of the Yoshida doctrine. Even when the interaction with East Asia implied dealing with the very targets of the U.S. containment policy, Japan did not renounce the Asianist option as demonstrated by the above mentioned seikei bunri strategy. On the other

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hand, as maintaining a strong relationship with the U.S. was vital, engagement in regionalist projects in the East Asia region was sacrificed on the altar of bilateralism whenever these projects clashed with U.S. strategic interests, as will be stressed later.5 The end of the Cold War brought forth a challenge to this pattern. Structural changes in the international system called into question the combination of Asianism and bilateralism which had been predominant so far. During the Cold War years, several factors had contributed to the smooth functioning of the peculiar mix of Asianism and bilateralism that the Yoshida doctrine implied: the world was bipolarized, the “hub and spoke” system served as an effective organizing principle of regional order in East Asia and the United States was Japan’s main provider of political, security and economic public goods. Yet, since 1989, this same system has started to show the signs of age and Japan has been confronted for the first time with the difficult task of bringing together economic benefits from cooperating with China with the security gains from alliance with the United States. As the redefinition of the Yoshida doctrine which has been prompted by the end of the Cold War is still under way, it is premature to assess how Japan has responded to this challenge. However, interesting insights for understanding the emerging pattern of interaction between Japan and the East Asian region can be found in Tokyo’s stance towards the East Asia Summit (EAS). The proposal of gathering a summit of East Asian countries was launched for the first time in 2001. One year later, it was reiterated in two reports released respectively by the East Asia Vision Group and the East Asia Study Group, two advisory committees linked with ASEAN Plus Three (APT)6 which proposed the establishment of an East Asia Community (EAC) as a long-term goal of the APT. The gathering of the first East Asia Summit was officially announced on 29 November 2004, on the occasion of the APT summit. As will later be explained in a more detailed way, Japan joined the summit in 2005. This process presents indeed several characteristics that render it particularly interesting. First, the EAS project brought into question Japan’s adherence to the U.S. strategic vision of East Asia. In its early stages, the summit called for a new model of regional integration, which was not conceived as transpacific, unlike APEC, and was further more ambitious in its long-term goals then the already existing East Asiancentered organizations, such as APT. The very nature of the summit thus confronted Japan with the task of exploring a new way of pursuing its East Asia diplomacy without threatening U.S. strategic interests. Second, the substantial changes that simultaneously occurred in Japan (power-shift to

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the Democratic Party of Japan) as well as in the regional environment and within the EAS itself (gradual enlargement of the membership) provides us with a scenario for objective analysis, outside of any particular circumstances. The goal of this paper is to examine what is left of the peculiar combination of Asianism and bilateralism that has underpinned the Yoshida doctrine, sixty years after the Occupation. In order to do this, I will first survey the evolution of Japan’s official discourse on the East Asia Summit and the East Asia Community (EAC). I will then try to identify the main drivers behind Japan’s decision to join the EAS, explaining how Tokyo’s role within the initiative is indicative of a new emerging pattern of Japan’s relations with East Asia. Finally, I will suggest that Tokyo’s enthusiast response to the East Asia Community project is symptomatic of an adaptive strategy intended to reconcile Asianism and bilateralism in a manner compatible with U.S. regional and global interests.

Japan’s official discourse on the EAS and EAC: “thought leader”, “fraternity” and other images References to the East Asia Community appeared in Japan’s official discourse three years before the first EAS summit. In a speech held in Singapore, in 2002, then Premier Koizumi Jun’ichirǀ stressed the need to build a “community” based on the strengthening of cooperation between Japan, China, South Korea and between Japan and ASEAN. The speech skillfully mixed poetic allusions of a shared identity with concrete references to the existing regional balance of power. The rationale of Koizumi’s appeal was summarized in the title of the presentation: “Let’s walk together, let’s advance together” (Tomo ni ayumi, tomo ni susumu).7 The declaration released on the occasion of the 2003 Japan-ASEAN summit renewed the commitment to collaborate in order “to build an East Asian community which is outward looking, endowed with the exuberance of creativity and vitality and with the shared spirit of mutual understanding and upholding Asian traditions and values, while respecting universal rules and principles”.8 One year later, in a speech held before the UN General Assembly, Koizumi formally launched the proposal to develop an “East Asia Community”.9 On the eve of the first EAS on 7 December 2005, it was then Foreign Minister Asǀ Tarǀ’s task to describe Japan’s posture towards the summit. In a speech held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, the minister re-affirmed Japan’s will not only to be a convinced supporter of

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the summit, but also to be a chief protagonist of the EAS project. The speech starts with an unconditional praise of the summit which is defined as an opportunity to write “a new chapter” in Asia’s history, as “a council of optimists” (rakkanshugisha no kaunshiru).10 According to Asǀ, Asian people deserve the qualification of “optimists” as they are inspired by a work ethics that allows them to look at the future with self-confidence. In particular, “Japan is the leader of the field when it comes to being optimistic” as Japanese were the first people in Asia to develop, thus showing that they were entitled to have a “forward-looking life credo”. These considerations – resonating with some of the key-arguments of the “Asian values” debate – introduce the central question of the speech: “What does Japan mean for Asia?”. The answer to this question is related to three definitions. The first and most important definition is: Japan is a “trailblazer through hands-on practice”, a “thought leader”. In Asǀ’s definition, the two terms describe a country that has been confronted with troubles prior to those of other countries and has endeavored to overcome them, thus becoming a point of reference. More specifically, Japan’s role as a forerunner became apparent in the early accomplishment of modernization and industrialization as well as in the adhesion to “democracy” and “market economy” which took place in Japan before any other Asian country. The second definition is: “Japan is a stabilizer”. In this case the allusion is to Japan’s role as a regional driver of stability in the realms of security and economics. The examples listed by Asǀ in order to corroborate his argument include Japan’s economic support to the countries affected by the Asian financial crisis and the Official Development Assistance (ODA) flow to the countries of the East Asia region. Moreover, as far as the security realm is concerned, the alliance with the United States, in Asǀ’s understanding, has granted peace to the East-Asia maritime chessboard; more generally, it has strengthened the stability and the order of the Asia-Pacific region. Finally, Asǀ defines Japan as a country “respecting other nations as peers and equals”. Japan – Asǀ explains – pursues its foreign policy giving up hierarchies and privileging relations with other states (notably the ones belonging to the East Asia region) based on egalitarian bonds. As Asǀ argues, the underlying principles of Japan’s ODA allocation and the rationale of the Fukuda doctrine, calling for a new era of cooperation between Japan and South East Asian countries based on mutual trust relationships, are significant evidences of this attitude. The power shift to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2009 – which marked a significant change in domestic politics – did not affect the

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basic tenets of Japan’s stance towards the EAS/EAC project. The Democratic Party of Japan both reaffirmed and reinforced Japan’s commitment to the building of an East Asia Community. Paragraph No. 52 of the 2009 DPJ platform identified regional diplomacy in East Asia and EAC as a priority of Japan’s foreign policy (“Strengthen Japan’s foreign relations in Asia with the aim of building an East Asia Community”) and suggested that Japan: Make the greatest possible effort to develop relations of mutual trust with China, South Korea and other Asian countries. Establish intra-regional cooperative mechanisms in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in such areas as trade, finance, energy, the environment, disaster relief, and measures to control infectious diseases. Take positive measures to promote the conclusion of economic partnership agreements (EPAs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) with countries of the Asia-Pacific region, as well as countries throughout the world, covering a broad range of fields, including investments, labour, and intellectual property. The measures will not include any which are detrimental to the safety and stable supply of food, increasing Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio, and the development of Japan’s agricultural industries and its farming villages.11

More specifically, in the vision of Japanese Democratic Party leader Hatoyama Yukio, Japan’s participation to the EAS and efforts in the building of an East Asia Community were conceived as a means to “open up” (hiraku) the country and develop “fraternity” (ynjai) in East Asia.12 As Hatoyama argued in a speech held in Singapore a few weeks after his designation, ynjai is sometimes translated as fraternity (hakuai): in other words, it is a way of thinking that attaches importance to the respect of one’s own freedom and personality and at the same time values the respect of other people’s freedom and personalities. It could be also defined as a philosophy of “autonomy and coexistence”.13 “Fraternity” implies an “open regional cooperation” that will eventually lead East Asia to achieve the results that Europe has already attained, where a situation of “reconciliation” and “cooperation” prevails. Specifically, “cooperation” should take the following forms. First, cooperation aimed at prospering together. The rationale of this cooperation lies in the acknowledgment of the great role played by economic integration in the case of EU and ASEAN. The means to attain this goal are EPAs and FTAs. Second, cooperation aimed at protecting the environment in Asia. Third, cooperation aimed at protecting lives from natural disasters and infectious diseases. Fourth, cooperation aimed at developing a “sea of fraternity”.14

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Japan’s role within the EAS/EAC project The political discourse on the EAC was not merely theoretical. Whereas the rhetoric on developing strong ties with Asian countries was reiteratively challenged both by the Yasukuni shrine issue and by the “history problem”,15 there was no substantial gap between the government’s enthusiastic declarations on the EAC and the policies thereby implemented. The Japanese government was committed to the EAC project from the very beginning. The timely references to the East Asia Community in the official political discourse were accompanied by a steady support of the EAS initiative. This support was demonstrated, for instance, by the intense diplomatic activity aimed at making sure that Tokyo would host the first EAS. Aspiring to play a central role within EAS, Japan strove to have the influence of the host-country, not just the seat of another player in the first gathering of the summit. It was no surprise that Japan’s assertion clashed with China’s parallel efforts to secure for itself the venue of the first summit. Eventually Malaysia got the best of the two contenders much to the satisfaction of many of the ASEAN members.16 EAS itself went through relevant transformations since 2005. Membership has widened as Russia and the United States joined the summit in 2011. Overall, the process of establishing a community in East Asia has proved to be more challenging than expected. Rivalry between regional powers and China’s progressive disengagement greatly impacted on the effectiveness of the EAS as an incubator of a regional community. It goes beyond the scope of this article to analyze the dynamics that have shaped the evolution of the East Asia Summit.17 I would rather focus on two aspects of Japan’s stance towards the EAS/EAC project that can be considered most indicative of a new way of reconciling bilateralism and Asianism. First, the very fact that Japan adhered to the EAC project is symptomatic of Japan’s will to set more value on East Asia regional diplomacy. Two enlightening precedents help to understand this shift. In the early 1990s Japan responded tepidly to the proposal of forming an East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC). The domestic debate triggered by the proposal was heavily influenced by the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s concern that joining a regional forum not at all welcomed by the United States would seriously damage Japan’s bilateral security and economic relations.18 Instead, Tokyo officially joined EAS in 2005, notwithstanding the unenthusiastic stance towards the initiative on the part of the U.S. Undoubtedly, the different nature of the two organizations made a big

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difference. Whereas the future EAC was not conceived as a regional forum exclusively centered on East Asia, the EAEC originally aspired to become a viable alternative to the transpacific oriented regionalism exemplified by APEC. In fact, the caucus excluded the states of the region that were not “Asian” (notably, United States, Australia and New Zealand) and was ultimately imbued with the polemical Asianism of its main architect, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mohamad Mahathir. In 1997, in a similar vein, Japan gave up the project of forming an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF). Conceived as a region-based response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the AMF would have been headed and mainly financed by Japan. This project, just like the EAEC proposal, clashed with U.S. strategic interests: Washington perceived the Asian Monetary Fund as an institution that would have challenged the U.S. and IMF leading positions in the global economy.19 The cases of EAEC and AMF suggest that the lack of U.S. vetoes has influenced Japan’s decision to join the EAS. A similar effect was exerted by the steady advance of globalization. As the fragmentation that characterized the East Asian regional political economy during the Cold War years left place to an intense interdependence generated by trade and finance liberalization, it became a very costly option for Japan not to engage in wide-reaching regional projects, such as the EAS. Finally, China’s rise has impacted dramatically on Tokyo’s regional choices. Whereas in the early 1990s Japan’s withdrawal of support to the EAEC had caused the failure of the project itself, in 2005 China’s remarkable growth confronted Tokyo with a completely different scenario. What has been aptly defined “Japan’s relativization in East Asia” (Higashi Ajia ni okeru Nihon no sǀtaika)20 has turned Japan from an absolute leader into a “relative” actor forced to share the regional stage with China. With the risk of falling behind China in the regional leadership stakes, Japan could ill afford not to join the EAS, lest it loses an additional arena to enhance its power. The stake for Japan was to counter China’s role and influence within the future community, averting the danger of a “sinified community” (chnjkateki kyǀdǀtai).21 Japan’s bid for the venue of the first EAS very well exemplified this strategy. Additional evidence can also be found in the official discourse on Japanese guidance. As stressed above, Japanese leadership has been craftily described as an “intellectual leadership” (chitekina rƯdƗshippu),22 that is a kind of primacy deriving not merely from a recent growth dynamic (as in the Chinese case) but also legitimated by Japan’s position as a forerunner. Purposely, the discourse on Japan’s long-term leading role in East Asia was reiterated during the DPJ era as well. In the aforementioned speech given by Hatoyama on 15

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November 2009, for instance, the former prime minister described Japan as a “unique country”, the uniqueness being a consequence of Japan’s early accomplishment of modernization and early perseverance with the post-growth related issues.23 The second aspect of Japan’s role within the EAS/EAC project that it is worth stressing is the will to conciliate participation to the project with U.S. interests. Whereas the choice to join the EAS undoubtedly signaled a strengthening of Asianism, it would be wrong to interpret this shift as an opposition to the norm of bilateralism. It is undeniable that the EAS was not originally conceived to include the United States, as demonstrated by the requirements outlined for the aspiring-member. The three conditions for participation were: being full ASEAN dialogue partners; having substantive relations with ASEAN; being a signatory to the “Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia” (signed in Bali in 1976). The last condition was especially problematic for the United States as the procedure for peaceful dispute settlement provided by the treaty was perceived as potentially conflicting with U.S. security strategies in the region.24 Despite this, in the early stages of the EAS process, the United States took a rather appeasing attitude towards the initiative, adopting a “wait-and-see” policy. When the implications of the new multilateral initiative were not completely clear, the United States stood on the side of the regional arena. Yet, in 2009, when the opportunities of joining EAS became more tangible, the United States decided to participate, announcing that they would accede to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. Japan’s participation with the EAS initiative took place eight years before the U.S. was officially included in the summit. Despite this, the U.S. and Japanese interests coincided from the very beginning. The United States envisaged in the EAC project a possibility that a vast area of Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region might be created. Seen from this perspective, the idea of having Japan to join the EAS and actively antagonize Chinese hegemonic attempts appeared to the United States as the lesser evil. On the other hand, Japan’s role within the EAS/EAC remained fully supportive of U.S. strategic interests. Tokyo has conceived the process of East Asia community building as an “open” form of regionalism with its participation in the process anchored in the Japan-U.S. alliance. In the document presenting Japan’s official position on the EAC, the three basic principles underpinning the government’s posture are identified as follows: the forthcoming Community should be based on “open regionalism” (hirakareta chiikishugi), “functionalistic cooperation” (kinǀteki kyǀryoku), and “respect for universal values and global rules”

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(fuhenteki kachi no sonchǀ, gurǀbaru na rnjru junshu).25 This comprehensive approach was consistent with Japan’s understanding that “open” and “enlarged” stood for inclusive, not opposed to U.S. interests, and (most of all), not China-centric. Japan’s concrete interpretation of “open regionalism” is very well conveyed by Asǀ’s words welcoming the inclusion of India, Australia, and New Zealand in December 2005: “I am especially pleased that Australia, New Zealand, and India are able to participate as full members from the very start and that these countries, who share with us the fundamental values of democracy, will join us as new peers who will also share a common dream for Asia's future. In addition, we must remember that cooperation with the United States, the EU, and others, as well as cooperative tie-ups with larger groups such as APEC, will also be important”.26 Overall, Japan’s goal was to promote the idea of EAC as an ASEAN plus Six-based community that would be distinct from the APT and open to future inclusion of the United States.27 In order to achieve this goal, a great deal of Japanese policy-making was devoted to strengthen relations with India and like-minded U.S. partners (such as Australia and New Zealand) and secure their full participation to the Community building process. As early as 2002, the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (METI) proposed the “East Asia Free Business Zone Initiative” including Australia, New Zealand and India. From 2005 onwards, Japan’s effort to engage Australia and India in order to counter China’s influence within the new regional arena has continued through the signing of a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements. The timing of the signing of these agreements is quite revealing: in 2005 (the same year the first EAS gathered), the Japan-Australia-U.S. trilateral dialogue started. The Global and Strategic Partnership between India and Japan was signed in 2006. Finally, the Japan-Australia joint Declaration on Security Cooperation (JADSC) – providing an institutional framework for diplomatic and security cooperation on a vast area of issues – was signed in March 2007. Japan’s determination to anchor its contribution to regional integration with the Japan-U.S. alliance seems to also have been confirmed by the decision to participate in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations which was announced by Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko on the occasion of the 2011 APEC summit (Honolulu, 12-13 November). The TPP is not just a complex free trade agreement being negotiated by twelve countries, including some of the world’s fastest growing economies (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam). Along with APEC, this

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ambitious project is an important part of the recently-heralded U.S. strategy aimed at strengthening Washington’s commitment to East Asia as a “Pacific power”.28 This is why Japan’s decision to participate to the negotiations can be considered indicative of the will to comply with U.S. regional plans. From the U.S. perspective, Japan’s access to TPP negotiations is essential: with the Doha round of global trade talk at a standstill, the TPP is imperative. Yet, as it has been argued, the TPP could never become “the linchpin of free trade in the Asia-Pacific region” without Japan’s participation. Japan’s GDP is roughly equal to that of all the other nations combined, except for the United States. As noted by Bernard Gordon, “including Japan would mean that the agreement covered 40 percent of global GDP and add $60 billion to the U.S. export market”.29 Finally, it is worth mentioning that Japan’s convergence with the United States on this trade issue could not exactly be taken for granted. Undoubtedly, the EU-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement (entered in force on 1 July 2011) and the signing of U.S.-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement (October 2011) acted as a powerful incentive. However, given the massive domestic opposition, the extremely troubled internal situation because of the 3.11 triple disaster of 2011 (Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami and meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant) and Japan’s traditionally cautious attitude towards FTAs, the decision to participate to TPP negotiations was rather unexpected.

Conclusion This case-study demonstrates that sixty years after the end of the occupation, Japan is still faithful to the fundamental principle of the Yoshida doctrine (i.e. alignment with the United States), while simultaneously pursuing a more assertive East Asian policy. In this sense, Japan is reconciling Asianism with bilateralism. By supporting the EAS from the very beginning, Japan has deviated from its standard East Asian policy, that is from a policy that subordinated participation to regionalist projects to compliance with the U.S.'s strategic vision of the region. As indicated here, the EAS initiative was not directly opposed to the United States. Yet, since it was originally conceived as a framework for regional cooperation that did not include the United States, it potentially complicated the U.S.’s exercise of power in East Asia. In promoting such an institution, Japan abandoned the “bilateralism-first” diplomatic course that had previously been followed. This shift is particularly evident in comparing Tokyo’s choices in 2005 with those in 1990 and 1997. In 1990 and 1997, Japan retreated from supporting East Asian region-building institutions (notably,

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the East Asia Economic Caucus and the Asian Monetary Fund) in order to comply with beiatsu (American pressures). On the contrary, in 2005 Japan enthusiastically adhered to the EAS proposal, notwithstanding the U.S. tepid welcome of the initiative. In so doing, Tokyo has shifted its strategy more towards East Asia (further demonstrated by Japan’s active engagement in trilateral cooperation with China and South Korea since 1997). Still, Japan’s stance towards the EAS shows that Tokyo has not completely dismissed the default Asian strategy that has predominated since 1952. It would be wrong to view the enthusiastic support of the EAS as an indicator of Tokyo’s will to steer a diplomatic course challenging the central role of the U.S.-Japan alliance, even taking into account the United States having joined the EAS in 2011. The appeals to “open regionalism” and “Japan as a stabilizer”, that were mentioned before, indicate that even in 2005, when the U.S. participation in EAS was far away from being accomplished, Japan conceived its engagement in the EAS in a way fully compatible with the U.S. regional and global interests. Needless to say, these interests also took into account U.S. concerns about the establishment of a China centered East Asia community. In fact, Japan is putting greater emphasis on its ties with Asia, while it is strengthening its relationship with the United States, as the decision to join the TPP confirms. As it has been aptly remarked, “what we are witnessing is not a move away from bilateralism or Asianism, so much as a move towards the simultaneous implementation of multiple strategies”.30 Sixty years later, the new formula of Japan’s East Asian diplomacy is: more Asia and more United States, not more Asia and less United States. There is no trade-off and no contradiction in the Japanese pursuit of these dual policies. Japan just remains faithful to a strategy that it has historically pursued: adaptation to changing power structures of the international system. Adaptation led to alignment with China under the “Chinese world order”, and with the United States in 1952. Now, the task is more challenging. There is no undisputed distribution of power to rely on. This is even more evident in East Asia where there is a sort of “regional interregnum”, to borrow Kenneth Pyle’s words.31 Consistent with this fluctuating scenery, Japan has opted for a double-hedging strategy, that is hedging against the danger of being abandoned by the United States, while minimizing the peril of being excluded from the dividends of East Asian integration. Only time will tell whether this option will be favorable in protecting Japan against the risks of power transition.

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Notes 1 Yoshida Shigeru, Nihon o kettei shita hyakunen [The hundred years that decided Japan] (Tǀkyǀ: Chnjǀ kǀronsha, 2012), p. 123. The term “good loser” is quoted in English in the text. 2 It goes without saying that the Yoshida doctrine is much more complex than suggested by this brief description. See for instance, Richard Samuels, Securing Japan (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 29-59. 3 John Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 4 Glenn D. Hook, Julie Jilson, Christopher W. Hughes and Hugo Dobson, Japan’s International Relations. Politics, Economics and Security (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 24-5 and pp. 162-6. 5 For a comprehensive analysis of the seikei bunri policy, the Fukuda doctrine and Japan-East Asia relations, see ibid., pp. 159-253. 6 ASEAN Plus Three is a regional grouping including the members of ASEAN, plus Japan, China and South Korea. It was established in December 1997 in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, in order to strengthen political and economic cooperation in East Asia. 7 The first part of this section is based on Noemi Lanna, Il Giappone e il nuovo ordine in Asia Orientale. L’altra faccia dell’ascesa della Cina (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2010), pp. 95-7. For Koizumi’s speech, see Koizumi Jun’ichirǀ, “Higashi Ajia no naka no Nihon to ASEAN. Socchokuna pƗtonƗshippu wo motomete” [Japan and ASEAN in East Asia. An Open and Sincere Partnership], 14 January 2002, in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (henceforth MOFA), http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/enzetsu/14/ekoi_0114.html (cited 28 September 2013). 8 See the “Tokyo Declaration for the Dynamic and Enduring Japan-ASEAN Partnership in the New Millennium”, 12 December 2003, in MOFA, http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/ASEAN/year2003/summit/tokyo_dec.pdf (cited 26 September 2013). 9 See Koizumi Jun’ichirǀ, “Atarashii jidai ni muketa atarashii kokuren” [A New United Nations for a New Era], 21 September 2004, in MOFA, http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/enzetsu/16/ekoi_0921.html (cited 28 September 2013). 10 For the full text of the speech, see Asǀ Tarǀ, “Watakushi no Ajia senryaku. Nihon wa Ajia no jissenteki senkusha, Thought Leader taru beshi” [My Asian Strategy. Japan as a de facto Forerunner and Thought Leader], 7 December 2005, in MOFA, http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/enzetsu/17/easo_1207.html. Quotations are taken from the English version of the speech available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm/aso/speech0512.html (cited 27 September 2013). 11 See “Minshutǀ no seiken seisaku Manifesto 2009” [The Democratic Party’s Government Policy], in Minshutǀ, http://www.dpj.or.jp/policies/manifesto2009. Quotations are taken from the English version of the manifesto, available at http://www.dpj.or.jp/english/manifesto/manifesto2009.pdf (cited 28 September 2013).

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On this point, see for instance, the speech held by Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio at the Sixteenth International Conference on the Future of Asia, 20 May 2010, in Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, available at http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/hatoyama/statement/201005/20speech.html (cited 28 September 2013). 13 Hatoyama Yukio, “Ajia e no atarashii komittomento. Higashi Ajia kyǀdǀtai kǀsǀ no jitsugen ni mukete” [A new commitment to Asia. Towards the accomplishment of the project of an East Asia Community], 15 November 2009, in Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/hatoyama/statement/200911/15singapore.html (cited 26 September 2013). 14 Ibid. 15 “History problem” is the term widely used to refer to the controversy over the past that has produced a series of diplomatic crises between Japan and its neighbors, especially South Korea and China. The “textbook issue” (kyǀkasho mondai) and the visits to the Yasukuni shrine are an important part of this problem, which became more acute in the last fifteen years. In particular, visits paid to Yasukuni by the Japanese prime ministers, such as Koizumi Jun’ichirǀ and more recently Abe Shinzǀ, were relevant sources of tension in North-East Asia as the sacred place enshrines not only the souls of the men who have died for Japan, but also the remains of men prosecuted as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. See, for instance, Thomas Berger, “The Politics of memory in Japanese Foreign Relations”, in Japan in International Politics. The Foreign Policies of an Adaptive State, eds. Thomas Berger, Mike Mochizuki and Jitsuo Tsuchiyama (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007), pp. 179-211. 16 Terada Takashi, “‘Tomo ni ayumi tomo ni susumu’. Shin no chiikishugi no setsuritsu o” [“Lets’ walk together, let’s progress together”. The establishment of a new regionalism], Gaikǀ Forum, no. 207 (2005), p. 36. 17 On this point, see, for instance, Jae Cheol Kim, “Politics of Regionalism in East Asia: the Case of the East Asia Summit”, Asian Perspective 34, no. 3 (2010), pp. 113-36. 18 Hook, Jilson, Hughes and Dobson, eds., Japan’s International Relations, p. 212. 19 Ibid., pp. 224-5. 20 See Kimura Fukunari, “Jijitsujǀ no keizai tǀgǀ to nisen nijnjnen no higashi Ajia” [De facto economic integration and East Asia in 2020], Gaikǀ Forum, no. 207 (2005), p. 30. 21 Kohara Masahiro, Higashi Ajia kyǀdǀtai. Kyǀdaika suru Chnjgoku to Nihon no senryaku [East Asia Community. China's growth and Japan's strategies] (Tǀkyǀ: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 2005), pp. 143-206. 22 Tanaka Hitoshi, “Nijnjisseiki Nihon gaikǀ no senryakuteki kadai” [Strategic issues for Japan's diplomacy in the 21st century], Gaikǀ Forum, no. 207 (2005), p. 13. 23 Hatoyama, “Ajia e no atarashii komittomento”. 24 The three conditions were: being full ASEAN dialogue partners; having substantive relations with ASEAN; being a signatory to the “Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia” (signed in Bali in 1976). The last condition was

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especially problematic for the United States as the procedure for peaceful dispute settlement provided by the treaty was perceived as potentially conflicting with U.S. security strategies in the region. 25 “Higashi Ajia kyǀdǀtai kǀchiku ni kakawaru waga kuni no kangaekata” [Our Country’s Position on the Building-process of an East Asia Community], in MOFA, http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/eas/pdfs/eas_02.pdf (cited 23 September 2013). 26 Asǀ, “Watakushi no Ajia senryaku”. 27 On this point, see Hook, Jilson, Hughes and Dobson, Japan’s International Relations, p. 213; Terada Takashi, "The Origins of ASEAN+6 and Japan's Initiatives: China's Rise and the Agent–structure Analysis”, The Pacific Review 23, no. 1 (2010), pp. 75-89. 28 Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century”, Foreign Policy, 11 October 2011, available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_century (cited 23 September 2013). 29 Bernard Gordon, “Trading Up in Asia. Why the United States Needs the TransPacific Partnership”, Foreign Affairs 91, no. 4 (2012), pp. 18-9. 30 Hook, Jilson, Hughes and Dobson, Japan’s International Relations, p. 393. 31 Kenneth Pyle, Japan Rising. The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), p. 32.

THE EMPEROR AND KISSING: JAPANESE CINEMA UNDER THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION CENSORSHIP KYOKO HIRANO

Introduction1 The sixtieth anniversary of the end of the U.S. occupation in Japan provides an occasion to examine the influence of American censorship and values on Japan. Take me, for example—a female academic and curator, born in Japan six weeks after the termination of the occupation. I am clearly a product of postwar democracy, having enjoyed freedom of speech, equal rights for women, and the renunciation of war, as proclaimed in the 1946 Constitution of Japan. However, these values have been challenged by conservative Japanese forces, creating tensions that continue to the present. While women in Japan have made progress in social, political, economic and cultural spheres, conservatives have demanded that equal rights for women be revoked. They have also called for an amendment to the constitution that would enable Japan to officially rearm herself.2 In terms of freedom of speech, questions have been raised about whether the Japanese have practiced it consistently in the true sense. In 1999, the Japanese government hurriedly legalized the national anthem, Kimigayo, and the national flag, hinomaru. Both are considered symbols of Japanese pre-war and wartime militarism: Kimigayo praises the rule of the emperors, and hinomaru’s design of a red circle in white background evokes an image of Japanese military aggression in Asia. Until then, the Ministry of Education’s enforcement of singing Kimigayo and hailing to hinomaru at public schools had been occasionally protested by school principals and teachers. However, after their legalization, protests have been much contained. Critics regard this government action as having lacked appropriate democratic process.3 Discussion of the emperor and the imperial system has concentrated

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primarily on whether the 1947 Imperial Law should be changed so that a female would be allowed the imperial throne, but there has not been much discussion of the possibility of abolishing the imperial system itself. In fact, after a male heir was born to the imperial family in 2006, no serious discussion of the imperial system has emerged in the national debate.4 Facing this attitude of the Japanese people’s indifference or unwillingness to discuss serious matters, one must wonder if the Japanese fully recognize the importance of freedom of speech, which was not legally protected until the end of World War II. Furthermore, since the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and its subsequent nuclear meltdown at the power plant in Fukushima, criticism of the government’s nuclear promotional policy has been somewhat muzzled in the Japanese mainstream media. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) which operates the Fukushima nuclear power plant is a major advertising client for media and a large donor to the universities. Their monetary power influences politicians, decision makers of mass media and academia, promoting the idea that nuclear energy is safe and clean. Immediately after the nuclear meltdown, the Japanese mass media mostly featured specialists and scholars who insisted that no immediate danger was expected, while critical views were found only in the Japanese alternative media and foreign news.5 This is another example indicating the extent to which freedom of speech is in crisis. In this article, I will go back to the basic facts of how the U.S. occupation policy reshaped Japan in the field of cinema through its censorship.6 I will focus on the American policy regarding the Japanese emperor and sexual expression, the themes which most highlight the political and cultural conflicts between American censors and Japanese filmmakers.

Film Censorship Policy: The Dual System In their effort to democratize Japan, the U.S. occupation authorities liberated the Japanese film industry from repressive pre-war and wartime government restrictions. At the same time, they established their own censorship recommending “democratic” subjects and prohibiting “undemocratic” subjects for Japanese filmmakers to pursue. They gave close guidelines in order to accomplish this task by a dual censorship system: the Civil Information and Education (CIE) provided pre-production and post-production censorship and the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) provided post-production censorship.

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The recommended subjects for films included biographies of anti-war activists, freedom fighters and advocates of civil rights and equal rights for women. Kurosawa Akira’s 1946 film, Waga seishun ni kuinashi [No Regrets for Our Youth], addresses the issues of anti-war activism, women’s independence and postwar agricultural reforms and is an excellent example of “democratic film” praised by American censors, Japanese film critics and audiences alike.7 Kissing was also encouraged in the film as a symbol of democracy. Prohibited themes included militarism, feudalistic ideas such as blind obedience to authority figures, the depiction of the inferior status of women, suicide, xenophobia, anti-social behavior including blackmarketeering, substance abuse, prostitution, and—above all—criticism of the occupation, the United States or any of the Allied countries.8

The Portrayal of the Japanese Emperor The portrayal of the Japanese emperor in film created a unique dilemma for the American censors who were caught between their reformist mission and the imperatives of post-World War II Cold War politics. This dilemma was most vividly revealed in the process of banning the 1946 documentary Nippon no higeki [The Japanese Tragedy], made by leftist director Kamei Fumio which suggested that Emperor Hirohito, among others, bore responsibility for the war crimes. Before and during the war, all discussion about the emperor and imperial system had been strictly controlled by the Japanese government. No criticism of the emperors, imperial family and system was allowed. In film, this measure was carried out to an extreme degree both visually and in dialogue. For example, images of chrysanthemums or of similar flower patterns were severely censored because the chrysanthemum was the exclusive emblem of the royal family. Censors went to the extent of counting the number of petals in any chrysanthemum-like flower on the screen, including kimono worn by actresses. The point was to make sure that no chrysanthemum-like flower in a film had sixteen petals, the number in the emperor’s symbol. Believing that worship of the emperor was at the core of Japanese militarism and fascism, American occupiers wanted to abolish his worship. For the first time in modern Japanese history, discussion among the people about the emperor was permitted, including the topics relating to the imperial system, the emperor’s role and his war responsibility.

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Again, the Americans allowed such discussion as long as it did not venture into criticism of the U.S. occupation. However, the portrayal of the emperor soon became a controversial subject. Kamei’s film, Nippon no higeki, traces Japanese military aggression in Asia from the 1930s to the end of World War II, and it uses wartime footage, still photographs, drawings, maps, and narration. With the encouragement of American censor David Conde of CIE, the film was completed in the spring of 1946. CIE passed the film immediately, although CCD delayed it for several weeks. Some censors at CCD found the film objectionable because it condemned dozens of war-promoting politicians and war-profiting businessmen and suggested that Emperor Hirohito was a war criminal. However, the censors who valued the importance of freedom of speech prevailed, and the film passed military censorship in June 1946. Because of its politically delicate subject, Nippon no higeki could not find a commercial distributor. Eventually, the film was shown independently; gradually, its reputation began to draw larger audiences. In August 1946 the CCD suddenly notified the film’s producers that the film was banned and that all of its prints would be confiscated in a week. Astounded producers demanded an explanation from the censors, but one was never given. Moreover, the Japanese press could not cover the story because mentioning the occupation’s censorship practices over Japanese media, films, theaters and personal correspondence was forbidden. However, the filmmakers presumed that the film was banned because it suggested that Emperor Hirohito was a war criminal. According to occupation censorship documents, Nippon no higeki was banned because of its visual images of the emperor suggesting his responsibility for the war. One particular scene started with the image of militarists being summoned by order of the Allied Forces to the Sugamo Prison in Tokyo where war criminals were imprisoned. A newspaper headline stated, “Kill People’s Enemy!” and the narration declared that many war criminals were still at-large. The visual switched to a newspaper clipping with pictures of prosecuted war criminals, while the voice-over argued that many prominent wartime officials and opinion leaders had become pacifists. A shot of the emperor in wartime military uniform appeared, gradually dissolving into a shot of the emperor in civilian clothes after the war. The voice over asserted, “We must think seriously, otherwise, we will be taken again. No, already, people have begun to pursue war criminals”. A

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newspaper headline stated, “The imperial family should be charged for their war responsibility”. The scene shifted to a mass meeting in Tokyo, demanding the prosecution of war criminals. The narration continued, “As the testimonies against war criminals were introduced, a huge list of as many as one thousand criminals was presented”. This grouping of images and voice-over communicated Kamei’s basic suspicion that the postwar trend toward democracy was something as superficial and fashionable as changing clothes. He also noted that before the war, the emperor’s portraits were not allowed to show his stooping back because he had to be perfect in every sense, physically and morally. Conde, who was widely believed to be a Communist Party member or sympathizer by both Americans and Japanese, resigned from the occupation government, voluntarily or as a result of being pressured, because of the banning of Nippon no higeki. This case revealed that there was a conflict within the occupation government between the enthusiastic New Dealers who wanted to radically reform Japanese politics and economics and the conservatives who considered communism to be a serious threat to the stability of the U.S. and its allies, most importantly newborn Japan. Initially, the labor movement in the Japanese film industry was encouraged by the American occupation policy. However, it was gradually regarded as dangerous by increasingly anti-communist American bureaucracy, its Japanese representatives and film studio heads. The Red Scare climaxed in the summer of 1948 with the suppression of the third labor strike at Japan’s largest film studio, Tǀhǀ, and the subsequent “red purge” targeted at the Japanese film industry. This was in correspondence with the suppression of labor and leftist movements in Hollywood and by the U.S. Committee on Un-American Activities. The Conference of Studio Unions in Hollywood went into a strike for eight moths until October 1945 when police intervened. Their second strike, which was more violent, occurred in the fall of 1946, and certainly alarmed the American studio heads to raise fear for the labor movement.9 Leftists and their associates in Hollywood came under fierce attack from the House Un-American Activities Committee by 1947 and news of the testimony of American stars and directors at its hearings was reported in Japanese film magazines.10 Although the emperor’s exact role in the war must still be explored, Americans were mistaken in thinking that the Japanese peoples’ antiemperor feeling was communist because the people who were opposed to the emperor or the imperial system included non-communists.11 Although

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the members of the Japan Communist Party may have been most vocal and stringent, much larger population suffered the oppressive prewar and wartime imperial system. The Japanese imperial government’s ideological control and war aggression in Asia were implemented under the name of the emperor, causing dissatisfaction towards the imperial system, if not the emperor himself, among people to some extent.12 This film censorship case exposed the American Cold War mentality and anti-communist sentiment in the early stage of the occupation period, barely one year after the end of World War II. It is interesting to note that this took place before the turning point of the occupation’s policy from an idealistic period of radical reform to a more conservative anti-labor, red purge period which was considered to be in February 1947, when General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), prohibited a nation-wide strike in order to maintain the country’s economic stability. Kamei, along with the film’s producer Iwasaki Akira, were two of the very few Japanese filmmakers labeled as subversive, anti-war activists and imprisoned by the wartime government. Iwasaki was a Communist Party member, active in proletarian film movements in the 1930s, while Kamei studied film and art in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Ironically, the same filmmakers suffered oppression for their political ideas under both Japanese and American rules. In late August 1946, a few days after the confiscation of all the prints of Nippon no higeki, producer Iwasaki was attacked in his home by a man carrying a Japanese sword. Although Iwasaki’s face was slashed, the perpetrator was never arrested. Rumors maintained that right-wingers incensed by the portrayal of His Imperial Majesty in Iwasaki’s film were behind this incident. Iwasaki continued to be one of the most influential leftist film critics, while Kamei continued to be a rare example of a principled artist with foresight, fully engaged in political documentary filmmaking.

Kissing Films The year 1946 saw another interesting phenomenon in the Japanese film industry. Because the pre-war and wartime government viewed kissing as a symbol of Western decadence, kissing scenes in foreign films were eliminated. Later, as the war became more desperate, any amorous

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expression or pursuit of personal happiness on the screen was also forbidden as too frivolous for wartime by the Japanese censors. Women were not allowed to wear flashy attire or decorative accessories, while any valuables were ordered to be donated to the war effort. Women wore simple, functional clothing and modest hairstyles. Wartime films promoted this kind of austere imagery as an expression of nationalistic values. The repression of sexuality and self-expression ended upon Japan’s defeat in World War II. American censors further began to pressure Japanese filmmakers, specifically demanding that Japanese make films with kissing scenes. This was a strange and curious request: some Japanese protested that as the Japanese do not kiss in public, it is not appropriate to include kissing in Japanese films. The American censors insisted that such thinking is the evil source of the so-called “Pearl Harbor mentality” which meant that “Japanese tend to do things sneakily. They should do things openly”.13 The demand came more as an order than as a suggestion. Thus, two major studios, Shǀchiku and Daiei, simultaneously released films on 23 May 1946 which included kissing. Directed by Sasaki Yasushi, Shǀchiku’s film, Hatachi no seishun [Twenty-Year-Old Youth], included a few kissing scenes.14 These landmark scenes were shot in an atmosphere of tension. The female star Ikuno Michiko was said to have used a small piece of wax paper or gauze on her lips or perhaps a cotton ball inside her mouth to avoid direct contact, probably for sanitary as well as moral reasons. The other film, Daiei’s Aru yo no seppun [A Certain Night’s Kiss], directed by Chiba Yasuki, actually included the word “kiss” in the title. However, it hid the climactic moments through the use of an umbrella which covered the whole screen. Some of the audience members felt betrayed, while others understood that this was a typical Japanese style of euphemism. Kissing films immediately began to flood the market. Newspapers and magazines from this period included both the pros and cons of kissing films. Defenders advocated kissing as a contribution to the liberation of Japanese films and thoughts, asserting that the portrayal and freedom of sexual expression was healthy. Critics argued that kissing films were the product of commercialism and fashion; actors were unskillful and awkward; kissing was not a Japanese habit; not hygienic, immoral, aesthetically unsuitable for Japanese physiognomy, and so on. Kissing films doubtlessly encouraged the freer expression of sexuality on the Japanese screen. In the field of literature, so-called kasutori zasshi,

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pulp magazines exclusively dedicated to sexual exploration, began to saturate the market. In theater, nudity shows entitled “frame shows”, in which semi-nude young women posed in front of a frame on the stage, began to be produced. The Nikutaiha or the Flesh School which advocated the importance of physical desire and one’s awareness of his/her physicality began to appear in all fields of literature, film and theater, becoming an immediate and smashing success for its sensational portrayal of eroticism. The kissing films were cultural products of the postwar liberation of artistic expression and anarchistic ideas due to social and cultural chaos. At the same time, they were also commercial products avidly exploited by producers. In addition, there was an element of arrogance in the cultural imperialism of the American conquerors who enforced their own cultural values and standards, while ignoring indigenous cultural habits. Nonetheless, it must have been a welcome imposition from the point of view of Japanese filmmakers because any kind of restriction is harmful for artistic expression. Indeed, the American liberation of Japanese sexuality which had been under the yoke of the Japanese totalitarian government opened the possibilities of individual freedom and personal happiness. Japanese filmmaking during this period was shaped by political, cultural and ideological conflicts on many levels. Most ironically, in trying hard to democratize Japan using their own censorship, Americans were engaging in an intrinsically undemocratic philosophy. Eventually, idealistic and enthusiastic New Dealers who wanted to radically reform Japan were won out by more conservative red-hunters whose priority was to protect American interests in international politics. Nonetheless, American interest in promoting its culture in the form of kissing has survived and thrived on the Japanese screen ever since.

Notes 1

The author would like to thank Duccio Basosi, Rosa Caroli, Roberta Novielli, Alide Cagidemetrio, and Rosemarie Hester for their inspiration and generous assistance. 2 The conservatives’ opposition to the constitution of Japan has targeted mainly two articles: Article 24 protecting equal rights for women, in the belief that allowing women to work outside of home contributes to Japan’s shrinking population; and article 9 preventing Japan from having military forces. In reality, in 1950 upon the breakout of the Korean War, the U.S. requested the Japanese

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government to create the Police Reserve Army, which later became the Defense Force in 1954, allowing Japan to militarily protect herself from enemy’s attacks. The interpretation of this definition has been controversial, e.g., when the Japanese government decided to send the “peace keeping operation” troops to conflict areas abroad, some critics opposed to it as stretching the definition. 3 In 1999, playwright and theater director Sakate Yǀji presented the theatrical piece Tennǀ to seppun [The Emperor and Kissing], based on my book of the same title (Tokyo: Sǀshisha, 1998), originally published in English as Mr. Smith Goes To Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation 1945-1952 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1992). Sakate brilliantly contextualizes the influence of the U.S. occupation policy in the postwar Japan by juxtaposing the Japanese filmmakers in 1946 and high school students belonging to a cine club in a local city in 1999 under the controversy of the legalization of the national anthem and flag. Sakate’s work received major Japanese theatrical awards of the year including Yomiuri Theater Awards and a special citation in Asahi Shinbun. 4 Serious discussion of whether to change the 1947 Imperial Law allowing only male descendants to the throne was averted when Prince Hisashito was born to the younger son of the current Emperor Akihito, Prince Akishino, in September 2006. This was the first male descendent born into the Japanese imperial family after 41 years when Akishino was born. 5 Kyoko Hirano, "311: Documenting A Catastrophe As A National Experience", Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 18, no. 2 (2014), pp. 37890. 6 I conducted research on the original forms of the censored materials stored at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and Suitland, Maryland; the Gordon Prange Collection of the University of Maryland; the MacArchur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia; and those in microfiche form at the National Diet Library in Tokyo. These materials and film magazine in Japanese and English translation were submitted to the CIE (Civil Information and Education) and CCD (Civil Censorship Detachment). The materials also include the censors’ conference records, directives, memoranda and correspondence. More detailed discussion accompanying quotations of appropriate sources should be referred to Hirano, Mr. Smith Goes To Tokyo. As for other notable studies on the U.S. occupation film policy, Tanikawa Takeshi’s Amerika eiga to senryǀ seisaku [American Films and the Occupation Policy] (Kyǀto: Kyǀto daigaku gakujutsu shuppankai, 2002) discusses the U.S. occupation film policy on American films released in Japan; and Yamamoto Taketoshi, Ishii Hitoshi, Tanikawa Takeshi and Harada Ken’ichi, eds., Senryǀki zasshi shiryǀ taikei [Anthology of Magazine Materials During the Occupation] (Tǀkyǀ: Iwanami shoten, 2008-09), vol. I to V, select and comment on important magazine articles during the occupation period in cultural spheres including film.

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Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation Censorship

Kurosawa dramatized the 1933 Kyoto University Incident, a notorious pre-war case of the government persecution of liberal professor Takigawa Yukitoki. His dismissal was not resisted by the university administration, leading to wide protest from other professors and students. Kurosawa created a quasi-fictional male character Noge as Prof. Takigawa’s student, modeled after anti-war journalist Ozaki Hotsumi who was arrested and executed in 1944 as an enemy spy. The director also created a fictional female character Yukie as Prof. Takigawa’s daughter who falls in love with Noge. Her strong will to pursue her ideal, her individualism, and her dedication to farming communities gave striking impression to the audiences of the time. 8 See John Dower, Embracing Defeat. Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), pp. 426-32. 9 Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), pp. 258-260; Janet Staiger’s chapter on “The Labor-Force, Financing and the Mode of Production”, in The Classic Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960, eds. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 10 Senoo Atsushi featured a series of articles on Hollywood and HUAC in film magazine Kinema Junpǀ, no. 20 (December – III, 1947), no. 26 (February – II, 1948) and no. 27 (February – III, 1948). 11 Once in a while, the discussion on Emperor Hirohito’s role in World War II has come out as a national debate. For example, in 1988, Nagasaki City mayor Motoshima Hitoshi made a statement that, as a former soldier who was trained by the Japanese military, he believes that Emperor Hirohito bears responsibility in war, leading to a wide range of discussion, both critical and supportive of his view and his courage to express his opinion in public. He became a survivor of gun violence by a right-winger two years later, but was re-elected as mayor and served until 1995 for four terms consecutively. As for notable publications on Emperor Hirohito’s role in World War II, the Japanese translation of Herbert P. Bix’s Pulitzer Prize awarded book, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins, 2000) was published as Shǀwa tennǀ [Showa Emperor] in two volumes translated by Okabe Makio, Kawashima Takane and Nagai Hitoshi, and supervised by Yoshida Yutaka (Tǀkyǀ: Kǀdansha, 2002); and Chiba Kei, Amaterasu to tennǀ: Seiji shinboru no kindaishi [Amaterasu and the Emperor: The Modern History of Political Symbols] (Tǀkyǀ: Yoshikawa kǀbunkan, 2011) discusses the historical evolution of how the imagery of the Japanese emperors has been taken advantage of and exploited by the Japanese politicians and military. 12 Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 302-18. 13 Sasaki Yasushi quoted in Koike Tamio, “Geinǀshi o aruku [Tracing the History of Entertainment]”, Asahi Shinbun, 4 January 1986. 14 Shinoda Masahiro’s 1984 film Setouchi shǀnen yakynjdan [MacArthur’s Children] portrayed life on a small island during the occupation period and

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included a scene of school children at a local theater cheering at the kissing scenes in Hatachi no seishun.

TOWARDS THE EMERGENCE OF MASS FASHION IN POST-WAR JAPAN: ASSESSING THE NATURE AND THE EXTENT OF THE AMERICAN INFLUENCE FEDERICA CARLOTTO

The end of World War II paved the way to an important new era in the history of the Japanese costume marked by the completion of yǀsǀka, i.e. the adoption of the Western-style clothing. Even though it had already started in the Meiji period (1868-1912), yǀsǀka continued to be a limited phenomenon all through the early 20th century. This was mainly due to defective know-how in Western tailoring and some cultural resistance, which was fostered by the pre-war and wartime ideological propaganda against foreignness. Soon after the war, an increasing interest towards the Euro-American way of living and the development of a domestic apparel industry created the conditions for Western fashion to flourish in Japan. As early as the 1960s, Japan had caught up with Western countries: not only had Japan realized yǀsǀka, but the process itself came to be structured in a mass fashion system, with a considerable quantity of diversified clothing items or accessories being manufactured and made available to a large number of consumers through a refined distribution chain and media. This chapter addresses the remarkable changes which occurred in Japanese clothing styles and practices between the years 1945-60, with reference to those elements in the areas of production, communication and consumption which would play a pivotal role in the emergence of a mass fashion system. Specific analytical attention will subsequently be paid to the American influence on it. Therefore, the chapter adopts a two-fold approach, first outlining this intermingling in action on the dawn of the post-war Japanese fashion scenario and, in the second part, questioning the weight and role of some of its events, factors, and trends. Though predictable in its historical occurrence – especially considering the seven-year occupation of Japan by the Supreme Command of Allied

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Powers (SCAP) –, the American legacy in post-war Japanese fashion has not yet been fully thematized in academic discourse. The ensuing pages are thus meant to provide preliminary thoughts, remarks and viewpoints to assess the phenomenon.

The emergence of the Japanese mass fashion system 1945-49: Subsistence fashion After the surrender, Japan experienced a few years of “subsistence fashion”. Some 70 percent of the textile industries equipment had been burned down.1 Furthermore, in order to receive food supplies, Japan was forced to export its best quality textiles, saving for domestic production only inferior quality thread (garabǀ).2 In 1947, the government issued the Regulation on Cloth Rationing (Iryǀ haikynj kisoku), which favoured wholesale dealers with a yearly turnover of five million yen and registered cloth retailers (toritasukai tǀrokuten).3 In the same year, the Plan for Demand and Supply (Jyukynj kikaku) could guarantee the final consumer just 37.5 grams of sewing thread, one yard of repairing fabric, one towel or tenugui, one pair of socks or tabi, twelve cloth-ration coupons.4 Yet this restraint notwithstanding, tailors and designers created associations – Tǀkyǀ TerƗzu Kurabu (TTC, Tokyo Tailors Club) in 1947; Nihon DezainƗ Kurabu (NDC, Japanese Designers Club) in 1948 – for the promotion of their activity, and organized fashion shows, exhibitions and skill contests both for tailors and wholesale producers. In 1948, an exhibition to sell (tenji hanbai) was arranged by the Union of Ready-made Clothing Wholesale Manufacturers in the department stores of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.5 The distance to cover to reach the average consumer continued to be substantial: besides the restriction imposed by the cloth-ration coupons’ measure, Japanese people could not afford to buy clothes or fabrics. In a period in which clothes were valued “more than precious stones”,6 many had to sell them on the black market in order to make money. Still, Japanese women could not help feeling sorry for their “[…] torn monpe [women’s work pants], and dirty, half-rotten blouses […]”.7 Among them only pan pan girls, the prostitutes serving the occupation Army, could afford to dress in Western “military style”, consisting of a jacket or coat with shoulder pads (ikari gata), long skirt, stockings and platform heels, which they received as regalia from their GI clients or purchased on the black market.8 For all the others, it was a do-it-yourself matter. In 1946 two famous Tokyo dress-making schools, Bunka Fukusǀ

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Gakuin and Doresu MekƗ Jogakuin, re-opened. In a short time, they garnered thousands of students, ushering in the opening of another 1500 schools throughout the country by 1948.9 Almost instantly, the demand for sewing machines rapidly increased and stimulated the development of the first major domestic industry after wartime weapons. Emphasizing the stark contrast between the two types of product, Yamaoka Ken’ichi, the establisher of one of the first Japanese sewing machine companies, defined it as the “symbol of peace” and reconstruction.10 As textbooks or as a source of inspiration for their creation, women and dress-makers could rely on specialized journals (Sǀen, re-issued by Bunka Fukusǀ Gakuin in 1947; Doresu MƝkingu, issued by Doresu MekƗ Jogakuin in 1949) and style-books (Amerikan fashion, 1947; Kǀknjbin Amerikan Sutairu, 1947; Nichibei Weekly, 1947) introducing the latest trends in American fashion as well as practical hints for all those who wanted “to make a Western-style dress perfectly suitable to their body – whatever the textile be – and stylish”.11 Furoshiki (wrapping clothes), curtains and old kimonos thus turned into Western garments, and Japanese women continued to be the main dress-producer of this period.

1950-55: “Mǀdo wo anata ni” (Fashion to you) In the wake of the recovery stimulated by the American request for supplies during the Korean War, the textile industry could finally diversify into the production of both natural and synthetic yarns and fabrics: cotton, rayon, vinylon, and nylon.12 Seminars, summer courses, professional testing for apparel workers and skill contests spread through Japan: sponsored by publishers and announced through the city with special cars, they were often honoured by a visit of the members of the Imperial family or by representatives of the governmental institution. At the same time, the distribution system began to function: the regulations on cloth rationing were abolished in 1951, and by 1955 the number of retailers in Tokyo reached 15,000.13 Most remarkable of all was a consistent refinement of communication with the general public. Starting in 1951, the meeting of the Tokyo Society for Fashion Management, gathering fashion journalists and apparel entrepreneurs, set as its main topic of discussion the working-out of advertising strategies.14 Ordinary people were soon invited to create catch phrases for textile products, posters appeared in trains and shops,15 and advertisements in magazines increased their appeal thanks to pictures and illustrations.

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Another powerful means of promotion was the fashion show. Until that moment, fashion shows had been either exhibitions for experts or performances on stage. From the 1950s, fashion shows were re-designed as a specific entertainment event with the models walking on a catwalk, such as the floor-show held by NDC in 1952, or the Christian Dior fashion show hosted by Bunka Fukusǀ Gakuin in 1953. Moreover, an article published in Asahi Shinbun on 3 December 1955 announced the opening, in the area of Dǀgenzaka (Shibuya, Tokyo), of the first café offering drinks and fashion shows five times per day. By the autumn of 1954, 230 fashion shows were being held in Tokyo and 600 in the rest of Japan.16 In order to make the fashion show a bodily performance of a collection’s allure rather than a mere display, in 1951 the journal Eibun Mainichi Shinbun advertised a casting for prospective models to be trained in the basics of walking and posing.17 One of the most famous models of that time was Itǀ Kinuko. Her well-proportioned figure (hattǀshin, i.e. with the head being 1/8th of the body’s height), helped to promote not only elegance in wearing dresses, but also an aesthetic of the body: in 1953, Itǀ obtained third place at the Miss Universe beauty contest, and she also appeared in advertisements for beauty products. If shows were meant to represent the magic aura of fashion, movies made the Japanese appreciate it “in a context”. Furthermore, by dreaming in front of the screen, spectators also learnt how to recreate the movies’ atmosphere in real life. It was the beginning of the so called shine mǀdo (cinema mode): Japanese women wore red shoes after the release of the English movie Red Shoes (1950), covered their head with a scarf in the machikomaki way like Machiko, the heroine of Kimi no na wa (What is your name?) (1953), and emulated Audrey Hepburn’s short cut (Itarian boi katto) in Roman Holiday (1954).18 The engagement between cinema and fashion soon became intimate and carefully articulated: actors were hired as male models for fashion shows and contests,19 and the apparel maker Tokyo Style released the shinema doresu (cinema dress), to be sold together with Japanese actresses’ bromides.20

1956-60: Abundance, pluralism, neophilia By the second half of the 1950s, Japanese fashion was definitely heading along the path of abundance and diversity. Textile companies put effort in the production of synthetic fibres. Due to their versatility in use, durability and comfort, synthetic fibres like acetate and polyester had a wide-range of applications: advertising Tetron (a branded fabric made

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from polyester and rayon) in 1959, the chemical manufacturer Toray proudly stated that, with the exception of baby clothing, Tetron could clothe the entire population of 87 million Japanese.21 The abundance of available textiles came to intertwine with the variety of styles – particularly in women’s fashion – which were arriving from Paris. After seven years of variations mainly based on the 1947 New Look line, from 1954 Christian Dior began to offer a different silhouette every single season: the H line in the autumn of 1954, the A line in the spring of 1955, the Y line in the autumn of the same year, and so on.22 Japanese fashion journalists were eager and obsequious followers of Dior’s playful inventiveness, and their regular reports on the latest Parisian trends helped reinforce among the Japanese the sense of a regularized neophilia, i.e. the seasonally-based celebration of change. This proclivity for novelty was reflected on a wider social level with the emergence of youth as a new category to dress. There already existed different models and lines according to the wearer’s age, but in this period Japanese youth took over mainstream fashion and, drawing some stylistic hints from the appearance of the post-war borderline subjects such as yakuza and pan pan prostitutes, they functioned as active bricoleurs in creating their own distinctive look. Girls played with the circular skirt of Dior’s 1947 Corolla Line elaborating the “parachute style” (rakkasan sutairu), with the skirt swelled by multilayered nylon petticoats, or with Hepburn’s ballet flats and Capri trousers, which evolved into mid-calf trousers. Dressed in those outfits, they could move easily when dancing rockabilly or mambo. Following the make-up of domestic calypso icon Hamamura Michiko, some of them started wearing mascara, eyeliner and lipstick, and kept long hair in the Latin-Caribbean fashion. On the other hand, boys deconstructed the serious three-piece suit and used mainly patterned shirts, thin neckties and slim trousers. The yakuza Hawaiian shirts (Aroha shatsu) with sunglasses and hair cut in the “Shintarǀ style” as shown in the movie Taiyǀ no kisetsu (Season of the sun, l955), became the uniform look of a distinct fashion tribe: the Taiyǀ zoku.23 Likewise, the leather jacket, the scarf and half length boots served as the visual identifier for the “thunder tribe” motorcycle gang (Kaminari zoku).24 Together with specific practices of aggregation í music concerts, dance parties, motorbike rides í these juvenile “new looks” signified the social existence of youth beyond the mere chronological span between childhood and adulthood.

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Fashioning the post-war Japanese fashion: the American contribution Was the U.S. really influential? As previously mentioned, scholars examining the course of clothing history in post-war Japan have often neglected to single out the American legacy as a self-standing topic of discussion. Their work, however, still gives a glimpse of this legacy in the way they frame and present the American resonance in the unfolding of Japanese fashion. From a stylistic viewpoint, it is generally acknowledged that Japan was able to secure emancipation from the U.S. in a short lapse of time.25 As a matter of fact, the “military style” which reached Japan along with the American occupation army had a deep impact on the actual realization of yǀsǀka. The introduction of Dior’s “New Look” in 1948, however, would make Japan turn its attention to Parisian haute couture as the reference for mainstream fashion, leaving the U.S. in the following years to provide icons (James Dean, Elvis Presley, Audrey Hepburn) and styles (“Aibi look”) just for pop trends or casual looks. In documenting the rapid shift from the eager absorption of the “military style” to the “period of inclination towards Parisian mode” (Pari mǀdo shikǀki),26 Chimura Michio and Nakayama Chiyo emphasize the American role, pointing out that the U.S. also served as a valuable gobetween for the transmission of the European vogue.27 The New Look, in fact, arrived in Japan via the U.S., where the Corolla skirt created by Dior for upper class ladies spread among American girls as the swing skirt. Together with the pony-tail, the swing skirt came to be part of one of the first outfits for the young, the so called “1950s style”. This diversion in the Parisian fashion route to Japan had some repercussions on the way Japanese received it: in Japan, the New Look was accepted partially as Dior’s style, partially as the American 1950’s style. In any case, it is highly probable that most Japanese women might not have been able to trace it back to Dior’s New Look.28 The transmission of know-how and expertise in the production of synthetic fibres and dressmaking techniques is another outstanding contribution of the U.S. which has been accorded recognition by Japanese historians. With reference to the sewing machine, Nakayama Chiyo stresses the crucial impact its impressive sales figures had in determining from the very early post-war years a “boom of the dressmaking” (yǀsai bnjmu), which in turn would fuel the rapidity of yǀsǀka. Nakayama, nonetheless, clarifies that this resulted not so much from the import of the

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American sewing machines, as from the acquisition of manufacturing skills by Japanese entrepreneurs, who could thus establish their own local production.29 Inoue Masahito tends to downgrade American pervasiveness, claiming that ordinary Japanese people and professional designers had from the very beginning sharpened their awareness of the French leadership in fashion, and could recognize in the American style the mere “imitation of the French one”.30 Furthermore, in order to provide an accurate interpretation of the post-war yǀsǀka, Inoue takes into account endogenous factors, such as the mobilization system established by the Japanese regime in the 1930s (sǀdǀin taisei) and women’s skills in cloth-sewing. The sǀdǀin taisei was realized in clothing practice through the creation of a “national suit” for men (kokumin fuku), which was made compulsory in 1940. Stretching the uniformity in appearance from the military to the civilian realm, kokumin fuku made Japanese men develop a strong sense of community. At the same time, their standardized bodies help to visually create the image of a national body. Though not directly involved in kokumin fuku practice, Japanese experienced the air raids and shortage of supplies during the wartime, thus facing several issues concerning comfort in dress and rationalization in the use of fabrics. Born out of necessity, comfort and rationalization were subsequently refined through style books and vocational education, finally ripening into a Western dressmaking culture (yǀsai bunka). According to Inoue’s reading, all these diverse factors helped Japanese women and designers to merge the pre-war standardization of the body imposed by kokumin fuku with creative freedom. Their western-style creations, in other words, could thus become a “‘practical lesson’ of democracy” (minshushugi no taitoku) both in terms of equality and diversity.31 .

Fashion and democracy Together with developing a focus on internal continuity as suggested by Inoue, it is also necessary to investigate in the opposite analytical direction, by widening the frame of enquiry and locating the role the U.S. had come to play within the coeval global context. The French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky provides a theoretical reading which is key to interpreting Western fashion evolution based on a precise definition of the term ‘fashion’. Unlike those scholars who consider it just as a mutation in style characterizing all societies in space and time, Lipovetsky describes fashion as a unique historical phenomenon originating in a society where change has been regularized as “a fixed

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law”32 and is considered an absolute and aesthetic value rather than something unpredictable, accidental, or ephemeral. This cultural significance of change is intimately related to the way that societies perceive the past and its authority, i.e. tradition. Lipovetsky agrees with Jean-Gabriel Tarde that, in praising the past and tradition, a community tends naturally to focus mainly on their maintenance at a collective level. Only with the shift of the focus to individuality and the desires of its members, a mental space for the emergence fashion is created.33 From this viewpoint, fashion had its origins in the Western part of Europe starting from the middle of the 14th century, and took on its modern features between the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, with the appearance of haute couture and ready-to-wear systems. Though apparently being poles apart, both haute couture and ready-to-wear were established on a shared basis of originality, regularized novelty and individual taste, expressing this cultural compound in the unique creations of haute couture, or making it available to the masses with ready-to-wear lines. If fashion is an historical phenomenon arising from the gradual blending of individualism, intended as the possibility granted to an individual to be a force for initiative and change, the cult of fantasy and pleasure, and neophilia, the first Western country which fully structured these elements in democratic terms in post-war reality was the U.S.. It was in the U.S. that, from the beginning of the 20th century, the logic of mass production was successfully harmonized with the elitist value of fashion as aesthetic individuality and passion for change. By the 1930s, a considerable quantity of diversified and high-quality articles were able to reach, both virtually and materially, a large mass of consumers through a distribution network and visual media: advertisements for ready-to-wear clothing items were published in the American version of Vogue, wellknown designers started up their own ready-to-wear collections, and instore shops hosted the clothing items worn by Hollywood actresses in their movies.34 During the invasion of France by German military forces, the U.S. was also able to free itself from Paris haute couture dictatorship. Even New York City Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia got involved in the struggle for the independence of American fashion: with his support, retailers and fashion journalists actively promoted the name of talented national designers. By the time the U.S. intervened in World War II, fashion consumption had assumed a patriotic flavour, as a tribute to the military effort.35

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As Mayor LaGuardia had expected, while in the post-war period Paris formally came back to occupy a prominent position in the fashion world, the American vision of fashionability as something available to all, the glamorous way of consuming fashion through images and movies, and the existence of a wealthy mass market, established the U.S. as its arbiter. French fashion acknowledged this state of affairs from 1947, when Dior visited the United States to receive the Neiman Marcus Award. It was the American press that dubbed Dior’s collection the “New Look”, and its success in the United States was accurately planned by department buyers and the media in order to seize the American fashion market. On the other hand, from 1949 the maison Dior itself decided to “go mass”, and agreed to sell patterns of collections and licenses for a large-scale production of stockings and neckties.36 Meanwhile, the victory over the Axis powers legitimated the U.S. to intervene in the political, economical and social recovery of both Italy and Japan, which also extended to the field of fashion. In Italy, the Marshall Plan helped the local textile industry and designers to start again, providing a friendly market for consumption. Already by the beginning of the 1950s, newly-created Italian fashions were targeting wealthy Americans or the Hollywood stars working at Cinecittà studios with appealing hand-made leather goods and high quality ready-to-wear goods. During the occupation years in Japan, the U.S. supplied the Japanese with “first aid clothing”, essential dress-making materials or sewing thread.37 It also offered a sophisticated model of the mass fashion system based on technological advancement, where the cycle of production, communication and circulation of clothing items was rationally and bureaucratically segmented in different phases managed by different professional actors with particular specialization. The Japanese textile companies acquired from the U.S. the technological know-how and the licences for the production of rayon, acetate and acrylic. In addition, professionals in the clothing industry travelled to Japan, upon request of General Head Quarters (GHQ), to hold conferences on the American situation, and to visit fashion schools and factories.38 Together with the textile and clothing industry, the U.S. also promoted fashionability in clothing, by supporting Japanese designers: such was the goal of the Tina Leser prize, a competition organized by the American designer Tina Leser and sponsored by Pan American Airlines from 1949 to 1953, where a selection of Japanese creations were sent to the United States to be evaluated by Tina Leser herself.39

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If the aristocratic allure of Paris beckoned to some Japanese designers, many others turned instead to the open and dynamic fashion reality of the United States, designing costumes for the Hollywood movies.40 Besides offering the concrete structural example of a mass fashion system, the U.S. helped Japan also in formulating its cultural bases. Though individuality and novelty had been the motifs underpinning the clothing styles and practises of chǀnin during the Edo (1603-1867) period and moga during the Taishǀ (1912-26) period,41 in the reality of post-war Japan these aspects came dramatically to the fore. After the surrender Japanese people were freed from the encompassing and totalitarian ideology of the kokutai (national essence), but they were left as individuals to deal with their own nikutai, their basic psychophysical needs. Without the “chrysanthemum and the sword”, in other words, the Japanese experienced a void which needed to be filled. This sense of void could either lead to decadence as a “provocative challenge to old orthodoxies”,42 or to materialism in the form of an appetite for instant happiness, as demonstrated by the yakuza men or the runners of the black market bargaining the three sacred regalia of the Japanese Great Empire for other material ones: aloha shirts, nylon belts, and rubber-soled shoes.43 The U.S. helped feed this appetite for fashion with well-packed sensorial dreams clued with a possible reality. Seeing pan pan girls and the wives of the upper echelons in the occupation Army in their “military style” attire, listening to the radio-news about the latest American fashion trends, or watching movies, Japanese women were able to give a concrete shape to their desire of a better appearance. More influential were the first style-books imported directly from the United States or reproduced by Japanese publishing companies with GHQ consent. In some cases more than fashion shows and cinema, style books provided women with the stylistic ideals to make their creation something unique and fashionable at the same time, something that they knew other people would possibly recognize as such. More generally, the sensorial stimulation in fashion through cinema and advertisements mastered by the U.S. since the 1920s was a relevant agent in making the Japanese aware of the democratic potential of fashion: through images, even people not directly involved in dress-making or who could not afford to buy clothes, were granted the opportunity to possess a fashionable dress because he/she “has dreamt it into his life”.44

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Conclusions The structuring of the mass fashion system in post-war Japan came along with the intermingling of events, factors and trends, both exogenous and endogenous, each one with its own specific driving force. As one of the most interesting stages in the Japanese adoption of Western-style clothing, it is epistemologically correct to underscore the consistent continuity with elements which had emerged since the Taishǀ period í interest in Western fashion, Japanese women’s sewing ability and the development of a certain type of mass society í for these elements were seminal for Japan to rapidly achieve yǀsǀka. This internal continuity was however upset by the occurrence of World War II. Here, World War II came to play an ambivalent role, suspending the normal course of the events while amplifying the extent and the rapidity of the production and the distribution of objects. All in all, World War II was a “goods war”,45 a “commodity enterprise [which] was able to assure mass destruction because of effective systems of mass distribution”.46 From this viewpoint, when the war ended, the victorious United States came to represent the “proto-supermarket to the world”.47 In the field of fashion, however, the most remarkable American contribution manifested itself not as much through the styles and the outfits proposed, but through specific patterns of considering, consuming and practising fashion. American primacy in the global post-war period was, in another words, not only a matter of what but how. This “how” is the changeover of fashion into an accomplished democratic phenomenon, which a non-Western people like the Japanese learnt as the “right to fashion”:48 the right to become through Westernstyle clothing a mass of individuals, homogeneous yet still diverse, and to exert this right in dreams, in dress-making, and in consumption.

Notes 1

Nakayama Chiyo, Nihon fujin yǀsǀshi [A history of Western-style women’s dress in Japan] (Tǀkyǀ: Yoshikawa kǀbunkan, 2010), p. 454. 2 Yǀfukugyǀkai kisha kurabu “Nihon yǀfukushi kankǀ iinkai”, ed., Nihon yǀfukushi: Isseiki no ayumi to mirai tenbǀ [A history of Japanese clothing: a one hundred-year path and its future outlook] (Tǀkyǀ: Yǀfukugyǀkai kisha kurabu “Nihon yǀfukushi kankǀ iinkai”, 1977), p. 365. 3 Ibid., p. 365. 4 Nakayama, Nihon fujin yǀsǀshi, p. 454. 5 Yǀfukugyǀkai kisha kurabu “Nihon yǀfukushi kankǀ iinkai”, ed., Nihon yǀfukushi, pp. 369í70.

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Hayashi Kunio, Sengo fasshon seisuishi: Sono toki boku wa, soko ni ita [A history of the vicissitudes of post-war fashion: that time, I was there] (Tǀkyǀ: Genrynjsha, 1987), p. 14. 7 Quoted in John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of Wold War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), p. 101. 8 Akurosu henshnjshitsu, ed., SutorƯto fasshon 1945-1995: Wakamono sutairu no 50 nenshi [Street fashion 1945-1995: fifty years of youth style] (Tǀkyǀ: Parco kabushiki kaisha, 2002), pp. 18í21. 9 Chimura Michio, Sengo fasshon sutǀrƯ: 1945-2000 [A history of fashion in the post-war period: 1945-2000] (Tǀkyǀ: Heibonsha, 2001), p. 15. 10 Quoted in Nakayama, Nihon fujin yǀsǀshi, p. 466. 11 Ibid., p. 456. 12 Chimura, Sengo fasshon sutǀrƯ, pp. 62í70. 13 Nakayama, Nihon fujin yǀsǀshi, p. 460. 14 Yǀfukugyǀkai kisha kurabu “Nihon yǀfukushi kankǀ iinkai”, ed., Nihon yǀfukushi, p. 385. 15 Ibid., p. 413. 16 Inoue Masahito, “Yǀsai bunka no kǀzǀ: sengoki Nihon no fasshon to, sono ba, kǀisha, media (2)” [The structure of the Western couture’s culture: Japanese fashion in the post-war period and its field, actors, media (2)], Kyǀto Seika daigaku kiyǀ, no. 38 (2011), pp. 4í22: 13. 17 Hayashi, Sengo fasshon seisuishi, pp. 46í51; Chimura, Sengo fasshon sutǀrƯ, pp. 33í5. 18 Chimura, Sengo fasshon sutǀrƯ, pp. 38í42. 19 Yǀfukugyǀkai kisha kurabu “Nihon yǀfukushi kankǀ iinkai”, ed., Nihon yǀfukushi, p. 432. 20 Chimura, Sengo fasshon sutǀrƯ, p. 72. 21 See the advertisement published on the Asahi Shinbun (Kyǀto edition) on 15 April 1959. 22 Hayashi, Sengo fasshon seisuishi, pp. 66í7; Chimura, Sengo fasshon sutorƯ, pp. 59í61. 23 Besides the specific code of appearance, the term Taiyǀ zoku identified the lifestyle of its members. Similarly to the main character of the movie, the members of the Taiyǀ tribe used to spend their summertime outdoors, indulging in leisure activities and capers as well. 24 Akurosu henshnjshitsu, ed., SutorƯto fasshon 1945-1995, pp. 44í73. 25 Ibid.; Chimura, Sengo fasshon sutǀrƯ; Nakayama, Nihon fujin yǀsǀshi. 26 Chimura, Sengo fasshon sutǀrƯ, p. 29. 27 Ibid., p. 23; Nakayama, Nihon fujin yǀsǀshi, p. 458. 28 Akurosu henshnjshitsu, ed., SutorƯto fasshon 1945-1995, pp. 26í7. 29 Nakayama, Nihon fujin yǀsǀshi, pp. 462í8. 30 Inoue Masahito, “Yǀsai bunka no kǀzǀ: sengoki Nihon no fasshon to, sono ba, kǀisha, media (1)” [The structure of the Western couture’s culture: Japanese fashion in the post-war period and its fields, actors, media (1)], Kyǀto Seika daigaku kiyǀ, no. 37 (2010), pp. 24í42: 30.

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Ibid., p. 33. Gilles Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 21. 33 Ibid., p. 24. 34 Patricia Campbell Warner, “The Americanization of Fashion: Sportswear, the Movies and the 1930s”, in Twentieth-century American Fashion, eds. Linda Welters and Patricia A. Cunningham (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005), pp. 84í5; Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), pp. 42í3. 35 Sandra Stansbery Buckland, “Promoting American Designers, 1940í44: Building Our Own House”, in Twentieth-century American Fashion, pp. 109í15. 36 Enrica Morini, Storia della moda: XVIIIíXX secolo (Milano: Skira, 2000), pp. 299í301. 37 Nakayama, Nihon fujin yǀsǀshi, p. 455. 38 Yǀfukugyǀkai kisha kurabu “Nihon yǀfukushi kankǀ iinkai”, ed., Nihon yǀfukushi, p. 385. 39 Hayashi, Sengo fasshon seisuishi, pp. 46í9. 40 Chimura, Sengo fasshon sutǀrƯ, p. 37. 41 Chǀnin literally means the “inhabitants of the city”, but it actually designated all the working categories whose activities thrived in the urban environment: namely, merchants and craftsmen. The term moga is an abbreviation for “modern girl”, and refers to those young Japanese women who, in the 1920s, eagerly followed Western fashion. 42 John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 120. 43 Ibid., p.146. 44 Richard Sennet, in The Empire of Fashion, p. ix. 45 Raymond F. Betts, A History of Popular Culture: More of Everything, Faster and Brighter (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), p. 25. 46 Ibid., pp. 26-7. 47 Ibid., p. 26. 48 Gilles Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion, p. 63. 32

IN THE REALM OF SIGNS: HYBRIDISM IN JAPANESE EVERYDAY LIFE ROBERTA NOVIELLI

On 23 and 24 July 1942 the literary critics and members of the Bungakkai literary journal Kamei Katsuichirǀ, Kawakami Tetsutarǀ and Kobayashi Hideo organized in Tokyo the Symposium “Overcoming Modernity” (Kindai no chǀkoku).1 Some of the Japanese leaders in the fields of art, literature, history, philosophy, music, cinema and science took part in this long marathon, contributing with panels on eleven issues: the “Modern Meaning of the Renaissance”, “Modernity in Science”, the “Link Between Science and God”, “Our Modernity”, “Modern Japanese Music”, “History: The Mutable and the Immutable”, “The Problem of Civilization and Specialization”, the “Essence of Civilization and Enlightenment in the Meiji Period”, the “West Within Us”, “Americanism and Modernism”, and “Possibilities for Present-Day Japanese”. The two terms that were most discussed at the symposium were “enlightenment” and “civilization” which translate the bunmei kaika slogan of the Meiji period (1868-1912), both intended as being responsible for the corruption of the true “Japanese spirit” of the past. But even if most participants stressed the urge of exalting the traditional values which could better restore the “true Japaneseness”, some elements suggested that their society had already been deeply and ineluctably changing. Almost all the participants were experts in French literature or in German philosophy, which seemed to enforce their refusal for English and American influences and, at the same time, to provide theoretical instruments for mapping back the historical development of their own cultural fields. Searching for the genuine aesthetical values of Japan, for example, the writer Hayashi Fusao emphatically evoked: “Japanese literature, return to your true nature! You are the progeny of the country. You are the valiant son who, born from your country, can now exalt it. You must succeed to the proper lineage and genealogy of Japanese literature.”2 In fact, he was referring to the Heian period (794-1185), centuries before the first contacts

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with the West. The music critic Moroi Saburǀ reacted to this position asserting: “the pursuit of the [Japanese] classics must not be simply retrospective. The notion that ‘things are good because they are old’ is tantamount to antiquarianism; it is impossible to see any creativity here. In our pursuit of the classics, we should adopt the attitude of ‘restoration is renewal’, for any simply reactionary or retrospective attitude must be thoroughly avoided”.3 With this answer, he was demonstrating that a true Japanese spirit was still alive in contemporary Japan, just like it had been in the past. Besides asserting the “true Japanese spirit” and refusing the Western influences with a geo-political definition of modernity in Japan, the symposium had produced an interesting effect, melting the elitist and academic culture with the industrial production of culture itself, analyzing the effects of this “third culture” in society. For example, film critic Tsumura Hideo believed that overcoming modernity meant refusing the techno-commercial American mass culture imported through Hollywood cinema, but at the same time he tried to re-evaluate Japan’s own mass culture. In this field, a fusion between American and Japanese distinctive traits paved the way to a hybridism which was soon going to spread all over the country, thus becoming the utmost evidence of the Westernization of Japan. Since ancient times, Japan’s eclecticism in absorbing elements from different cultures has represented a sign of what we now define as glocalization (global localization) and even pre-postmodernism, given the tendency to host foreign influences while still preserving an intact cultural basis. This is partly due to the peculiar way innovation spreads throughout Japan, which greatly differs from the West for its “implicit communication”. It is up to the observer to interpret the correct meaning of what is presented, catching the surfacing signs and inventing the most suitable way to adapt them to life. According to the psychologists John R. Weisz, Fred M. Rothbaum and Thomas C. Blackburn, the American influence on Japan is due to America’s “primary control” (acting on the environment in order to influence it), while Japan’s absorbing culture is closer to the concept of “secondary control” (adjusting oneself to one’s circumstances). They also add that “Americans have more frequent and psychologically more potent opportunities to influence their surroundings, whereas Japanese have more frequent and psychologically more potent opportunities to adjust to their surroundings”.4 It is not surprising, therefore, that the American impact on Japanese culture after the occupation had not been so shocking and, quoting Kawai Kazuo, “after the inevitable misunderstandings,

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frustrations, friction, and reaction, it could still be said that, on balance, no occupation of an enemy country in all history had turned out to be such a happy surprise at this one for both the conqueror and the conquered”.5 Before the war, Japanese industrial design had mainly been influenced by the European taste, even if strongly linked to the old tradition of craftsmanship, but during and following the occupation the attention shifted towards the American lifestyle, which fascinated but also intimidated the average Japanese. It was especially thanks to the diffusion of TV in Japan from 1953 onwards that the American middle-class way of life exerted a great influence in the country, also because most of the TV programs imported from the U.S. provided models which easily broke through the Japanese audience. In particular, products as electrical appliances and automobiles became the engine for urban consumerism. In the 1950s the middle-class “desire” coincided with the three treasures or the “three Ss” — senpuki, sentakuki, and suihanki (the electric fan, the washing machine, and the electric rice cooker); in the 1960s, the “three Cs”: a car, a cooler (air conditioner), and a color television, replaced by the “three Js” in the late 1970s, jnjero, jetto and jnjtaku (jewels, jetting and house). All these items, excluding jetting, were associated to possession, the core of the American ideal as seen from a Japanese perspective. Even food was influenced by the same kind of image: during the 1960s and the 1970s, in various television programs chefs who owned a restaurant were invited to explain how they had founded their business, how they managed it and what kind of presentation of the food they had planned. Food itself was gradually associated with the possession of a range of tools and a rich kitchen equipment, like the ones which recalled the American happy family, including a mix of older items, such as the kitchen chopstick saibashi, the frying pan for takoyaki or the bamboo draining basket, daily used together with electric appliances such as rice cookers and microwave ovens. A long series of icons were imported from America, often associated with peculiar goals to achieve, such as fitness, beauty, romance or freedom. Many Japanese firms had to conform to the new strategies to attract consumers. When Japanese economy began to grow at the beginning of the 1960s, foreigners (usually young models) began appearing in Japanese ads, and in a second moment Hollywood celebrities were chosen, especially associated with fashion, food and cosmetics. One of the first actors to impersonate the new Japanese fashion was Charles Bronson with a TV commercial for the Mandom perfume in the early 1970s, soon followed by other prestigious names publicizing other brands: David Niven, Paul Newman, Alain Delon, Peter Fonda, Sofia Loren and

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hundreds more, including Woody Allen and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Most of them generally had to say just a few short lines in English, only to confer an exotic atmosphere to the product. An emblematic example is represented by the oldest brewing and distilling Japanese company, Suntory (established in Osaka in 1899 with the name Kotobukiya), producer of the first single malt whisky made in Japan. In 1961 Suntory launched a special campaign with the slogan “let’s drink Tory’s and go to Hawaii”, giving the audience a rare chance to make their dream become true. The same year Suntory whisky became the first Japanese whisky to be approved for registration in the United States. While ideally exporting the Japanese production abroad, in the early 1970s Suntory began “importing” famous American celebrities to advertise their product. Foreign personalities in the Suntory ads were associated to different items, almost representing a kind of “label” of the product itself. For example, a Sammy Davis Jr. commercial at the beginning of the 1970s was associated with the “white label – Suntory Owaito” whisky, with an evident effect of humor. Since whisky is originally a Western product, the American celebrities added a touch of authenticity, to certify that the middle-class Japanese man was now fond of whisky like a westerner. Once the image of “original Japanese whisky” was consolidated, a new campaign contributed to demonstrate that it was ready to compete on an international market. Kurosawa Akira directed a series of commercials on the set of Kagemusha, the Shadow Warrior (1980), one of which starring Francis Ford Coppola and Kurosawa himself (Coppola and George Lucas had helped to raise the money for this film). Sofia Coppola’s Lost in translation represents a homage to that campaign, since the main character is an American actor (played by Bill Murray) who goes to Japan to advertise the Suntory whisky. As a logical consequence of the tsunami of innovation vehicled by the American products and icons, the Japanese language acquired a great number of neologisms. Here again, instead of creating native equivalents of the English terms, words were used in the original form and “absorbed” in everyday life as signs of exotic values. Many of the original words were imported in their written form and pronounced differently (raifu wƗku for “lifework”), sometimes arbitrarily shortened (nega for “negative”) or even summarized (pasokon for “personal computer”). These neologisms were called wasei eigo, “Japanese manufactured English”, and their use converted into signs, neglecting the meaning and represented by the katakana syllables used to write them. By the beginning of the 1970s Japan was ready to create and export its “third culture” in different products. One of the first icons to be

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successfully created was the pop symbol Hello Kitty manufactured in 1974 by Sanrio and exported to the United States in 1976. She ambiguously represents a white cat with anthropomorphic body movements and no facial mimic. Kitty is not supposed to be Japanese when sold in Japan, where it originally was very fashionable because it was potentially a westerner. Her true name is Kitty White and she was born in the suburbs of London. Her white skin was the main symbol of the West, and the complete absence of a mouth (apart from the animation series) was the strongest sign of the global effect Kitty would soon gain in the world. Sanrio asserted that Kitty had no mouth to better satisfy the people’s desire to “project their feeling into the character”, and in fact it was successful almost everywhere in the world, without having to modify its original design to satisfy different markets.6 Like the Hello Kitty phenomenon, a great success and an ambiguous sign was represented by the construction of Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, the first Disney park to be located outside the U.S., larger than the original one. It became so popular in a few years that it led to the development of sixty other theme parks across Japan. Many scholars have noticed how it symbolized Japanese post-modernization, with no reference to its Americanization. Aviad E. Raz in “Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland” calls it a mythmaker and a re-creator of history, because of “its ideological representation of American history, commodified nostalgia, utopian space, post-modern consumer society, and audience control”.7 Tokyo Disneyland only simulates the American culture (popular, post-industrial, of leisure) mixing it with native myths (like ghosts), all merging from an a-geographic background, becoming something different from a parody or a reproduction of the original. If according to Jean Baudrillard “the post-modern is dominated by models of the real without origin or reality”,8 Tokyo Disneyland is a new land suspended between reality and imaginary. During the 1980s, the development of communication technologies and media industries led Japan’s technological hegemony to produce new icons which enforced the “third culture”, mixing together Western influences, cyberpunk elements and images derived from feudal Japan. At the same time, many of Japan’s semi-governmental organizations were privatized and re-territorialized their images, for example using acronyms for their Japanese-English names, such as Nihon Denshin Denwa Kǀsha, the telephone monopoly, which became NTT. In commercials, besides the foreign models who originally were either blond and associated to Americans or dark-haired and resembling Europeans, we assist to a reworking of local cultural values which are

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prevalently replaced by a mix of Japanese-Westerner ideals, at the same time exotic and familiar, a tendency which is still prevalent. The Japanese media industry was now turning to the Asian market adopting a new strategy. As noted by Iwabuchi Kǀichi, “Japanese media industry believes that if there is anything about Japan which attracts Asian people, it is the hyperactive indigenization and domestication of 'the West'. […] Japanese localization strategies attempt to create local zones by gauging the practices of local media centers and their dynamic indigenization progress. These strategies that incorporate the viewpoint of the dominated, who long ago learned to negotiate Western culture in their consumption of media products imported from the West”.9 The Japanese music industry is the field where the effects of “domesticating the West” can be widely found. Each pop idol makes Western elements his own, according to his/her new image, thus becoming a hybrid idol, neither America-inspired nor truly-Japanese, but rather a sign of an indigenized West. There is no need of authenticity, but, as the British anthropologist Daniel Miller notices, local cultures are to be found “a posteriori not a priori, according to local consequences not local origins”.10 While expanding towards Asia, Japanese culture gained huge visibility in the U.S. and in Europe as well, exporting its “third culture”, and its realm of signs. One of the pioneers of this tendency was the painter Okada Kenzǀ, who had been particularly appreciated during the 1970s for his peculiar reinterpretation of the decorative effects of traditional Japanese painting starting from an expressionist background. Like him, the Japanese-American sculptor and designer Noguchi Isamu had long tried to link Japan and America by creating a liminal space of interaction between the two cultures. Maybe the most interesting effect of the “third culture”, springing from the influence between the American and Japanese realm of signs is represented by the “superflat” culture proposed by Murakami Takashi, especially in absence of perspective and profundity in the twodimensional imaginary. To Murakami, this style is a criticism to the postwar Japanese society, when the a-critical absorbing of the American influence had produced an undistinguished culture, with no space for high and low.11 More than re-evaluating the “true Japanese culture”, in the last sixty years Japan has created a distinction between what can be partially mutuated and what is intrinsically Japanese. In truth, not all the fields have been penetrated by outside influences. Variety shows broadcast on Japanese television have been influenced very little, and sumo, for example, has remained practically unchanged although 25 percent of the

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wrestlers in the top two divisions are foreign-born. The American journalist Douglas McGray once asserted that “there exists a Japan for Japanese and a Japan for the rest of the world”,12 which may suggest a new perspective for evaluating Japan's peculiar realm of signs.

Pictures 1 and 2. Charles Bronson in a series of commercials for Mandom, a cologne from Japan created by The Mandom Corporation in the 1970s. (Sources: juntajuleil.blogspot.it and dangerousminds.net).

Picture 3. Ad for the Japanese National Television Dealer from the 1960s. (Source: flickr.com).

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Picture 4. Suntory White commercial from the 1960s starring Sammy Davis Jr. (Source: dailymotion.com).

Picture 5. The Jacket of Sammy Davis jr.'s EP record of “Chi-ki Chi-ky Sammy”. (Source: rubbergard.jp).

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Picture 6. Bill Murray plays the part of a testimonial for Suntory whisky ads in Sofia Coppola's 2003 film Lost in Translation. (Source: inta.org).

Notes 1

Full reference in Richard F. Calichman, ed., Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 2 Ibid., p. 2 3 Ibid, p. 7. Italics included in the original text. 4 John R. Weisz, Fred M. Rothbaum and Thomas C. Blackburn, “Standing Out and Standing In: The Psychology of Control in America and Japan”, American Psychologist 39, no. 9 (1984), pp. 955-69. 5 Kazuo Kawai, Japan’s American Interlude (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 1. Kawai's work is reviewed critically by Robert McNeill in Midwest Journal of Political Science 6, no. 2 (1962), pp. 216-8; and by Ardath Burks in American Political Science Review 54, no. 4 (1960), pp. 141-2. 6 Chris Berry, Fran Martin and Audrey Yue, eds., Mobile Cultures. New Media in Queer Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 172. 7 Aviad E. Raz, Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 3. 8 Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. M. Poster (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 166. 9 Iwabuchi Koichi, Recentering Globalization. Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 96-7. 10 Quoted in Shaun Moores, Media/Theory: Thinking about Media and Communications (New York: Routledge, 2005) p. 115. 11 See Hiroki Azuma, Otaku. Japan’s Database Animals (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 12 Douglas McGray, “Japan's Gross National Cool”, in Japan Society, http://www.japansociety.org/content.cfm/gross_national_cool (accessed 20 May 2013).

THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION AND MUNICIPAL IDENTITY: TWO TOWNS IN WESTERN TOKYO MICHAEL MOLASKY

Introduction During the occupation and in the ensuing decade, Japanese responses to the American forces varied widely, but most people seemed to view the foreign troops and the occupation itself with some degree of ambivalence, and nowhere is this ambivalence on display more vividly than in literary works set during the early postwar years. I have argued elsewhere that Japanese male and female writers of fiction, as well as writers from Okinawa as opposed to those from mainland Japan, represented the occupation in fundamentally different ways, and suggested that an awareness of these differences leads to a fuller, more nuanced, understanding of how the occupation was perceived and remembered by the broader populace.1 In this chapter, however, I wish to take a more concrete, local approach to the occupation by examining how Tachikawa and Kunitachi, two adjacent towns in western Tokyo, were affected by, and responded to, problems related to American troops in their respective communities during the early 1950s. Although I will refer to them below as "towns", Tachikawa and Kunitachi today are both separate "municipalities" located within Greater Tokyo (Tǀkyǀto). Their municipal status is marked by the suffix "-shi" (thus, in Japanese they are referred to as Tachikawashi and Kunitachishi), in contrast to Tokyo's twenty-three central "wards", which are signified by the suffix "-ku" and "towns", which are marked by the suffix "-chǀ". Tachikawa was elevated from town to municipality in 1940, and Kunitachi in 1965. During the occupation, however, they had much smaller populations: Tachikawa's population today is approximately 180,000, whereas in 1952 it was roughly 56,000; Kunitachi's current population is approximately 77,000, whereas at the end of the occupation it was just

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over 16,000. 2 Furthermore, during the occupation and throughout the 1950s, both towns seemed far more isolated from central Tokyo than they do today. This is due in part to the extensive development of western Tokyo since the 1960s and concomitant increase in the frequency of trains, especially express trains, connecting the newly developed areas to the city center and other parts of the metropolitan area. Kunitachi and Tachikawa are located less than three minutes apart by train on the Chnjǀ Line, which runs from Tokyo Station in the heart of the city to the foot of the mountains at the western edge of Greater Tokyo. Yet despite their proximity, the two towns have long seemed to both local residents and outsiders alike as being situated on opposite ends of Tokyo's social and cultural spectrum. The contrasting character of the towns can be traced in part to their prewar history, but it was the American occupation that brought these differences into sharp relief and shaped their subsequent development.

Tachikawa Tachikawa today is best described as a "satellite city" within the Tokyo metropolitan area: not only does it have a large residential population, but its commercial sector brings in workers from elsewhere, and its main train station serves as a transportation hub for western Tokyo. In addition, Tachikawa's numerous shopping and entertainment facilities attract consumers from the surrounding communities, including Kunitachi. Until it underwent a thorough municipal makeover in the 1980s and 1990s, however, Tachikawa was known throughout Japan as a "base town" (kichi no machi) since it was home to a large American military base from September 1945 through the end of the Vietnam War. And although the Japanese expression "kichi no machi", does not contain the double entendre of its English counterpart, it nonetheless evokes the image of being "base" in the sense of "low" or "crass". In fact, until Tachikawa Base finally closed in 1977, the town was treated in the national media as a symbol of America's ongoing domination of Japan long after the occupation ended. In the mid-1950s, an attempt by the U.S. military to expand the base and airfields into the abutting agricultural community of Sunagawa (which was incorporated into Tachikawa City in 1963) led to an intense, large-scale protest movement that brought members of labor unions, student groups, and others to the Tachikawa area to join the protests. The "Sunagawa struggle" (Sunagawa tǀsǀ), which lasted from

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1955 to 1957, ultimately succeeded in preventing the base expansion plan, and was among the rare citizen movements of the early postwar era that succeeded in forcing the American military to accept the demands of local residents. It is also viewed as a forerunner of the (ultimately unsuccessful) protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty that shook the nation circa 1960. The Sunagawa struggle had the added effect of reinforcing the image of Tachikawa as a town inextricably bound to its American military base and suffering under its corrosive influence. Together with Okinawa and other large base towns throughout mainland Japan, Tachikawa thus became a national symbol of the occupation's continuing impact on everyday life in what was purportedly the "post-occupation" era. In fact, well before the name "Sunagawa" gained widespread currency, Tachikawa was already established as such a symbol, thanks largely to the countless newspaper and magazine articles devoting special attention to the town's travails, not least of which was widespread prostitution. Readers familiar with Japanese literary accounts of life under occupation will not be surprised to learn that many of the journalistic exposes of Tachikawa and other base towns that appeared in the early 1950s tended to represent GI prostitutes as a symbol of the nation's occupied body politic. For male writers of fiction and nonfiction alike, no image seemed to better encapsulate the author's personal sense of humiliation at America's ongoing domination of Japan than that of vulnerable young women forced to sacrifice their bodies and dignity to foreign soldiers. At the same time, descriptions of the prostitutes in these narratives typically emphasize their otherness: covered in heavy makeup, wearing brightly colored dresses and high heels, smoking cigarettes or chewing gum, the prostitutes seem to have embraced not only the occupiers themselves but their culture as well, and readers are left to conclude that excessive contact with the occupiers threatens one's very identity as a Japanese. Several female novelists—including Sata Ineko, Nakamoto Takako, and Hiroike Akiko—published nonfictional as well as fictional accounts about life in Tachikawa, drawing on their personal observations from living in or near the city during the early 1950s.3 As with male writers, they frequently focused on the plight of the city’s prostitutes and those referred to as “onrƯ” (an abbreviation of “only one”, signifying a GI mistress), although as I've argue elsewhere, women's fictional narratives about prostitutes tend to treat their characters less as helpless, emblematic victims of foreign occupation than as women struggling to fend for themselves in a patriarchal social economy. In such women's narratives,

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the American military presence clearly exacerbates the struggles of the female characters, and it is implied that they are victims not only of foreign occupation but of deeply entrenched patriarchal conditions as well.4 Yet with a few exceptions, fictional narratives of the occupation, whether by male or female writers, reached a limited readership. Far more influential at the time were journalistic accounts exposing the social and economic ills that plagued American military base towns, including Tachikawa. As noted above, journalistic accounts critical of the bases devoted considerable attention to prostitution, and often touched on "the problem of mixed-blood children" (konketsuji mondai). During the early 1950s, women's magazines such as Fujin kǀron (Women's Forum) seemed particularly interested in the plight of such children, many of whom were given up for adoption, although few journalistic articles bothered to interrogate the concept "mixed-blood" itself, and fewer still posed the question of why Japanese society viewed such children as an inherent "problem" in the first place.5 Often overlooked in narratives of Tachikawa's problems is that it was already home to a military base—and to legal prostitution districts—well before the American forces arrived in 1945. The town was connected to Shinjuku by train in 1889, and in 1921 an airfield was constructed in town. As one municipal publication notes, until Tokyo's Haneda Airport was opened ten years later, "Tachikawa Airport played a pivotal role in civilian aviation in Japan". 6 The Japanese army took control of the airport following Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and companies producing aircraft parts and military supplies increased as well, giving the town a palpable military presence. Tachikawa's two brothel districts that catered to American occupation troops in the early postwar years were actually established in 1943 when Susaki, Tokyo's second largest brothel district after Yoshiwara, was forced by Japanese military authorities to turn over its facilities to a local shipyard, which converted them into workers' dormitories in an effort to facilitate increased production. Although the Susaki brothels were shut down, the proprietors dispersed and soon resumed business in other parts of Tokyo, specifically New Yoshiwara, the Anamori district in Haneda, and the Hagoromo and Nishiki areas of Tachikawa. They also set up shop in Chiba Prefecture’s former brothel districts in the cities of Funabashi, Chiba, and Tateyama.7 Thus prostitution in Tachikawa is linked to both the Japanese military in wartime and the postwar American occupiers. The most thorough academic study of everyday life in Tachikawa

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during the early 1950s devotes considerable attention to the prostitution in town. Suzuki Jirǀ's Toshi to sonraku no shakaigakuteki kenkynj (A Sociological Study of City and Village),8 first published in 1956 and long out of print, is a meticulous analysis based on both archival research and fieldwork. For several months in 1952, Suzuki and his team of four researchers lived in town, renting rooms in apartment buildings that housed prostitutes or GI mistresses. In the book's introduction, Suzuki notes that they selected Tachikawa as the site of their research because "we were interested in a city where close interaction with people of a different race or ethnicity (iminzoku) permeates every facet of daily life".9 (The following year, Suzuki and his team conducted fieldwork in the remote village of Ihama, research that they later incorporated into the book, which is framed as a comparative study of Tachikawa and Ihama, hence the "city and village" in the title). Space does not permit me to provide a detailed summary of Suzuki's findings, but I would like to cite some of his data and analysis with respect to the issue of prostitution because, as noted above, until the Sunagawa Struggle captured the nation's attention in the mid-1950s, prostitution was the among the most salient issues in journalistic accounts of the problems plaguing Tachikawa as a base town. Suzuki and his research team devote a full chapter in their book to the problem of prostitution in Tachikawa, employing the term "yǀshǀ", which consists of the characters meaning "western" and "prostitute", to signify those women catering specifically to foreign men. Needless to say, at the time "western" was synonymous with "American", and it was understood that the male customers were members of the U.S. military, so I will use the term "GI prostitute" below as a translation of "yǀshǀ". Suzuki's analysis includes a detailed discussion of the argot used in the subcultural world of GI prostitution, and although his attention to "personality types" reflects a theoretical framework that will seem outdated to today's readers, this study remains valuable not only for its data and insights, but because it remains among the rare contemporary studies of prostitution in a base town that is committed to socio-historical analysis over political advocacy.10 The Suzuki team's extensive survey of Tachikawa households found that approximately 2,500 of the town's 12,000 households provided a room to a GI prostitute or mistress. In other words, roughly one in five households was in some manner implicated in the local prostitution economy. Suzuki notes that this compares to an estimated two percent in the naval base town of Yokosuka and ten percent in the Hokkaidǀ base

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town of Chitose, although he adds that the data on Chitose was too vague to distinguish between GI prostitutes and those catering to Japanese men, and therefore the actual percentage of GI prostitutes was probably even lower. 11 Even this one piece of data attests to how thoroughly GI prostitution permeated everyday life in Tachikawa toward the end of the occupation, and its impact on both the local economy and on society can hardly be overstated. One problem complicating any effort to understand the occupation's impact on everyday life in towns such as Tachikawa is the Korean War, which largely overlaps with the occupation historically but caused a sharp increase in the flow of American soldiers traveling in and out of base towns just as the occupation itself was winding down. Not only did traffic of American military personnel increase, but soldiers traveling to and from the battlefield inevitably behave more erratically, if not violently, than in times of peace, which has the effect of intensifying their presence in base towns. This was true during the Vietnam Was as well as during the Korean War. The seven-volume Tǀkyǀ hyakunenshi (The hundred-year history of Tokyo) notes in its chapter on Tachikawa that the town's American base played a critical role in U.S. military operations on the Korean peninsula, and that the war exerted a noticeable impact on life in town: For much of the postwar era, Tachikawa's economy was dependent on the American military. Yet the presence of the military created problems, including noise from takeoffs and landings as well as accidents involving military aircraft. In January 1951, for example, a B-29 leaving for a bombing mission on the Korean peninsula crashed immediately after takeoff, and the ordnance it was carrying exploded, severely damaging over 100 homes in Nakazato Village, Sunagawa. Rape, robberies, and trespassing into private homes by American soldiers also occurred frequently, in addition to traffic accidents. The contradictions posed by the economic dependence on the base and its impact on the local environment are symbolized most clearly by the comfort women (ianfu) and prostitutes serving the American soldiers. The presence of these women became a major social problem in town and, until the end of the Korean War, they were seen as largely defining the character of Tachikawa.12

This study concludes that in Tachikawa “the postwar has yet to end” (“koko de wa mada sengo wa owatte inai”).13 Anyone aware of the conditions in Okinawa's base towns today will find the litany of problems plaguing Tachikawa during the 1950s to be

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disturbingly familiar. But just as Okinawa was effectively erased from the map of Japan until "reversion" to prefectural status in 1972, a municipal map of Tachikawa printed in 1953 contains an enormous blank space, extending from the main train station in the city center northwest to the municipal border.14 Nothing is marked on the space other than the name of the area, “Midorichǀ”. While occupying roughly one-quarter of the city's land, Tachikawa Base was off-limits to Japanese residents (except to those who worked on base), and the foreign occupation of what was previously local land is thus reflected cartographically as an aporia. Yet if the base appears only as a blank space on local maps, its presence in everyday life could not be forgotten: in addition to the legions of local prostitutes throughout the town, jeeps, tanks, and aircraft passed through or over Tachikawa on a daily basis. According to the abovementioned chapter on Tachikawa in Tǀkyǀ hyakunenshi (which, incidentally, also quotes Suzuki's study), the prostitution problem was at its worst in 1952. The situation became so dire, in fact, that elementary school teachers routinely showed up for work early to clean up and thereby shield their students' eyes from the mess left by prostitutes and their GI customers and who routinely broke in during the night and used the school building in lieu of a hotel.15 In fact, it was concern about the psychological impact on local children that prompted citizens in Tachikawa to organize a "purification movement" (junka undǀ) to address the problem of prostitution, but with a large U.S. military base remaining in the middle of town, the movement's success was limited. Next door in Kunitachi, however, a similar movement had gotten underway, and through effective legislative maneuvering, coupled with the fierce determination of a coalition of housewives, university students, and faculty, this movement largely succeeded in its goals—although the conditions that originally generated it have long since been forgotten by most of the town's residents.

Kunitachi Tachikawa's notoriety as a base town lasted through the 1970s, whereas by this time Kunitachi had consolidated its image as a childfriendly town known for its sophisticated culture and natural beauty (with over four-hundred cherry blossom trees lining its streets, Kunitachi is considered one of the best sites in Tokyo for the spring ritual of cherry blossom viewing). Kunitachi is thus far removed from the gritty world of

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its next-door neighbor. As Tǀkyǀjin, a magazine on Tokyo life and history, notes in one of its special editions on Chnjǀ Line culture, Kunitachi is unique among towns located on this train line: Among all the stations located on the Chnjǀ Line, Kunitachi prides itself on standing out from the others. [...] For example, the town has a branch of the high-end supermarket, Kinokuniya, bookstores specializing in Western-language books, a shop specializing in pipes and tobacco, art galleries, a culinary school specializing in French food and desserts, and even a school teaching horseback riding. The area around Kunitachi Station is a far cry from the crass and chaotic atmosphere of other stations along the Chnjǀ Line, such as Kǀenji. Not only does Kunitachi lack the sleazy establishments found elsewhere, you won't even find a pachinko parlor here".16

In addition, Kunitachi is said to have the second highest concentration of beauty salons in all of Tokyo, well over a dozen French restaurants, and French-language signs dot the commercial landscape, even though, unlike the Kagurazaka or Hirǀ neighborhoods, it does not claim a substantial French-speaking population. Kunitachi's special atmosphere is shaped as much by those commercial establishments that are explicitly prohibited by municipal code as it is by the high-end shops and restaurants. For example, not only are sex-related businesses and mahjong parlors prohibited, one would be hard-pressed to find anything particularly offensive in the local landscape—although during the past two decades chain stores, convenience stores, fast food joints, and so-called “family restaurants” have managed to infiltrate even this most vigilant of towns. Kunitachi's distinctiveness, in other words, is marked by social class, which in turn is signified by the town's many highbrow "Western" cultural establishments. If Kunitachi appears snobbish or pretentious, it is partly due to this unabashed pursuit of European high culture. An examination of Kunitachi's early history, however, reveals that this characteristic dates back to the town's initial development in the 1920s. Kunitachi was originally developed as a model community inspired by a German university town. One Japanese university and one music school located in central Tokyo agreed to relocate to a forested plot of land in Yabo Village that, in December 1925, was named "Kunitachi". The two educational institutions, Tokyo University of Commerce (Tǀkyǀ shǀka daigaku) and Tokyo Higher School of Music (Tǀkyǀ kǀtǀ ongakuin), are known today as Hitotsubashi University and Kunitachi College of Music.

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The former is a prestigious national university, and the latter was Japan's first private higher school devoted to music education (it became a "college" in 1950). According to the authoritative two-volume Kunitachishishi (History of Kunitachi City), the circumstances surrounding the relocation of these two educational institutions to what was basically an isolated forest with no roads or infrastructure, are closely linked to the vision of one ambitious land developer, Tsutsumi Yasujirǀ. The development project began in earnest when Tokyo University of Commerce, which had been destroyed by the Great Kantǀ Earthquake and ensuing fires, signed a contract with Hakone Land Development Corporation in 1924 and moved to Yabo Village in the North Tama district. The president of Hakone Land Development Corporation, Tsutsumi Yasujirǀ, was a member of the Diet and a personal friend of Sano Zensaku, the president of the university. In addition to having developed the Karuizawa and Hakone resort areas, Tsutsumi's company had also developed Mejiro Cultural Village (Mejiro bunkamura) and ƿizumi School and Garden District (ƿizumi gakuenchǀ) as well as having built and sold luxurious private residences to wealthy individuals and members of the aristocracy. Tsutsumi was particularly determined to make the new site of Tokyo University of Commerce into an idyllic university town, so he sent Nakajima Noboru, one of his corporate officers who spoke German, to Europe to study potential model cities, which led to the German city of Göttingen being selected as a model for "Kunitachi University Town".17 The Karuizawa resort area has long been among those areas where wealthy Tokyoites own summer homes, and photographs from the 1920s show a private plane taking off for Karuizawa from what is now University Avenue (Daigaku dǀri), the main street leading straight from Kunitachi Station to Hitotsubashi University. (Contrary to rumor, however, University Avenue, although it occasionally served as a runway in its early days, was never designed for that purpose.) From its early history, Kunitachi was thus linked both physically and symbolically to European culture as well as to Japan's upper classes. Yet it was not until the American occupation, more precisely not until the Korean War, that Kunitachi succeeded in legally codifying its distinctive municipal identity. At this time, the town was attracting national attention for a hard-fought struggle to gain governmental recognition as a "Special Education and Culture District", status that was granted by the Ministry of Construction in January 1952, making Kunitachi the first municipality in the nation to be recognized as such (several districts with universities were granted this status earlier, but not

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as a municipality). This new status empowered Kunitachi to enact strict new zoning regulations that had the immediate goal of ridding the town of prostitutes and their GI customers. Few current residents are aware that Kunitachi was once plagued by problems with GI prostitutes and mistresses, but an article in the 27 May 1951 local edition of the Asahi newspaper lumps Kunitachi together with Tachikawa and Musashino as "hotspots for prostitution". The Kunitachishishi records that in June of that same year, a rooming house for university students was converted into an "inn", which housed approximately sixty prostitutes. In response to the growing prostitution problem in town, a "purification movement" was begun by local citizens. This movement temporarily merged with the movement advocating for recognition as a Special Culture and Education District, but the two groups soon separated for strategic reasons: whereas there was widespread support for the Purification Movement, some supporters remained concerned that, if the application for special status were approved, the resultant zoning restrictions would hamper Kunitachi's economic development. The debate over whether to apply for recognition as a Special Culture and Education District grew so contentious that, at one point, proprietors of prostitution-related businesses in town recruited yakuza from Tachikawa, who arrived with fierce Akita dogs and tried to intimidate students and others advocating for the special status.18 After a prolonged and intense struggle, the application was approved in December 1951 and enacted the following month. Two levels of zoning restrictions were then adopted, with the most stringent applying largely to the area leading south from the train station to Hitotsubashi University. A second area located farther from the station, was subject to comparatively lax restrictions, yet even these prohibited the following establishments: certain types of restaurants (ryǀriten), cafes ("kafe", presumably referring to those questionable establishments that offered more than just coffee), cabarets, dance halls, dance classrooms, hotels, Japanese-style inns, theaters, playhouses, and facilities with grandstands, etc. In addition to these establishments, the stricter regulations that applied to the area nearest the station further prohibited construction of movie theaters, markets, amusement parks, and factories, although movie theaters and amusement facilities already in business were allowed to remain open.19 Even in the years following the enactment of these zoning restrictions, Kunitachi continued to struggle with the problem of GI prostitutes and mistresses who rented rooms in town, where they were visited by their American patrons. A privately published municipal history offers a further

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example of how the zoning restrictions did not always achieve their aim: after experiencing a sharp drop in business following the proliferation of television around 1960, the Konii Movie Theater on Asahi Street, which had previously shown popular movies such as The Harp of Burma, began to expand its offerings by including a live strip show, although this soon encountered local resistance, and the theater shut down in 1962.20 Although local businesses that profited from prostitution and therefore opposed the application for special status occasionally claimed that supporters were motivated by anti-American ideology or were mere tools of leftist groups, the Kunitachishishi offers a different, albeit surprisingly critical assessment of the local citizens' movement: Ultimately, it was a movement in which intellectuals and the middle class, anxious that they might lose the privileges they had acquired, worked to preserve the status quo. Only by acknowledging this underlying motivation can one understand why the movement achieved such broad and deep support. [...] It was propelled not so much by a particular ideology, nor was it inspired by high-minded ideals about creating a bucolic university town. On the contrary, precisely because it was a movement to preserve the quality of everyday life in town that so many residents joined the struggle, which ultimately achieved its goal. When the issue was framed as whether to preserve a healthy social environment for the town's children, the heretofore untapped energy of local housewives was released. These were not the only factors at play, but they were crucial to the movement's success. And it is precisely for this reason that, once the special status was granted, the movement lost all momentum.21

Conclusion I wish to suggest that to gain a full understanding of the citizens' movement in Kunitachi, one must not only acknowledge the conservative motivations of its intellectuals and middle-class as noted above, one must also take account of how advocates of the "Special Culture and Education District" conceived of "culture" in the first place. This, in turn, entails consideration of the important symbolic role that Tachikawa—and, by extension, the American occupier within—played in the process of Kunitachi's municipal self-definition. The movement in Kunitachi to achieve special status entailed a contentious debate between the town's elite and middle-class populations on the one hand, and those working in the local commercial and

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agricultural sectors on the other (even today, small rice paddies and vegetable fields dot the outskirts of town). Thus the debate over whether to seek recognition as a Special Education and Culture District entailed an internal struggle between the town's social classes, which also, to some extent, pit new arrivals against long-term residents. As we have seen, during the occupation years, Tachikawa was viewed as the antithesis of everything that Kunitachi aspired to become. What is typically overlooked in historical studies of both towns, however, was how heavily Kunitachi's elite and middle-class residents relied on Tachikawa as a catalyst in their struggle to forge a distinctive municipal identity during the early postwar decades. It is true that Kunitachi evolved into a childfriendly and culturally refined (or "pretentious", depending on one's viewpoint) town, thanks in part to the lofty vision of its initial developer, Tsutsumi Yasujirǀ, in the 1920s. During the occupation years, however, it was the town's close proximity to Tachikawa and its American military base that propelled Kunitachi's intellectuals and middle-class to band together and reaffirm Tsutsumi's ambitions by rejecting everything that Tachikawa represented in the national imagination. Precisely because Tachikawa was seen as embodying a "base" culture, and because those base elements had begun to infiltrate Kunitachi, the struggle to attain special status was, in effect, a struggle to expunge what were deemed to be corrosive foreign elements from Kunitachi's municipal body, and it is no coincidence that the term "purification movement" was coined to represent this struggle. Kunitachi's effort to preserve a pure, "high" culture entailed a rejection of Japanese popular cultural spaces (pachinko parlors being but one example) as well as those sites that attracted, or were affiliated with, American soldiers. Kunitachi was thus a rare case in early postwar Japan of a town that forged a municipal identity inspired by images of European high culture while, at the same time, purging the town of commercial spaces associated with American culture generally, and Japanese popular culture as well. Thus, Kunitachi residents who wanted to play pachinko, dance to big band jazz, or engage in other "lowly" leisure activities could head next door to Tachikawa, but their own town was to remain an unsullied oasis from such "base" cultural practices.22 Since the American military base closed in 1977, Tachikawa has gradually "cleansed" itself of those elements associated with the early postwar decades: much of the land formerly occupied by the American military is now Shǀwa Memorial Peace Park; only one bar remains from over one-hundred that formerly catered to GIs, and today it bears a

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Japanese name and nearly all of its customers are Japanese (the eightyseven-year-old original owner still sits behind the bar making cocktails until midnight); while the city's nightlife continues to offer a range of tawdry options, the customers here, too, are Japanese men (although the women servicing them represent a range of nationalities from throughout Asia); finally, Tachikawa today is home to a wide range of shopping and entertainment facilities, from discount shops to high-end department stores. In short, present-day Tachikawa largely resembles other Tokyo satellite cities of comparable size; one must look carefully to find any signs of its distinctive postwar history in the local landscape today. It is almost as if the occupation and ensuing decades themselves were relegated to a huge blank space in municipal memory, just as Tachikawa Base once appeared on city maps as an "absent presence". But these aporias themselves only serve to underscore the centrality of the American military presence in shaping Tachikawa's municipal identity, whether as a postwar base town or as a twenty-first century satellite city that strove to expunge all signs of its occupied past. Today that past lives on in its very erasure from the municipal landscape—both in Tachikawa and in the "Special Culture and Education District" of its highbrow neighbor, Kunitachi.

Notes 1

Michael Molasky, The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory (London: Routledge, 1999). 2 For population statistics on Kunitachi between 1951 and 1988, see Kunitachishishi hensan iinkai, ed., Kunitachishishi [History of Kunitachi City], vol. 2 (Kunitachi: Kunitachishi, 1989), pp. 337-8. Current statistics are listed on the town website: http://www.city.kunitachi.tokyo.jp/shokai/000169.html. Statistics on Tachikawa's population from 1944 through 1955 can be found in Tǀkyǀ hyakunenshi henshnj iinkai, ed., Tǀkyǀ hyakunenshi [A Hundred-year History of Tokyo], Vol 6 (Tǀkyǀ: Tǀkyǀto, 1972), p. 1224. For current population statistics on Tachikawa, see the municipal website: http://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/cms-sypher/www/info/detail.jsp?id=1621. 3 Hiroike Akiko, “OnrƯtachi” [The Only Ones], in Gendai no jorynj bungaku [Modern Women's Literature], ed. Jorynj bungakushakai, vol. 1 (Tǀkyǀ: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1974), pp. 193-212; Nakamoto Takako's “Kichi no onna” [Women of a Base Town] was first published anonymously in the literary magazine, Gunzǀ (July 1953): pp. 102-27; Sata Ineko's “Usugumori no aki no hi" [A Cloudy Autumn Day] was first published in 1950 and appears in Sata Ineko zenshnj [The

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Complete Works of Sata Ineko], vol. 5 (Tǀkyǀ: Kǀdansha, 1978), pp. 289-303. I discuss the stories by Hiroike and Nakamoto in Chapter Five of The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa; Isoda Kǀichi also briefly discusses Hiroike's “OnrƯtachi” in his book, Sengoshi no knjkan [The Space of the Postwar] (Tǀkyǀ: Shinchǀsha, 1983), pp. 55-6. Also see: Sharalyn Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation: Vision, Embodiment, Identity (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 4 See Chapter Five of Molasky, The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa. 5 For a sample of articles on "mixed-blood children" from the era, see the following articles, all published in 1953 issues of the magazine Fujin kǀron [Women's Forum]: Kanzaki Kiyoshi, "Shiro to kuro: Nichibei konketuji no chǀsa hǀkoku” [Black and White: Research Report on Japanese-American Mixed-blood Children] (March 1953), pp. 128-39; Yuzawa Reiko and Takeshita Eiko, "Konketsuji no haha wa uttaeru" [Mothers of Mixed-blood Children Speak Out] (Sept. 1953), pp. 38-47; Koya Yoshio, "Konketsuji monogatari" [The Story of Mixed-blood Children] (April 1953), pp. 164-73. 6 Tachikawashikikakubu kǀhǀka, ed., Shisei 50-shnjnen kinen "Tachikawashi shisei yǀran" [In Commemoration of Fifty Years as a Municipality: A Statistical and Demographic Overview of Tachikawa City] (Tachikawa: Tachikawashi, 1990). For a succinct summary of the history of Tachikawa Airport, see the pamphlet published by the city's History and Folk Archive, Tachikawa hikǀjǀ no ayumi [History of Tachikawa Airport] (Tachikawa: 2006). 7 Katǀ Masahiro, Haisen to akasen: Kokusaku baishun no jidai [Wartime Defeat and Red-light Districts: The Era of Government-sanctioned Prostitution] (Tǀkyǀ: Kǀbunsha, 2009), p. 88. Also see the groundbreaking study of GI prostitution during the occupation: Kobayashi Daijirǀ and Murase Akira, Kokka baishun meirei monogatari [The Story Behind the Government's National Prostitution Policy] (Tǀkyǀ: Ynjzankaku, 1971). For a collection of feminist scholarship on the topic, see Keisen jogakuen daigaku heiwa bunka kenkynjjo, ed., Senryǀ to sei [Sex and the Occupation] (Tǀkyǀ: Inpakuto shuppankai, 2007). 8 Suzuki Jirǀ, Toshi to sonraku no shakaigakuteki kenkynj [A Sociological Study of City and Village] (Tǀkyǀ: Sekai shoin, 1956). 9 Ibid., p. 1. 10 The following unpublished study of prostitution in the U.S. Naval base town of Yokosuka conducted by faculty and students at Keiǀ University in 1953 is another example of an academic analysis of the issue: Keiǀ gijuku daigaku shakai jigyǀ kenkynjkai, ed., Gaishǀ to kodomotachi: Tokuni kichi Yokosukashi no genjǀ bunseki [Streetwalkers and Children: An Analysis with Special Attention to the Current Situation in the Base Town of Yokosuka]. 11 Suzuki, Toshi to sonraku, pp. 64-5. 12 Tǀkyǀ hyakunenshi, p. 1224. 13 Ibid., p. 1247. 14 The 1953 map I refer to, Tachikawashi zenzu, was published by Nihon chizu

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kabushikigaisha and provided to me by the Tachikawa History and Folk Archives. 15 Tǀkyǀ hyakunenshi, p. 1234. 16 Tokyǀjin, December 2006, p. 35. 17 Kunitachishishi, Chapter Two. 18 Kunitachishishi, p. 244. 19 Ibid., p. 263. 20 Kunitachi no shizen to bunka o mamorukai, ed., Kunitachi no shizen to bunka [Nature and Culture of Kunitachi] (Privately published, 2000), p. 136. 21 Kunitachishishi, p. 277. 22 According to an article "No Pachinko" [Pachinko ga nai] in the 20 June 1953 local edition of the Asahi newspaper, whereas there was not a single pachinko parlor in Kunitachi's designated "Special Culture and Education District", there were forty-two in Tachikawa alone.

PART II: MEMORIES, IDENTITIES AND PERCEPTIONS

OCCUPIER, OCCUPIED: THE DOUBLE REALITY OF JAPANESE IDENTITY AFTER WORLD WAR II MARCELLO FLORES

Identity and memory Peoples’ identities are always linked with both history and memory; the case of Japan can usefully test the way short and long term memories have influenced history and how memories have helped to construct the historical narratives prevailing in the present years. The constructing of a national history – despite its proclamation of objectivity by historiography – has affected Japan in the same way (and in the same years) as Italy and France: after the first wave of reconstruction, it was the 1980s and 1990s that witnessed a shift due both to the end of the Cold War and to the debates on the past which were begun mainly for political and judicial reasons. As Sakai Naoki remarked, “the attempt to posit the identity of one’s own ethnicity or nationality in terms of the gap between it and the putative West, that is, to create the history of one’s own nation through the dynamics of attraction to and repulsion from the West, has, almost without exception, been adopted as a historical mission by non-Western intellectuals”.1 The historian is a many-faceted figure whose contours are often uncertain and whose goals are not always clear. In every society, the historian should be a mediator between the present and the past, between awareness of today and the complex heritage of yesterday. Although most historians tend to portray themselves as scientists, the circumstances and the very nature of the profession also lead them to be something else—educators and archivists, judges and writers, philosophers and politicians. This is all the more true of contemporary-age historians, since in the present time the tension with the recent past remains unsolved, more problematic and changing. It was largely in the modern age that tradition was “invented”, and it was in the 20th century that collective myths and beliefs first contributed everywhere to that “nationalization of the masses” that had found its main means of implementation in opposing ideologies.

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With the exception of some recent postcolonial scholars, modern historiography has stressed the universalization of the nation-state as the most natural (and often desirable) form of political community. Japanese historiography tried in the 1960s to prove Japan’s equivalence with Europe already in the late 19th century, while simultaneously highlighting its differences from the rest of Asia. As Lim Jie-Hyun wrote, “the establishment of toyoshi (Oriental history) […] had an implication not only for Japanese Orientalism but also for Occidentalism in his works. It became increasingly antagonistic towards the West, while retaining the modernist approach to history”. As he puts it: the Japanese discourse intended to dislocate its past from Asia by inventing the Orient of China and Korea and simultaneously positioning Japan in the West so that it would overcome a sense of lack in its national history. It stood on the modified configuration of China-Korea-Orient and Japan-Occident via Japanese exceptionalism, which dislocated Japan from the East. The idea of an exceptional Japan to Asia presupposed the existence of a Japanese historical peculiarity that was close to European history. Thus, Japanese exceptionalism served as the equivalent of European exceptionalism in world history.2

The occupation is mainly remembered by the Japanese as an American affair. The memories collected by many researchers reflect both the negative and the positive aspects of an experience which changed the interaction between the Japanese and the rest of the world. The mistreatment of Japanese workers is a recurrent theme, for instance, either in the Japanese and American or Australian narrative. But the memories of those who worked as interpreters show a totally different attitude and are generally much more positive. Christine de Matos, who studied the relationship and the legacy of the Japanese-Australian encounter during the occupation, stressed that – probably also true for the American side – the real positive legacy of the occupation was a cross-cultural encounter that provided an opportunity to view each other’s common humanity, in both its best and its worst forms: The Allied Occupation of Japan constructed a space where cross-cultural exchange between Australians and Japanese occurred on an unprecedented scale. The exchange was largely driven by individuals rather than directed by the Australian government or the military, the latter imposing a ‘nonfraternization’ policy intended to prevent or reduce interaction. The stated aims of the occupation were demilitarization and democratization, not the desire to gain a greater cultural understanding of each other. Considering the level of propaganda and images of cultural stereotypes that existed about the ‘other’ in both Australia and Japan before and during the Asia–

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The Double Reality of Japanese Identity after World War II Pacific war, the encounter proved to be more positive in many regards than may have been expected.3

The strong and controversial debate regarding the nature of textbooks’ narrative of the contemporary history of Japan can usefully be summarized by looking at the way “victimhood” (the suffering of the Japanese people) and “victimization” (the atrocities inflicted on the people of Asia) are treated, stressed, obliterated, downsized, etc., both in the colonial/imperial era and in the years of the occupation. In post-war Japan there emerged a coexistence, in respect of the Japanese past, of an academic establishment, mainly progressive and with a strong Marxist influence, with a conservative bureaucratic and political establishment, which tried to dictate a “nationalistic” view of Japan’s past. During the 1980s the narratives which mainly focused on Japan’s victimhood as a nation were widely criticized for absolving the Japanese people of their responsibility in the Asia Pacific War. However, in this narrative, the nation came to be perceived in generally positive terms as a source of opposition against the state’s interests, whereas the state came to represent the negative past of imperialism, authoritarianism, and barbarism. As Alexander Bukh remarks: the narrative of Japanese victimhood creates a distinction between the state and the nation and emphasizes the heavy cost of the state’s misadventures and policies for the people of Japan. As such, the victimhood of the Japanese people serves not only as a ‘foundational myth’ of postwar Japan’s pacifist identity but also creates a highly critical view of the state and its militaristic policies. […] The victimhood of the Japanese nation in relation to World War Two is still extensively narrated in most of the texts. The most substantive change that has occurred involves depictions of one of the bloodiest battles of the war in the Pacific—the battle for Okinawa, one of the major issues in the struggle over (re)defining historical narrative. In essence, the battle has been one aspect of the general progressive drive to deepen the remorse for the past, along with the Nanjing Massacre and ‘comfort women’.4

The very symbols of Japanese victimhood – the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – are often described in evenementiel way, without resorting to emotions, and relying especially on the number of casualties and stressing the interpretation that the bombs were dropped because of the American strategic desire to establish military superiority over the Soviet Union in the postwar world order. Yet, for a long time the suffering of the Japanese people has been much more central in history textbooks (as well as in the official commemorations of the Japanese victims on 15 August every year) than the images and the narratives of the

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pain inflicted and of the crimes committed by Japan on other nations. The attempt of the Tsukurukai group in the mid-1990s to promote a revisionist view whereby the war atrocities should cut back, partially succeeded in removing almost every reference to “comfort women” from the textbooks, although the victory of the nationalist right was counterbalanced by the overwhelming rejection by Japanese local education authorities and teachers. Even if the victims’ voices are now included in many of the narratives, the narrative of Japan’s victimhood as a nation has still prevailed in textbooks over the last ten years, where the "most controversial instances of atrocities inflicted by Japan—such as the ‘comfort women’ and Unit 731 biological experiments—are notably missing and the innocence of the general Japanese population" emphasized.5 A recent survey on “peace consciousness” among students and young people revealed that the most important topics were still the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the wartime air raids and the Okinawa war experience (30.5 percent, 28.3 percent, 21.2 percent, respectively), while only a minority (14.5 percent) thought that the war of aggression against Asia could be considered of some interest.6 This can explain that, even if the narrative of national victimhood continues to play the most important role, there is an increasing importance attributed to the narratives of victimization. It was mainly the growing interest in the facts and interpretations of the battle of Okinawa that, after a long silence that had been maintained until the 1980s (with the very significant exception of ƿe Kenzaburǀ’s Okinawa Notes, whose narrative of mass suicides driven by the Japanese military started a judicial quarrel settled only in 2011), challenged the prevailing view of the Japanese nation as a victim of the state, giving more space to the images, documents, quotations and voices of the victims of Japanese imperialism in the public debate and diluting the traditional victimhood narrative of the close Japanese history.7 The building of an identity happens over time and is constantly renewed: continuity and innovation are part of it on an equal footing, although their role varies according to context. It is at the same time a political and a cultural process, which is predominantly a top-down one, from the summits of power toward society at large. The latter, however, is far from passive, and often expresses its own tendencies, preferences and sensitivity through different attitudes that are more or less spontaneous, as the “character” of a people can hardly be sidelined or replaced by mere impositions or artificial creations. Nevertheless, the primary responsibility for the building of an identity lies with the political establishment as a whole.

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In this case there has been, over the last twenty years, a fierce cultural battle, to submit the troublesome truths of the period of the war against China and Asia and of War World Two to the attention of the public sphere and especially of the younger generation. We should never forget that after every historical watershed, identity tends to recreate itself, and in so doing it retains obvious elements of continuity, but at the same time tries to break with the recent past in the name of emerging and shared values, new symbols, and new forms of coexistence.

Between State and Nation The underlining of an opposition between “state” and “nation” is linked to the overlapping of two different and opposed political interpretations of the war and occupation: that of the left’s opposition (to the capitalist state in its continuity) and that of the rightist populism which viewed the state, both in wartime and post-war Japan, as elitist and treacherous. Both the left and the right assumed the Japanese people (embodied in the nation) were not responsible for supporting wartime Japanese intervention in Asia but mainly suffering as a result of the bombing of the last phase of the war and the ensuing occupation. As Kevin Doak suggests, the disestablishment of the imperial state after the war left many Japanese with a sense that the state was a thoroughly corrupt agent for social change, but it did little to temper a broader, popular sense that national cultural identity, as reflected in the concept of minzoku,8 remained untrammelled by the sins of the militarized, westernized state: Since the imperial state had subordinated nationalism to its priority on public order under the impetus of ‘wartime exigencies’, defeat in the war was thus most immediately a defeat of this state and not necessarily a repudiation of nationalism. Indeed, after the war, the nation now could be (and in fact was) represented as a victim of the state and its elite-driven war and thus given an even greater patina of legitimacy through the ubiquitous anti-war sentiment of victimhood. This point has often eluded those historians and political theorists for whom nationalism is simply reduced to an ideology of the state. But for others who have paid closer attention to the tensions between state and nation, between statism and nationalism as they have played out both in theory and in modern Japanese historical practice, the ironic re-legitimation of nationalism through the defeat of the state is one of the most significant, if ironic, political lessons of the post-war period.9

Taking inspiration from Oguma Eiji’s work, Doak states that “Japan's defeat in World War II and its loss of empire were the preconditions for a

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post-war myth of national identity” that was rooted less in an idea of democratic citizenship and faith “in the postimperial constitutional state than in a myth of the Japanese as an ethnically ‘homogeneous nation’”.10 Doak also recalls the post-war efforts that, “following theories of decolonization that posited ethnic nationalism as liberation, sought to exempt theories of ethnic identity from complicity with imperialism, in the same way that others have imagined the Japanese people as victims of an imperialism driven by a capitalist state”.11 He concludes that Japan's national ethnic policy of the 1930s, working toward the common goal of the liberation of Asia, was useful for “postwar Japanese ideologues on both the political right and left [who] found this ethnic nationality a valuable alternative to a new Japanese nationality premised on the postwar state”.12 According to Doak, the appeal of ethnic national culture grew stronger after the war […] as a [sort of] cultural defense in light of what seemed in retrospect a war caused solely by the military and the state [….] Wakamori [Tarǀ]'s recent discovery that the state was the real aggressor in the war and that ethnic identity was the best hope for peace was more than turning the tables on history and Japan's imperial past: it also merged with Nakano [Seiichi]'s postwar sociology of victimization to locate the Japanese nation (represented as an ethnic nation) as a victim of its own state.13

If Doak’s analysis is correct, ethnicity became a legitimate foundation of national identity for the left as well, under the conditions of military occupation: In some ways, SCAP was complicit in allowing the continuation […] of the appeal of ethnic nationality in postwar Japan, since SCAP […] believed the war was caused by ‘top-down’ militarism, not by ‘bottom-up’ social ideologies like ethnic nationalism. After the occupation ended, however, this ethnological approach to Japanese identity did not wane. During the 1950s, right-wing extremists began to wax enthusiastically about ethnic nationalism as the proper foundation of the postimperial Japanese state.14

The riots accompanying the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty Revision at the end of the 1950s and in 1960, often used, both on the part of "rightists" and "leftists", the same ethnic national rhetoric to condemn the postwar state. For progressive intellectuals, too, from the 1950s there was a new awareness that Japan had again become an Asian power, and they tried therefore to retrieve and reassess an Asian tradition against the old belief that democratization and modernization modeled exclusively on “Western

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modernity” could be considered as an opposition toward ‘backward Asia’. According to Oguma Eiji: in general, for early post-war ‘progressive intellectuals’ the term ‘Western modernity’ expressed a reaction against wartime conditions. For them, emperor-centered authoritarianism and the wartime criticism of ‘modernity’ by intellectuals, as well as the farmers who (from the intellectuals’ perspective) fell in line with military authoritarianism and the assault on Western culture, were to be loathed. In contrast, what they agreed on was a ‘modern Western’ society divorced from authoritarianism and united on the basis of equality. The more miserable the wartime experience of an intellectual and the stronger their reaction against the war and authoritarianism, the more apt they were to idealize ‘Western modernity’ and, in contrast, to lump together the negative elements of Japanese society and generalize them as ‘Asiatic’.15

But this changed following the 1949 Chinese Revolution and the success of Asian independence movements: “this transformation in the image of ‘Asia’ occurred in tandem with changes in the domestic and international conditions of the 1950s”.16 From the end of the war there prevailed a vision of war responsibility focused especially on the responsibility of politicians, bureaucrats, the military, and the emperor, while the Japanese people, both soldiers and civilians, were seen as victims of the state’s choice for war. The Asian victims were neglected, as was all the suffering caused by the Japanese, both in occupied China and in the Pacific War. It was the protest against the brutal behavior of American soldiers in Vietnam that led some activists and intellectuals to feel a sense of guilt for Japan’s participation in the war, paving the way for a reconsideration of the victimization of Asia and for the successive attention to other wartime issues (the Nanjing massacre, the “comfort women”, etc.). In this context, according to Oguma: The image of ‘Asia’ for postwar intellectuals provides not only a mirror of Japanese national identity, but a reflection of domestic conditions. For many Japanese, ‘Asia’ is limited to East and Southeast Asia, i.e. China and Korea, or Indonesia and Malaysia. However, for Western Europeans, ‘Asia’ seems to refer above all to the Middle East and India, followed by China. Opinions differ as to whether such border areas as Greece and Russia fall within ‘Asia’ or the ‘West’. There are even anecdotal instances of Poles calling Russians ‘Asian’, Germans labeling Poland as ‘Asian’, and French branding Germans as ‘Asian’. Thus, ‘Asia’ frequently evokes images of the ‘other’ that are constructed in opposition to the ‘self’ in the process of national identity formation. This was the case for Japanese intellectuals, too. For them, ‘Asia’ was the medium through which they expressed reactions and attitudes including anti-Western emotions and

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desires for modernization, complex feelings toward the masses and traditional culture, and conflict between generations and the issue of war responsibility. Above all, their constructions of Asian nations reflected a Japanese national identity that changed amidst shifts in domestic political and economic conditions.17

The burden of memory The continuity between wartime society and that of the post-war era has often been emphasized but always within the dichotomy of state and society, the first to be blamed as a source of victimization, the second as a subject of victimhood, in a harsher way (but similar in many aspects) than postwar France experienced with the Vichy regime and Italy with the responsibility of fascism during the first years of the war and the occupation of the Balkans. Many historians underlined a discontinuity within the occupation itself, between the first six months characterized by an early major reform phase; and then a subsequent reverse in direction more in line with the new necessities of the Cold War and of Japan as the strongest shield against communism in Asia.18 At the beginning there was a broad range of political and social reform: the abolition of all constraints on free speech, the liberation of political prisoners, the abolition of the Thought Police, education reform, the eradication of militaristic school textbooks, the disestablishment of the Shinto religion, electoral reform (widening the franchise to women) and the elimination of restraints upon the formation of labor unions. In order to dismantle the economic organization of Japan’s war machine, preliminary efforts were also made to undermine the monopolistic power of the relatively small number of big financial conglomerates (zaibatsu dissolution) and initiate a program of war reparations.19

Ambitious reforms aimed at instilling democracy in Japan were carried out during the first two years of the occupation, and a comprehensive land reform measure was also successful. One of the major weaknesses of the democratization process regarded the fate of the Emperor. Sebastian Swann wonders whether the Emperor survived because of MacArthur’s disenchantment with the democratic process or because it was the decision to retain him that made MacArthur’s change of policy towards the Japanese people more difficult to avoid, and concludes that this seems to be something of a chicken-andegg problem. In fact MacArthur thought that the Japanese people “are unaware of

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and absolutely cannot understand either democracy or American political idealism” and was persuaded that they have a blind obedience to the Emperor, using him to achieve the goals of the occupation more easily.20 While the chief justice of Japan’s Supreme Court believed that Hirohito bore legal and moral responsibility for the war, urging him at various times (including the autumn of 1945) to stand down as a way of saving the throne and perhaps the indignity of a war crimes trial – and it is highly likely that he could have stopped the war earlier and avoided the fire bombings of Tokyo, the carnage of Okinawa and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the Chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan, on his arrival at the beginning of 1946, told his staff that the Emperor was not to be a target of investigation, inviting those who did not agree to go home.21 The decision to put the Emperor in the new constitution as merely “a symbol of the State and of the unity of the people”, made a clean break with the past with regard to the divine status of the Emperor, but also could be interpreted “as a reaffirmation of Japan’s supposed racial purity and cultural homogeneity”,22 undermining a true process of democratization. Hirohito himself, in fact, saw his role more in terms of meeting the will of his new masters than reflecting the will of the people of whom he was now the constitutional representative. This ambiguity was rooted in the central ironies of the occupation: namely, that liberation from domestic militarism came at the hands of foreign soldiers and that the most profound democratic reforms were initiated by the occupiers themselves. The struggle over the renewal of the Security Treaty in 1960 – ratified despite strong opposition from Japan’s left parties and strong street protest – was mainly against the “reverse course”, the Cold War goals, and the idea of Japan as a bastion of Free World capitalism. It was the constitution – with its no-war clause – that became the symbol of the protest, especially youth and student protest, but also of the majority of Japanese people opposed to recent developments. The Zengakuren opposition to the revision of the security Treaty was important because, after the Sunagawa Incident,23 the Tokyo District Court acquitted the leaders of the protest on the grounds that the Law for Special Measures would violate the constitution’s “due process” clause because the presence of the U.S. bases in Japan was unconstitutional. Even if the Supreme Court overturned the decision in December 1959 – with the American Ambassador putting strong pressure on the Supreme Court – the legal problem was set to return in the future, just when the protest against the new Security Treaty provoked the cancellation of Eisenhower’s trip to Japan and the retirement of Kishi Nobusuke (the prime minister, a “class

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A” war criminal de-purged within the Reverse Course by the SCAP and released in 1948 without trial).24 The protest was more about internal issue than anti-Americanism, and the Zengakuren (which had recently changed to a new anti-communist leadership) were more interested in criticizing Japanese imperialism and aiming at an immediate revolution than struggling against the U.S. influence as it had done until 1957.25 The battle over an identity rooted in neutrality and peacefully interpreting the constitution – against the Security Treaty considered incompatible with Article 9 of the constitution – again favored the opposition between the “nation” and the “state”. During the 1960s and the 1970s, there was again, in contrast with the new “Asian” identity, an attempt to carry on the intellectual strategy of de-Asianizing the Japanese postwar discourse, trying to put Japanese history into the history of the modern West: In the field of memory, this led to partial amnesia about Japan’s expansionism past. Japanese victimization of other Asian nations and the history of Japanese violence on the Asian mainland remained largely undiscussed. The war appeared, in the first place, as a conflict between Japan and the USA. The atrocities committed on the Asian mainland — the Nanjing massacre, the biochemical experiments of Unit 731, the forced prostitution throughout Asia — were excluded from debate. In Japanese discourse, ‘Asia’ disappeared in a historiographical vacuum.26

It was in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s that Japanese memory of the war and of the occupation changed deeply, even if the focus was now left mainly to writers, novels, and the movies. This was due to the fact that the other Asian voices (Chinese, Korean) were now more frequently heard and not marginalized as they had been before; that the discussion on memory and remembering assumed in Japan as in the whole world a new and deeper dimension; that there was a sudden increase in personal memories and histories of ordinary Japanese who wanted to make their voices heard. Thus, within the framework of the disappearance of East-West opposition brought about by the end of the Cold War, opened up the possibility of new forms of contestation of the hegemonic versions of national memory […] as the controversy over the Enola Gay exhibition in Washington in 1995 demonstrated, the concern with American interpretations of the Japanese past had not diminished. […] The most important development in the 1990s was what could be named the return of ‘Asia’. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war in 1995, in particular, the demand for an official apology from the Japanese government was made by many Asian governments and civil society groups. […] The debates in Japan cannot be understood outside

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The Double Reality of Japanese Identity after World War II this broader context. What is striking in all these debates is not just the extent to which formerly marginalized voices have made themselves heard and turned a Japanese preoccupation with the national past into a transnational endeavor. […] In the 1990s, however, the voices increased and undermined the governmental monopoly on national memory. Individuals and civil society groups from other Asian nations began to play a leading role in the shifting terrain of Japanese memory production. Through these various and discordant interventions, they contributed to the emergence of what Lisa Yoneyama has recently called ‘post-nationalist public spheres in the production of historical knowledge’.27

The literary works of this period, which Michael Molasky has wonderfully analyzed, with their strong “metaphors of castration and impotence, present the men as ‘feminized’ and thereby equate men’s social powerlessness under foreign occupation with that of women under supposedly normal social conditions”. Even in literature victimhood prevailed over victimization, even if many of these works “refuse to acknowledge the victimhood of postwar subjects of American occupation without first implicating them as complicit in Japan’s violent prewar and wartime domination of Asia”.28 Since the years of the occupation memory and history have been a common and ongoing focus for the political and cultural struggle within Japan. A comparative analysis with two or three European experiences (Italy, Germany, France) is probably needed to deepen these issues further, keeping in mind that the historian should unveil the complexity of historical events, their multiple causes, the complex indetermination of their context, the fact that memories and documentation can never be exhaustive, the provisional character of any possible synthesis and the ever new questions that need to be addressed.

Notes 1

Naoki Sakai, Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 50. 2 Jie-Hyun Lim, “The Configuration of Orient and Occident in the Global Chain of National Histories: Writing National Histories in Northeast Asia”, in Representations in History, Media and the Arts, eds. Stefan Berger, Linas Eriksonas and Andrew Mycock (New York: Berghahn, 2008), pp. 296-7 and 304. 3 Christine M. de Matos, The Occupiers and the Occupied: A Nexus of Memories, University of Wollongong Research Online, 2006, p. 14, available at http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/index.3.html (accessed 17 November 2013); for the wartime propaganda both in US and Japan cfr. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).

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Alexander Bukh, “Japan’s History Textbooks Debate. National Identity in Narratives of Victimhood and Victimization”, Asian Survey 47, no. 5 (2007), p. 691. 5 Ibid., p. 699. 6 Orihara Toshio, “Peace Education in Japan’s Schools: A View From the Front Lines”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 19 April 2009, available at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Orihara-Toshio/3128 (accessed 17 November 2013). 7 See the contributions in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 8 The concept of minzoku encompasses various meanings including that of ethnic group, nation, race and a combination of these. 9 Kevin M. Doak, A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 203. 10 Kevin M. Doak, “Building National Identity through Ethnicity: Ethnology in Wartime Japan and After”, Journal of Japanese Studies 27, no. 1 (2001), p. 5. See also Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-images (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002), Ch. 17. 11 Doak, “Building National Identity”, p. 6. 12 Ibid., p. 31 13 Ibid., p. 33. 14 Ibid., p. 38. 15 Eiji Oguma, “Postwar Japanese Intellectuals’ Changing Perspectives on ‘Asia’ and Modernity”, in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 9 February 2007, available at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Oguma-Eiji/2350 (accessed 17 November 2013). This was the revised version of a chapter in Sven Saaler and J. Victor Koschmann, eds., Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders (London: Routledge, 2007). 16 Oguma, “Postwar Japanese”. 17 Ibid. 18 See Peter Duus, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), vol. 6, 1988; Masao Maruyama, Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. Ivan Morris (London and New York: Oxford University Press,1963). 19 Sebastian Swann, “Democratization and the Evasion of War Responsibility: the Allied Occupations of Japan and the Emperor”, Discussion Paper no. IS/99/370, presented at the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, London School of Economics and Political Science, available at http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/is/IS370.pdf (accessed 17 November 2013). 20 Ibid. 21 The Tokyo War Crime Trials. A Digital Exhibition, available at http://lib.law.virginia.edu/imtfe/ (accessed 17 November 2013). 22 Swann, “Democratization and the Evasion”. 23 The “Sunagawa incident” took place in 1957 when anti-base protesters entered the U.S. Tachikawa air force base area to protest the extension of the base runway.

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John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999). 25 Stuart Dowsey, ed., Zengakuren: Japan’s Revolutionary Students (Berkeley: Ishi Press, 1970); Zackary Kaplan, “Anti-Americanism in Zengakuren 19571960”, Studies on Asia 2, no. 1 (2012), pp. 50-70; William Marotti, “Japan 1968: The Performance of Violence and the Theater of Protest”, American Historical Review 118, no. 1 (2009), pp. 97-135. 26 Sebastian Conrad, “Entangled Memories: Versions of the Past in Germany and Japan, 1945-2001”, Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 1 (2003), pp. 85-99: 92. 27 Ibid., pp. 96-8. 28 Michael S. Molasky, The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 29.

QUOTING THE PAST: SHINODA’S MACARTHUR’S CHILDREN EUGENIO DE ANGELIS

Japanese film production needed more than thirty years to come to terms with the issue of the American occupation. One major turning point can be traced back to Shinoda Masahiro’s film Setouchi shǀnen yakynjdan [MacArthur’s Children] (literally: ‘Setouchi Boys’ baseball team), considered by many “the best-known Japanese film about the occupation”.1 The film, released in 1984, was the result of a series of events that followed the changes in the cinema industry before the 1980s. It embodied a new approach in dealing with the occupation matter and, to some extent, it still represents a unique experience on this topic, offering both a historical overview of that period and a critical approach to the feelings of the whole country.

Historical Background The staging of the relations between the United States and Japan and the influence of the American culture on postwar Japan has been a problem since 1945, owing to a number of factors. The opening scene of Shinoda’s film with the Emperor's surrender speech (known in Japan as gyokuon hǀsǀ i.e. Jewel Voice Broadcast) and documentary footage of the American landing, has high iconic value for what it would come to represent for postwar Japan and consequently for its film industry. While in 1939 the Film Law - the so-called Eigahǀ - had led the Japanese cinema, through strong forms of censorship2, to exalt the new nationalistic order or, at least, not to criticize it, the American occupation reversed the perspective to 180° degrees since its beginning. In September 1945 the Supreme Commandment of the Allied Powers (SCAP) established the Civil Information and Education (CIE), whose purpose was the cultural "re-education" and “democratization” of the country. At that time in Japan television was still far from being

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widespread and cinema was one major form of entertainment. Therefore it became one of the best means to promote "democratic values" through a new kind of censorship. New guidelines were handed over to Japanese filmmakers. As a result most of jidaigeki3 - the “period dramas” – were banned until the end of the occupation, along with all those movies which could recall any feudal-type relationships, the exaltation of military heroes of the past or other symbols associated with the nationalistic ideals of the previous period such as Mount Fuji. In 1949 a national censorship board was set up. It was heavily influenced by the occupation practices of the time and was given the name of EIRIN (Eiga rinri kitei kanri iinkai), still in force today. Through the examination of new screenplays and the review of finished products the CIE promoted a cinema full of democratic and positive ideals such as individuality, freedom of speech, liberal social mores4 and female emancipation. Cinema was cleansed from violence, and emphasized the collective effort towards peace and the welfare of the community. Under the occupation American authorities, even if promoting freedom of speech, ironically prohibited any form of references to the occupation itself. As noted by Jasper Sharp: “Despite the large role they played in everyday life, as far as cinema went, the occupation had to remain virtually invisible: the one thing that the modern-day viewer notices about the films of this period is that the occupier is never alluded to. There are no signs of soldiers; no English-language signs; no U.S. planes flying overhead; films about mixed-blood offspring of the locals and American soldiers were never produced; indeed no foreign faces at all are in evidence”.5 At the end of the 1950s, the political environment in Japan radically changed because of the appearance on the political stage of the leftist student movements led by Zengakuren6, followed by the protests against the ratification of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (known in Japanese as Anpo jǀyaku or ANPO). The climate of protest and defiance against the Authority and State - reflected in contemporary cinema - gave rise to the so-called New Wave of Japanese cinema and promoted the uprising of a new generation of young directors as ƿshima Nagisa, Imamura Shǀhei and Shinoda Masahiro himself, who made his debut in 1960 with Koi no katamichi kippu [One-way Ticket for Love]. These directors rebelled against the former studio system, identifying themselves with Japan’s youth culture and their struggle against authority. They challenged the previous generation of directors by dealing more directly the issues faced in postwar Japan. Unlike the films of the 1950s, these works often refer to

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the American occupation and how western culture had influenced Japan. The protest towards the State, considered guilty of being too submissive to the interests of the United States, however, did not allow an ideologically detached analysis of the relationship between the two countries. The young filmmakers used the American influence as a weapon to criticize Japanese society, by representing the criminal undergrowth which had flourished around the American military bases. Some of the best examples are Imamura’s Buta to gunkan [Pigs and Battleships] (1961), his documentary Nippon sengoshi: Madamu onboro no seikatsu [History of Postwar Japan as told by a Bar Hostess] (1971) and Suzuki Seijun’s Nikutai no mon [Gate of Flesh] (1964). Directors of this period also focused on how the Western influence affected youth’s minds as in the case of Shinoda’s Kawaita mizuumi [Youth in Fury] (1961) and Wakamatsu Kǀji’s Teroru no kisetsu [Season of Terror] (1969), or referred to American soldiers in stories with a universal human value as in ƿshima’s Shiiku [The Catch] (1961), based on the novel by Nobel-prize ƿe Kenzaburǀ. With the second ratification of the ANPO in 1970, and the events which followed the so-called Asama sansǀ jiken,7 the protests completely died out in the mid-1970s; at the same time the New Wave exhausted its innovative strength8 and the directors who had characterized this cultural season took different directions. Meanwhile, the cinema system underwent a crisis,9 resulting in a fragmentation of works and relying on the repetition of longstanding formulas as proven by the endless “Tora-san series”, Otoko wa tsurai yo [It’s tough being a man] (1969-1995, fortyeight movies). It could be said that by that time the American occupation issue was still unsolved in Japanese cinema, until Shinoda finally directed MacArthur's Children in 1984. It is not a coincidence that Shinoda directed MacArthur's Children in the 1980s. As noted by Linda Ehrlich: “Shinoda’s film from the ‘80s reflects a time when the Japanese could pause in their frantic race toward modernization and reflect on the rapidly receding memories of the past thirty years”.10 Japan reached its peak of economic expansion in the 1980s, becoming the second economic world power, and coming to threaten the superiority of the United States itself. Therefore in this particular historical period, it could be said that Japan had somehow leveled the psychological subjection against the former invaders and had overcome the trauma of occupation (despite U.S. military bases were - and still are - on the Japanese soil, particularly in Okinawa). Indeed the cultural influences derived from the period 1945-52 had now been assimilated. Japan found itself in such a social and economic position that the country could look

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upon its “re-educators” from an equal position and analyze the past with a historical perspective, since thirty years had passed.

About the Director Shinoda Masahiro made his debut in the same period of ƿshima and Yoshida Kijnj, the leaders of the so-called Shǀchiku Nouvelle Vague,11 and he is considered as one of the leading directors of the Japanese New Wave between the 1960s and the 1970s. His films often explored moral dilemmas, revealing “his core conviction that societies victimize the individual”12 as in two of his best early works: Shinjnj ten no Amijima [Double Suicide] (1969) e Kawaita hana [Pale Flower] (1964), moving “back and forth between an explicitly theatrical style and a softer historicism”.13 In this period, during which filmmakers and artists in general were closely aligned with political activists, Shinoda reached his stylistic maturity. Afterwards, as many directors of the time, he no longer got involved in political issues. His interest shifted to a more aesthetical approach that showed his love for classical art,14 often relying on traditional aesthetics from kabuki and bunraku. Following the end of the New Wave movement, Shinoda, looking back on the past in a nostalgic mood, focused on aesthetic transpositions of literary works and theatrical plays such as Chinmoku [Silence] (1971, by Endǀ Shnjsaku), Sakura no mori no mankai no shita [Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees] (1975, by Sakaguchi Ango) and Maihime [The Dancing Girl] (1989, by Mori ƿgai). In 1984, after a 25-year career and almost the same number of films, Shinoda was a mature author and one of the most outstanding directors of Japanese cinema.

Counter-memory as a Strategy for Interpretation Given Japan’s economic and social situation in the 1980s, the period was therefore mature for the Japanese cinema to finally face the occupation matter, without the restrictions of the censorship of the 1950s or the ideological blinders of the 1960s and the 1970s. MacArthur's Children was the first film to deal with the topic so broadly and directly. Shinoda’s reinterpretation of this period explores a new approach to Japanese cinema. The film is presented as a "nostalgic and sometimes humorous representation of the feeling of defeat and helplessness of those who attended the death of a large part of the ancient Japanese culture".15 It revises history through memory, using what Wimal Dissanayake defines as counter-memory: “Counter-memory looks to the past for the hidden

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histories excluded from dominant narratives. […] Counter-memory forces revisions of existing histories by supplying new perspectives about the past.”16 The theme of the relations between the two countries and the cultural influence that America had on Japan are then represented through personal memories, as those of the director himself, who was fourteen years old in 1945. He had to face both the shame of defeat and the difficulties of the postwar period, which were so deeply imprinted in his experience that he would return to them in two of his later works, Shǀnen jidai [Childhood Days] (1991) and Setouchi mnjnraito serenƗde [Setouchi Moonlight Serenade] (1995). As he had stated himself, his task was to perpetuate the memory and involve the younger viewers of contemporary Japan: “Now the Japanese have plenty to eat and live a full life, so maybe at least they can have the leeway to look at the images of their own defeat. I may be a member of the last generation that remembers MacArthur calling us cultural twelve-years-old”.17 However, Shinoda’s memories are also those of a boy not yet into adulthood; the film is therefore filled with a lighter vein of what the audience might expect from the representation of such a difficult period. The pain for the loss, the disorientation due to radical changes and daily hardships are therefore contrasted by the curiosity for the arrival of the American soldiers and, above all, by the spirit of the Japanese constructive initiative which let them to look towards the future with optimism despite adversity.

Setting the Mood for a Choral Work MacArthur's Children is based on the novel by Aku Ynj and the personal memories of both the director and the screenwriter Tamura Tsutomu.18 The film, released in 1984, was one of the biggest box-office hits of that year and it was critically acclaimed, ranking third in the annual Kinema Junpǀ's "Best Ten" and winning the Japanese “Blue Ribbon Award” for the Best Film. MacArthur's Children is set in Awaji, a small island on the Inland Sea of Japan. The Second World War had spared the island except for some abandoned cannons on a cliff and the sad procession of the soldiers returning home. Nostalgia is one of MacArthur's Children’s main themes, within which Shinoda vividly depicts this small community of fishermen, mainly through the innocent eyes of two children. The Emperor’s surrender speech introduces the film and triggers confusion among the primary school children who do not fully grasp the meaning of what they are listening to on the radio. The teacher herself is unable to cope with what she is hearing and with dismay she starts to cry all alone. It is then

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that the film makes use of the documentary footage which shows the American landing and the arrival of General MacArthur in Japan, accompanied by the shots of the iconic Genbaku domu in Hiroshima. This editing of clips, dramatic for the Japanese, is somehow relieved by using as soundtrack the classic In the mood by the Glenn Miller's Band, a fresh and bright American wartime hit, which sets from the beginning the general mood of the film. Ehrlich summarizes it as: “a bittersweet recollection of a time just beyond the horrors of war that seemed to offer the promise of better things to come”.19 Shinoda focuses on the lives of several characters during the early American occupation on the island: a teacher waiting for the return of her missing husband, a high-ranked soldier accused of war crimes and submissively waiting to be sentenced, his daughter, a lascivious hairdresser, a policeman, the gangster Tetsu20 and, most importantly, Saburǀ and Rynjta, the two primary school children both orphans of their father because of the war. With its manifold characters, the film turns by all means into a choral work, where “their histories exemplifies different ways of coping with everyday workaday changes brought about, in part, by changes beyond their power to control”.21

Ambivalence in Representation By revising history through personal memories, the director’s attitude towards the American occupation is ambivalent and at times ambiguous. According to Dissanayake: “Shinoda takes a hard and satirical look at postwar Japan, and the impact of American culture. In terms of the question of nationhood, the film opens up the multilayered representational space of the nation by pointing out its different sedimentations”.22 The feelings of resignation and defeat experienced by the adults of the island are accompanied by a sense of dislike towards the Americans by the children. Their reaction is to group together and watch the American landing, trying to prevent them from finding the Japanese soldier and protecting his daughter, who is one classmate of theirs. On the other hand, Shinoda recalls the American arrival on the island as an event feared and awaited at the same time. The policeman and the local authorities feverishly do their best to give them a decent welcome, while the director depicts the American soldiers “as they might have appeared to the Japanese at that time – broad-brushed figures projecting an air of self-assurance and invulnerability”.23 They are mostly kind and open-minded towards the local people, but at the same time unaware of cultural differences. For instance when two soldiers enter a traditional Japanese house with their

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boots on, their superior scolds them because they show no respect towards the local costume. Moreover, the director shoots some iconic scenes of American soldiers traveling with their jeeps, followed by curious children to whom the soldiers throw candies, chewing gum and chocolate bars. However the director does not fail to stress that the American convoy is driving straight onto the stone-steps of a Shinto shrine, thus confirming the ambiguity of the representation of the Americans. Nonetheless Shinoda seems to deal with their arrival in a rather conciliatory way, not criticizing the American soldiers directly. On the contrary he highlights their human qualities, directing his blame to abstract entities such as the “United States” and the “war”. Even if the director depicts the American physical invasion as peaceful, he also stresses, in a quite nostalgic way, the more subtle aspects of their arrival. Early in the movie, when MacArthur has already set the rules, the teacher abruptly points out to the class that all the words, phrases, sentences connected to the nationalist past will be totally erased from their textbooks. This scene has a strong symbolic connotation and when words like “Imperial Shrine”, “Sailor's Mother”, “Souls victorious in battle”, “Korean Country Tales” are erased, the children are also erasing their history. The ink-dipped paintbrush becomes the living tool of oblivion. At first the words on the books, then their own national identity is erased when they childishly smudge with ink their clothes. They are left with nothing, just like Rynjta who is forced to burn his own drawings of Japanese battleships and fighter planes, which represent the only memories left of his mother. After that, Shinoda looks back to the past in a nostalgic way highlighting the loss of cultural and emotional roots. This process of loss will be completed at the end of the movie, when the teacher, during an English lesson, makes her students tragically repeat the sentence: “I'm an American boy”: the country had surrendered completely to the American power.

American Legacy The effects of the American arrival in Awaji, are basically the same as the rest of Japan’s. However Shinoda, by focusing on the small island's microcosm, is able to give prominence to their effectiveness: the female hairdresser, depicted as a lascivious woman, starts to run a western-style bar which plays rock 'n roll music. People start to dress differently: western suits, bright shirts and extreme and eccentric haircuts begin to take the place of the usual local clothes. Thereby, the movie industry changes too: a scene shows the two children watching a screening of the first

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Japanese movie containing an explicit kiss, Hatachi no seishun, directed by Sasaki Yasushi in 1946. Therefore, MacArthur’s Children effectively shows the Americans bringing modernization to the national cinema, but at the same time the film avoids noticing the new kind of censorship they imposed on it, which prohibited all the jidaigeki and the movies that recalled the Emperor or the nationalistic ideology. This is what McDonald calls “eclectic ambiguity”24 in Shinoda’s representation of social changes. However, even if the director often depicts Americans in a positive, or at least non-negative way, he also gives a critical reading of some of the changes above mentioned, showing some negative factors of the American influence. First of all, a sort of decadence of the social mores which symbolically starts when the Japanese soldier is arrested and charged with war crimes. Shinoda introduces this character positively as if he embodied the authentic Japanese values, avoiding any references to nationalism. The high-ranked soldier played by Itami Jnjzǀ elevates himself both from the local fishermen and the American soldiers for his severity, his elegance and for his composure. When the character recalls the incident which had led him to a martial judgment, the idea of a history revised by the victorious comes along, changing what was considered to be an act of valor from the Japanese’s point of view into a war crime. This is the only scene in the movie where Shinoda seems to overtly victimize Japan, although McDonald is prone to read the entire film as “a natural outcome of Shinoda’s lifelong conviction that the individual’s relationship with society is essentially one of victim and victimizer. […] In MacArthur’s Children his venue shifts to the plight of young children who must grow up in the aftermath of World War II”.25

Japanese Purity The scene where the war criminal has to leave the island symbolically represents the beginning of the American “invasion” which brought new trends and ideologies, together with a sort of moral decadence. The characters that embody this bad influence are Saburǀ's two young acquaintances from Osaka who induce the boy to wish to become a baraketsu, a typical expression for “young gangster”. The western clothes they wear are so flashy that they make the teacher say: “I thought that maybe a circus has arrived”. They took Saburǀ away from his classroom without permission, while tossing western candies to the other children who in turn throw themselves onto the floor trying to take as many sweets as they can. The teacher tries to calm down the class but in vain; they are literally and symbolically subdued by western temptations. The following

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dialogue between the teacher and the woman from Osaka clarifies the inner self of the two characters and what they symbolize, revealing once again Shinoda’s nostalgic look. The teacher is considered a woman with an old-fashioned way of thinking, while the other woman states that now “people's desires come first” in contrast with the typical wartime sentence “no pleasure before victory”. Mume, the daughter of the Japanese soldier, shows no interest in western candies and she is the only one who remains seated. Considering her maturity and how she reacts to her father’s execution by joining the baseball team, Shinoda seems to suggest that Mume is, along with her teacher, the only one who can preserve the Japanese traditional values, standing for “stoic acceptance of individual fate at the mercy of historical progression”.26 The dramatic and typically Japanese love story involving the teacher – “the moral core of the film” in Ehrlich’s opinion27 - induces to strengthen this interpretation: she is raped by the brother of her missing husband, and when the latter finally returns home she refuses to meet him. Her “dirty” body does not allow her pure love to be fulfilled, as in the typical Japanese scheme. In a wider sociological reading, this scene can be also seen in the frame of the United States-Japan power relationship, because it takes place “in the very house where, and at the moment when, the village administration is downstairs entertaining the occupational troops”. All this leads to the conclusion that “in the aftermath of the war, Japan as nation was […] metaphorically ‘raped’ by the occupation forces: deprived of selfgovernance, forced into surrender and capitulation to the Western other, upsetting the terms of power/masculinity”.28 A reading which is underlined when the two young protagonists speak in awe of the massive size of American penises. Director Takechi Tetsuji certainly takes the same stance quoted above and makes this point extremely clear in his highly criticized - and heavily censored - Kuroi yuki [Black Snow] (1965), one of the few films which openly and directly refers to the American occupation. The film’s outrageous aesthetics and strong criticism to Japan during the politically-engaged 1960s, sent the director to court, charged with public obscenity, in a trial which was the first of this kind since the end of the war. Kuroi yuki takes place in the surroundings of Yokota U.S. military base and features a main character who is able to perform sexual intercourse only when he has a gun in his hand. The opening sequence leaves no further doubts about the director’s intent, showing a Japanese woman lying on her back and a black serviceman having sex stretched over her. Shinoda obviously does not provide such extreme images, nonetheless he shows by the end of the film how the American influence had negative effects on the island's stability: the western bar run by the ex-

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hairdresser goes bankrupt and the two characters from Osaka turn out to be cheaters looking for easy money.

Baseball vs yakynj Even if it is true that Shinoda makes some negative remarks about the American occupation, the conciliatory nature of the movie makes it bearable. U.S. soldiers are depicted positively and in some cases they appear truly interested and respectful of the local culture, the climax of which is the scene of the baseball match between the American soldiers and the Japanese children. This match obviously does not have a competitive nor revengeful intent, as Shinoda himself later explained,29 and “serves as an apt metaphor for the interconnected destinies of Japan and United States. […] Baseball becomes the leitmotif of the film, linking past, present and future among the Japanese. It exemplifies the merging of Western technology and Japanese spirit that Japanese authorities had been espousing since the mid-1800s”.30 However, Ehrlich makes some remarks about the relevance of the dog (he steals the ball allowing the Japanese children to triumph), which would represent the reincarnated spirit of the executed war criminal, thus affirming a sort of Japanese moral victory: “It would be hard to imagine the generally celebratory finale of the film had the Americans won. What the baseball game represents is a progression of three generations of Japanese (grandfather, teacher and children) through bitter memory on to a spiritual, if not military, victory”.31 Regarding this we should note that baseball was introduced in Japan in the 1870s, reaching professional status in the 1930s, and has become today the most popular sport in Japan.32 Matches between American and Japanese teams have been on record starting from the end of the XIX century. Since the introduction of baseball, Japan has tried to make it genuinely Japanese, shaping it in compliance with the important elements of the nation in the early twentieth-century, with a strict set of unwritten rules which Robert Whiting defined as “Samurai Code of Conduct for Baseball Players”. Rejecting the origin of the game, a new Japanese word – yakynj – was designed to name it instead of the traditional katakana alphabet used for foreign words. Therefore even if not intentional by Shinoda, the point made by Ehrlich could be relevant. A match between American and Japanese teams, inevitably brings into context – even in the not competitive context of the film - a symbolical rivalry in which Japan needs to affirm its independence from America, claiming baseball (or, even better, yakynj) as a typical and superior national product.

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Nostalgia The lighter and optimistic look at the period by the screenwriter Tamura predominates in some highly symbolic scenes such as the one in which the schoolmates join their forces doing several manual works to get the money they need to buy the baseball equipment. This is a scene which, along with the beautiful final images of the hill in blossom, can stand for a country trying hard to rise from the poverty and defeat of the war aftermath without complaining; scenes which testify the will of Japan to face the future in an optimistic way as the two main female characters seem to suggest. This combination of nostalgia and sadness may be explained through the different visions which the author of the novel, the screenwriter and the director himself had on this historical period. As Shinoda explains,33 the then-eight-year-old Tamura, who represents Awaji children's point of view, inevitably see all the changes brought by the Americans - though in a more sneaky than violent way - as they were signs for a better future, regretting at the same time his lost childhood. On the contrary the director, who is six years older than Tamura, was certainly more capable of understanding what was happening around him, conscious of the fact that Japan would have had to pass through hard times to recover from the huge war wounds. He represents the Awaji adults' point of view, according to which the American interference is more traumatic because it arbitrarily erases the past imposing the conditions for the future. Therefore, it prevents the Japanese people to develop the awareness and critical perception of their past, necessary to acknowledge the errors they have made. The movie appears constantly in balance between optimism and sadness, the two moods which indeed characterized the postwar period.

Conclusion Through the ambiguous representation of the occupation period, by alternating the viewpoint of the children with those of the adults’, optimism and defeat, baseball games and war criminals, the film becomes a banner on which opposing forces are measured. Shinoda deals with the relationship between the two countries and the United States’ influence from a different perspective and greater maturity than the Japanese cinema had done so far. He paves the way to a more blunt relationship between the United States and Japan, once the avant-garde season has withered away and western codes have now been fully integrated into national cinema and literature, as witnessed by Murakami Haruki, who is now

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considered the most international among the Japanese contemporary writers. In his novel, 1Q84 (2009), a book which deals with themes such as memory and identity, Murakami writes: “Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It’s a crime. Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us—is rewritten—we lose the ability to sustain our true selves”.34 Similarly, by using the microcosm of Awaji, the director is able to deal with the postwar Japan and the experience of the American occupation through the eyes veiled with nostalgia for his vanished youth. In MacArthur's Children, Shinoda operates through individual memory so not to lose the collective memory. As stated before, the 1980s marked the economic peak for Japan, which was flying high on the euphoric wings of the bubble economy that eventually would break down that same economic hegemony. Shinoda's film became a watershed that closed the American occupation chapter in cinema history putting it aside. The economic boom incorporated the cultural scene within the postmodern capitalism, in a process of cultural restyling that seemed to erase the memory by marking the definitive abandon of political commitment. What Peter Eckersall wrote about the theater of the 1980s can be moved to a certain extent to the cinema of the same period, revealing “an overwhelming ‘urge to erase history’. Such an impulse makes a historical reality seem distant, playful and without substance, while at the same time underlining the sense of historical amnesia regarding unpleasant realities of war and Japan’s past”.35 The economic recession which had started in the early 1990s, put an end to the superficial euphoria of the 1980s. Though it marked the rise of a new sense of crisis in Japanese society, the Japanese cinema had already moved to a new phase with the emergence of filmmakers such as Kitano Takeshi and Tsukamoto Shin’ya. MacArthur's Children thus represents the peak and, at the same time, the end of what the occupation symbolized for the cinema of the country.

Notes 1 John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), p.649 2 Planned in April 1939 and put into force in the October of the same year, the Film Law enabled the government to control the production and distribution of films. The bunka eiga (culture film) and nynjsu eiga (news film) were the main weapons of cinema propaganda and they were screened in “double-bill” with a feature film. By 1941 the situation worsened because of the ban of all American

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films and a total readjustment in the film industry. See Akira Shimizu, “War and Cinema in Japan” in The Japan /America Film Wars: WWII Propaganda and Its Cultural Context, eds. Abé Mark Nornes and Yukio Fukushima (Newark: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994), pp. 28-9. 3 An exception is represented by the film Utamaro meguru gonin no onna [Utamaro and his five women] (1947) that Mizoguchi Kenji was able to shoot submitting Utamaro to CIE as a liberal hero who rebelled against the feudal order of the shogunate. See Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2005), p. 110. 4 Thanks to this new trend the first explicit kiss in the history of Japanese cinema in 1946 could be shown in two films distributed simultaneously, Hatachi no seishun [Twenty-Year-Old Youth] by Sasaki Yasushi and Aru yo no seppun [A Certain Night’s Kiss] by Chiba Yasuki. See Maria Roberta Novielli, Storia del cinema giapponese (Venezia: Marsilio, 2001), p. 126. 5 Jasper Sharp, “Review of Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo”, available at http://www.midnighteye.com/books/mr-smith-goes-to-tokyo-japanese-film-underthe-american-occupation-1945-1952/ (accessed 5 June 2013). 6 All Japan Federation of Student Self Governing Associations (Zen Nihon gakusei jichikai sǀrengǀ or Zengakuren) was founded in September 1948 gathering all the university-based political organizations of the country. Ten years later it would detach itself from Japan Communist Party, and come to term with wider political issues rather than with university-related ones. It became independent from JPC, contributing greatly to form the New Left, leading all the major demonstrations of the 1960s against the ANPO signing and renewal, the handover of Okinawa, the war in Vietnam, etc.. Zengakuren's progressive fragmentation eventually led to its dissolution and an escalation of violence in the early 1970s by the extremist left groups. See following footnote. 7 In February 1972, five members of the extreme left-wing organization United Red Army (Rengǀ sekigun) barricaded themselves in a mountain lodge fighting back the attacks of the police for ten days and causing three deaths and numerous injuries. It was discovered later that in the two previous months, the group had killed twelve of its members for "ideological deviation". The event caused a stir and put an end to the season of the student riots in Japan. Director Wakamatsu Kǀji later recounted his version of the Asama sansǀ jiken in the highly realistic Jitsuroku: Rengǀ sekigun [United Red Army] (2007). 8 David Desser, Eros plus Massacre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 195-6. 9 Mark Schilling, Contemporary Japanese Film (Trumbull: Weatherhill, 1999), p. 14. 10 Linda Ehrlich, “Erasing and Refocusing: Two Films of the Occupation”, in Shohei Imamura, ed. James Quandt (Toronto: Cinematheque Ontario Monographs, 1999), p. 176. 11 However this definition was rejected by the directors themselves. It represented a label coined on purpose by the Shǀchiku which aimed at selling easily the early works of this new generation of filmmakers to a young audience.

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Keiko McDonald, Reading a Japanese Film: Cinema in Context (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), p. 152. 13 Ehrlich, “Erasing and Refocusing”, p. 166. 14 Novielli, Storia del cinema giapponese, pp. 231-2. 15 Ibid., p. 232 16 Wimal Dissanayake, “Introduction” in Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema, ed. Wimal Dissanayake (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. xxiv. 17 Quote from Ehrlich, “Erasing and Refocusing”, p. 176. 18 Tamura was a very active screenwriter during the Japanese New Wave period as witnessed by his co-operations with important directors as ƿshima Nagisa and Yoshida Kijnj. 19 Ehrlich, “Erasing and Refocusing”, p. 168. 20 The soldier is played by Itami Jnjzǀ who, at that time, was not yet a filmmaker. His daughter is played by the newcomer Sakura Shiori who won several awards for this role. As in most of his films, the director cast his wife, Iwashita Shima, as the hairdresser. The film also marks the first appearance on screen of Watanabe Ken who plays the role of the gangster Tetsu. Natsume Masako, who starred as the teacher, would tragically die a year later, at the age of 28. 21 McDonald, Reading a Japanese Film, p. 154. 22 Dissanayake, “Introduction”, p. xxv. 23 Ehrlich, “Erasing and Refocusing”, p. 174. 24 McDonald, Reading a Japanese Film, p. 158. 25 Keiko McDonald, From Book to Screen – Modern Japanese Literature in Film (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), p. 237. 26 McDonald, Reading a Japanese Film, p. 162. 27 Ehrlich, “Erasing and Refocusing”, p. 173. 28 Nina Cornyetz, “Fetishized Blackness: Racial Desire in Contemporary Japanese Narrative and Culture” in Literature and Ethnic Discrimination, ed. Michael J. Meyer (Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997), p. 213. 29 Midori Yajima, “Yari no gonza”, Kinema junpǀ 927, January 1986, p. 52. 30 Ehrlich, “Erasing and Refocusing”, p. 168. 31 Ibid., p. 169 32 CRS, Dai 17 kai. Ninki supǀtsu chǀsa [17th Most popular sports surveillance], 2009, available at http://www.crs.or.jp/data/pdf/sports09.pdf (accessed 10 June 2013). 33 Yajima, “Yari no gonza”, p. 53. 34 Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 – Books 1 and 2, trad. Jay Rubin (London: Harvill Secker, 2011), p. 257. 35 Peter Eckersall, Theorizing the Angura Space: Avant-garde Performance and Politics in Japan, 1960-2000 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p.103.



THE OTHER OCCUPATION OF JAPAN: THE CASE OF OKINAWA ROSA CAROLI

The sixtieth anniversary of the end of the American occupation of Japan has not been of any particular significance in the Japanese calendar of commemoration. No official ceremony, scholarly convention or citizens’ initiative was scheduled on or around 28 April 2012 to remember the day when the San Francisco Peace Treaty took effect and the country regained its sovereignty. The relatively short but significant period of occupation (senryǀ or senryǀki), to which no public memorial space or monuments are dedicated,1 seems to have been diluted into a nebulous and undefined “post-war” (sengo) – or rather “long post-war” – period (nagai sengo) starting on 15 August 1945, the day when Japan was “defeated, liberated, and occupied all at once”.2 This long sengo lasted well beyond 28 April 1952, when the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty also went into effect, and continued against the background of the Cold War.3 It did not end even with the ending of the Cold War, at least because of the continued subordination of Tokyo within a U.S.-led alliance structure inherited from the Cold War. Even very recently the longevity of the long post-war was demonstrated by the fact that some considered the threefold catastrophe which took place on 11 March 2011 (the earthquake, the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster) as an opportunity to have done with it.4 This tenacious and long-lived sengo, which began with the alleged foundation of a “new Japan” and survived the dissolution of Cold War bipolarity, thus refuses to be interrupted by the end of occupation, as the 2012 calendar of (non-)commemoration attests. In Okinawa the ending of the American occupation follows a different chronology and calendar, which reflect a distinct fate and history. In this, Japan’s most southwesterly prefecture, covering a chain of islands over 1000 kilometers long but making up less than one per cent of Japanese territory, the anniversary falls on 15 May, and 2012 marked the fortieth anniversary of both the end of twenty-seven years of American rule and of Okinawa’s reversion to Japanese sovereignty. This anniversary was solemnly



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celebrated in a ceremony co-hosted by the central and the prefectural governments, and attended by important personalities from Japan and from abroad, including Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko and the U.S. ambassador. The former opened his speech by remembering “[the] precious lives of countless people that were lost in the Second World War [as well as the] unspoken hardship and suffering of the people of Okinawa Prefecture who experienced long years of occupation even after the war”, and paid “tribute to the efforts made by the people of Okinawa to date”.5 Outside the ceremony hall in Ginowan, a city located on Okinawa island and occupied for more than one third of its area by two U.S. military bases, thousands of citizens protested against the government’s policy, demanding the immediate closure and transfer of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma out of the prefecture, urging that the plan to deploy the MV-22 Osprey aircraft in the base be canceled, and marching towards the Okinawa International University, where a Marine Corps helicopter crashed in August 2004.6 Some weeks earlier, more than two hundred and fifty specialists in Okinawan studies from Japan and overseas took part in a forty-eight panel international conference in Tokyo whose aim was to “provide an opportunity […] to reflect back on Okinawa’s past, reconsider its present, and think about its future”.7 These and other events were held in order to remember the day on which the Okinawa Reversion Agreement entered into force, providing for the return to Japan of “all and any powers of administration, legislation and jurisdiction” over Okinawa that the United States had held under the San Francisco Peace Treaty.8 Yet, the U.S. bases in Okinawa – which, according to the Okinawa Prefectural Government, account for seventy-four per cent of all exclusive-use U.S. military facilities maintain in Japan, and occupy more than ten per cent of the prefecture and nearly twenty per cent of Okinawa island9 – were maintained, and remained within the politico-military framework of the U.S.-Japan security alliance. The year 2012 was thus marked by two different anniversaries of ending of two distinct occupations, which correspond to divergent histories, memories and commemorations. A certain degree of social and cultural divergence between Okinawa and Japan proper preexisted the end of World War Two. This essay traces the role played by the American occupations in deepening a divergence that is attested to in a manner that is more than just symbolic: by the requirement of a passport for travel between occupied Okinawa and post-occupied Japan.



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Using enemy against enemy The plan for the Okinawa campaign, code-named “Operation Iceberg”, was first contemplated by U.S. military planners in September 1944 as an alternative to the invasion of Taiwan and the Chinese coast, which had been under consideration for most of the year. At the beginning of October, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in Washington issued a directive to Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, to seize positions in the Rynjkynj and Bonin islands by March 1945.10 This sudden change in U.S. war strategy found the Navy’s Civil Affairs Team (NCAT), which was responsible for planning the occupation of Japanese possessions in the Pacific area, unprepared; they had almost no data on the archipelago.11 The only significant source available at that time consisted of three reports produced by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and printed between March and June 1944. These reports maintained that Okinawans were racially different from the Japanese, and separated from the latter by mutual feelings of aversion and enmity. Indeed, the third report, entitled The Okinawas [sic] of the Loo Choo Islands, A Japanese Minority Group, stated that Okinawans were “not only a physical minority but a linguistic and an ethnic one”, and that the “intolerance of the Japanese and Okinawas toward each other [was] reciprocal”.12 The use of the terms Rynjkynj (the Japanese reading for Liuqiu, the name given by the Chinese to the islands), or even “Loo Choo” (which sounded similar to the Mandarin pronunciation of Liuqiu), was in itself an effective method of reminding readers of the Okinawan's past links with China, and of emphasizing the cultural and ethnic gap between them and the Japanese. Even if the report stated that the islands had “always been exploited economically” and historically discriminated against by Japan, and that “[the] most vital result of the Japanese attitude [was] a deeply-grounded feeling of subjection and of subordination on the part of the [Okinawans]”, it also emphasized what it called the “Okinawan antipathy for the Japanese”. After wondering if “the rift between the Okinawas and the Japanese [could] be made use of in the present conflict”, the report contemplated the possibility of both utilizing the Okinawans’ resentment toward Japan in psychological warfare and promoting anti-Japanese mobilization among Okinawan communities overseas.13 The claims made by this report were not wholly unfounded. Having been for centuries an independent state known as the Rynjkynj kingdom, with a long tributary relationship with China, the region had been incorporated into the young, modern Japanese state in 1879 as the Okinawa Prefecture. Even if Japan’s action was supported by the claim



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that by “geography, race, customs and language” the islands were “a part and a natural subordinate” of Japan,14 Okinawans were forced to abandon their distinctive culture, language and customs to become “civilized” Japanese and loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor. Poor economic conditions in Okinawa induced thousands to migrate abroad as well as to mainland Japan, where they faced prejudice and were employed in lowwage sectors. Yet antipathy and hostility towards mainland Japanese were not all-embracing features of Okinawans, if only because it was often only through identification as Japanese that they could emerge from socioeconomic backwardness and escape discrimination.15 The reports' emphasis on the uncertain Japaneseness of Okinawans probably derived from the use of dated sources in Chinese and English, and of inquiries conducted among Okinawan immigrant communities in South America and the Pacific;16 or – more probably – from the fact that the OSS team preferred to select sources which could reinforce their basic idea that Okinawans were different from the Japanese and oppressed by them.17 At any rate, an analogous view was set forth in another study, entitled “Civil Affairs Handbook, Ryukyu (Loochoo) Islands”, issued by the U.S. Navy Department in late 1944; this provided detailed – although often out of date – information on every aspect of Ryukyuan society, history, its economy and administration, information obtained mainly from sources displaying a Japanese prejudice that the islanders were “backward rustics” and “racially inferior”.18 Besides indicating “the perception on which U.S. military policy toward Okinawa was based”, these works became the main sources for civil affairs planning for Okinawa and were widely used in the actual administration of the islands.19 Furthermore, the construction of this image of Okinawans became a key element in U.S. psychological warfare campaigns aiming at mobilizing the Okinawans against Japanese troops, and contributed to creating an equation between the impending military invasion and the apparent achievement of Okinawa's freedom from Japan’s oppression and discrimination. This idea also appeared in the “Psychological Warfare Earthquake Plan Against Japanese Homeland”, drafted by the OSS in the wake of the invasion of Okinawa in the spring of 1945; the plan illustrated “the possibility of triggering a potential earthquake condition from the realm of fantasy to that of scientific plausibility”. Here, the “strategic goal” of the plan to correlate earthquakes in Japan with U.S. bombing in order to create “social hysteria and panic among the Japanese”, included “the appearance of an alleged ‘Free Japan movement’ [whose] activities […] beamed into Japan by medium wave



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from Okinawa might be the medium for activating the liberal group in Japan”.20 Indeed, as asserted by military historian Arnold Fisch, before and during the invasion, millions of propaganda leaflets were dropped on the islands, and even a newspaper issued by the psychological warfare office, Ryukyu Shuho (Rynjkynj Weekly). Furthermore, “tank-mounted amplifiers, aircraft with loudspeakers, and remotely controlled radios parachuted behind enemy lines” contributed to a psychological war aiming at depressing the enemy’s morale, at persuading both civilians and soldiers of the destructive consequences of the Japanese command’s refusal to surrender, and at promoting the idea that “Okinawans were ethnically and culturally different from the home-island Japanese”. They also “told the Okinawan citizenry not to be afraid, for they were not regarded as the enemy”.21 As the military invasion began, a military government of Okinawa was established under the so-called “Nimitz proclamation”, which suspended “all powers of the Government of the Japanese Empire”, and assigned “all powers of government and jurisdiction in the islands […] and the inhabitants thereof, and final administrative responsibility” to the Navy.22 Yet Nimitz’s directive for the government of the Rynjkynj “failed to make the ethnic and social distinctions between the Ryukyans [sic] and the Japanese so carefully drawn by the authors of the [Navy’s] handbook. While Koreans and Taiwanese Chinese might be granted special treatment when conditions allowed, ‘ordinary Japanese subjects’ — he included the Okinawans in this category — could expect no such preferred treatment”.23 The extent to which this psychological warfare helped reduce civilian suffering and loss of life during the invasion of the archipelago is doubtful. Most certainly, despite the representation of Okinawans as a minority people alienated from mainland Japanese, and the emphasis on their resentment towards the latter that characterized U.S. wartime studies, the contribution made by Okinawans conscripts to the Japanese war effort was quite high (calculated at around one-third of the defenders).24 A farewell telegram to Tokyo written by a Japanese admiral who committed suicide inside the Navy underground headquarters with 4,000 other soldiers, praised the loyalty and dedication of Okinawans, “forced into military service and hard labor” and stated: Now we are nearing the end of the battle […] Every tree, every plant is gone. Even the weeds are burnt. By the end of June, there will be no more food. This is how the Okinawan people have fought the war. And for this reason I ask that you give the Okinawan people special consideration this day forward.25



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The battle lasted eighty-nine days and ended on 23 June 1945. Almost one-third of the local population perished during what, in Okinawans' memory and discourse, is still remembered as “tetsu no akashi” (typhoon of steel), namely an amphibious assault involving a number of troops greater than that the forces employed in the Sicily and the Normandy invasions, and in which the number of civilian casualties far exceeded that of both the U.S. and Japanese combatants.26

Detaching Okinawa from Japan The assumption that Okinawans were not fully Japanese did more than supply backing for the U.S. attempt to arouse the Okinawans’ aversion towards Japan and erode their identification with mainlanders. It also helped reinforce a plan to detach Okinawa from mainland Japan, and to support the final decision to placing it under exclusive U.S. control. Since the summer of 1942, Chinese political and military leaders, including Chiang Kai-shek himself, had been expressing on several occasions China’s determination to recover the Rynjkynj.27 The option of a joint Chinese-U.S. occupation of Okinawa was discussed between Chiang and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Cairo Conference in the fall of 1943,28 even though the final Cairo declaration did not contain a clear statement concerning the future status of the islands.29 Nor did the Potsdam Declaration, which defined the terms of Japanese surrender and was released one month after the fall of Okinawa, mention the Rynjkynj islands. Potsdam adopted a rather vague formula according to which “Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such minor islands as we determine”.30 The vagueness of these official statements indicates that the hypothesis of separating Okinawa from Japan was taken into serious consideration by the U.S. wartime authorities, and so do other sources. Indeed, even though its purpose was not “to discuss the future prospects” of Okinawa, the OSS report cited above mentioned a Foreign Affairs article published in October 1942 stating that Japan “should be permitted to retain only those [lands] which she had before 1894” and that “An exception to the above procedures should be made of the Luchu [Rynjkynj] Islands. Although Japan annexed them before 1894, they earlier had been tributary to China for 500 years. That and the fact of the strategic importance of the islands, makes the problem of their disposal a matter for special consideration”.31 A few months before the Cairo meeting, an analogous hypothesis was discussed within the U.S. State Department by the Territorial Subcommittee (TS) working under the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy.



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In the summer of 1943, the TS drafted an eight-page document that is considered the first to deal with the future status of Okinawa. After introducing the history of Japan’s acquisition of Okinawa, and emphasizing the island's peculiar culture, the resentment of natives for being excluded from key posts in local government as well as the “considerable strategic importance” of the islands, the TS presented three possible solutions for the archipelago's future: namely transfer to China, an international administration, or conditional retention by Japan.32 Yet, the TS also stated that, “in view of the reported antagonism of the local people toward Japanese rule, […] there might be some local support for detachment from the Japanese Empire [even though] this would not necessarily result in local approval of transfer to Chinese rule”.33 Besides, the conditions upon which the third solution was considered feasible included the disarmament of Japan, the dismantling of the military apparatus in the Rynjkynj, and guarantees preventing them from serving again for military purposes in the form of periodic inspections by an international agency.34 Three viable solutions for the future status of Okinawa were also contemplated by the Inter-Divisional Area Committee on the Far East (IDACFE) established by the State Department, which – at the time when Nimitz received the directive for Operation Iceberg – first carried out a study on Okinawa. The IDACFE paper, entitled “Japan: Territorial Problems: Liuchiu (Ryukyu) Islands”, was revised several times before reaching its final version dated 14 December 1944, where the “strategic value” of the islands was recognized and three alternatives recommended: the retention of the islands by Japan, which would have reduced their strategic importance if Japan was disarmed and submitted to an effective method of preventing its rearmament; the establishment of an international commission to ponder the implications deriving from a change in sovereignty in case China claimed the acquisition of the islands; and the establishment of an international security base in the islands, a base which, however, “would not be a predominant factor in determining their future status”.35 Hence, although Japanese sovereignty over Okinawa seems to have been considered the most valid of these options by U.S. wartime studies, other options – including that responsive to China’ interests – were left open in consideration of the fact that, while Japan was an enemy, China was an ally.36 And, if the official statements made in Cairo and at Potsdam did not clarify whether the Rynjkynj were included among the “minor islands” over which Japanese sovereignty was to be determined by the Allies, this probably happened – as ƿta Masahide notes – “because vagueness was politically preferable at that stage”.37 ƿta also states that,



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even if the U.S. policy concerning Okinawa was apparently independent from that toward Japan, there was a close interrelationship between the two since well before the beginning of the American invasion of the islands, for which the detachment of Okinawa from Japan was considered a guarantee precluding Japanese rearmament. Indeed, ƿta's hypothesis is “that the postwar reforms of Japan Proper were drafted and adopted on the premise of Okinawa’s detachment”.38 It was only once the military campaign started that Okinawa was bluntly named as one of the “areas wherein the United States should have ‘exclusive military rights’”, as requested in early April by Admiral Ernest J. King, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations.39 An analogous request was among the post-war base requirements presented by Navy Department officials to President Harry Truman in early June. Truman himself hastened to ask the views of the Army on this, views that were communicated to him on 3 July by General George C. Marshall. Stressing the strategic importance of the islands as well as the need to hold them in order to guarantee security and stability in the region, Marshall defined a “base in the Ryukyus […] particularly desirable”, also in consideration of the fact that, after “the Cairo Declaration, Formosa [was] to be restored to China”.40 On the way back from Potsdam in early August, Truman was urged by the military to consider as essential an American presence in Okinawa and to declare the U.S. intention to maintain military bases around the world.41 Indeed, on 9 August – the day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki – the President made the general assertion that the U.S would acquire bases “which our military experts deem to be essential for our protection”.42 By July U.S. troops had “firm control of Okinawa where they [were] busy improving harbors and developing numerous airfields”.43 Yet, despite the specific interest shown by both the Army and the Navy towards the Rynjkynj, a shift of responsibilities between the two armed services characterized the period preceding and following Japan’s capitulation, due the fact that “neither the Army nor the Navy wanted to assume responsibility for the region”.44 Indeed, the responsibility for the military government initially assigned to the Navy was temporary turned over to the Army on 31 July, only to be re-assigned to the Navy once mainland Japan had been invaded. On the same day, from his headquarters in Manila, General Douglas MacArthur assumed control of the islands, where the U.S. personnel now consisted of nearly 260,000 officers and civilians – a number probably not too distant from that of the Okinawans who survived the “typhoon of steel”. On 15 August, when Japan surrendered, the transfer of command had not been completed, but one



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month later the military government was returned to the Navy which, however, would soon lose interest in a region frequently affected by typhoons and with poor anchorages.45 Even after the defeat of Japan, military planners confirmed the primary strategic importance of Okinawa, to which the United States should have exclusive rights.46 Queried about the Navy’s proposal for the retention of bases in the Pacific at a news conference on 6 September, Truman answered: “if it is necessary to have one on Okinawa, I think we can negotiate so we can have it”.47 Yet, at the end of the year it was still unclear whether the U.S. government should “extend trusteeship” to Okinawa or “insist that it be the sole administering authority over [it]”.48 Indeed, perhaps in a concession to international cooperation and wishing to avoid permanent separation of Okinawa from Japan, the State Department procrastinated on plans concerning the future status of the islands; this despite the JCS’s reiterated demands for control over them, which were “supported, if not led”, by MacArthur himself.49 To underpin this cause, the general himself patronized the idea that Okinawans were not to be considered as Japanese. By June 1947, this idea would become functional for his explanation as to why the Japanese would “not object to the U.S. occupation of the islands”, where American bases were needed to defend Japan’s security.50 In a March 1948 conversation with George Kennan, who at the time headed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, MacArthur termed “absolutely necessary” the retaining of “unilateral and complete control” of the islands, whose natives “were not Japanese”, had “never been assimilated” by Japan, and would have “a reasonably happy existence from an American base development” in the islands. He also argued that, while “complete unilateral control of the Ryukyus [was assured by the fact that they] were not under SCAP authority but [under that] of the Far East Command”, it would not “be feasible […] to retain bases anywhere in Japan after the conclusion of a treaty of peace”.51 Nevertheless, the vagueness as to the status to be accorded Okinawa persisted until the growth of Cold War tensions induced Washington to reconsider the requests of military planners, with important repercussions on the administration of the islands. Once these islands lost their role as a base from which to invade Japan proper, a “policy of vacuum” came both to characterize the American occupation of the Rynjkynj and to generate “the ambivalence of an administration without purpose” that lacked “the rigid command controls which distinguished the occupation of Japan”.52 In order to shift most of the administrative burden onto Okinawans while retaining ultimate authority, the military government revived local



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institutions which were “just as amenable to a democratic society as to a totalitarian one, and whether they are to exist in the one or the other depends on where the ultimate sovereignty and power rests”.53 Besides, the “herculean task of physical rehabilitation of the islands” and mitigating the traumas of Okinawan society was hindered by the “absence of longrange policy”, by “the relative lack of attention given military government of the Ryukyus by the Far Eastern Command in Tokyo”, as well as by the fact that the islands “seemed to be regarded as a kind of ‘Siberian outpost’ of Japan”.54 Indeed, Okinawa became “a ‘dumping ground’ or place of exile for American personnel unwanted at GHQ [General Headquarters] or in Japan proper”,55 while, as elsewhere, the American military presence was made tangible by an incalculable number of crimes and violence against the local population, particularly women.56 The delay of Okinawa’s post-war recovery during this “period of indifference” contrasted sharply with rapid reconstruction in Japan proper. This phase ended with the escalation of the Cold War in Asia, particularly with the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949. It is no coincidence that in the New York Times of 12 October, General J. Lawton Collins, the newly-appointed army chief of staff, declared the U.S. intention to retain Okinawa indefinitely.57 Temporary facilities were thus replaced by permanent installations the substantial enlargement of which was made possible by progressively invading areas contiguous to urban centers and requisitioning land from farmers.58 The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 clarified the function of Okinawa – from which a myriad of air missions was launched toward North Korea – as the “keystone of the Pacific” and a “permanent base to combat Communism’s expansion”.59 In that same year, when American retention of the islands “on a long-term basis” became apparent, the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR) was established; despite the semantic alteration in its name, this remained de facto under the U.S. Army Department and continued to be directed by military officers.60 Against this background, John Foster Dulles, then serving as a special adviser to the U.S. secretary of state, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru started direct negotiations over a peace treaty and a security treaty which were to define the future status of the islands.

The other side of the San Francisco Peace Treaty On 8 September 1951, the U.S., Japan and forty-six other countries signed the treaty that formally ended the state of war between the signatories, provided for the termination of the occupation of Japan and



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restored its sovereignty. A different destiny was instead reserved for Okinawa under the provision of Article 3, which stated: Japan will concur in any proposal of the United States to the United Nations to place under its trusteeship system, with the United States as the sole administering authority, Nansei Shoto [southwest islands] south of 29 deg. north latitude (including the Ryukyu Islands and the Daito Islands) […]. Pending the making of such a proposal and affirmative action thereon, the United States will have the right to exercise all and any powers of administration, legislation and jurisdiction over the territory and inhabitants of these islands, including their territorial waters.61

Space does not permit a detailed account here of the debate among the actors who concurred in the constructing of Article 3.62 Our examination is here limited to the most important consequences that the uncertain political and legal framework deriving from it had for Okinawans. In fact doubts about the legitimacy of Article 3 did not simply derive from the shaky premise that the Rynjkynj could fall within one of the categories of territory described in the Cairo and Potsdam statements. Indeed, while granting administrative rights over the islands to the U.S., the article did not specify the status to be assigned to the Rynjkynj before their possible passage to a state of trusteeship, nor did it determine which country held sovereignty over them. Even if not expressly included in the peace treaty, the unprecedented formula permitting Japan to retain “residual sovereignty” (senzai shuken in Japanese) over the Rynjkynj was enunciated at the San Francisco peace conference by Dulles and welcomed by Yoshida.63 It was later reaffirmed on several occasions by major exponents of both the Japanese and American governments,64 and finally used by Tokyo to obtain the reversion of Okinawa. Even if it was said to be a formula whose implications would certainly change “if Japan were to shift its allegiance to the Soviet sphere” – which would have induced the U.S. to use Okinawa “as a bastion against a hostile Japan”65 – the concept of “residual sovereignty” supported the view that the Rynjkynj remained “under the sovereignty of Japan” and their inhabitants continued to be “Japanese nationals”. This was also repeatedly confirmed by the Department of State and recognized by American courts.66 Nevertheless, “residual sovereignty” was to lend itself to various interpretations, such as a “dormant sovereignty” implying “an obligation to return governmental power to the dormant sovereign”, “a nebulous and unprecedented doctrine”, as well as a “concept qui constitue une hérésie selon les critères classiques de la souveraineté”.67



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Both obligations and restrictions deriving from it remained ambiguous even for jurists and academics who tried to elucidate the legal status of Okinawa and Okinawans.68 For instance, the Hague Convention of 1930 giving to each state the right “to determine under its own law who are its nationals” should have authorized the application in Okinawa of the new Japanese Nationality Law of 1950. However, the law was not implemented in Okinawa, where the pre-war laws remained in force as promised in the Nimitz Proclamation's pledge that “the existing laws [would] remain in force and effect”.69 Indeed, individuals listed in the family registers of the Rynjkynj and residing in the archipelago were defined as Ryukyuans and subjected to direct governance by USCAR, while non-resident Ryukyuans were not allowed to enter the islands unless for “official and compassionate reasons”. Yet, while the latter needed passports or identification documents issued by the Japanese government to visit the islands, the first were required to apply for identity documents at the USCAR offices to go both abroad and to mainland Japan.70 In the documents issued by American authorities, Ryukyuans were identified neither as Japanese nor as American citizens, but simply as “Ryukyuans”, a fact that induces one to conclude that until 1972 they were “essentially stateless people not entitled to either Japanese or U.S. passports or civil rights”.71 Another incongruity of the peace treaty derived from the fact that the United States never submitted a proposal for trusteeship to the United Nations, and continued to exercise “all and any powers of administration, legislation and jurisdiction” for two decades as provided in Article 3. In a discussion before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1952, during which Okinawa was said to be “part of [the U.S.] island chain of defense in the Far East”, Dulles stated that even if a decision on how to exercise the choice provided for by Article 3 had “not yet been finally determined by the United States”, the trusteeship provision was “an option” that they were “not obligated even to apply for”.72 In January 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower stated that the U.S. should “maintain indefinitely [its] bases in Okinawa”.73 In the same period U.S. officials repeatedly declared the U.S. intention to make no proposal for a trusteeship on the grounds that Okinawa’s cultural standard and conditions were different from those of other regions under trusteeship, and that Okinawans did not desire to be placed under such system.74 As a matter of fact, a proposal for a trusteeship would probably have met opposition from the Chinese and Soviet governments and “[would have] tied the US’s hands through the United Nations”.75 Besides, the strategic importance of Okinawa increased further after the enactment of the security treaty granting U.S. armed forces the right to station in Japan, particularly in the



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face of Tokyo’s intensifying struggle for sovereignty and resistance to Washington’s pressures for larger and faster rearmament.76 Thus, the continuing American occupation of Okinawa was also a welcome solution for Tokyo, since it allowed post-occupied Japan to remain only marginally affected by the presence of U.S. troops. In any case, the failure to submit the proposal produced a condition which was not explicitly contemplated in the treaty and which made the political status of Okinawa even more paradoxical, namely an anomaly defying “any conventional classification such as a possession, a protectorate, a colony, or a trust territory”.77 Indeed, during the American occupation, this state of indeterminacy under Article 3 – labeled a “'juridical monster' unprecedented in international diplomatic history”78 – contributed to leaving Okinawans with no guarantees as to their nationality, citizenship, legal and diplomatic protection or civil rights – all of which would, paradoxically, have been ensured under a trusteeship system.79 Besides, neither the American constitution, nor the Japanese constitution adopted in 1947, were applied to this group of islands, leaving their inhabitants excluded from the set of guarantees they embodied, including those of the Japanese “peace clause” renouncing war and forbidding the maintenance of any war potential. In regard to this, one author notes that, ironically, it was the “peace clause” itself that would “make Okinawa one of the principal pillars supporting the security treaty”.80

The legacy of American occupation All the above explains why, as soon as the plan for the restoration of independence to mainland Japan and the continuation of the occupation of Okinawa became clear, the ambiguous status of the islands became a central issue in Okinawan public debate. Increasingly active pressure for reunification with Japan emerged. A document containing nearly 200,000 signatures (more than 72 per cent of Okinawa's adult population) was sent to American and Japanese delegates at the San Francisco peace conference supporting reversion to Japan.81 Although it had influence on the treaty, this campaign was both a sign of the massive popular aversion to the provisions of the peace treaty and the premise for the “reversion movement” which later made the history of protest in occupied Okinawa.82 The activities of the movement – which initially assumed a highly nationalistic character and emphasized the Japaneseness of Okinawans by designating Japan as “motherland”, adopting the Japanese flag and preferring the term Okinawa over Rynjkynj83 – was met by opposition from the American authorities which, tending to “equate commitment to reversion with support for communism” and fearing that it could induce



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Tokyo to advocate a more restrictive policy toward U.S. bases, tried to suppress it in various ways.84 Crude methods were combined with propaganda aimed at preventing the spread of Communist ideology in the islands, at promoting pro-American sentiments among Okinawans and, once again, at persuading Okinawans that they were not Japanese. To stimulate a “Ryukyuan identity” American occupiers tried both to stir up the Okinawans' aversion toward mainland Japanese and to emphasize the uniqueness of the local culture and the past history of the Rynjkynj kingdom in order to promote a sense of “pride” in being connected to such a tradition.85 Textbooks on Okinawa's history were prepared, the gathering of surviving cultural artifacts was sponsored, and support given to local artists. Reminders of the past were collected and exhibited in newly-built museums and libraries funded by the U.S. military authorities, including a museum inaugurated in 1953 as the Perry Commemorative Hall-Shuri Museum to celebrate the centenary of the visit of the American commodore to the Rynjkynj kingdom.86 The University of the Ryukyus, established by USCAR in May 1950 as the first university in Okinawa, was the recipient of a project of partnership with Michigan State University sponsored by the U.S. Army Department; Ogawa Tadashi has called this “a part of U.S. public diplomacy in the early years of the Cold War” intended to create a “separatist identity among Okinawan intellectuals”.87 Yet, it was the students of this same University who, in 1953, initiated the journal Rynjdai bungaku (The University of the Ryukyus literature), which attracted USCAR censorship for its strong criticism of land expropriations and oppressive U.S administration.88 Most of these institutions backed and funded by the American authorities, together with the U.S. military bases as well as with widespread criticism toward high militarization, the military use of the land, the damage to the natural environment, and the risks to the health and safety of Okinawans, still remain in post-occupied Okinawa as a legacy of the occupation. The commemorations of the fortieth anniversary since the end of the American occupation in Okinawa thus reveal a vivid memory of this past that is not completely past. They also testify to the will to narrate “another” history of the American occupation of Japan. In fact, if declined in the plural, the American occupation appears to be an even more “complicated, and contradictory human story” than the one many scholars have deftly contributed to reconstruct.89 This is a human story where histories and memories contrast and are contested, and vivid recollections compete with historical amnesia. In Okinawa as well as in the daily lives of Okinawans the legacy of this “other” occupation of Japan is still visible and tangible. After all, as Wang Hui acutely notes, seen from



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the perspective of Okinawa, the Cold War in Asia “has not come to a complete end”.90

Notes  1

Memorials of American occupation are generally built inside U.S. military bases and mostly dedicated to Douglas MacArthur. His head office in the Daiichi Mutual Life Insurance Building (Daiichi Seimei) was preserved and opened to the public until the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., when it was closed for security reasons. The Yokohama’s Hotel New suite, where he spent his first Japanese days, is also largely unchanged and named after him. See Eric Prideaux, “Where history was made”, The Japan Times, 28 April 2002. 2 Carol Gluck, “The Past in the Present”, in Postwar Japans as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 66. 3 The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty granted the United States the right to dispose of its “land, air and sea forces in and about Japan” and prevented the latter from granting third powers any bases or any military-related rights “without the prior consent of the United States of America”. The treaty is reproduced in Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cold War. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 157-9. 4 See for example Inose Naoki and Mikuriya Takashi, “Ima hoso ‘sengo’ o seisanshi ‘kokka’ o katare” [Now is time to settle with ‘postwar’ and talk about ‘nation’], Chnjǀ Kǀron, July 2011, pp. 8693. 5 “Speech by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on the occasion of the commemoration ceremony for the 40th anniversary of Okinawa's reversion to Japan; Tuesday, May 15, 2012”, in Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet, available at http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/noda/statement/201205/15okinawa_e.html (accessed 30 July 2013). 6 Rynjkynj shinpǀ and Japan Times, 16 May 2012. 7 See International Symposium, Remembering 40 Years Since Reversion: Okinawan Studies Until Now, Okinawan Studies From Now On, Waseda University, 29-31 March 2012, available at http://okinawasympo.wordpress.com/schedule-2/ (accessed 30 July 2013). 8 The agreement, signed on 17 June 1971, provided for the return to Japan of “all and any powers of administration, legislation and jurisdiction” over Okinawa that the U.S. had held under the peace treaty. It is reproduced in James Mayall and Cornelia Navari, eds., The End of the Post-war Era: Documents on Great-power Relations, 1968-1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 237-41. 9 Military Base Affairs Division, Okinawa Prefectural Government, “U.S. Military Base Issues In Okinawa”, available at http://www.pref.okinawa.jp/site/chijiko/kichitai/documents/2011.6%20eng.pdf (accessed 30 July 2013).



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10 Roy E. Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, Dept. of the Army, 1948), pp. 1-4 and 25. The largest island of the Rynjkynj is Okinawa, while the Bonins (Ogasawara in Japanese) include Iwojima. 11 Arnold G. Fisch, Jr., Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands. 1945-1950 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1988), p. 13. NCAT was formed by military personnel specifically trained in civil affairs at a school established by the Navy at Columbia University in 1943. Ibid., pp. 12-3. 12 Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch, Okinawan Studies No. 3. The Okinawas of the Loo Choo Islands, A Japanese Minority Group (Honolulu: 1944), p. 103. 13 Ibid., pp. 107, 109, 121 and 124-5. 14 Matsuda Michiyuki, Rynjkynj shobun [Disposition of Rynjkynj], in Meiji bunka shiryǀ sǀsho [Collected documents on Meiji culture], vol. 4 (Tǀkyǀ: Kazama shobǀ, 1962), p. 179. 15 More details in Rosa Caroli, Il mito dell’omogeneità giapponese: storia di Okinawa (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1999). 16 See The Okinawas of the Loo Choo Islands, pp. 22-3, 90-2, 98-101, 106-17 and 138-44. 17 See David John Obermiller, The U.S. Military Occupation of Okinawa: Politicizing and Contesting Okinawan Identity 1945–1955, PhD diss. (University of Iowa, 2006), pp. 64-5. 18 Fisch, Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, p. 14; Kensei Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed: Okinawa Under U.S. Occupation (Bellingham, Wash.: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2001), pp. 6-7. 19 Ota Masahide, “The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa and Postwar Reforms in Japan Proper”, in Democratizing Japan. The Allied Occupation, eds. Robert E. Ward and Sakamoto Yoshikazu (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), p. 286; also see Fisch, Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, p. 14. 20 Office of Strategic Services, “OSS Psychological Warfare Earthquake Plan Against Japanese Homeland”, 1945, secret, pp. 7, 9 and 12, available at http://www.e-net.or.jp/user/mblu/ndb/skbk1/sg1/media/earthquakeweapon/oss.html (accessed 30 July 2013). 21 Fisch, Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, pp. 42-4. See also Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, p. 463. 22 Quoted from Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed, p. 2. This proclamation would have become the legal basis for the following administration of the islands and, as ƿta notes (“The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa”, p. 289), it made the occupation of Okinawa “inherently different” from that of Japan. 23 Fisch, Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, p. 20. 24 Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, Keystone: the American Occupation of Okinawa and U.S.-Japanese Relations (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University, 2000), p. 8. 25 Quoted from Laura Homan Lacey, Stay Off the Skyline. The Sixth Marine Division on Okinawa: An Oral History (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005), p. 63.



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26 Yoshida (Democracy Betrayed, p. 15) notes that in Okinawa, Sicily and Normandy there were engaged 182,000, 170,000 and 150,000 troops respectively. 27 George H. Kerr, Okinawa: The History of an Island People (Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2000 [1958]), p. 464. 28 United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers (henceforth FRUS), The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), p. 324. In January 1944, informing the Pacific War Council about his discussion with Stalin at Teheran, Roosevelt stated: “he is in complete agreement that [the Rynjkynj] belong to China and should be returned to her” (ibid, p. 869). For the discussion between Roosevelt and Chiang on the Rynjkynj, and the latter’s view and account of it, see Wang Hui, The Politics of Imagining Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 243-60. Wang Hui concludes that “the Ryukyu’s role in the Cold War had been determined by 1943, when […] postwar arrangements had already been placed on the Great Power agenda” (p. 259). 29 The Cairo Declaration stipulated that “Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the first World War in 1914 […]. Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed”. See Robert J. C. Butow, Japan’s Decision to Surrender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954), p. 241. 30 Ibid., p. 243 (emphasis added). 31 The Okinawas of the Loo Choo Islands, p. 126. The article of S.R. Chow, “The Pacific After the War”, appeared in Foreign Affairs, October 1942, pp. 71-86 (quotation from p. 74). On p. 117, citing a publication on the Marshall Islands issued in January 1944, the OSS report stated that it “shows that the Okinawas have only been an actual part of Japan since 1879 and that amenability to Japanese suzerainty may be questioned”. 32 See Ota, “The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa”, pp. 296-8; Robert D. Eldridge, The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem: Okinawa in Postwar U.S.-Japan Relations, 1945-1952 (New York: Garland Pub., 2001), pp. 51-3 and, for the considerations on Okinawa of both the Political and the Security subcommittees, pp. 44-9. 33 Quoted in Eldridge, The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem, pp. 52-3. 34 Ibid., p. 53. Noting that “the document refers to the fact that China had demanded the Ryukyus return on several occasions”, ƿta (“The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa”, p. 297) surmises that it “influenced the Cairo Conference”, while Eldridge (pp. 54-5 and 56) states that Roosevelt “did not even seek to acquire or use the documents that had been prepared in the Territorial Subcommittee. […] Had Roosevelt actually bothered to read [them], he would have known that Chinese control was not considered a viable option for the disposition of the Ryukyus”. 35 Quoted in Eldridge, The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem, pp. 59-64. 36 Kimie Hara, Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided territories in the San Francisco System (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 183. 37 Ota, “The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa”, p. 296.



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 38

Ibid., pp. 297 and 299. “Memorandum for the Joint Chiefs of Staff on U.S. Requirements for Post-war Bases from Admiral Ernest J. King”, 1 April 1945, quoted in Eldridge, The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem, p. 19. 40 Ibid., pp. 23-5. 41 Ibid., p. 26. 42 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman (henceforth Public Papers Truman), vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), p. 203. The message was the report to the American people on the Potsdam Conference, which here he called “Berlin Conference”. 43 FRUS, The Conference of Berlin (the Potsdam Conference), 1945, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 346. 44 Fisch, Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, p. 72. 45 Ibid., p. 72-4. Eldridge (The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem, pp. 256) states that later the availability of bases in mainland Japan also contributed to the decrease in the Navy’s interest in Okinawa. 46 Eldridge, The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem, pp. 28-30. 47 Public Papers Truman, vol. 1, p. 311. 48 FRUS, 1946, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972) pp. 546-7. In November, during a meeting on the trusteeship, Hugh Borton, a historian of Japan and chief of the Japanese Affairs division in the State Department, stated “that the President had decided that […] there would be no attempt at the present moment to make a decision with regard to the Ryukyu Islands” (ibid., p. 689). 49 Eldridge, The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem, p. 4. 50 Ibid., p. 126. 51 FRUS, 1948, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), p. 701. 52 Ralph Braibanti, “The Ryukyu Islands: Pawn of the Pacific”, American Political Science Review 68, no. 4 (1954), pp. 972-98: 986. 53 Leonard Weiss, “United States Military Government on Okinawa”, Far Eastern Survey 15, no. 15 (1946), pp. 234-8: 234-5. During the war, Weiss was an economic officer in the military government of the Rynjkynj. 54 Ibid. 55 Kerr, Okinawa: The History of an Island People, p. 9. It is estimated that, during the twenty-seven years of the occupation, at least twenty-two different persons guided the military government of the islands. Ota, “The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa”, p. 290. 56 On the sexual assaults against women in occupied Okinawa, see Yacine Mancastroppa, “Basi militari americane e violenza sulle donne: il caso di Okinawa (1945-2010)”, in DEP Deportate, Esuli, Profughe, no. 15 (2011), pp. 114-34, available at http://www.unive.it/media/allegato/dep/n112011/Documenti/6_Mancastroppa_cor.pdf; and Yacine Mancastroppa, ed., “Le figlie-prostitute di Okinawa. Conversazione con Takazato Suzuyo”, in DEP 39



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 Deportate, Esuli, Profughe, nos. 13-14 (2010), pp. 338-51, available at http://www.unive.it/media/allegato/dep/n13-142010/Interviste/19_Intervista_Takazato.pdf. 57 Higa Mikio, Politics and Parties in Postwar Okinawa (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1963), p. 8. 58 For the problem of the military use of land and the friction it caused between the U. S. military and the residents, see Etsujiro Miyagi, “The Land Problem (1952 1958)”, in A Comprehensive Study on U.S. Military Government in Okinawa, eds. Masahide Ota et al. (Naha: University of the Ryukyus, 1987), pp. 36-100; Miyume Tanji, Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 59-76. 59 This role of Okinawa was confirmed with the Vietnam war, during which it was the primary staging post for the conflict. Okinawa was also included in the Project 112, the top-secret project of chemical and biological warfare conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense which “had thousands of sub-projects testing a variety of poisons, drugs and germs […]. Project 112 proposed experiments in ‘tropical climates’ and, to evade laws regulating human testing in the U.S., it suggested the use of overseas ‘satellite sites’. Fulfilling both prerequisites, Okinawa must have seemed a perfect choice”. See Jon Mitchell, “Were we marines used as guinea pigs on Okinawa?”, The Japan Times, 4 December 2012. 60 FRUS, 1950, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), pp. 1313-9. The directive for USCAR stated that the basic liberties of democratic countries would be guaranteed to the Ryukyuan people “as far as is consistent with the military occupation” (ibid., p. 1315). 61 Hanhimäki and Westad, eds., The Cold War, p. 160. 62 In this regard see Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed, pp. 36-50; Eldridge, The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem, Ch. 7; Sarantakes, Keystone: the American Occupation, Ch. 3. 63 Dulles, the principal architect of the peace negotiations, stated: “In the face of […] division of Allied opinion” about the sovereignty over the islands, “the United States felt that the best formula would be to permit Japan to retain residual sovereignty”. Yoshida welcomed “in the name of the Japanese nation the statements […] on the residual sovereignty of Japan over the islands”, and expressed his hope that Japan could restore the administration of the islands “in the not distant future with the reestablishment of world security – especially the security of Asia”. U.S. Government, Department of State, Conference for the Conclusion and Signature of Treaty of Peace with Japan, Record of Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951), pp. 78 and 94. 64 Assertions as to the validity of “residual sovereignty” by American and Japanese sides in Higa, Politics and Parties in Postwar Okinawa, p. 11; Mikio Higa, “Okinawa: Recent Political Development”, Asian Survey 3, no. 9 (1963), pp: 41527: 422; Mikio Higa, “The Reversion Theme in Current Okinawan Politics”, Asian Survey 7, no. 3 (1967), pp. 151-64: 154-5; Akio Watanabe, The Okinawa Problem. A Chapter in Japan-U.S. Relations (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1970),



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 pp. 38-9 and 49; Tomohisa Sakanaka, “The Present Status of the Okinawa Reversion Movement”, Japan Quarterly 15, no. 1 (1968), pp. 30-41: 34. 65 Ralph Braibanti, “The Ryukyu Islands: Pawn of the Pacific”, p. 985. An academic in political science, Braibanti served as political adviser to the USCAR. 66 See Ryoichi Taoka, “Legal Status of Okinawa. Present and Future”, Japanese Annual of International Law, no. 2 (1958), p. 98-104: 99; Saburo Kuwada, “Status of Okinawans under the Japanese Nationality Law”, Japanese Annuals of International Law, no. 3 (1959), pp. 87-92: 87; Higa, Politics and Parties, p. 11. 67 These definitions are respectively in Alfred C. Oppler Legal Reform in Occupied Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 309; Braibanti, “The Ryukyu Islands”, p. 415; Pierre Michel Eisemann, “Le statut d'Okinawa: de la souveraineté résiduelle à la restitution au Japon”, Annuaire français de droit international 17, no. 17 (1971), pp. 255-78: 256. 68 See for example the special issue on Okinawa no chii [The status of Okinawa Islands] of the Kokusaihǀ Gaikǀ Zasshi [Journal of International Law and Diplomacy] 54, nos. 1-3 (1955). See also Eisemann, “Le statut d'Okinawa”, pp. 255-68. 69 Kuwada, “Status of Okinawans”, p. 88-9. The new Civil Code and the Family Registration Law, both of 1947, were not applied either. See David Chapman and Karl Jakob Krogness, “The koseki”, in Japan's Household Registration System and Citizenship: Koseki, Identification and Documentation, eds. David Chapman and Karl Jacob Krogness (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 1-18: 13. 70 Yoko Sellek, “Migration and the nation-state. Structural explanations for emigration from Okinawa”, in Japan and Okinawa: Structure and Subjectivity, eds. Glenn D. Hook and Richard Siddle (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 81; Pedro Iacobelli, “The Limits of Sovereignty and Post-War Okinawan Migrants in Bolivia”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan 11, 34/2 (2013). 71 Chalmers Johnson, “Another battle of Okinawa”, Los Angeles Times, 6 May 2010. 72 U.S. Congress, Senate, 82nd Cong., 2nd Sess., Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations: Japanese Peace Treaty and Other Treaties Relating to Security in the Pacific (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), pp. 512. 73 Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union", 7 January 1954, in The American Presidency Project, available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=10096 (accessed 30 July 2013). 74 See Taoka, “Legal Status of Okinawa”, pp. 102-3. 75 Furuki Toshiaki, “Considering Okinawa as a frontier”, in Japan and Okinawa, eds. Hook and Siddle, p. 30. 76 Kǀno Yasuko, Okinawa henkan o meguru seiji to gaikǀ. Nichibei kankeishi no bunmyaku [Politics and diplomacy over the reversion of Okinawa. The history of U.S.-Japan relations] (Tǀkyǀ: Tǀkyǀ daigaku shuppankai, 1994), pp. 191-4. Kǀno also notes (pp. 64-5) that, in the absence of security and administrative agreements to be applied to Okinawa, it was a fait accompli that Tokyo had no voice in the establishment of the military bases in Okinawa.



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 77

Higa, “Okinawa: Recent Political Development”, p. 417. Higa, Politics and Parties, p. 10. 79 For the problems deriving from this unusual legal framework, see Moriteru Arasaki, “Okinawa Reversion and the Security of Japan”, in The Japan Interpreter 6, no. 3 (1970), pp. 281-93: 282-5. 80 Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed, p. 24. 81 For this door-to-door campaign see Higa, Politics and Parties, p. 8; Sakanaka, “The Present Status”, p. 32; Watanabe, The Okinawa Problem, p. 13; Tanji, Myth, Protest and Struggle, p. 61. 82 Various views of the complex history and politics of the movement, also defined as “anti-colonial” and aiming at “Okinawa’s liberation from ‘alien rule’”, are in Arasaki, “Okinawa Reversion”, 285-93; Taira Koji, “Troubled national identity. The Ryukyuans/Okinawans”, in Japan’s Minorities. The Illusion of Homogeneity, ed. Michael Weiner (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 139-77: 15961; Tanji, Myth, Protest and Struggle; Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003); Christopher Aldous, “Achieving Reversion: Protest and Authority in Okinawa, 1952-70”, Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (2003), pp. 485-508. 83 An interesting analysis of the use of the terms “Okinawa” and “Ryukyu” in occupied Okinawa in Kano Masanao, Sengo Okinawa no shisǀzǀ [Images of thoughts in post-war Okinawa] (Tǀkyǀ: Asahi shinbunsha, 1987), pp. 53-68. 84 Aldous, “Achieving Reversion”, p. 489; Steve Rabson, “Assimilation Policy in Okinawa: Promotion, Resistance, and ‘Reconstrucion’”, in Okinawa: Cold War Island, ed. Chalmers Johnson (Cardiff, CA: Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999), p. 145. 85 Miyagi Etsujirǀ, Senryǀsha no me: Amerikajin wa ‘Okinawa’ o dǀ mitaka [In the eyes of the occupiers: How Americans saw Okinawans] (Haebaruchǀ: Naha shuppansha, 1982), p. 35. 86 Miyagi Etsujirǀ, “Amerika bunka to no sǀgnj. Tai Okinawa bunka seisaku to sono juyǀ ni kansuru shiron” [Encounter American culture. The policy toward Okinawan culture and its receptiveness], Shin Okinawa Bungaku, no. 89 (1991), pp.14-20. 87 Tadashi Ogawa, “Mishigan misshon to Rynjkynj daigaku: Reisenki Amerika no bunka senryaku” [The Michigan Mission and the University of the Ryukyus: American public diplomacy toward Okinawa in the Cold War era], Ajia Taiheiyǀ Tǀkynj, no. 20 (2013), pp. 109-20. 88 Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson, eds., Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), pp. 5-6. 89 John Dower defines the American occupation using these terms in the “Foreward” to Dear General MacArthur. Letters from the Japanese during the American Occupation, ed. Sodei Rinjirǀ (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001), p. xxi. 90 Wang, The Politics of Imagining Asia, p. 262. 78



LOVE AMONG THE RUINS: AMERICAN FICTIONS OF OCCUPIED JAPAN IN THE 1950S ALIDE CAGIDEMETRIO

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best. —Robert Browning, “Love Among the Ruins”

The title of my essay echoes Robert Browning’s 1855 poem, whose male protagonist muses over a splendid city destroyed by war, and the everlasting power of a love capable of overcoming despair and nostalgia for what is lost. It also echoes Victoria Wolh’s study of the eroticism underlying the political discourse of Athenian democracy: the language of love, she maintains, characterizes international relations, and both hides and exposes the doubts and contradictions of enforced policies.1 “There is a golden vein in love […] and I must mine it while I can”, the American novelist and reporter in occupied Japan Earnest Hoberecht declared, commenting on the roaring success of his Tokyo Romance, published in Tokyo in 1946, in Japanese translation, and in 1947 in the United States.2 Tokyo Romance tells the story of a love affair in occupied Japan between an American war correspondent, Kent Wood, and a beautiful Japanese actress, Hara Tamiko, and it is provided with a happy ending that includes the lifting of the fraternization ban for the Japanese, and the triumph of democratic love mores. Though considered “an unfortunate specimen of U.S. culture” and “possibly the worst novel of modern times”,3 Tokyo Romance was addressed to the Japanese public and successfully transformed the conqueror into a lover and the conquered into a democratically inspired agent of the Pax Americana, glossing over cultural and political tensions, wholeheartedly embracing the U.S. policy of “liberal paternalism” which Shibusawa Naoko has set at the center of the re-imagination of post-war Japanese-American relationships.4 “You sound like a professional propagandist”, Tamiko says to Kent, when he, extolling the superiority of the American way of life, proudly declares:

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“America is the melting pot of the world”.5 Love is at the core of an imagined future able to erase the sight of the ruins of Japan, the memory of the atomic bomb which still haunts Tamiko’s nightmares; love is “more than just a personal thing”, intermarriage between American men and Japanese women is “an example” and “requires the courage to cast aside all ideas of racial superiority”.6 It seems that courage was indeed needed in 1947 to celebrate intermarriage in occupied Japan, judging from Elliott Chaze’s scornful presentation of a love affair between a Japanese girl and an American soldier in The Stainless Steel Kimono: “it was just like Madame Buttercup in the movies with that navy guy”, comments the narrator, referring to 1932 Madame Butterfly film starring Cary Grant. Sarcasm surrounds the Japanese girl, who remains nameless but for her grossly corrupted nickname, and, deeming her “something to be apologized for”, is made to exit Chaze’s fiction savagely beaten back to where she belongs.7 The love plots and romantic stereotypes in U.S. fictions of occupation from the 1950s did not follow in Chaze’s footsteps, they do nonetheless reflect the contemporary clashes over racial and sexual issues and address the country’s uneasiness about post-war American democratic inclusion and exclusion, at home and abroad. For example, as Caroline Chung Simpson has shown, the imaging of the war-bride as representative of the Japanese “model minority” was linked to the contemporary debate on segregation; American culture was engaged in a process of “redeeming democracy”, in David Palumbo-Liu’s view, whose protagonists are Japanese and Japanese-Americans because of their double status of previous enemies and victims of internment.8

Operation Butterflies It is apparent that writers in the U.S. took a short-cut to transform Japanese from previous enemies into friends by relying on a form of exoticism, adopted by widely popular Hollywood movies such as The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) or Sayonara (1957), both based on bestselling novels, respectively by Vernon Snyder (1951) and by James Michener (1953). The discourse of exoticism, writes Graham Huggan, “may be described as a kind of semiotic circuit that oscillates between the opposite poles of strangeness and familiarity. Within this circuit, the strange and the familiar, as well as the relations between them, may be recoded to serve, different, even contradictory, political needs and ends”. Additionally, exoticism relies on a social asymmetry of power, fashioning a cultural imaginary that allows for both acceptance of, and resistance to,

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its content within and without constituted societies at different times of their history.9 The “Japanese” in the 1950s may as well be stylized as an “exotic at home”, home being both the American motherland or the occupied territory, or their intersection in American culture, a character strange and familiar at the same time, who may be set at the center of an American foundational plot renewal. American culture has traditionally invoked love plots in representing the opposite poles of inclusion and exclusion: since the nineteenth century romantic love (and the individual free will at the core of it) is often weighed against insurmountable racial differences, constructed as a perilous, if necessary, adventure into a contested national ground, into the contradictions of the Republican experiment, all inclusive but racially exclusive. At the beginning there were the exotics-at-home, deserving Native Americans, but “vanishing Indians”, especially vanishing Indian women, who embraced the republican fervor of early American democracy while deeming themselves too “different” to be part of it,10 and assuming the outlandish character of “foreigners”, in what was their own land. A similarly vanishing Japanese woman was available for use in twentieth century popular mythology, in the 1950s the Butterfly reference becomes a pervasive tag: the arrival of Japanese war brides in the United States for example was named “operation Butterfly” in a Stars and Stripes article of 19 January 1952, titled “Modern Butterflies find happiness”.11 The 1950s “butterflies” perhaps found happiness in America, as Stars and Stripes claimed, but pairing happiness and the Butterfly stereotype provides an oxymoronic short circuit between the national “pursuit of happiness” and the popular tale of the exotic character driven to suicide. Given the state of affairs brought about by the American occupation of Japan, Butterflies are, like their cultural grandmothers, the Indian Princesses, bound to embody both acceptance of and resistance to the conquerors. This is what happens in what turned out to be the most popular novel of occupied Japan in the United States, James Michener’s Sayonara, whose plot, differently from Tokyo Romance to which it bears some resemblances,12 reasserts the inevitability of separation for the romantic lovers. To build an American-style democracy elsewhere, the national myth has to be reassessed, recognizing the potential of free will and independence of the “exotic”: Butterfly becomes “Swing Butterfly”, where “swing” - in itself a background music to early efforts of desegregation rather than signaling the American dance the Takarazuka girls perform, points to the “swinging” of the stereotype toward a successful comedy of empowered butterflies hilariously chasing the occupying Americans away;

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and Major “Ace” Gruver, the protagonist and first person narrator of Sayonara, thus comments the star’s performance: “She was all Japanese women making fun of all American men”.13 The staging of “Swing Butterfly” announces and matches the swinging of Gruver from a bigoted view of interracial love to the sentimental education made possible by the Japanese dancer Hana-Ogi. At the same time the episode adds a political meaning to Hana-Ogi’s refusal to marry him: as a swing Butterfly, by her achieved liberating free will and independence, she will stay to carry on honored traditions in the “New Japan”. As she says: “Because I know you, now I better Japanese. You better American”.14 This appears as a “separate but equal” solution to romantic love, reminiscent of the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the legitimacy of segregation. Indeed in the 1953 novel, Major Crawford, a Southerner, calls Gruver, also a Southerner, “nigger lover”, a clear allusion to the fierce debate on desegregation that led to the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education Supreme Court decision and the following dramatic enforcement of it. For the lovers who cross racial barriers, as Gina Marchetti has observed, a “tragic punishment” is in store.15 In Sayonara such punishment is staged by the double suicide of Private Joe and his wife Katsumi, an exceedingly happy couple. The act is triggered by their “watching one of the many classical plays” from the Japanese past, staged by men in black, or black figures, while the lovers are “caught in an increasing set of pressures”, made more and more effective by almost barbaric sounds contrasting with the matter-of-fact American response to them.16 While at home the “separate but equal” solution is being overturned, in Japan an ancient, mysterious culture is feared to project a shadow on the postwar enforcement of democracy, or such exotic culture may have in store values that could prove helpful once translated into American culture. Four years later in the film version of Sayonara the double suicide may appear as a tragic mistake, in the light of the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act which eliminated race as an obstacle to naturalization and allowed the legal recognition of GI’s marriages to Japanese women. The tragic ending of the secondary plot reinforces for the American audiences the message delivered by Gruver and Hana-Ogi who are at last seen on their way to be married, and to America, where, she says, they will happily raise their mixed race children. In Joshua Logan’s movie Marlon Brando-Gruver’s resolve to marry his Japanese girlfriend moreover supports and enhances the appreciation of the Japanese brand of wifehood, a motif that is also insisted upon in Michener’s novel: “they make their men feel important”, allow for “the

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man” to run “his job on the outside” and for the woman to run “her job at home”.17 In short: “There are all kinds of things wrong in Japan. But Japanese women aren’t one of them and their view of love suits me fine”.18 Such a description of Japanese women provides answers for the protagonist’s fear of American women,19 their post-war freedoms magnified by the data of the recently published Kinsey reports. Japan’s past may become socially beneficial, its exotic quality can be domesticated and propagate its particular nostalgia for a lost past now found in a faraway place: Japanese women embody the past the country imagines to be losing, and their future, like that of Hana-Ogi transformed from a successful dancer and custodian of traditions into a proper housewife, is in America. It is not surprising that in the movie the Swing Butterfly episode is excised, with all its potential of a resisting, individualized Japan, allowing instead the Hollywood hypertrophy of the exotic:20 “A porously obvious modern rewrite of the old ‘Madame Butterfly’ tale, fixed up with an easy happy ending. It could be as ho-hum as a yawn”,21 wrote a New York Times critic in 1957, the year after Japan joined the United Nations, its democracy and alliance with the U.S. solidified, and when the first Japanese car was sold in the United States.

Where are the Victors? A year earlier the most intense, and by far the least popular American novel of occupied Japan, This Scorching Earth by Donald Richie, was published. Written from 1948 to 1953, it is narrated from American and Japanese characters’ perspectives, and relies for verisimilitude on a diary Richie kept as a soldier in occupied Japan.22 He was perhaps “writing history”23 and publishers might have thought the same, since the title of the first edition was changed to This Scorching Earth from Where Are the Victors?, the latter probably deemed too controversial for a novel that invites controversy, given its dark humor, the devastating representation of some in the American Army, the serious considerations it gives to the ways of democracy and to “the Occupation’s self-appointed task of democratizing Japan”.24 Both a Japanese/American love story and a Butterfly appear in it: in fact Richie, as a reporter for Stars and Stripes, reviewed the first post-war production of Puccini’s Butterfly in Tokyo.25 In the novel the representation of Puccini’s Butterfly26 exposes the exotic lenses through which Americans look at Japan and the Japanese are led to look at themselves. Sponsored by the Occupation government and produced by a shady Japanese businessman with a Cornell degree, Madama Butterfly

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turns into a farce, amidst stage mishaps and a cacophony of languages. Americans in the audience are caught in an orgy of poisonous remarks on Japan and the Japanese (they “merely gossiped about a nation”), or in the act of aggrandizing themselves: “We’re examples. We got to go around acting like examples to these people. They’re going to imitate us” as a villainous major puts it.27 As to the Japanese, Haruko, the girl who identifies with Cho-cho-san, at the final scene of the opera explodes in a sweet-sour laughter together with her old-time Japanese boy friend, to whom she is now engaged to be married, swinging around her introjected Butterfly’s “fatal love” for private Richardson, who had exotically seen her like “one of the girls in the old prints he’d liked” but also had imagined as “terrible beyond belief” her encounter with his family.28 Unlike other American fictions of occupied Japan, in Richie’s novel ruins characterize the Tokyo landscape. And love among the ruins is a sad affair embodied by a sort of Butterfly antitype, or a revived Pinkerton, the American Gloria Wilson, from Muncie, Indiana. Since the publication of Robert and Helen Lynd’s 1929 Middletown, A Study in Contemporary American Culture, Muncie had become the obvious reference for provincial America and its traditional core culture. As its representative Gloria Wilson demolishes whatever may be considered appropriate in Middletown America, and occupied Japan becomes her land of freedom, or rather of license, where she obsessively pursues sexual encounters and indulges in epic drinking sprees. As Gloria sees it: “She was in the glamorous Orient and she was one of the most glamorous things in it”.29 A lewd character, but with the wit of despair, she gives her version of the time and place: Often she had seen other Americans here smile for no apparent reason as they walked in the sunlight. Was it because they were conquerors? She doubted it. It was because they were free. Free from their families, their homes, their culture – free even from themselves […] Nothing they had been taught could be used in understanding the Japanese, and most of them didn’t want to anyway. It was too much fun being away from home, in a country famed for exoticism […] She felt herself a part of something larger, something benevolent, like god, engaged in kind works and noble edifices. Her own country - the United States, Indiana, Muncie - like an arranged vista, fell perfectly into place. She understood it; she understood her place in it […] The ruins were one huge playground where everything forbidden was now allowed and clandestine meetings were held under the noonday sun. The destruction evident everywhere she looked, contributed to or perhaps caused this. She felt like a looter, outside society. Society no longer existed.30

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“I think is winning the war that did it”, an anonymous lieutenant says, commenting the sordid “love among the ruins” episode whose protagonists are Gloria and Tadashi, a Japanese driver employed by the occupation government.31 After the Butterfly performance, a lonely, disgusted, drunken Gloria resolves to seduce “roaringly handsome” Tadashi. She makes him drive to the area of Susaki, “the most extensive ruin” she had ever seen, where Tadashi’s father “had been burned to death” almost five years earlier.32 There Tadashi is reminded of the destruction of Fukagawa and of his family during the great Tokyo air raids, and there, in a symbolic, ludicrous, sad scene reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, a frightened Gloria, turned “masculine” and “predatory”, imposes her kisses on an astonished, frightened Tadashi: “Let’s look at it this way,” she said, “this is democracy in action”. “Democracy”. said Tadashi. “Sure, honey. And now you see – democracy can be fun! Now I’ll give you one of the finer points – this is the Monroe doctrine”.33

Almost a parody of Hoberecht’s Tokyo Romance, where the American reporter teaches the Japanese actress how to kiss, and of Hoberecht himself who declared that in thus kissing he fulfilled his “obligation to democracy”,34 the episode ends in Tadashi’s driving away at full speed, leaving behind Gloria semi-naked on the scorched desolate ground. The “scorched earth” strategy of the war is translated into the “scorching earth” of the occupation: the Butterfly antitype is turned into a grotesque, honest Tadashi is left musing on his own defeat, humiliation and failures. Where are the victors then? The question haunts the novel, the “mirage-like quality of eternal promise” of Jeffersonian democracy is set against both the resistance/acceptance of the Japanese and, more poignantly, against the effects of occupation: exoticism and democracy clash, and both are deemed fakes by an idealistic (and, in the end, demoted) Colonel. He subscribes to the “time-honored thought that America had never lost a war and never won a peace”,35 and thinks that, for the majority of the occupying forces: the reconstruction of democracy was a bit like the reconstruction of Williamsburg […] It was an empty shell, devoid of life, a travesty on what it had once been, a tourist attraction which was generally advertised as something quite noble and special, something to which one might make an occasional pilgrimage.36

The Colonel is therefore perceived as un-American. Perhaps this is also how Richie’s novel itself might have been perceived at home, when

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audiences flocked to see the movie Sayonara at the height of the Cold War. Once exotic love is set among the ruins, it becomes predatory and empty from the American point of view, and an impossibility nourished by divided memories and divided loyalties from the Japanese. Haruko, though refusing at the end her identification with Cho-cho-san, writes in uncertain English in her diary: “I have fatal love like Romeo and Juliet, like Tristan and Isolde, like Miss Greer Garson in Dusty Blossoms”.37 The Western “fatal love” sequel exposes the fake uniqueness of the exotic Butterfly myth, and, more interestingly, adds a variant to it, that of Greer Garson’s character in Blossoms in the Dust (1941). Garson is no Isolde, Juliet or Butterfly, she plays the role of an American childless widow who takes care of hundreds of orphans or abandoned children, puts them up for adoption and succeeds in having the word “illegitimate” lifted from their birth certificates. The full-screen movie dedication reads: "This is the story of a great woman, and of the great work she is doing for humanity”. What does Haruko’s Greer Garson stand for? Does she stand for America and its relation to the Japanese people? Is it an allusion to a different type of fatal love, that for the Japanese as “children” to be educated, as General MacArthur famously put it, or to the Japanese as “illegitimate children” in an American-style democracy? Or does it refer to the pervasive American policy of making Japanese women protagonists of Japan’s democratization,38 or to Gloria Wilson’s particular way of spreading democracy among the ruins? Is the occupation an example of “the great work” being done for humanity? Richie leaves this to his few readers, and only evokes doubts, contradictions, and the symbolic, omnipresent, ambiguous soft power of the Americans: “The rising sun cast the shadows of the buildings far behind them. The distant rails shone silver in the sun, and Greer Garson luxuriated, her paper face half in the shadow”.39

Notes 1

Victoria Wohl, Love among the Ruins: The Erotics of Democracy in Classical Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 2 Collier’s Weekly, 8 March 1947, p. 58. 3 Life, 7 April 1947, p. 107. 4 Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 5 Earnest Hoberecht, Tokyo Romance (New York: Didier, 1947), p. 49. Quotations are from this edition. 6 Ibid., p. 144. 7 Elliott Chaze, The Stainless Steel Kimono (New York: Simon and Schuster,

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1947), p. 167 and 169. Racial superiority characterizes this novel whose “Foreword” (p. vii) begins with: “I believe the reaction of most occupation troops in Japan is that of a person suddenly handed a brimming bedpan and told to guard its contents carefully”. 8 Respectively: Caroline Chung Simpson, An Absent Presence: JapaneseAmericans in Post-war American Culture, 1945-1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); David Palumbo-Liu, Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). 9 Graham Huggan, The Post-Colonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 13. 10 Such as in the archetypes of Uncas and Cora in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826), or in the bodies of the many Indian Princess who do indeed commit the equivalent of suicide by renouncing love and disappearing in the primeval forest (as in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, 1827). See Alide Cagidemetrio, “Vanishing Indian Princesses, or the Sentimental Transformation of the Pocahontas Myth”, RSA 7 (1997), pp. 5-26. 11 Nathan Glazer in a much quoted essay, has maintained that cultural stereotypes about Japan have not changed much since Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946). See Nathan Glazer, “From Ruth Benedict to Herman Kahn”, in Mutual Images, Essays in American-Japanese Relations, ed. Akira Iriye (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 138-68. 12 In Tokyo Romance the female protagonist is a famous movie actress, in Sayonara a famous Takarazuka performer, in both novels intermarriage is disparaged, and there are lengthy discussions about the qualities of Japanese women. James Michener wrote what can be seen as a curious disclaimer in 1957: “When I finished my talk to the students from Waseda University in Tokyo, the first question from the floor was, ‘How do you compare the literary accomplishments of Jean Paul Sartre and Earnest Hoberecht?’ I had to confess that for the past several years I had been traveling and had been unable to keep up with the younger German writers. My audience laughed. After the meeting a graduate student said, ‘I'm writing my thesis on The Influence of Earnest Hoberecht on Modern Japanese Thought. I'm really surprised you didn't even know that Hoberecht was an American.’ I explained that since 1950 I had been away from home and hadn't been able to read all of our bright young men. I said, ‘I did get some books by Capote and Buechner flown out to me, but apparently I missed Hoberecht.’ Replied the intense young men with obvious disdain, ‘But Earnest Hoberecht is America's greatest writer. He's been famous since 1945. In my thesis I prove he's America's most significant modern novelist.’ This bowled me over, for wherever I am I studiously read Time's weekly book section and drop into big libraries around the world to catch up on the Sunday New York Times book section. But four days later my amazement was compounded when I attended a round table conducted by some of Japan's intellectual leaders: college professors, a head of the radio system, literary critics and two famous novelists. After opening amenities had been taken care of, a professor asked me directly, and in a somewhat hushed voice, ‘Do you consider the short stories of Earnest Hoberecht superior to those of

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Ernest Hemingway?’”. See “1957 Newsday Piece on Earnest Hoberecht”, available at www.downhold.org/lowry/earnest1.html (cited 10 September 2013). 13 James A. Michener, Sayonara (New York: Random House, 1954), p. 94. Quotations are from this edition. 14 Ibid., p. 225. 15 “In the case of the interracial romance, the two couples provide the tragic ‘punishment’ for those who cross racial barriers as well as the liberal ‘happy ending’ for those who can be assimilated into the American mainstream […]. The tragic couple acts ambivalently as both the voice of social critique and as confirmation of the racial status quo. The couple that transcends the social taboo against miscegenation usually provides a weaker indictment of racism, since their union, at the conclusion of the film, confirms that American society is the tolerant melting pot it claims to be”. See Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 125-6. 16 Michener, Sayonara, p. 222. 17 Ibid.. Quotations from p. 52 and p. 59, respectively. 18 Ibid., p. 59. 19 Ibid., p. 118-9. 20 For a discussion of gender identity in the representation of the Takarazuka girls in Michener’s novel see Jessica Hester, “Japanese Women/American Men: National Identities and the Takarazuka Revue”, in Portrayals of Americans on the World Stage, Critical Essays, ed. Kevin J. Wetmore (Jefferson: McFarland and Co., 2009), pp. 191-200. 21 Bosley Crowther, “Screen: Brando Stars in 'Sayonara'; Off-Beat Acting Marks Film at Music Hall”, New York Times, 6 December 1957. 22 Richie’s novel never became popular, and was sardonically reviewed in The Journal of Asian Studies particularly because of his offering Japanese characters’ points of view, making them “not credible” since such technique “requires that the novelist be born in Japan”. See John Ashmead, “This Scorching Earth. By Donald Richie”, The Journal of Asian Studies 16, no. 2 (1957), p. 324. 23 As he states in the preface to the 1986 edition of Where Are the Victors? (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co. Publishers, 1986). Quotations are from this edition. 24 Ibid., p. 95. 25 Stars and Stripes, 25 April 1948. 26 As Arthur Groos has pointed out, Madama Butterfly was constantly revised for Japanese audiences in the occupation years, enabling “the gradual assertion of a Japanese perspective”. He also mentions versions by the Takarazuka Revue, Chocho-san in 1946 and later in 1953, when, as part of the celebration of the centenary of Commodore Perry’s arrival to Japan, Three Generation Cho-Cho-San was staged offering a redeeming story centered on the encounter of a young Japanese American woman with the descendant of Pinkerton’s son. See: “Return of the Native: Japan in Madama Butterfly/Madama Butterfly in Japan”, Cambridge Opera Journal 1, no. 2 (1989), pp. 167-94.

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Richie, Where Are the Victors?, p. 252. Ibid.. Quotations respectively from p. 63 and p. 229. 29 Ibid., p. 27. 30 Ibid., p. 43-4. 31 Ibid., p. 308. 32 Ibid.. Quotations from p. 300 and p. 302, respectively. 33 Ibid., p. 303. 34 Quoted in Mark J. McLelland’s “'Kissing Is a Symbol of Democracy!' Dating, Democracy and Romance in Occupied Japan 1945-1952”, Journal of the History of Sexuality 19, no. 3 (2010): 508-35. The “kissing debate” originated in the suggestion to Japanese film makers by Occupation authorities to include kissing scenes in movies, kissing being considered an inappropriate public behaviour in Japanese society. See Kyoko Hirano, Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: The Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute, 1992), pp. 144-54. 35 Richie, Where Are the Victors?, p. 208. 36 Ibid., p. 207. 37 Ibid., p. 141. 38 Not differently from the American old-time derogatory representation of exotics at home, natives or slaves, the Japanese are often called “women”, or “children”; see Shibusawa Naoko’s America’s Geisha Ally on the feminization of Japan and childishness as paradigm for cultural change in the U.S. apprehension of Japan during the occupation and on the parallel promotion of “a traditional view of women’s and children’s dependence and helplessness” calling “for occupation forces to bestow strong, manly protection, intervention, and guidance (p. 19). 39 Richie, Where Are the Victors?, p. 316. 28

SAYONORA, TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON, AND THE COLD WAR RE-“OPENING” OF JAPAN ALAN NADEL

Introduction The end of World War II initiated a process in the United States of befriending formerly demonized Axis countries. Given the enmity and destruction that characterized World War II, the political viability of this conversion necessitated a re-formation of the cultural imaginary, as the reorientation of axis countries was foundational to the United States Cold War strategy, and thus the occupation plans for Germany and Japan. These countries, it was felt, needed to adopt democratic forms of governance consistent with the specific capitalist model that characterized, in American parlance, the “Free World”. At the political level this process was easier to effect in the United States than at the cultural level, in light of the half-decade or more during which Axis countries underwent rampant demonization. Overcoming racial prejudice toward the Japanese, which had proliferated as part of the United States war effort, posed a particularly cogent problem. The internment of Japanese Americans, for example, but not German or Italian Americans clearly illustrates the racial hierarchy implicit in the United States war effort. Two popular mid-1950s films, Teahouse of the August Moon and Sayonara, both of which indicate how Japan must reject its traditions in order to be accepted by the West, provide clear examples of the template, in America, for a successful occupation.

Rescuing the Japanese Character The problematic, confused, and often confusing, image of Japan and the Japanese in American popular imagination in the decade following World War II is exemplified by a 10 September 1951 article in Life, “The Birth of a New Japan”, occasioned by the drafting of a treaty that would

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end the United States occupation. Announcing that “Now, in 1951, Japan has been rescued from the worst consequences of its aggression and defeat” the article treats Japan’s World War II defeat as a form of Japanese victory and thus turns Hiroshima and Nagasaki into an American rescue mission.1 As the article, in an unmistakably self-congratulatory context states, “No other people but Americans—optimistic, expansive, equally confident of their political institutions and their machines—would have attempted to remake another nation in their own likeness”.2 The article subsequently praises Japan’s staunchly anti-Communist direction as an indication of the positive influence of the occupation. The rhetorical impetus of the article, therefore, is to rescue the image of Japan, that is, to make Americans favor rather than fear Japan’s imminent return to the world of independent nations. The article thus focuses on what it sees as profound flaws in the traditions and the character of the Japanese people, especially their inability to distinguish right from wrong, because that flaw disposes the Japanese to the positive influence of America. For example, about the manners and customs exercised on entering a Japanese farmer’s home— removing shoes, squatting on clean mats, not acknowledging the host until greeted, accepting tea, and admiring the home’s floral arrangements— which typify the traditional behavior, the Life reporter explains: “Here […] is the old Japanese life, graceful to watch but dangerous to pursue”.3 Instead of explaining why this behavior is “dangerous”, the author describes Japanese militarism in the preceding decade, implying an obvious connection: the roots of Pearl Harbor lay in the customs of Japanese life. At the same time, the article argues, those customs were at odds with the true nature of the Japanese people, whose embrace of the occupation and of American GIs was “the normal and honest reaction of an extraordinary national character”.4 That “extraordinary character”, however, is systemically amoral, marked by “pragmatic worship of pure success [and] substitution of a maze of contractual obligations for a definitive notion of right and wrong”.5 What the article describes as a “steel web” of obligations, commitments, and loyalties replaces, in Japanese culture, any sense of absolute values, as exemplified by Plato or Christianity, such that the rigid web of obligations, “taut enough to achieve a precarious equilibrium”, renders the Japanese model citizens “often appallingly polite”.6 Away from home, however, outside his web of obligations, the Japanese man can be brutal and dangerous. With no moral codes to restrain him, released by his superiors from his bonds, the thousand lifetime frustrations of the repressed little soldier boil over. In Nanking he rapes and pillages in the

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streets. At Bataan and in Manila he kills Filipino babies and bayonets helpless American captives. This is what happens when a Japanese is “taken out of context”.7

While the author clearly avoids one implication of his argument—that amorality predisposes people to capitalism—he does outline a set of cultural narratives that reflect the path to reinventing Japan and the Japanese in the American imaginary: historically and culturally the Japanese are morally inferior to Americans, but that inferiority allows adaptability, as the reporter’s wartime anecdote proves: On Okinawa, I watched a captured artillery captain obligingly direct American fire on the position which he had just left. Another prisoner […] voluntarily worked for U.S. Marine intelligence officers, explaining the locations and compositions of his own forces. Neither of these men thought of himself as a traitor, for there was nothing left to betray. After capture, they instinctively felt that their only hope was to fit themselves into some new pattern of loyalties and obligations.8

Thus amorality, itself a product of ensconced Japanese culture and tradition, well-equips the Japanese to abandon their culture and tradition. The test of the occupation is thus the extent to which it can draw on its traditions in order to say sayonara to them. This is the goal of the American “rescue” operation, which will only succeed if the Japanese prove themselves capable of being rescued from their past, their history, their culture, their identity. The article is thus part of a large media effect aimed at convincing the American people to accept a heretofore vilified Japan on the basis that the Japanese people can be rescued and are worthy of rescue. An Atlantic magazine article written in August of 1956, the bulk of which disparages every aspect of Japan’s work ethic, initiative, and productivity, places in a business context the competing narratives that informed the American popular image of Japan in the mid-1950s: Japan’s great pact of cheap and surplus labor is a disadvantage, for it leads to a lack of interest and efficiency. […] In all walks of Japanese society raises are awarded mainly according to seniority rather than merit; and generally speaking, it is more important to age than to think. A worker expects his employer, or substitute father, to take care of him for life, and hiring a worker is closer to adoption of a child than to fitting the right worker to the right job.9

As in the Life magazine article four years earlier, everything here represents the Japanese as socially, economically, and even emotionally

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retarded. In this way, the article’s rhetoric restages what is referred to in American history books as the nineteenth-century “opening of Japan”, by which is meant both its accessibility to Western markets and principles, and its emergence into the industrial age, as defined by Euro-American economy and production. In this context, the postwar occupation merely restages the earlier rescue operation, the initial “opening of Japan”: once again an infantile people are being shown a way to emerge from their regressive state into one of psychological as well as economic selfsufficiency. This infantilization of the Asian is a central motif of an extremely successful film, The King and I, nominated for Best Picture in 1956. In this film the British governess hired to take care of the royal children of the king of Siam eventually educates him in exactly the same way as she does the children, gently instructing all of them in Western manners and morals.10 The King and I thus exemplifies a Western narrative practice spanning several centuries that Traise Yamamoto identifies as the “feminization of Japan”: An ideological trajectory that includes the civilizing missions of the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, the influx of Christian missionaries in the early twentieth century, and the disciplinary rise of Japan studies in the mid-twentieth century. In each instance, Japan has been positioned as the site of instruction and an object of knowledge subject to the West’s ideological gaze.11

Teahouse of the August Moon Like the film musical The King and I, Teahouse of the August Moon, a film comedy made the same year, set on Okinawa during the U.S. occupation, represents the Asians in every aspect of their behavior as identical to their depiction in the Atlantic article, at the same time that it makes Okinawa synonymous with Japan. For 1950s American audiences the important distinctions between Okinawa and Japan would have been moot; most of the film’s American viewers would have regarded Okinawa as a specific place name within the generic setting of “occupied Japan”. A short promotional film about the making of Teahouse in fact treats the film as though it were set in Japan: “Operation Teahouse”, the narrator explains, “utilized all the technical and physical facilities offered by modern Japan. But equally important was the natural scenic beauty of old Japan”. Therefore, the film was shot in Nara, an “ancient capital of old Nippon”, and the film short shows the Nara “local citizens who will portray the inhabitants of our story’s Tobiki village” (on Okinawa). In Teahouse, Marlon Brando plays the “Japanese” interpreter, Sakini,

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as childish and lazy, unable to keep his socks up or understand the most fundamental instructions from Colonel Purdy, the commanding officer of the occupation post. Despite insisting that he is “most eager to be educated by our conqueror”, Sakini’s inability to distinguish figurative from literal instructions, combined with a childish demeanor renders him completely incorrigible, in consequence of which he is sent to the southern tip of the island to help the incompetent but well-intentioned Captain Fisby (Glenn Ford) modernize Sakini’s home village. In every way the village’s economic savvy and sense of marketing conforms to the Atlantic description: “Japanese industry is also weak in manufacturing practices, both in finding out whether there is any consumer demand for a given product, and in selling the product once it has been manufactured”.12 Thus, at the insistence of Fisby, the villagers attempt to sell hand-made sandals and cricket cages for which there is no demand and which cost much more to make than mass-produced alternatives. In the film, however, these poor marketing decisions that, according to Atlantic, characterize the Japanese, are made by the U.S. military. This would resonate well with the audience, given that over twenty million American men had served in the American armed services between 1942 and 1956. Typically, these ex-GIs had returned to civilian life with an almost comic disdain for military procedures, supported by a prolific array of anecdotes. A popular saying of the 1950s, cited by Leon Slater in his memoir, A Rifleman Remembers World War Two, was “there were three ways of doing things, the right way, the wrong way, and the army way”.13 Fisby’s commanding officer, Colonel Purdy, relentlessly exemplifies the Army approach by, for example, constantly ordering pointless signs, such as those differentiating officers’ clothes lines from enlisted men’s, so as to segregate laundry by rank. Each day Purdy counts the laundry in French, because the Army taught him French in preparation for the invasion of Europe, then assigned him to Okinawa. Giving Fisby “Plan B”, a book produced in Washington “pertaining to the welfare and recovery of these villages”, Purdy tells Fisby, “You don’t even have to think, Captain. This document relieves you of that responsibility”. Having been in the paper box business before the war, Purdy admits to Fisby that he knew nothing about foreigners, but “my job is to teach them democracy”, Purdy explains, “and they’re gonna learn democracy if I have to shoot everyone of them”. The film thus makes clear the U.S. military represents everything that the occupation did not desire the Japanese to become: it is not competent and it is not democratic. The village starts to prosper, therefore, not when Fisby follows Plan B, but when he is seduced by Japanese manners. Instead of building a

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schoolhouse with the materials supplied by the military, he builds a teahouse, which he populates with the village women who, rather than abandon their Japanese traditions epitomize them by learning to become geisha. The villagers facilitate the conversion from impoverished peasants to those enjoying the lifestyle associated with teahouses and geisha by selling to Army bases the moonshine the village has for centuries produced for its own consumption. When Colonel Purdy uncovers these practices, he orders the teahouse and the whisky still to be destroyed, only to discover that U.S. congressmen about to arrive at the village regard its conversion as a model of successful occupation. Standing on the site of the demolished teahouse, with the arrival of the congressmen immanent, Purdy believes his career is over, when he is informed by Sakini that the stills were not destroyed but hidden and that the teahouse was disassembled but not demolished, as proven by the fact that, in matter of minutes, the villagers reassemble it. This scene is extremely revelatory in several ways. First, it illustrates that the Japanese are efficient and productive workers. The reconstruction of the teahouse, moreover, replicates in microcosm the Levittown-like, assembly-line production of housing that made possible post-war America’s affordable suburban lifestyle, suggesting how much the Japanese are actually like the Americans. Finally, the fact that this Japanese village prospers from leisure activities allays anxiety over the possibility that a democratic Japan will be an industrial rival to the United States in the way that it had been a formidable military rival in the preceding decade. Following the implicit prescription for rescue outlined in Life magazine, traditional Japanese amorality and duplicity is channeled into a production line and lifestyle for which the postwar, American middle class serves as the model. Thus, in the process of deprecating Japanese business practices as naïve, the Atlantic article mentions that “some companies keep as many as three sets of books: one for themselves, one for their investors, and one for the government”,14 a practice actually indicating a shrewd business sense, one exactly analogous to the villagers’ action, in Teahouse, of officially destroying the stills while secretly hiding them. And that is but one example among many demonstrating the villagers’ ingenuity, cunningly disguised as the incompetence that Sakini, especially from the perspective of Colonel Purdy, appears to manifest. Even more telling is the Atlantic article’s attempt to disguise the extraordinary success of Japanese business that belies the article’s pervasive critique: For the Japanese cannot continue to expect to increase annual exports to America by 62 per cent, as they did last year […] without making

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concessions in return. An example is the marked increase in exports of Japanese sewing machines to America—100 per cent in one recent month—while at the same time the Japanese vigorously deny American sewing machine companies an entry into the Japanese market.15

The complaint here relates to the superiority of Japanese business and the way that Japanese trade policies place the United States in the supplicant position, a reversal rather than a restaging of Perry’s “opening of Japan”. These complaints, moreover, would be meaningless if the critiques of the Japanese business practices, to which the bulk of the article is devoted, were valid. The article reconciles these contradictions, as does Teahouse, by evoking the term “democracy”: “It is not likely that Japan can make further improvements in Japanese industrial production without introducing industrial democracy and a more truly competitive pattern of life”.16 The Japanese, in other words, should demonstrate a willingness to compete with one another rather than with the United States. In the Cold War model, democracy means following the self-proclaimed “Leader of the Free World”, not competing with it. And in the parlance of “containment”, about which I have written extensively,17 the battle to defeat Communism was waged not only at the economic, military, and geopolitical levels, but at the lifestyle level as well. “Baseball”, Ian Buruma points out, “was encouraged [during the occupation] as an intrinsically democratic game”.18 The Life magazine article similarly points out in regard to the occupation, “Baseball was of course democratic”.19 A 1958 Time magazine article thus praises the Japanese for developing housing structures along the western model: “The apartment house has become not only a place to live but also a new way of life”.20 This new way of life, connected to a government-sponsored housing program, headed by a 72-year-old banker, Kano Hisaakira, includes central heating, gas stoves, stainless steel sinks, and tables with legs. The apartment doors have western-style locks with “Yale-type keys”. Kano tells Time: “This flat piece of metal is wonderful. It gives us privacy and security”.21 “Adds waspish Banker [sic] Kano: ‘The key will emancipate wives. Their husbands will now have no good excuses for leaving them at home and going off alone to the geisha house’”.22 This fascinating conclusion to the article conflates social and economic progress in Japan, defining the amalgam in terms of post-war American middle-class domestic values. People with a rudimentary understanding of technology (amazed by the wonders of the “flat piece of metal” called a “door key”) and (by Western standards) with a commensurately dubious sense of family values, under the leadership of a wasp-like capitalist, can come to see the relationship between the ability to protect one’s property

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and the superiority of the nuclear family, which privileges togetherness over socially and spatially divided gender activities. Lynn Spigel notes that “In 1954, McCall’s magazine coined the term ‘togetherness’”, pointing out that the term “shows the importance attached to family unity during the postwar years” and that “home magazines primarily discussed family life in language organized around spatial imagery. […] In fact, the spatial organization of the home was presented as a set of scientific laws through which family relationships could be calculated and controlled”.23 In adopting the spatial arrangements and thus accepting the incumbent controls that such arrangements impel, Japan takes another step away from its traditions and toward democracy, for, as the Life magazine article makes clear, Japan’s capacity for democracy is inextricably linked to changing its culture and lifestyle. The cultural work being performed by Teahouse of the August Moon depends, therefore, on how its merger of technology, capitalism, and white, middle-class western morality (that provides a future for people whose cultural and political retardation made them the objects of nuclear devastation) coalesces around the problematic figure of the geisha, a person whose alleged allure is chiefly to people who eat on the floor and are amazed by door keys. Yet the basic point that Teahouse makes is that the geisha and the Japanese lifestyle are alluring rather than retrograde. Fisby does not instruct the Japanese, but rather the Japanese instruct him, such that democracy does not mean eliminating the geisha but making her services accessible to more men, and making her appearance and performance skills accessible to more women. The embrace of the geisha’s fashion and talents therefore ironically entails rejecting the geisha’s profession, for it is the profession that makes her role discrete from that of the wife’s. If wives learn to perform as geisha, then as the role of geisha becomes democratized and the profession of geisha becomes obsolete. In Teahouse, therefore, when the housewives of the village demand to learn the geisha’s skills they are following the rescue plan outlined by Life magazine, that is, celebrating their tradition by eliminating it. Rejection of the professional geisha and the sexual license she provided Japanese men not only democratized the housewife, to the extent that the 1950s American housewife typified democracy, but also removed the threat that the geisha lifestyle posed to 1950s American masculinity that was circumscribed by the puritanical norms of Cold War America, for the gendered narrative that placed Japan in the feminine position was, as Yamamoto points out, central to the West’s acceptance of Japan: the feminization of Japan functions in relation to the masculinized West in the same way as the stereotype of the Japanese woman functions in relation

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to the white Western male. Both relations are inscribed by overdetermined patterns of submission and domination in which race and gender difference mark the boundaries of the orientalized other in a manner that both “invites” access and allows erasure of the threatening Japanese other gendered as male.24

Sayonara The sexual dynamics of this relationship cannot be underestimated, as underscored by the way they connect Teahouse to Brando’s next film, named, ironically, with the word he speaks to conclude Teahouse: “Sayonara”. The 1958 film, Sayonara, a serious melodrama, was at the time the fifteenth highest grossing film in the history of American cinema. That film too is about the seductive power of the Japanese performing artist, and the plot focuses on the U.S. military’s prohibition against marrying Japanese women—a regulation in place in 1950—the moment in which the film is set—but long rescinded by 1958 when the film was made. In effect, it is about how Americans ought to comprehend Japan, by 1958 an invaluable ally in the Cold War, and what kinds of negotiations are necessary to make the Japanese acceptable partners. Hence, it is not surprising that both films attend extensively to lifestyle and sexual freedom. Sayonara used the panoramic widescreen to set the melodrama against a lush travelogue, highlighting especially Japanese performance arts. As I have argued extensively elsewhere, the Cold War was a courtship narrative staged between rival suitors, the United States and the Communists, in which it is impossible to keep the genders straight.25 In Sayonara, Major Gruver (Brando) who seems to lack adequate libidinous drive when in the presence of his American fiancée, Eileen, becomes rapt when he first sees the Japanese performer, Hana-Ogi. From both a racial and a gender perspective, his response is transgressive. As the star in an all-female theater company, Hana-Ogi, who plays both male and female roles, is initially distinguished by her androgynous appearance. When Gruver first sees her on stage and later when he sees her walking with the other women in her troupe, all of whom wear kimono, she is wearing white pants, shirt and hat (a look that would be echoed in the following decade by Candice Bergen, playing the explicitly lesbian Lakey in the 1966 film, The Group). By simultaneously epitomizing a Japanese tradition and violating it, Hana-Ogi functions in Sayonara as the housewives-geisha do in Teahouse. Just as the democratizing of the geisha mollifies concerns over the sexual license of Japanese men, so the Japanese tradition of same-sex theater

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safely contextualizes American Cold War homophobia.26 Gruver’s attraction to Hana-Ogi also invokes issues of miscegenation, strongly resonant with American audiences at a time when the desegregation of American society was causing widespread, often violent conflict. There can be no doubt that Brando’s insistence on playing Gruver with a thick Southern accent underscored allusions to racial conflict in the United States, of which anti-Japanese racism was a typical, if not pervasive example at the time. “The concentration on racial difference in the film can only serve to comment on internal American politics and the race laws of the time”.27 While calling attention to racism, the casting nonetheless adheres to the racial prohibitions of United States history and culture, which tacitly recognized male relations with non-whites, as evidenced by the open acknowledgment of slaves fathered by their owner, but vilified sexual relations between black males and white females to such an extent that, even as late as the 1950s, a black male could put his life in jeopardy by simply looking at a white woman in a manner deemed “improper”.28 In this regard, Sayonara adheres to the standard pattern of 1950s race casting: Gruver and Joe Kelly (Red Buttons), an enlisted man in his unit, are white actors playing men who love Asian women. In the (less explicit) relationship between Eileen, played by British actress Patricia Owens, and Nakamura, the star of the all-male kabuki theater, Nakamura is not played by a Japanese man, but by white actor, Ricardo Montalbán.29 In the same way that the casting of Nakamura avoids violating racial taboos, the script avoids gender transgressions. While Nakamura, like Hana-Ogi, plays cross-gendered roles in a single-sex theater company, evoking homophobia, he explicitly affirms his heterosexuality by expressing his attraction to Marilyn Monroe. Costume is very important in both films because the Asian outfit, which Brando dons (along with the custom of taking off his shoes and of sitting on the floor) in the same way that Fisby does in Teahouse, serves as the exotic alternative to the occupying military uniform. Thus the allure of the Asian focuses the erotics of transgression evoked but also strictly prohibited in the homosocial environment of the U.S. military. These echoes of homoerotics and homophobia frame the way the film establishes the conditions under which one may succumb to the transgressive attraction of Japan. In counter-distinction to Gruver, Kelly marries a Japanese woman and adopts the Japanese lifestyle, so much so that when he is ordered back to the United States without his bride, Kelly and his wife, Katsumi (Umeki Miyoshi), commit suicide, replicating the theme of a Japanese puppet show they had attended. At the puppet show, Kelly objects to the story of the two lovers committing suicide, but Katsumi

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explains that it means they will be together for eternity, a proposition he apparently comes to accept. In this way, Kelly instead of helping to democratize Japan gives up his life to endorse pre-war and wartime Japanese beliefs, associated with practices of harakiri and kamikaze. The difference in Japanese and Western attitudes toward the value of human life, which suicide signified, was often evoked in the U.S. to justify use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a logic of self-justification, the use of nuclear weapons was not the product of Western indifference to Asian life, but rather the logical extension of Asian attitudes and beliefs. Because these beliefs were inimical to democracy, Kelly and Katsumi by committing suicide in effect join those killed in the war’s extensive bombing—nuclear and conventional—as victims of Japan’s suicidal tradition. Among those victims of tradition and/or bombing was Hana-Ogi’s father, which had caused her to hate Americans, but as she explains to Gruver, while he has been (obsessively) watching her, she has also been watching him, and thus realizing that he does “not look like a savage”, she asks his forgiveness. By looking at him, in other words, she comes to understand that her anger about her father’s death is actually guilt about her prejudice toward Americans, a guilt not caused by the white man’s appearance, but rather dispelled by it. The ameliorative quality of whiteness is consistent with the idea that the war was a rescue operation, one that requires a re-evaluation of Japanese traditions, something of which Hana-Ogi is uniquely capable. Through her array of costumes, on stage, among her theater troupe, and with Gruver, Hana-Ogi demonstrates that she is not bound by tradition. As Brian McIlroy points out, “as such costume changes suggest, she is—like Japan itself—both old and new, in constant flux, a prize for the Americans to capture and control”.30 Gruver thus can couple his proposal to Hana-Ogi with her rejection of the traditions that connect her family honor to remaining a permanent, unmarried member of the Matsubayashi opera company, conditions that she at first rejects and then accepts, whereupon the film comes to an abrupt ending with Gruver, pressed by journalists for a quote, saying “Sayonara”.

Conclusion When we couple the endings of these two films, made back-to-back by Brando, we see that he speaks the farewell to Japanese tradition from both the subject position of the occupied and of the occupier, in both cases acknowledging admiration for Japan in exchange for Japan’s farewell, in its own words, to its own past. Sayonara.

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Fig. 1. Still from Teahouse of the August Moon (1956).

Fig. 2. Still depicting construction of prefabricated housing, from the short movie Community Development with Gunnison Homes (1950s circa). (Source: archive. org).

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Notes 1

Frank Gibney, “The Birth of a New Japan”, Life, 10 September 1951, pp. 134-53: 134. 2 Ibid., p. 144. 3 Ibid., p. 137. Emphasis added. 4 Ibid.. 5 Ibid.. 6 Ibid., p. 138. Emphasis added. 7 Ibid., p. 141. 8 Ibid.. 9 “The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Japan”, Atlantic, August 1956, pp. 1920. 10 See Sheng-mei Ma, “Rogers and Hammerstien’s ‘Chopsticks’ Musicals”, Literature/Film Quarterly 31, no. 1, (2003), pp. 17-26; Kerr Houston, “'Maps Not So Small!': Maps, History, and Gender in The King and I”, Camera Obscura 20, no. 2 59 (2005), pp. 73-117; Bruce McConachie, “The ‘Oriental’ Musicals of Rogers and Hammerstein and the U.S. War in Southeast Asia”, Theater Journal 46, no. 3 (1994), pp. 385-98. 11 Traise Yamamoto, Masking Selves, Making Subjects: Japanese American Women, Identity, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 12. 12 “The Atlantic Report”, p. 20. 13 Leon Slater, Not in Vain: A Rifleman Remembers World War II (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), p. 54. “Anyone who's ever been in the army has heard the saying — ‘There's the right way, the wrong way, and the army way’. As far as the army goes, it's true”: H. Newton Maloney, When Getting Along Seems Impossible (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1989), p. 63. Citations for this commonplace are prolific. See, for example: Beth Baily, America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). More important, the huge number of references indicates how assumptions about the incompetence of U.S. military procedures were so widely accepted as to have become a cultural cliché. The retrospective overpraising of the U.S. military in contemporary American political discourse tends to obscure the fact that such proclamations about military efficiency would have been laughable in the 1950s. 14 “The Atlantic Report”, p. 20. 15 Ibid., p. 22. Emphasis added. 16 Ibid.. 17 Alan Nadel, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995). 18 Ian Buruma, Inventing Japan, 1953-1964 (New York: Modern Library, 2004), p. 134. 19 Gibney, “The Birth”, p. 147. 20 “Life with a Key”, Time, 10 November 1958, p. 42.

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Ibid.. Ibid.. 23 Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 37. 24 Yamamoto, Masking Selves, Making Subjects, p. 22. 25 Nadel, Containment Culture. 26 See: Robert Corber, Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Robert Corber, In the Name of National Security: Hitchcock, Homophobia, and the Political Construction of Gender in the Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993); Barbara Epstein, “Anti-Communism, Homophobia, and the Construction of Masculinity in the Post War U.S.”, in The Cold War, ed. Lori Lyn Bogle (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 73-96. 27 Brian McIlroy, “White Nagasaki/White Japan and a Post-Atomic Butterfly: Joshua Logan’s Sayonara (1957)”, in A Vision of the Orient: Texts, Intertexts and Contexts of Madame Butterfly, eds. Jonathan Wisenthal et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), p. 134. 28 In 1955, Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was perceived to have leered at or flirted with (perhaps whistled at) a white woman when Till was visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta. A few nights later, he was kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered. 29 It is important to note in this regard that while today the U.S. census data distinguishes “white” from “Hispanic”, throughout the history of American cinema, many leading men of Hispanic background (in addition to Montalbán, Fernando Lamas, Cesar Romero, as well as fictional characters such as Zorro and the Cisco Kid) were paired romantically with white women, not until the mid1960s do we see any pairing of black men with white women. Thus the extremely chaste Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1968) still seemed groundbreaking. 30 McIlroy, “White Nagasaki/White Japan”, p. 133. 22

NEOCONSERVATIVE FANTASIES AND THE JAPANESE ANALOGY FEDERICO ROMERO

In 1991, neoconservative analyst Joshua Muravchik (then at the American Enterprise Institute, now at Johns Hopkins SAIS) published an ambitious book entitled Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny. In a reconsideration of the 20th century, and particularly of the Cold War era, that any historian is bound to consider rather haphazard and idiosyncratic, Muravchik berated the “folly of realism” and contrasted it with the “potency of ideas” as the main vehicle for international change. He accepted that hard-nosed containment and deterrence had played a role in cornering and debilitating the Soviets, but the latter’s collapse derived primarily, in his opinion, from the “disenchantment” of the Soviet elites, who simply could no longer come to terms with the failure of socialism vis-à-vis the success of Western democracy. The United States had won – because Muravchik had no doubts about the Cold War being an American triumph – primarily in the realm of ideology and culture. The defining struggles of the 20th century - whether they were conducted by means of covert actions or open propaganda, modernization plans or support for anti-Communist groups, as in Poland or Nicaragua - had revolved around the conquest of hearts and minds.1 Muravchik was not pleading for liberal internationalism, he showed no interest in multilateralism, and was not suggesting a constructivist approach. Far from it. His argument was entirely inscribed within the intellectual and political boundaries of American nationalism. His dialogue was with the hard-power theology of American conservatism, which at the time was inebriated by victory in the Gulf War and the prospect of unrivalled unilateral U.S. dominance on a global scale.2 Therefore, Muravchik bowed to the conservatives’ worship of national security as the only legitimate conceptual framework, and structured his proposals within its confines. You do not go to war just to expand democracy - he conceded - but when war is looming for reasons of national security, you ought to consider the option of democratization

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because it is powerful, efficient and useful. Our ideas, he claimed in his conclusion, are victorious. We are on the verge of a new “American century” when we can look forward to the creation of a “Pax Americana unlike any previous peace, one of harmony, not of conquest”.3 This fluctuation between handy utilitarianism and lofty rapture was still quite original at the time. In about a decade, though, it will grow into a recurrent feature of neoconservative intellectuals. In late 2002, at the time of the protracted public campaign for war against Iraq, much of Muravchik’s style, arguments and implications had become common currency for his fellow neoconservatives. And so had Muravchik’s main case for theorizing democratization by external imperium: the American occupation of postwar Japan. In his book, he put Japan at the top of a list of societies allegedly turned by U.S. action from authoritarianism into democracies (Germany, Austria, Italy, the Philippines, South Korea). He stated that the Asian nation embodied the “single most remarkable example” of a country going democratic “as a result of direct American coercion”.4 In historical terms, his analysis of the postwar occupation of Japan is superficial and often flawed. His choice of arguments, though, is highly symptomatic. Stunned by an indisputable, absolute defeat that was moral and cultural no less than military and material, Japanese society was pried open by occupation policies that broke the grip of traditional institutions and practices, argues Muravchik. On top of purging the top echelons of the militarist establishment, American authorities provided economic aid and introduced broad reforms (in education, land ownership, labor relations) that fostered a sense of “civic equality”.5 They went too far, in his opinion, in purging and restructuring the business world, which the Japanese then had to reconcentrate and strengthen as soon as they had the authority to do so. But he thought that the occupation regime was an altogether restrained and judicious one. In most cases “it ruled indirectly” with a “process of give and take” with the Japanese administration. Even its most direct imposition, the very text of the Constitution, turned out to be quite acceptable to the nation. Ultimately, it was General MacArthur’s traditionalism and cultural conservatism that saved the day: by maintaining the emperor he legitimized the new democratic regime, and he made the latter acceptable to the people by respecting Japanese habits and customs. In Muravchik’s pecking order the fact that Japanese democratic tendencies and groups could now operate freely figures as a nice icing on the cake, dutifully noticed but listed at the bottom of the pile.6 In analytical terms, his interpretation was neither surprising nor particularly controversial. That the postwar reconstruction of Japan in

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democratic terms, and its integration in the expanding web of Western multilateralism, was one of the masterpieces of twentieth century U.S. liberal internationalism is a widely shared tenet in the American literature on international history and U.S. foreign relations. It was one of the key pillars of Western strength and influence in the confrontation with Soviet power, and the best example – together with West Germany – of the possibility of overcoming the legacy of authoritarianism and violence. It could also be usefully contrasted with the rather less successful attempts at nation-building that the U.S. pursued in less industrialized societies, often with little if any priority given to the democratic nature of the experiment.7 Many historians of postwar Japan are obviously way more critical of the American occupation, or less convinced of its central relevance for the shaping of Japanese society and institutions. Several studies highlight the gap between the democratizing rhetoric deployed by the U.S. government and its protection of the emperor’s role, support for conservative politics, and acceptance of a centralized, authoritarian form of capitalism. The initial plans for a more open democracy were soon sacrificed for the sake of imperial control in the emerging Cold War logic, which gave priority to the reliability and economic might of the newfound ally. On top of a tale of missed opportunity, these studies also tell us that the U.S. occupation authority was not the only agent; Japan’s reconstruction was primarily a struggle among different sections of Japanese society with widely divergent views of the nation’s future. They were actively pursuing their own projects and agendas in a complex, dialectical relationship with the American occupation authorities. The latter maintained a broad range of options and possibilities open until 1947, but then veered towards a conservative, top-down, and decidedly less pluralistic project, throwing their weight for the consolidation of Japan’s economic and political élites.8 Other studies strike at the very premise of Muravchick’s reasoning, which largely reflects and updates the assumptions held at the time by the Occupation authority itself. General MacArthur saw his task in unabashedly paternalistic terms. Japan had to be dragged out of a semifeudal state and projected into 20th century modernity, its citizens liberated from serfdom and turned into autonomous, responsible individuals. Accordingly, the general thought of himself as the school master in charge of educating “a boy of twelve”.9 However, this self-aggrandizing and selfcongratulating tale loses most of its traction when the backwardness vs. modernity dichotomy is seriously contextualized and, ultimately, deconstructed. The American reformers’ own role obviously appears less influential and decisive when set against the background of a nation that in many ways was already modern in the interwar and war years, with

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institutions and ideas that were not so radically different – particularly in the economic realm – from those prevailing in Europe and America, as well as an imperial role and outlook that made it more similar to those societies than to the prevailingly agrarian ones of continental Asia. As Laura Hein has argued in a recent survey of the literature, “historians of the United States are now far more likely than in the past to treat the Occupation as a questionable imperialist venture, while historians of Japan increasingly see Japan’s war and especially Japan’s empire as very similar to those of modern Europe”.10 Since I am no scholar of postwar Japan, I certainly do not pretend to have a say on this. As in the case of postwar Germany or Italy, historians usually emphasize different aspects and weigh influence in nuanced, complex ways. Criticism of the American occupation can very well coexist with a positive assessment of some of the reforms it initially promoted, and of the legacy of women’s vote, new labor rights, land reform, and the Constitution in the life of postwar Japan.11 The point I want to make is that the history of democratization – in Japan, in Italy or elsewhere – is always a complex, multifaceted one, and that simplified, one-dimensional, self-serving narratives are not only bad history but also a poor guide for broad generalizations and current policy recipes. Perhaps Muravchick would have better served his readers, including his neoconservative constituency, had he paid more attention to those critics who see U.S. postwar foreign policy in the Pacific driven less by a democratizing ethos than by the search for maritime dominance and imperial pre-eminence.12 But this was not to be. With the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the historical antagonist, the perceived dawn of an era which seemed to promise uncontested U.S. ascendancy gave an entirely different twist at the prevailing views on the relationship between power and democracy. American conservatives (whether of the neo- or the more traditional mold) drew from recent history not so much a lesson as a principle of faith. Throughout the 1990s they shelved away the rhetoric on democracy promotion that they had deployed from the mid-1970s as a function of anti-Soviet campaigning. To begin with, in the new postCommunist international environment there seemed to be no pressing need for it in terms of U.S. strategic interests. Secondly, nation-building and democracy promotion were key features of the Clinton Administration’s neo-wilsonian policy to consolidate and extend multilateralism. Therefore, ideological rivalry as well as domestic political competition drove even neoconservatives towards embracing more traditionally conservative views pivoted on hard-power dominance. At the Pentagon, Paul

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Wolfowitz coordinated a 1992 Defense Planning Guidance paper centered on the consolidation and extension of U.S. military supremacy. The international strategic environment did not so much need to be nurtured or stabilized by means of democratization and reforms, much less coordinated by negotiated interdependence, as controlled by unmatched U.S. pre-eminence. The key goal was to prevent the long-term emergence of rival powers in Asia and Europe - at the time identified once again with Germany and Japan. The central tenet was therefore unrivalled U.S. military dominance, whose extension in the long-term future appeared as the only crucial condition for the maintenance, and control, of a favorable global outlook. The third factor that underpinned this nationalist construction was the belief that positive world transformations, in the Cold War as in the foreseeable future, depended primarily if not solely on America’ strength. As long as actual or potential adversaries could be kept at bay by U.S. power, freedom would spontaneously spread its reach, markets would take root, and democracy could flourish unobstructed. In the neoconservative interpretation, the lessons of the 20th century were distilled in a one-dimensional belief in American supremacy as the midwife of a naturally-ordained historical progress towards freedom.13 It is perhaps worth noticing, at this point, that historians have so far refrained from clear-cut, head-on interpretative battles about the reasons that brought the Cold War to its end. Nothing even remotely polarizing as the late 1960s debate between traditionalist and revisionist views of Cold War origins - with their fundamental divide about Soviet or American responsibilities - has yet surfaced. Few, if any, professional historians accept the simplistic, righteous, and tautological proposition that the collapse of the Soviet system demonstrated that Western policies had been not only sensible and effective, but also decisive. The multiplicity and complexity of the long-term factors that transformed not only the bipolar struggle itself but the very context and conditions in which it took place simply prevents any mono-causal explanation from gaining traction. To list just the most obvious ones, the expansion of a global economy and the technological revolution of the late 20th century; the strategic, economic and cultural repositioning of China; the emergence of new protagonists in the global South; the decline of Marxism’s intellectual influence; the increasing permeability of Socialist countries to the social and economic models pursued by Japan and Western Europe; the resurgence of antimodernist religious and/or nationalist projects; all these factors appear to have had such a transformational role as to dwarf any role played by direct U.S. policies and pressures. Historians today might stress one or more of these factors, and weigh their relative importance and mutual

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interferences, but they usually avoid mono-causal interpretation, and especially those pivoted around centralized strategies and policy decisions. Even when explicitly crediting Ronald Reagan and especially Mikhail Gorbachev with the crucial choices, historians are still trying to assess the complexity of the deeper historical forces rather than apportioning blame and merit. The jury, in short, is still debating and a unilateral verdict seems most unlikely.14 Fin de siècle neoconservatives, at any rate, juxtaposed a peculiar reading of the Cold War as a real war, allegedly resolved by U.S. military superiority, with the exceptionalist faith in the universality of American values and experiences. Thus intellectually armed, they consequently marched towards the 21st century with “giddy triumphalism”.15 For the time being, Muravchick’s plea for democracy promotion appeared pleonastic, and it could be safely shelved. But not for long. When 9/11 struck, great power realism seemed all of a sudden irrelevant. The Bush Administration went furiously in search of a theory of historical change to accompany its deployment of military power; Muravchik’s claim for exporting democracy was suddenly back on stage.16 Many observers noticed, and John Dower analyzed with detailed sophistication, the use of the Japanese analogy in the run-up to war and invasion. Already in April 2002 Condoleezza Rice publicly recalled the immediate post-war period, “when American leadership expanded the number of free and democratic states – Japan and Germany among the great powers – to create a new balance of power that favored freedom”. In September Paul Wolfowitz reiterated the same historical template when he quoted Winston Churchill’s declaration, on the day after Pearl Harbor, that “dictators underestimate America’s strength”.17 Explicit references to the post-war occupation of Japan first surfaced in October 2002, when the White House made known that it had a plan for the occupation of Iraq, although without giving any specifics.18 It was then repeated, or alluded to, by White House officials and media commentators on several occasions. On the eve of war, President George W. Bush proclaimed that in 1945, “after defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. […] In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home”, and he mentioned it again even as late as 2007.19 His Press Secretary stated that (in spite of the huge campaign on weapons of mass destruction) “the dream of a democratic Middle East was actually the most powerful force behind President Bush’s drive to war”.20 It is not difficult to see why the Japanese analogy was conveniently attractive for the Iraq war’s spin-doctors. It dovetailed with the recurrent

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twining of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, promising an equally fitting retribution for the moral outrage. It added an ostensibly constructive, idealistic goal to a “war on terror” thus far pivoted on public feelings of revenge and issues of national security, but now seemingly geared also to a generous, uplifting outcome. Unlike the German example, it included a racialist and culturalist subtext that could not be made explicit but obviously resonated with part of the American public: American policies and ideals could be made good even in a non-Western, non-Christian, Asian nation. The analogy with post-war Japan, however, was only for public consumption. Visions of international change and actual policies towards Iraq were based on a completely different set of assumptions and premises. Neoconservative intellectuals and administration officials shared an utter disdain for the very concept of nation-building, which they saw as fraught with unnecessary, liberal-minded concerns for social compact, state intervention, and institutional engineering.21 The CIA, the State Department and other research outfit who looked at the postwar scenario – and gave more serious consideration to the historical record - warned that nation-building measures would be required on a large scale. The physical, political, institutional and cultural reconstruction of a democratic Iraq called for serious planning and a long-term commitment of financial, administrative and logistical resources.22 Nothing, however, could be more distant from the administration’s own outlook, which revolved on a “shock and awe” military strategy to be followed by a quick exit. Vice-president Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld overrode the more sensible and cautious voices. The Pentagon took over the alleged “planning” of the postwar scenario, and the Administration fell for its own rhetoric of “liberation”. Since the Iraqis themselves were “driven by the dream of a just and democratic society”, as Paul Wolfowitz claimed on the eve of war, there was no need for a large investment of American resources, be they financial, human or technical.23 No large machinery of occupation was envisioned because all the U.S. had to do was “to remove the shackles on democracy”.24 Freedom and democracy, in other words, were conceived as the default state, almost a natural condition. They would prosper all by themselves – irrespective of specific experiences and circumstances – as soon as the lid of tyranny had been lifted. In 1945 the U.S. had approached the issue of democratization in Japan, Germany and Italy within the conceptual framework of liberal multilateralism. International peace, stability and Western solidarity for containment required well-functioning public institutions, carefully engineered political consensus and a social compact for growth. None of

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that mattered for the neoconservatives, who promulgated – and probably believed - that “the great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism” had delivered “a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise”.25 Since democracy would artlessly rise from the ruins of dictatorship, and spread its fruit as indubitably as free market competition is held to provide growth and wealth, there was little use for the actual experiences to be derived from the occupation of Japan fifty years earlier. The legitimization of the U.S. role with the Iraqis was presupposed rather than searched for by means of constructive policies and actions. The need to establish essential conditions of safety and efficiency on the ground was tragically overlooked. Instead of long-term planning and preparation, negligence and improvisation reigned supreme. A close, positive dialogue with local forces to be helped, if not nurtured, towards collaborative solutions with democratic aims appeared simply superfluous. Rather than relying on the existing administrative machinery, the U.S. occupation regime soon disbanded all tools of government, military as well as civilian. Instead of economic reorganization, it promoted privatization and contracting out, which came with abundant doses of plundering and corruption. If the mid-Twentieth century Japanese had been faced with a vast, functional and relatively well-prepared occupation bureaucracy that interfaced with their own civil service in providing administrative guidance, the Iraqis had to make do with inexperienced young Republican activists catapulted from Alabama to Baghdad, where they were tasked with opening a stock exchange when electricity and other basic services were still lacking.26 As a result, it took less than six months after “shock and awe” for an Iraqi insurgency to proliferate among conditions of administrative vacuum, lawlessness, and widespread chaos. Even as sympathetic a witness as Republican senator Chuck Hagel would later point out that “the hubris of such assumptions – to bring democratic changes and affect the course of religious history at the point of gun in Iraq – [was] breathtaking”.27 As John Dower aptly put it, a “faith-based planning process” rooted in “false analogy and magical thinking” had turned the neoconservative rhetoric on liberation and democracy into a nightmarish failure. “Occupied Iraq was the antipode of occupied Japan”.28

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Notes 1 Joshua Muravchik, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1991), quotations from p. 19, p. 2, and p. XII respectively. 2 See Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment”, Foreign Affairs, Winter 1990-91. 3 J. Muravchik, Exporting Democracy, p. 227. 4 Ibid., p. 91. 5 Ibid., p. 101. 6 Ibid., p. 95 and pp. 97-104. 7 See, for instance, Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 8 See John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999); Howard B. Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945–1952 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1989); Joe B. Moore, Japanese Workers and the Struggle for Power, 1945– 1947 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). 9 Douglas MacArthur quoted in John Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 550. 10 Laura Hein, “Revisiting America’s Occupation of Japan”, Cold War History 11, no. 4 (2011), pp. 579–599. See also Scott O’Bryan, The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009). 11 See, for instance, Eiji Takemae, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and its Legacy (London: Continuum, 2002). 12 See Bruce Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009) and Chalmers A. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004). 13 See Justin Vaïsse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 261-65; Federico Romero, “Solitudine Americana”, in Oltre il secolo americano. Gli Stati Uniti prima e dopo l’11 settembre, eds. Raffaella Baritono and Elisabetta Vezzosi (Roma: Carocci, 2011), pp. 29–44; James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 192-211. Among the direct sources for neoconservative thinking on U.S. foreign policy before 9/11 see Robert Kagan and William Kristol, eds., Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000), and the policy document Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000) available at http://www.newamericancentury.org/defensenationalsecurity.htm (visited on 9 August 2012). 14 The best representation of this plural, open-minded search for multiple factors and explanations can be found in the essays collected in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Its third volume, in particular, offers the most updated and reasonably complete guide to ongoing research approaches and

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directions. I have argued at length for a multi-factor interpretation of the Cold War and its dynamics in Federico Romero, Storia della guerra fredda (Torino: Einaudi, 2009). 15 Jack F. Matlock, Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray and How to Return to Reality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), p. x. 16 On the Bush Administration’s strategic thinking and policies after 9/11 see Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay. America Unbound: the Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Hoboken: Wiley, 2005); Richard Crockatt, America Embattled: September 11, anti-Americanism, and the Global Order (New York: Routledge, 2003). 17 The two speeches by Condoleezza Rice, 29 April 2002, and Paul Wolfowitz, 14 September 2002, are quoted in J. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, p. 316 and p. 300 respectively. 18 David Sanger and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Has a Plan to Occupy Iraq, Officials report”, The New York Times, 11 October 2002. 19 President George W. Bush, speech to the American Enterprise Institute, 26 February 2003, and speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 22 August 2007, both available at http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news (visited on 9 August 2012). 20 Scott McClellan, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), p. 131. 21 See Donald Rumsfeld, Beyond Nation Building, speech in New York City, 14 February 2003, available at http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=337 (visited on 9 August 2012). See also Kenneth M. Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York: Random House, 2002). 22 See James Dobbins et al., America’s Role in Nation- Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, Rand, 2003). 23 Speech by Paul Wolfowitz, 11 March 2003, quoted in Richard H. Immerman, Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 226, 24 Paul Wolfowitz, interview with Prospect, 1 December 2004, quoted in Justin Vaïsse, Neoconservatism, p. 266. 25 National Security Strategy of the United States 2002, available at http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/ (visited on 9 August 2012). 26 On the abysmal record of the U.S. occupation in Iraq see the vivid, insightful, startling account by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), and also Terry H. Anderson, Bush’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 138-61. 27 Chuck Hagel (with Peter Kaminsky) America: Our Next Chapter (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 51. 28 John Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), p. 443, p. 314 and p. 358 respectively.

PART III: OCCUPATION, OCCUPATIONS

THE U.S. OCCUPATION OF JAPAN: A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE AKIRA IRIYE

What is a transnational perspective? It may be distinguished both from national and international perspectives on historical events. To take the U.S. occupation of Japan as an example, the subject may be understood in the framework of national affairs, in this case in the context of U.S. political and military strategy, public opinion, and the like, on one hand, and that of the Japanese leaders’ and people’s responses to the coming of the American occupiers. This is a perfectly legitimate approach, and impressive monographs have been written on these subjects on the basis of archival and other material.1 It is quite possible and plausible to understand the U.S. occupation of Japan as a chapter in U.S. history and in Japanese history. These respective histories intersected during the war of 1941-1945, and during the next several years, 1945-1952, there was an American chapter in Japanese history, and a Japanese chapter, albeit in a more modest way, in U.S. history. Quite clearly, the U.S. occupation was a major turning point in modern Japanese history, and, while the same degree of importance cannot be attributed to the place of the occupation of Japan in the history of the United States, it may be said that this was an important example of how the nation undertook to reform another country. (Recall that the occupation experiences in Japan and Germany after the Second World War were frequently recalled by U.S. policy makers and the public as they reflected on their military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan at the turn of the twenty-first century).2 All these are examples of a nationcentric perspective on the past. The U.S. occupation of Japan, however, becomes a transnational story when we consider how cross-border links were established between Japanese and American individuals and private groups, and also when we place the event in the context of transnational history, not of the respective histories of Japan and the United States. Shared experiences, memories, and networks constitute transnational history in that they do not necessarily fit into the framework of national history. For the majority of Americans, to be sure, the occupation of Japan

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was not a personal experience, nor did it create lasting relations with Japanese individuals or communities. They may have been aware that the former enemy was being occupied by U.S. forces, but they must have had no intimate knowledge of what went on in far-away Japan. For most Japanese, too, the occupation was just a framework in which they carried on their daily living. At this level, these people’s life stories were basically separate, to be understood primarily, if not exclusively, in the framework of national history. There were individuals in both countries, however, who actually encountered one another and who even developed lasting inter-personal relations. Others vicariously experienced each other’s cultures through reading about them, seeing movies depicting one another, or otherwise becoming conscious of the social and cultural connections that tied the two countries. These individual Americans and Japanese may be said to have shared some experiences and remembered them as an integral part of their lives. We may understand how national and transnational perspectives overlap through the experiences of individuals. To take a personal example, I was ten years old when the war ended on 15 August 1945. (In the United States, lying east of the international date line, it was still in the evening of 14 August when the Japanese emperor made the radio announcement at noon of 15 August, announcing Japan’s surrender or, technically, acceptance of the Potsdam declaration of 26 July calling on Japan to surrender). Through the diary that I started keeping on 19 August, it is possible to see how the occupation of the country by U.S. forces affected the life of a teenager living in Tokyo. Our home was far enough removed from the center of the city that it had not been destroyed by U.S. aerial bombing. The first time that I saw U.S. military aircraft, according to my diary, was on 28 August. My diary for that day records, “Today is said to be the first day of the U.S. occupation, and U.S. planes were flying low and slowly”. I continued, “I feel awful, but there is nothing I can do except to study”. I still had not seen an American, but that would soon change as U.S. soldiers would come roaring in their jeeps into our neighborhood. They impressed us as more friendly than menacing, and they often threw away candy wrappers in our direction. The smell of chocolate that lingered in the wrappers was the first taste of America. At one point my grandmother and I ran into many GI’s on foot in Shinjuku, a central part of Tokyo. I did not record my impressions of them but recall my grandmother saying that these Americans looked so well fed and strong, against whom it had been futile and foolish to fight. As these instances reveal, the initial impact of the U.S. occupation was felt through

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food. Virtually every day I recorded in my diary what we had to eat, how my grandmother and I went to the countryside to purchase potatoes and whatever other items farmers were willing to sell us, and how, once in a while, we were able to eat rice, the Japanese staple. The occupation authorities released some canned items to the Japanese, such as corned beef, which gave us the first taste of American food. In a sense we came to know America through food. In time, we gained more extended impressions of Americans and their life styles through the Hollywood movies that began to be shown almost as soon as the war was over. As Kitamura Hiroshi has shown, the showing of carefully selected American cinemas was designed by the U.S. government and occupation authorities as part of the overall process of reeducating the Japanese, away from militarism and martial values toward embracing the peace and happiness of family life.3 My diary records that, starting in January 1947 when my mother took me to see “Madame Curie”, I saw a string of American movies, including “The Yearling” and “The Little Women”. As we, middle or high school children, went to see such products of American culture, we were establishing vicarious ties with America, in a sense forming part of the transnational chain of moviegoers across the globe. “Humanism” was the term that was often used in this context. It was exemplified in many Hollywood movies, in which individuals with their own personality and beliefs counted, and where humane values underlay social institutions.4 For us school children, however, probably the most consequential encounter with America came through the new educational system that was instituted by the occupation. Henceforth the nationalistic history and geography textbooks that we used to read were to be replaced by those that put Japan in its place, as one among many countries in the world, one that was now to mend its ways and to become a peace-loving nation. To ensure that this happened, the occupation authorities ordered the rewriting of school textbooks. Where new texts were not yet ready, school children were told to bring scissors, brushes, and ink to cut out or blacken passages that were considered militaristic. History as it had been taught up to the end of the war was no longer authentic history and was to be rejected in favor of a new history. In a sense, historical memory was to be transformed wholesale. Yesterday’s remembered past was rejected as propaganda, and students as well as teachers were to absorb fresh facts, what had actually happened, as against what they had been told by the authorities as having happened. In retrospect, of course, this was replacing one piece of propaganda by another, indicating that historical truths could

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be manipulated at the state’s will, that yesterday’s truth might become tomorrow’s falsehood, and therefore that one must think for oneself to find the truth. Comparing wartime Japanese propaganda with postwar U.S. occupation propaganda, however, it is clear that the former contained far more falsehood and that the latter had a liberating quality. To the extent that freedom of speech and inquiry was a novel idea introduced by Americans, textbook rewriting was the most direct way in which school children came into contact with the United States. This was a truly important transnational experience for me and my generation. For me personally, as I think of my intellectual development, the newly liberated study of history was the starting point of my career as a historian, and my view of scholarly endeavors as fundamentally a transnational engagement and my conviction that one must think for oneself rather than absorbing what the authorities proclaim as history may be said to have had their origins in those early postwar experiences. Going beyond such personal reminiscences, I also wonder about generational memories across national boundaries. Do people of my generation, i.e. those who were born during the 1930s and so were too young to be directly involved in actual combat as soldiers and yet remember the war and the postwar occupation of defeated countries remember those experiences in some similar fashion? Historians have written about “the generation of 1914” (in Europe), “the generation of the 1919” (in China), and the like, implying that certain common experiences and mentalities connected men and women born and growing up during a particular moment in history.5 Can there be generationally shared memories of the Second World War? To be sure, there are obvious differences in overall national memories that have been transmitted from generation to generation. In the United States and Great Britain, Richard J. Evans has noted, the Second World War is still remembered as a “good war”, a memory that “has sustained a positive self-image ever since 1945”.6 Obviously, Japanese memory of the war would be different. And yet, the idea that after 1945 things changed for the better seems to be shared by the majority of both Americans and Japanese, particularly those of the 1930s generation. At the very least, people of this generation share the rather clear-cut chronology; for them, 1945 means a defining moment and a point of departure, after which their lives would be more ordered, even predictable, than earlier. The same, of course, could be true of people of roughly the same age group in other countries as well. It may well be that the older generation, born between, say, 1920 and 1930, had an altogether different set of experiences from those of the generation of the

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1930s, if only because the majority of men in this older generation would have been directly involved in the war as soldiers, prisoners of war, and the like, and a higher proportion of them would have died during the war than members of other generations. The wartime generation became, and remains, veterans of the war, and as such they may share much memory in common regardless of which side in the war they served. How the younger generations today, for whom even the Cold War was history when they were born, "remember" the Second World War, and to what extent their memories share certain characteristics transnationally, are fascinating questions that await systematic study. It is said, for instance, that a considerable number of the postwar generation in Japan, particularly those born since the 1970s, tend to romanticize the war because even their parents do not remember the horrors of war and they are taught little about Japanese imperialism and aggression in the schools. The recent rise of dogmatic nationalism in Japan, echoing the right-wing extremists in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, may thus be a generational phenomenon. The same age group in the countries that fought against the Axis – the United States, Britain, Russia, China, etc. – may, on their part, share certain memories, although their schools seem to teach their children more nation-centered than transnational stories about the Second World War. Considerations of transnational memory lead us to the distinction between transnational history and international history.7 The contrast between the two is not always clear-cut, and some historians even collapse the two approaches into just one, either transnational or international history. In this essay, the two conceptions of history are presented so as to differentiate between nation-centered themes and those that transcend, lie underneath, or penetrate national boundaries. Memory is fundamentally a personal matter and so belongs in the realm of transnational phenomena. But to the extent that countries of the world deal with one another as formal entities through their respective state authorities and seek to define their collective memories about their past dealings with one another, that is a subject of international history, and such activities can best be understood as international affairs, a term that implies formal interrelationships among national entities. The key themes in the study of international history are foreign policy, military strategy, national security, national interests, and the like, all of which presuppose that each country has a distinct set of geopolitical conditions and concerns. To the extent that a modern nation state is defined through geography (territorial boundaries) and history (national memory), it follows that each country is unique and different

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from all others. It seeks to protect and promote certain interests, usually referred to as “the national interest”, which is considered the key mission of the state. In such a framework, the U.S. occupation of Japan was an instance of international relations in which one nation, exercising its sovereign power, undertook the occupation of a country against which it had fought a war. The occupation objectives and policies, their implications for the overall foreign policy agenda of the nation after the war, preparations for unanticipated occurrences – these were all part of the international history of the post-1945 era, as were Japan’s responses, ranging from the government’s decision to surrender and to accept the terms of the occupation, to working out the details about the administration of the defeated country, including demilitarization of its armed forces. To be sure, Japan was not a “sovereign” nation at that time, and its foreign affairs and domestic policies were severely controlled by U.S. authorities. Still, the two countries dealt with one another through their state apparatus, as best exemplified by the several meetings between General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the allied powers, and the emperor of Japan. Moreover, the occupation of Japan had implications for international relations in Asia and in the world. To the extent that the end of the Second World War resulted in the emergence of the victorious nations, in particular the United States, the British Empire, China, and the Soviet Union, as the key to the postwar world order, the fact that U.S. troops controlled Japan had geopolitical significance, as did the developments in the defeated country’s former colonies and other territorial possessions, some of which were now occupied by U.S., U.S.S.R., and Chinese forces while others were being recaptured by British, French, and Dutch troops, a situation that triggered an immediate resistance on the part of the colonial population. All these are subjects of international history, and historians have produced numerous monographs dealing with them. While international history thus deals with the macroscopic relationships among nations and defines a geopolitically defined regional or world order, transnational history is concerned with individuals, communities, themes, and movements that exist outside formal state apparatus, establish their own networks, and even become part of shared experiences across national boundaries. In contrast to international history, transnational history would have its own themes and chronologies quite apart from inter-state relations or geopolitical vicissitudes. Such transnational phenomena as economic globalization, cultural communication, human rights, and environmentalism have their own stories to tell, so that, if we

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put the U.S. occupation of Japan in a transnational, as against an international, framework, we would be looking for developments that were pregnant with future significance in connection with the emergence of a more and more transnational world, rather than putting it in the framework of Cold War history or viewing it as a chapter in the story of “the rise and fall of the great powers”. There is clearly a tension between an international story and a transnational story, and we should not assume that the former always trumps the latter. Sometimes, the opposite is the case, and an aim of this chapter is to show how we may come to a better understanding of the U.S. occupation of Japan if we look at it as a transnational phenomenon. One way of doing so would be to put occupation history in the context of some of the transnational themes that grew after 1945 and see how the U.S. presence in, and governance of, Japan contributed to the development of such global phenomena as mentioned above, phenomena that would come to constitute core elements of a transnationalizing world.8 Take, for instance, economic globalization. This has unquestionably been one of the main themes in post-1945 history, promoting, and in turn further being promoted by, transnational interchanges of goods, capital, people, and cultures. Did the U.S. occupation of Japan play a role in the story? The answer would be yes if we focused on the dismantling of the autarkic Japanese empire in East Asia and various economic reforms instituted by the occupation authorities, such as land redistribution, the dissolution (if partial) of zaibatsu (monopolistic combinations of financial houses), encouragement of the labor union movement, and the educational reforms that provided general, compulsory education to all children through ninth grade. Ultimately, such changes would combine to turn Japan into a major trading nation, even becoming the second richest economy in the world for a brief moment. But all this was in the future, and during the period of the occupation, the country remained largely removed from the global economy. Industrial recovery from the war was excruciatingly slow, labor disputes were rampant, and what merchandise was exported belonged in the category of cheap goods. Currency transactions were strictly controlled, and Japan was not a party to any negotiations the United States and other countries were undertaking, looking forward to the implementation of the Bretton Woods programs of open trade and developmental assistance. Even after Japan gained independence, in 1952, it should be noted that the nation practiced trade protectionism well into the 1960s. Occupied Japan, in other words, played no direct part in the steady globalization of economic transactions.

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Human rights, on the other hand, was a transnational theme in the development of which the U.S. occupation of Japan may be said to have played a major role. First of all, the postwar Constitution of Japan, drafted under the auspices of the occupation authorities, included references to people’s rights and liberties, something that had been lacking in the 1889 Constitution that had been the supreme law of the land till the end of the war. Equal rights between men and women, for instance, and freedom of speech were written into the new constitution that was written in 1946 and promulgated in the following year, indicating Japan’s embracing of the concept of human rights that was being discussed at the United Nations, culminating in the 1948 “universal declaration on human rights”. Equally important, the new constitution’s “denunciation of war”, by eschewing any resort to military force and entrusting Japan’s security in the hands of “peace-loving people of the world”, was in a sense a statement on human rights, implying that any war was an assault upon those rights. In addition, the Far Eastern Military Tribunal, convened to try Japan’s war criminals, made references to the crimes against humanity that had been committed by the Japanese, including the launching of the war of aggression as well as the slaughtering of Chinese civilians in Nanjing and elsewhere. (I witnessed the trials personally when, in 1948, my father who had a press pass took me with him to the Ichigaya, Tokyo, building where the proceedings were taking place. I was thus a witness to history on trial, also to a new history of human rights in the making, for the war crimes trials were nothing if not an occasion for the codification of the rights and freedoms of all people, in peace as well as in war). By the time the occupation ended, then, Japan was in a position to define itself as a nation of peace adhering to the principle of human rights. In reality, of course, instances of injustice remained and still remain, but to the extent that the promotion of human rights became an important theme in world history in the second half of the twentieth century, occupied Japan may be said to have played an integral part in the story. Cultural and educational exchanges, another key theme in transnational history, also played a role in U.S.-Japan relations right after the war. As was the case in occupied Germany and Austria, U.S. officials and educators fiercely believed in the importance of fostering people-to-people exchanges between the former enemies.9 Studies of such exchange programs have tended to put the subject in the context of U.S. Cold War strategy.10 As early as 1947, when the National Security Act established the basic apparatus for dealing with the would-be Soviet enemy, including the CIA and Radio Free Europe, there was a tendency, at least in official

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circles, to comprehend all aspects of the nation’s foreign affairs in the geopolitical context. But that would be a limited view of postwar cultural relations, for they had as many transnational as geopolitical implications. After all, the idea that a peaceful world must be founded on cultural understanding had been one of the key philosophies of private organizations in the United States, such as the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations. Numerous other non-governmental organizations joined them after 1945 to resume exchange programs, and, in the meantime, Congress undertook its own initiative by initiating student and scholarly exchanges, collectively known as the Fulbright program. Japan was an early recipient of these initiatives, and as early as in the late 1940s a small number of students and scholars began crossing the Pacific to study and do research in American colleges and universities. As was the case in Germany and Austria, Japanese officials and people were very receptive to such initiatives. There had been a long history, going back to the last decades of the nineteenth century, of young Japanese men and women studying in American colleges and universities, and trans-Pacific communication had been kept alive even during the difficult years preceding Pearl Harbor, for instance through various conferences and seminars sponsored by the World Federation of Education Associations, in which both Americans and Japanese played leading roles.11 The wartime severance of such activities was now seen as having been an unfortunate and discredited interlude so that those educational relations could be re-established without encountering any psychological resistance. Furthermore, Japan’s leaders were now proclaiming that their country was transforming itself into a “nation of culture”, an expression that was used by the crown prince, the minister of education, and other leaders in the immediate aftermath of the war. Now that militarism and war had brought so much destruction, pain, and humiliation to the country, Japan was going to forsake war for peace, militarism for culture. The idea appealed to many, as it seemed to provide the people with a new definition of national life and identity. (I was a most fortunate beneficiary of this renewed cultural internationalism. In 1952, under the initiative of Joseph C. Grew, U.S. ambassador to Japan during 1932-1941, and his friends in the two countries, a foundation was established in Tokyo with the aim of sending several Japanese high school graduates to American colleges with a view to promoting postwar reconciliation between the two peoples. I was one of the first students, fresh out of high school, chosen for the award and spent four years at Haverford College, Pennsylvania, starting in 1953. My gratefulness to the Grew Foundation’s initiative for an unforgettable

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experience has remained to this day, sixty years since I first came to the United States. It is no exaggeration to say that virtually all my fundamental ideas about the past, present, and future of U.S.-Japan relations and by extension of the world were formed during those four years). In such an atmosphere, there was real enthusiasm for international exchange programs as best exemplified by UNESCO, established in 1945 as the cultural arm of the United Nations. Japan was not to be an independent country till the U.S. occupation ended in 1952, but already in 1951 it sent an unofficial mission to UNESCO’s sessions, and the nation was formally admitted into the organization in 1953, three years before it was granted membership in the parent body, the UN. There was an excellent inter-meshing between UNESCO’s objectives and postwar Japan’s aspirations, both definable as cultural internationalism – or, in the context of transnational history, as cultural transnationalism. The idea was that all people, regardless of their national, ethnic, and other identities, were precious existences with their rights and freedoms, and that it was both possible and desirable for men and women of diverse backgrounds to come together and learn about one another to develop a shared sense of common humanity. Whether or not Japan proved true to such a vision is another question. At the very least, the idea of mutual understanding through educational and cultural exchange sustained postwar Japan’s selfdefinition and thus constituted an integral part of transnational history. That view of common humanity would surface, shortly after the nation regained independence, in the movement against nuclear weapons, including their testing. During the occupation, it was not possible to discuss openly the precise extent of casualties and damage caused by radiation through the atomic bombings in August 1945, but a number of books and articles were written on the subject, almost all of which expressing horror at nuclear devastation. These sentiments would coalesce in the mid-1950s and become the basis of a powerful anti-nuclear movement in Japan. It is interesting to note, however, that at that time, and during the occupation, the anti-nuclear movement did not yet merge with the movement to protect the earth’s environment, as would soon be happening in other parts of the world. Environmentalism was rather slow to develop in postwar Japan, and so the nation’s role in this, one of the key transnational developments, must be considered to have been rather minimal. Given that environmentalism emerged as a significant transnational movement only during the 1970s, it is not surprising that most Japanese were ignorant of, or indifferent to, problems of clean air

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and water, or of the disappearance of endangered species. Indeed, many today recall how clean the rivers and lakes were in the immediate aftermath of the war. The foulness of the air began to impress urban Japanese only during the 1960s, when economic growth, coming after reconstruction, got under way. In the newly independent countries, development would become a cardinal objective, but they, too, would begin to suffer from environmental disasters. For them and for the world, the idea of “sustainable growth”, that is, economic development compatible with environmental sustainability, would gain strength. But that was far in the future, and before 1952 neither Americans nor Japanese in the occupied country were attuned to such issues. In conclusion, it may be said that occupied Japan’s contribution to the making of a transnational world was significant in some respects, minimal in others. To the extent that transnational connections began to develop with their own momentum, irrespective of, or at a different level from, geopolitical developments, the personal ties established between Americans and Japanese after 1945, as well as Japan’s embracing of American cultural products may be said to have contributed to the growth of transnational consciousness leading to the idea of common humanity. To be sure, as Koshiro Yukiko argues, Americans in occupied Japan were not free from prejudice toward their former enemy. Many of them fathered babies of mixed races, whom they often abandoned when going home.12 Others, however, took Japanese women with them to marry and raise their children in the United States. Tolerance for diversity, which would become a major characteristic of American society in the last decades of the century, definitely grew, as did appreciation of Japan’s cultural legacy on the part of a number of occupation personnel who would later become students and scholars of Japanese literature, art, and music. On the part of Japanese, their marked openness to American, and by extension modern Western, culture was slowly dismantling the edifice of national uniqueness. Human unity and diversity, the twin themes of contemporary world history, was making an impression on the Japanese, and a sense of common humanity was beginning to challenge the traditional, more hierarchical view of people and of the world. There would be no turning back the clock. To be sure, there would be occasional lapses into the past, both in the United States and Japan. Those uncomfortable with the rapidly globalizing, diverse, and hybrid world would, from time to time, organize themselves into extremist groups to preserve the alleged uniqueness or superiority of their particular national, ethnic, or cultural legacies. But contemporary history, going back to the immediate postwar years, would

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never be reversed so easily. The sense of interconnectedness between Japan and the United States as well as the rest of the world would never be erased. That, perhaps, is the fundamental legacy of the U.S. occupation of Japan.

Notes 1 Among the best studies of the U.S. occupation of Japan are Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999); and Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 2 For the U.S. occupation of Germany, see Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). On the occupation of Austria, see Reinhold Wagnleitner, CocaColonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). 3 Hiroshi Kitamura, Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010). 4 These statements are based on a reading of my diary, which is in the author’s possession. 5 See, for instance, Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 6 Richard J. Evans, “The Truth about World War II”, New York Review of Books, 11 October 2012, p. 52. 7 For a fuller discussion of international and transnational history perspectives, see Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 8 My ideas about the transnationalization of the post-World War Two world are summarized in “The Making of a Transnational World”, in Akira Iriye, ed., Global Interdependence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 9 For U.S. cultural and economic policies in occupied Germany, see Goedde, GIs and Germans. 10 See, for instance, Volker Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold War in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 11 Gotǀ Ken’ichi, Kokusaishugi no keifu: ƿshima Masanori to Nihon no kindai [A chronology of internationalism: ƿshima Masanori and Modern Japan] (Tǀkyǀ: Waseda daigaku shuppanbu, 2005). 12 Yukiko Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). See also Naoko, America’s Geisha Ally; Sarah Kovner, Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

REDEEMER NATION / REMEDY NATION: AMERICAN STUDIES AND MILITARY OCCUPATION GEORGE BLAUSTEIN

Introduction Academic American Studies has always been an international endeavor, but not always in predictable ways. It is common, for instance, to associate the spread of American Studies abroad with the major apparatuses of American cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. Thus Norman Podhoretz, the conservative editor of Commentary, posed a direct correlation between American Studies and the expansion of American power: Does Finland have a great literature? Does Afghanistan? Does Ecuador? Who knows or cares? But give Finland enough power and enough wealth, and there would soon be a Finnish department in every university in the world—just as, in the 1950s, departments of American Studies were suddenly being established in colleges where, only a few years earlier, it had scarcely occurred to anyone that there was anything American to study.1

In fact the full history is more complicated than this, and involves a foray into comparative and transnational history. To be sure, American Studies as we understand it today is, to a large degree, a creature of midcentury cultural diplomacy, spread abroad under the auspices of the State Department and large foundations. But military occupation is also important, and American Studies took on new meaning in occupied Germany, Austria and Japan. This essay approaches the topic of American Studies and military occupation in three ways. First I discuss similarities between the structures of American Studies in occupied Europe and in occupied Japan, with particular attention to the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies and similar Japanese institutions. Second I look back at

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the somewhat hidden history of prewar American Studies in both places, since that brings certain elements of the postwar period into clearer relief: American Studies under a democratizing military occupation could represent a break from a darker past, or it could mark a reassertion of liberal commitments. I have focused on the Japanese Americanist Takagi Yasaka, whose career stretched from 1917 through the occupation. The final section explores the overtones of remedy and redemption that attended American Studies in occupied countries.

Tale of Two Seminars Two formative seminars founded during the occupations illustrate certain similarities between the European and Japanese scenes. The first is the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies; the second is the Tokyo Seminar in American Studies. The Salzburg Seminar is a famous origin story for post-war American Studies in Europe, established in 1947 by a Americans and Europeans with the tenuous approval of the U.S. Military Government in Austria. It was a private institution, located in a baroque 18th-century castle in Salzburg, and its purpose was to expose formerly warring European parties to American thought and art, particularly those parties who had been cut off from American culture under Nazi domination. In 1947, funded by the Harvard Student Council and the Geneva-based International Student Service, the Seminar attracted ninetyseven European students from seventeen countries (iron curtain countries among them), including former Nazis and current displaced persons.2 Since American Studies would later be so associated with the Cold War, it is interesting to note that the original organizers in Salzburg had no particular devotion to American Studies as a field (indeed, as a field, American Studies had no real coherence: it was an ideologically diffuse movement across sundry disciplines). Rather, the Salzburg Seminar was primarily a student relief operation, and American Studies was attractive as “a relatively neutral field of study”—simply by not being “European civilization”.3 It was also a relatively obscure field in European universities. The Salzburg Seminar was unusual in many ways, but it epitomizes several broad currents in American cultural diplomacy at midcentury, first and foremost its private character. It was led by non-state actors without governmental funding. It trumpeted its independence from the State Department, and denounced “propaganda” (always a bad word in the American imagination). But by 1950 it had forged a harmonious relationship with military authorities and with the official apparatuses of

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American cultural diplomacy in the era of the Marshall Plan. And by 1950 much of its funding would come from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. The second seminar is based on the first: the 1950 Tokyo Seminar in American Studies was directly inspired by the successes of Salzburg. Its organizers were the Stanford diplomatic historian Claude Buss, the Rockefeller Institute’s Charles Fahs, and the Japanese scholar Takagi Yasaka (about whom more below), and for them the private character of the Salzburg Seminar was particularly attractive because they wanted some form of institutionalized American Studies to last well beyond the occupation.4 Like the Salzburg Seminar, the original content of the Tokyo Seminar did not announce a particular platform of American Studies as a field; instead, they advertised a harmony of the humanities and the social sciences. The humanities would “help the Japanese people become aware of themselves and of other people”, said Konno Genpachirǀ at a conference on voluntary agencies in occupied territories, while social sciences would “provide the Japanese with a scientific approach to behavior”. He called it “our most successful seminar on American Studies”: one hundred twenty Japanese professors and educators studied philosophy, economics, history, international relations, and political science, and were dedicated to “furthering the democratization of our country”.5 Both seminars took the form of an intensive six-week course taught mainly by American professors with about 100 students. Both announced themselves as “democratic” endeavors, and of course both placed American Studies uneasily at that inherent paradox-point of installing “democracy by fiat”.6 In both contexts, American Studies was part of higher education reform, much-needed correctives to the excessively pedantic and hierarchical universities that had evidently incubated authoritarianism. In both places the interdisciplinarity of American Studies was at least as important as the American subject matter: to merge the social sciences and the humanities would inculcate pragmatism and relate education to everyday life. At the same time, both established American culture as worthy of serious academic attention, and the word “Seminar” evoked both high German seriousness and American democratic inclusiveness. Historiographically, it is possible to see the very same endeavors as representing the better angels of American internationalism, or as exquisitely subtle manifestations of American hegemony and cultural imperialism. American Studies was no doubt intertwined with military occupations and with emerging apparatuses of cultural diplomacy, and the

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lurking subtext of American Studies scholarship was always, as the British historian Max Beloff put it in the first issue of American Quarterly (1949), “the projection of America abroad”—even if there was little consensus over what this “projection” was supposed to look like.7 American Studies, broadly considered, could be a cultural gloss on American hegemony, an erudite exercise in “soft power” undergirded by the purposeful collusion of government organizations, universities, and large foundations.8 Or it could be an avenue of international dialogue, an institutional formation facilitating the exchange of persons and ideas across borders—the latter was the rhetoric surrounding the Salzburg Seminar and its progeny.

Prehistories Such were the institutional and structural similarities in the founding, funding and administration of American Studies in postwar Europe and postwar Japan. But what of the deeper question of what exactly was “American” in American Studies? Various forms of American exceptionalism have always been at the center of American Studies, but behind the ostensibly dry topic of military occupation and academic American Studies is the meta-drama of American exceptionalism, German Sonderweg, and Japanese uniqueness (nihonjinron). These were, after all, rival discourses, that “ran on parallel tracks, not only countering but also bolstering each other”, in Peter Bergmann’s thoughtful analysis.9 All three countries had, supposedly, arrived at modernity by exceptional routes— say, an incomplete modernity in Germany and Japan, or, in the American case, by the absence of anything truly pre-modern. A look back at the prehistory of American Studies in Germany and Japan is illuminating in this respect. After all, “American Studies” existed outside of the United States well before it existed inside the United States. In the United States, academic American Studies only emerged in the 1930s, but in Europe immediately after World War I, there had emerged a relatively robust study of the United States as a civilization (often lacking an authentic culture), corresponding to rising American political, economic and cultural influence. The closeness and interaction between “the Old World and the New”, according to the Norwegian Americanist Sigmund Skard’s pioneering synthesis, prompted the need to define and differentiate between them. European programs resembled integrated area studies programs more than they would in the United States.10 Their purpose was “to grasp the totality of [American] civilization by means of a team-work between many branches of learning”, an interdisciplinary, exceptionalist (though Skard did not use the term) framework which,

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Skard maintained, “seem[s] to have originated in Europe”. The first European academic chair devoted specifically to American literature was created in 1918 at the Sorbonne for Charles Cestre, who pushed for “concentric investigations, guided by the methods of History, Psychology and the Social Sciences, and directed toward American Civilization as a living whole, expressive of American aspirations and ideals”.11 Both Germany and Japan had particularly robust traditions. At the end of World War I, one of Kaiser Wilhelm’s last acts as emperor was to establish a university chair in “amerikanische Landeskunde” in Berlin.12 This was one of the earliest named positions in American Studies. The early holder of that chair, Friedrich Schönemann, suggested in a 1921 manifesto (Amerikakunde: eine zeitgemäße Forderung—“American Studies: a timely proposition”) that Germany had lost the war because it did not really know or understand the United States.13 In 1930 he became a full professor for Kulturkunde Nordamerikas. At first a liberal who had studied with Hugo Münsterberg at Harvard and taught in the U.S. for nearly a decade, he joined the Nazi Party in May 1933 and became known for his anti-Semitic views.14 Here was an integrated cultural approach to American history—“area studies” of a sort, but also “enemy studies”—that in the Nazi period, as Philipp Gassert has shown, evolved into a form of “political reconnaissance work” for the regime.15 Clearly this is a more complicated origin story for American Studies in Europe than the charming, idealistic Salzburg Seminar. After the Second World War, not surprisingly, German academics eagerly disavowed this Nazi pre-history and welcomed “American Studies” as a fresh, unsullied import, even though there was some continuity in personnel from the 1930s to the 1950s. The American scholars and statesmen who made serious efforts to establish American Studies programs in postwar Europe likewise preferred to start from Stunde null (zero hour): they believed Nazi-era images of America could be dismissed as Nazi misinformation without rummaging too deeply for skeletons in the closet of prewar Amerikakunde. And American Studies could safely be an idealistic element of reeducation and democratization.16 Japan also had long experience with some form of American Studies. In 1917 an American banker donated money to the University of Tokyo for “an American Professorship in International Law and Comity”; those funds eventually endowed a chair in American history, held for decades by the so-called father of modern American Studies in Japan, Takagi Yasaka. Takagi studied in America under Frederick Jackson Turner, among others, and saw the essence of America in the frontier, and simultaneously, in the intellectual and religious heritage of Puritanism. American Studies in

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Japan thus began as an undertaking by pro-Western liberals who saw the United States as a model for Japanese democratization. The major works in Japan corresponded to major works in the United States, especially Takagi’s obviously Turnerian “The Significance of Free Land in American Political History” (1927) and Shiga Masaru’s leftist, Parringtonian “The Main Currents of American Literature” (1937).17 Takagi is an interesting figure. In the 1930s, he walked a delicate line: still a liberal pleading for “international understanding” and peace, he nevertheless explained and often justified Japanese expansion by likening it to American expansions. The winning of the American West provided “the exact replica—if not the originals—of the Manchurian incident”. “Of all the peoples on earth”, he said in 1932 to a Western audience, “I am inclined to think that Americans would probably be the first to understand Japan’s position and even appreciate the psychology of her people in desiring to see Manchuria become a land of peace and order”. Takagi regretted the inability of Japanese liberals like himself to restrain the ultranationalists (who, interestingly, reminded him of “the Southern Secessionists in the American Civil War”—both were “absolutely convinced of the justness of their cause”, convinced that “it is they who would be fighting for liberty and lasting peace”), but he considered the American Monroe Doctrine the obvious prototype for the “Asia Monroe Doctrine”.18 Three months before Pearl Harbor he compared Japan’s “New Order” policy to the pan-Americanism and the Good Neighbor policy in the U.S.19 What was different and unfortunate about Japanese history, Takagi believed through his whole career, was the absence of a Christian reformation: “Without the experience of deep spiritual struggle and the subsequent conviction gained through such discipline, our people may perhaps be criticized as not being congenial in thought and readily appreciative of the motivating power which underlay the great events of modern history, such as the founding of the first Puritan colonies in America or even the declaration of the Rights of Man”.20 To my knowledge, Takagi never wrote anything “anti-American” or even especially critical of the U.S. —the closest he came was a 1943 historical overview of American Far East policy, suggesting that the U.S. approached the east with a combination of “idealistic, humanitarian sentiments” and “realistic, material interest”, and that all the rhetoric about “democracy” had a “‘holier than thou' attitude” that really had more to do with “high American standards of living”. He hoped America would take the noble path of peace, not be “policemen of the world”, since, after all,

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Japan was fighting “not a war for domination or enslavement, but a war for liberation”. Both sides were noble, even in 1943.21 My point here is not to tar prewar American Studies in Japan as complicit, only to emphasize pre- and post-war continuities, and thus differentiate the American Studies project in occupied Japan from that of occupied Germany and Austria. Takagi remained the major voice of American Studies in Japan after the war. As early as 1946, he along with other Japanese intellectuals pursued a revival of American Studies, with mixed success, well before Americans arrived with money from the Rockefeller Foundation. His programmatic statements about American Studies after the war sound a lot like his pronouncements before the war. Christianity was even more prominent. In his opening remarks to the Tokyo American Studies seminar (the analog to the Salzburg Seminar), he said that the main weakness of American Studies in Japan (and of Japan in general) had been the failure to understand “the fundamental ideas and values at the basis of American democracy and also of internationalism. The Japanese tradition which stresses the virtue of obedience under the Buddhist and Confucianist influence has failed to nurture the concept of individual personality, without which no one can hope to attain a true understanding of American civilization, [which was] based upon the Christian ethical idea of human personality”. And he closed this inaugural address by frankly admitting “the close relationship between democracy and Christianity as the world faith and universal religion”.22

Redeemer nation/remedy nation In the aftermath of World War II, and in the context of military occupations, both in Europe and Japan, “Americanism” became a supranational creed. American Studies was an important part of that transformation, but it took different forms in each context. The key drama of American Studies in Austria and Germany after the war was reconciliation, with “America” as the strangely neutral territory on which rival parties could meet, thus to redeem (or invent) something called “Europe”. Europeans would learn American lessons, so to speak, but those lessons were part of an Atlantic heritage. For American scholars and statesmen in Europe, the key metaphor was kinship, with American Studies in Europe as a sort of intensely awkward family reunion. (In the face of European anti-Americanism, this could be a taunt: Perry Miller, a founder of American Studies in the United States, taught in Europe in 1951 and in Japan in 1952, and he liked to remind European intellectuals

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that the America they often loathed was really “bone of European bone, blood of European blood”. The “American impact” was “the reimportation of ideas”).23 American Studies scholarship in the middle of the 20th century is associated indelibly with “American exceptionalism”—a somewhat anachronistic label for a tendency to see American history as the exception to a European norm. What we now call “American exceptionalism” was indeed Eurocentric at its core, but it was a more complex pattern of thought than we tend to recognize today. In postwar Europe, American exceptionalism was not nationalism; it was instead the antidote to nationalism. To take one of many examples, the German Americanist Hans Galinsky, whose scholarship in the Third Reich had a Nazi tint, embraced American culture as a “supra-national” phenomenon.24 American Studies was part of this broader “living faith”, he said, “part of the new European civilization worth working for”.25 In Japan, American Studies offered a set of usable “democratic” methods, especially in the social sciences—that, to some degree, was what American Studies had always been. After the war, though, it was the occupier's remedy rather than the Japanese liberal's aspiration. For the Japanese intellectuals involved, American Studies was a welcome escape from Japanese nationalism (whether or not they held to Takagi’s association of democracy with Christianity). Nationalism was a mental illness, and American Studies a cure (among many cures)—remedial both in the sense of medical, and in the sense of elementary.26 If the guiding metaphor in Europe was kinship, in Japan it was something else. Marriage was one possibility. Takagi's appointment to Japan's first American Studies professorship coincided with his marriage in 1919, and at his wedding reception, he later recalled, someone told him “Now that you are happily married, your next duty is to work for the desired objective of spiritual wedlock between America and Japan”.27 For the Americans involved in American Studies, however, the operative metaphor was not kinship, nor a spiritual marriage of equals, but rather a foster-relationship. This was Perry Miller’s image in 1952, after he had taught American literature and intellectual history in Japan at the end of the occupation: at the Tokyo American Studies seminar, as well as other events like a conference on “American ‘civilization’ in Hiroshima” (“I do not recommend the experience to fastidious consciences”, he said about his visit to Hiroshima). Then a professor in Harvard’s English department, Miller had been on the vanguard of American Studies in the United States, enlivening the study of American intellectual history with magisterial volumes on the “New England mind”. Politically, he was

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more-or-less a left-liberal Cold Warrior, and an admirer of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s cautions against liberal complacency.28 Miller wrote one essay about his experience in Japan, which on one hand recycled familiar tropes of Cold War orientalism, but at the same time warned against the occupation’s betrayal of democratizing ideals. Japan was free of Europe’s “anti-Americanism”, he said; Japan’s desire to emulate “the American way of life” was “as openhearted a gesture as was ever made in modern international relations”. But the “ineradicably Japanese” tendency toward abstractions made “America” into “Americanism” —a creed to be wholly rejected or wholly embraced. Miller unwittingly echoed Douglas MacArthur’s comment about Japan being like “a boy of twelve”: the Japanese in Miller’s portrait had so trusted “the father-image of America” that American hypocrisies in the Cold War (the Korean War and the issue of rearmament) were a “foster father”’s betrayal. He quoted (or ventriloquized) a Japanese friend: “if you [Americans] reverse yourself, and tell us [Japanese] to pick up again the accursed [military] toys, what do you expect from us—from a people as docile, as abstractly-minded, and as emotionally excitable as are the Japanese?”.29 On one hand this cast the Japanese as “docile” subjects for whose welfare the American must take up a white man’s burden. But this rhetorical turn could cut in more than one direction, and Miller warned that American hypocrisies in the Cold War (the Korean War and the issue of Japanese rearmament) were a foster father’s perilous betrayals of a rare trust. Thus Miller closed with a warning: The United States has become in Japan a foster father who, however unwillingly, has taken up the obligation. Can we let this child be himself, let him develop according to his own deep genius (not that false genius imposed upon him by the militarists), without trying to force him into our own image—or worse than that, into a sentimental image of our image? If we cannot, we shall be bound, sooner or later, to excite his revulsion.30

The irony of Americanism as a supra-national creed was that the United States itself would never reach it.

Notes 1

Norman Podhoretz, Making It (New York: Random House, 1967), pp. 90–1. Information about the Salzburg Seminar is drawn from George Holt Blaustein, “To the Heart of Europe: Americanism, the Salzburg Seminar, and Cultural Diplomacy” (Ph.D., Harvard University, 2010), chapters 3–4.

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Henry Nash Smith, “The Salzburg Seminar”, American Quarterly 1, no. 1 (1949), p. 31. 4 For details on the Tokyo Seminar and the similar organizations that followed it, see Takeshi Matsuda, Soft Power and Its Perils: U.S. Cultural Policy in Early Postwar Japan and Permanent Dependency (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2007), chapters 7–8. 5 Genpachiro Konno, “The Humanities and Social Sciences in Japan: Their Status and Problems”, in Responsibilities of Voluntary Agencies in Occupied Areas; A Report of the Second National Conference on the Occupied Countries Held Under the Auspices of the Commission on the Occupied Areas of the American Council on Education in Cooperation with the Department of State and the Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., November 30 and December 1, 1950, ed. Harold E. Snyder (Washington, D.C., American Council on Education, 1951), pp. 51 and 57–8. 6 John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), pp. 70–1. 7 Max Beloff, “The Projection of America Abroad”, American Quarterly 1, no. 1 (1949), p. 26. 8 The term “soft power” was coined in 1990 by Joseph S. Nye in Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990), and elaborated in Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). Matsuda Takeshi has made this argument about postwar American relations with Japan. See Matsuda, Soft Power and Its Perils. 9 Peter Bergmann, “American Exceptionalism and German Sonderweg in Tandem”, International History Review 23, no. 3 (2001), p. 506. 10 Note that this international line of inquiry complicates debates about whether or not American Studies can be “area studies”, for instance Paul A. Bové, “Can American Studies Be Area Studies?”, in Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies, eds. Masao Miyoshi and Harry D. Harootunian (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). 11 Sigmund Skard, American Studies in Europe: Their History and Present Organization (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958), vol. I, pp. 34-7 and 157. 12 Werner Sollors, “The American Studies Century”, in Predecessors: Intellectual Lineages in American Studies, ed. Rob Kroes, European Contributions to American Studies 43 (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1999), pp. 401–2. 13 Friedrich Schönemann, Amerikakunde: eine zeitgemäße Forderung (Bremen: Angelsachsen-Verlag G.M.B.H., 1921). 14 Frank-Rutger Hausmann, Anglistik und Amerikanistik im “Dritten Reich” (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2003), p. 191. Erwin Helms notes that the Nazis used the available Amerikakunde as “an instrument for their foreign and racial policies”. Positive aspects of American culture were considered to be due to “the contribution of the German immigrants”; negative aspects included “the rule of high finance” and (somewhat ironically) racism. See Erwin Helms, “The Influence

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and Significance of American Studies in Germany After World War II”, Paedagogica Historica 33, no. 1 (1997), p. 321. 15 Philipp Gassert, “Between Political Reconnaissance Work and Democratizing Science: American Studies in Germany, 1917-1953”, GHI Bulletin, no. 32 (2003). See also Philipp Gassert, Amerika im Dritten Reich: Ideologie, Propaganda und Volksmeinung 1933-1945 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997). 16 See for instance Henry J. Kellermann, Cultural Relations as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy: The Educational Exchange Program Between the United States and Germany, 1945-1954 (Washington: Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Dept. of State, 1978), p. 3. 17 The major works in Japan corresponded to major works in the United States, e.g. Takagi’s obviously Turnerian “The Significance of Free Land in American Political History” (1927) and Shiga Masaru's leftist, Parringtonian “The Main Currents of American Literature” (1937). See Makato Saito, “American Studies in Pre-War Japan”, in American Studies Abroad, ed. Robert H. Walker (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975). 18 Yasaka Takagi, “World Peace Machinery and the Asia Monroe Doctrine”, Pacific Affairs 5, no. 11 (1932), reprinted in Toward International Understanding: Enlarged Edition, ed. Center for American Studies, University of Tokyo, The Collected Works of Yasaka Takagi (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1971), vol. 5, pp. 17 and 20. 19 Takagi, “Letters to Ambassador Grew” (1941), ibid., pp. 92–3. 20 Takagi, “On International Reconciliation”, Contemporary Japan 4, no. 2 (1935), reprinted ibid., pp. 82-3. See also Tadashi Aruga, “Japanese Scholarship and the Meaning of American History”, The Journal of American History 79, no. 2 (1992), pp. 504–14. 21 Takagi, Toward International Understanding, p. 115. 22 Yasaka Takagi, “On the Development of American Studies in Japan”, opening remarks at the Stanford-Tokyo Summer Seminar (1950), printed ibid., pp. 251–2. 23 Perry Miller, “The Reimportation of Ideas”, in The Impact of America on European Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), p. 88. 24 Galinsky thought it not unlike “the supra-national character of the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire” in an earlier era. Hans Galinsky, “American Studies in Germany”, in American Studies in Transition, ed. Marshall W. Fishwick (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), p. 243. 25 Hans Galinsky to Robert Mead, 25 January 1954, Box: Ditty File, Salzburg Seminar Archives, Leopoldskron, Salzburg, Austria. 26 Laura Hein, “Revisiting America’s Occupation of Japan”, Cold War History 11, no. 4 (2011), p. 591. 27 Takagi replied, “If each of the contracting parties is really a worthy individual personality, there would be no trouble in any marriage”. Takagi, Toward International Understanding, p. xxvii. This story has a postwar coda. In 1948, Takagi agreed to write an article for Foreign Affairs on “Defeat and Democracy in Japan”; in it he recycled paragraphs about the Japanese absence of a Christian reformation from earlier essays. Republishing this piece in 1971, he wrote:

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“Incidentally, it was during the critical weeks of my wife's illness that I strove to write this article; and the gift package of streptomycin from Foreign Affairs reached me too late to help her in her valiant fight for life, which was markedly long-suffering and unselfish”. Ibid., p. 147. 28 On Miller and the Cold War, see Nicholas Guyatt, “‘An Instrument of National Policy’: Perry Miller and the Cold War”, Journal of American Studies 36, no. 1 (2002), pp. 107–49. 29 Perry Miller, “Teacher in Japan”, The Atlantic, August 1953, p. 64. 30 Ibid., pp. 64–5.

OCCUPATION, AMERICANIZATION, WESTERNIZATION: LESSONS FROM THE GERMAN CASE? GIOVANNI BERNARDINI

Introduction Although historical similarities between post-war West Germany and Japan cannot be overestimated, a parallel reflection on the long-lasting cultural influence of the Unites States on both defeated and occupied countries could open stimulating opportunities for research beyond national specificities. As a starting point, in fact, the Federal Republic of Germany and Japan shared a common condition of “penetrated systems” (according to a popular German definition) after the conclusion of the war; a state implying that “decisive allocations of values were steered from outside their boundaries”.1 This paper aims at proposing some possible ground for comparative analyses through an overview of the recent German historiographical debate. The perception of American influence has been discussed in Germany since the early XX century, as a recurrent subject of wishful or dreadful thinking.2 Nevertheless the events of the 1990s cast new interest on this topic in historical perspective. For reasons stemming from the German geopolitical specificity, the end of the Cold War and the reunification of the country entailed a reassessment of the country’s self-perception in the international arena. This collective reflection was also fostered by highly symbolic events such as the first deployment of German military forces abroad since the end of the Second World War (during the NATO bombing over Serbia), and the fiftieth anniversary of the Federal Republic in 1999.3 Later, further inspiration came from the abrupt end of Post-Cold War triumphalism as a consequence of the September 11 events, and especially from the Transatlantic rift that occurred about military intervention in Iraq: in that case and for the first time, the German government, one of Washington’s most loyal partner in the past, voiced its opposition to the U.S. resolution to wage war, protesting the incoherence of “preemptive” and “total” war

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with Western values.4 Even more striking, this opposition paid electoral dividends to the German government, thus proving that a vast majority of German voters shared the opinion of their government against the Bush Administration: an attitude which some worried observers hastened to label as rampant “Anti-American”.5

The interpretative paradigm of “Westernization” At the academic level, the debate was reignited by a new theoretical approach, proposed by a group of historians gravitating around Anselm Doering-Manteuffel at the Tübingen University. Explicitly adopting the research track of “intercultural transfer” from the 1990s cultural debate on globalization, Doering-Manteuffel proposed “Westernization” as a broader, more encompassing paradigm than the mere “Americanization” for interpreting the pattern of German-American cultural relations after World War II.6 Such analysis considered this particular phase against the background of U.S.-European relations in the longer term. Focusing on the role of ideology and on the agencies responsible for its transmission, these authors emphasized the long-term emergence of a Transatlantic community of values bounding Western Europe and the United States at a deeper level than the occasional transfer/adoption of specific lifestyles or production techniques.7 Thus, the interpretative paradigm of Westernization accords an overriding importance to the Cold War of ideologies, which is interpreted suggestively as the last battle for the heritage of Enlightenment, opposing liberal democracy and communism. In his seminal work, Doering-Manteuffel does not underplay the meaning of U.S. military intervention and continued presence in Europe after 1945 as a starting point for a reprise of this process: without Nazi unconditional surrender, the looming Cold War, the division of Europe, and the impact of the Marshall Plan, German historians simply would not have the opportunity to debate freely about the forms Transatlantic exchange and interaction. Furthermore, both the government and nongovernmental agencies of the United States actively sought to foster such community of values since the late 1940s, in order to supply an ideological foundation to the emerging Western security and economic community.8 However, those values were never transferred to Europe in a pure form, but rather merged with European ideas and traditions. While “Americanization” would imply a U.S. hegemonic imposition of values and practices, “Westernization” takes into consideration the interplay of American and non-American heritages in shaping this Transatlantic community of values by means of cultural transfer. The acculturation of

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“consensus liberalism”, as the ideological base of this community, took different forms in different national settings; nevertheless it was adopted in principle almost everywhere in Western Europe. Democracy was not confined to the political practices, but became a social principle, as society increasingly perceived itself as the element influencing and altering the state and its institutions, instead of the opposite.9 Furthermore, the principled affirmation of pluralism in every field of personal and social life was aimed at undermining gradually the harsh polarizations and the traditional class allegiances which had conditioned so dramatically the political life of the interwar era. Other features of this Transatlantic community of values were a representative system of government and social pluralism; in the economic sphere, equal opportunities for individuals and free market tempered by a variable degree of state intervention; in the cultural sphere, individualism and the postulate of freedom in art and research. Also religion and science progressively found their place into this societal self-depiction, thereby creating a nexus from which traditions and a sense of intellectual-epistemic community were able to develop across national borders. Thus, the post-1945 evolution was the last step of a process of reciprocal acculturation which had been bringing ideas and practices back and forth across the Atlantic during two centuries.10 Germany plays a relevant part in this context in a twofold sense: first, many of its elites in exile influenced the cultural and political debate developing in the U.S. about the postwar order and democratization, carrying with them their experience of German authoritarianism and Nazi brutality.11 Even more important, Westernization carries considerable explanatory power in terms of “the German divergence from the West”: according to Doering-Manteuffel, this Transatlantic community of values was shaped at least partially against the negative example of the long tradition of German authoritarianism and warmongerism, which reached its peak during the Nazi era.12 Only after the end of World War II and the collapse of Hitler’s regime, German pretenses of exceptionalism came to an end, and the new national leadership fully acknowledged its active participation in the Transatlantic community. The authors of the Westernization paradigm concede that the process occurred between 1945 and 1960 could be called Americanization, meaning a phase of massive, indeed overwhelming transmission of American intellectual impulses to Europe. Although the two levels overlapped partially in that period, historians should not underestimate the active role played by local leaderships, which shared with the Americans a common interest in

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shoring up the West against the twin threats of Soviet influence and communist insurgence. Specifically, the research project on Westernization has focused on the protagonists of the process of “Transatlantic-community-making”: this was the case of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an informal organization based in Berlin and grouping the elites of political parties, trade unions and intellectuals from the United States and Western Europe.13 This forum was an excellent Transatlantic laboratory, and a legitimizing forum for politicians with “Western” credentials: leaders such as Willy Brandt were allowed to participate even if they opposed the politics of the Adenauer government, but accepted the values of liberal democracy. Although it is difficult to gauge the influence that the forum exerted on actual policy, it certainly set the stage for the debate on the socalled “End of Ideologies” theory, elaborated by U.S. and European sociologists.14 The theory had a strong influence on the SPD Bad Godesberg program and on the reform movement inside the German trade unions. On this latter subject, other researchers have focused on the Westernization of the German labor movement.15 They concluded that the influence of intercultural transfer was especially long-lasting in this case, since the “acculturation” of the labor movement in exile had a crucial impact on the programmatic reforms of the West German Trade Unions. Other authors have rather approached those social contexts where German national traditions were strongly articulated – for example in the Protestant milieus, in the conservative press, and among constitutional jurists. Here the process of Westernization seems to have been much slower and mediated than the mere support for the short-term program of adherence to the Western defensive and economic institutions carried by the moderate German governments.16 The Westernization approach has raised some enthusiastic reactions due to its focus on cultural and ideological aspects, in a field of research were economic and diplomatic paradigms have been dominant so far.17 Some authors have seized this opportunity to raise the case against the Americanization approach which, they stated, hide the implicit assumption of an aggressively acting American imperial power. The same authors blame the Gramscian interpretation of American hegemony in postwar Transatlantic relations for reducing culture to a mere instrument of power, without acknowledging its independent status as a foundation stone of the Atlantic community.18 Furthermore, the Westernization model casts a new light on aspects underestimated by previous historiography, such as the democratization process and the cross-pollination of political cultures.

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The reassessment of “Americanization” as a comparative opportunity This new pattern of analysis has exerted a positive influence even on historians who have spent their time and energy in fine-tuning the paradigm of Americanization through analyzing particular aspects of postwar Transatlantic relations. Most of them admitted that Americanization still needed to be specified beyond its heuristic value: the very concept has been used too frequently and unproblematically to debate too many different subjects such as culture, mass consumption, lifestyle transformations, economic and political influence.19 However, they did not refrain from criticisms. First, the Westernization paradigm seemed to be shaped around the traditional historiographical problem of “German divergence from the West”, but cannot be applied successfully in a comparative perspective with other geopolitical areas, where the U.S. became even more deeply and directly involved in the reshaping the political culture of the post-war.20 Japan is the most typical case in point in this respect. Besides, by overemphasizing the role played by German exiled and local elites in planning the post-war order with the victorious power, the authors of the Westernization paradigm seem to fall again in the traditional search for a “usable past” which has characterized the German social sciences after the Second World War. On the other hand, empirical research often seems to disprove the theoretical model: rather than showing the merging of national traditions in a community of values, empirical analysis highlights a massive process of removal of cultural elements stemming from the German heritage, which are substituted with new and more “America-oriented” tendencies, ranging from the employees’ role in labor relations to the relevance of non-state actors in culture and science, from the informalization of the relations between genders and among generations to the competition between private and public in media broadcasting. Thus, the overwhelming preponderance of U.S. influences after the war seems to follow a trend common to all the West European countries with varying degrees of pervasiveness, independently from their status of winners or losers, and from their previous adherence to the Western community of values.21 Finally, the Westernization authors seem to pay scant attention to the normative use of the concept of “West” made by the cultural and political protagonists of the postwar season in order to foster a widespread sense of community, which in fact was far from being reality.22

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Some historians have protested the assimilation of the Americanization paradigm, as operated by the Westernization authors, to a strawman: on the contrary, the scientific conceptualization of Americanization has never reduced the term to the forced imposition of values and practices from the United States, or the slavish emulation of its institutions. In all its historical declinations in Europe and abroad, Americanization entailed a process of interaction with some local cultural and political elites, and not the mere acceptance of a foreign heritage.23 A high degree of negotiation was needed in every moment, in order to blend with local traditions and to seek the voluntary acceptance by most of the population. These blendings, or “creolizations”, rarely achieved a perfect equilibrium between its foreign and indigenous elements, but came out with either a stronger or weaker American “coloration”.24 Needless to say, this pattern of research in Germany owes considerably, although seldom explicitly, to some seminal studies on the Pacific area and on the Americas.25 Furthermore, the proponents of the Westernization paradigm seem to underestimate the structure of the global economic and political post-war order. Power relations are necessary to understand the comprehensive pressure and determination that emanated from America after 1945: at that time, unlike after WWI, the United States became the major player within the international system, a leading power in a new geopolitical and ideological conflict.26 The progression of Americanization was strictly related to the (not always explicit) hegemonic pressure emanating from the collective determination of the U.S. authorities to make use of their power within the international system. This pressure could, and did, take a variety of forms: political, economic, cultural. It was often direct, though it was rarely physical; or it could be indirect, subtle, and covert. But, as the German case illustrates, the goal of U.S. governmental and private agencies was not to “replicate” their country abroad; rather they aimed at making a new Germany structurally, institutionally and ideologically compatible with the “Pax Americana” they sought to establish.27 Their final aim was the integration of the “German economic dynamism” into a homogeneous international economic system for the prosperity and stability of the Atlantic region, especially in the framework of the new East-West confrontation.28 The peculiar reason for the success of American influence in Germany after 1945 was both such collective determination by the U.S., and the little resistance that the recipient country offered, in contrast with the more checkered history of the same process during the first half of the century.29 Therefore, the model of Westernization seems to lack concreteness. Individuals, institutions and nations became westernized through negotiation and interaction with

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country specific models, institutions and governments, not with a fictive and prescriptive idea of “the West”.30 The ruling classes, as well as economic and cultural actors, were deliberately interventionist and consciously manipulative. They reflected power relations that were clear at the end of the conflict. Therefore it would be a nonsense to affirm that the German intellectual leadership made the “free choice” for self Westernization while dealing with the material and moral annihilation of their country, the continued military occupation, the prospect of Soviet hegemony. A revealing analysis comes from the relatively new research field of economic culture. Here Americanization was conceptualized as the process by which ideas, practices, and patterns of behavior were first developed in the U.S. and then widely spread on the other side of the Atlantic.31 In fact, U.S. novelties in the fields of production and marketing have aroused the interest of several Europeans since early XX century. However, the model they sought to emulate was not necessarily “America as a whole”. German manufacturers had started experimenting with American-inspired rationalized production since the 1920s, but with reservations. In fact, they tried to gain the economic benefits of modern technology without any of the leveling effects experienced in America, such as mass consumption and higher wages. In short, the authoritarian German capitalism never accepted the Fordist assumption that the masses would only tolerate the accumulation of great wealth in the hands of a few, if they could derive a corresponding advantage from it. Only after World War II, confronted with the need to adapt to an American-dominated, competitively organized, multilateral world economy, German industry completed the transition to mass production and embraced the idea of mass consumption.32 Finally, this process arouse consumerist desires and dreams of a ‘better life’ among the population, thus pushing towards an “America-oriented” model of mass consumption: every resistance or attempt by the economic and political elites to mediate this social side effect resulted in vain. Turning to another common criticism of Westernization, some scholars have questioned the usefulness of this paradigm for understanding the American impact on German high and popular culture, which seemed to follow rather different patterns. In fact, the recent proliferation of researches on Cold War popular culture have entailed the abandonment of older analytic definitions: today culture is being defined comprehensively to include sciences, religious practices, and education of all levels, in addition to ‘high’ and ‘popular’ as traditionally defined. This reassessment is a preliminary indicator of how far more democratic American notions of

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culture have replaced elitist conceptions prevalent in Europe.33 However, the emphasis on a Transatlantic community of political values overshadows the fact that American “high” culture, such as avant-garde art, music or literature, encountered considerable resistance in Germany. As has been brilliantly documented by Hiroko Ikegami, in this respect the German case seems to share several similarities with Japan.34 Among the dissenting voices, it is not hard to find part of those elites who operated in favor of the inclusion of the Federal Republic within the Transatlantic economic and security institutions, but which did not see as a contradiction the preservation of an autonomous cultural identity from American influence.35 In order to overcome such resistance, U.S. authorities and big philanthropic foundation embarked on recurrent, organized efforts of promotion and persuasion, which amounted to a coolly calculated Cold War strategy and value investment.36 On the other hand, this strategy did not need to include American popular culture, and especially popular films and music which were flowing from the U.S. to Germany soon after 1945, satisfying an evergrowing demand especially among the younger generation.37 Hollywood and the American music industry did not need to push their products particularly hard, despite a varying degree of apprehension and hostility by the local elites, even the most involved in binding transatlantic ties.38 However, in a society proclaiming the principle of free choice in both the political and the economic marketplace as its distinguishing character from past and present authoritarian experiences, the inflow of such cultural artifacts could be hardly hindered.39 Furthermore, they were comparatively inexpensive and within the budget range of German working and lower middle class. In this case at least, neither mediation nor bargain was required.40 Thus researchers in this field, especially those adopting the perspective of cultural anthropology, simply take for granted “Americanization” (and sometimes “self-Americanization”) as describing the transfer of goods and symbols from the U.S. to other countries, and to focus on how societies abroad have taken up and, in the process, transformed these influences.41 The emphasis is more on the process of appropriation and transformation by ordinary historical actors such as the citizens of Europe after World War II. The abused notions of “cultural imperialism” and “colonization of the imaginary” have left room to the metaphor of American cultural artifacts as “black boxes”, empty semiotic spaces, subtracted from their original context and then filled with new social meanings by the recipient populations.42 Therefore, for this field of research Americanization does not represent a grand explanatory theory or the postwar era, but a useful aid to indicate promising areas of inquiry and

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to suggest provisional understandings among social and geopolitical processes which are remote in time and space. Some successful experiments of comparisons between Germany and Western Europe in general, and Japan have been published during the recent years, giving a new significance to a wide range of interdisciplinary topics such as cinema, popular music, youth behaviors and fashions, urban recovery and space appropriation, and more.43

Conclusion It would be unfair to draw a clear-cut conclusion from the rich and stimulating debate on Americanization and Westernization. However, even this tentative examination suggests that the real meaning of such virtual forum of discussion is not the endless Sisyphean research of an all encompassing analytical paradigm for the American influence on postwar German culture. On the contrary, the debate among scholars from different methodological approaches offers, first of all to its very protagonists, precious and unlimited opportunities to fine-tune their research tools, and to open new stimulating fields of scientific investigation. Thus, increasing opportunities for comparative studies with other national cases could only be welcome, since they will advance the general knowledge of the dynamics of cultural transfer in the second part of XX century; in this sense, the unresolved tension among local specificities, transnational correspondences and broad conceptualizations will be a stimulus for improvement rather than a reason for disciplinary retrenchment. Even a superficial look at the German debate indicates that Japan is among main candidates for such an endeavor.

Notes 1

Jost Dülffer, “Cold War History in Germany”, Cold War History 8, no. 2 (2008), pp. 135–56. 2 For an illuminating example of German love/hate attitude towards the United States during the first half of the XX century, see: Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 3 Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, “Wie westlich sind die Deutschen? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Amerikanisierung und Westernisierung in der westdeutschen Gesellschaft”, Potsdamer Bulletin für Zeithistorische Studien, no. 17 (1999), pp. 7–19.

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Alexander Stephan, “Introduction”, in Americanization and Anti-Americanism. The German Encounter with American Culture after 1945, ed. Alexander Stephan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), pp. 1–10. 5 For an authoritative dissenting opinion on this latter point, see: Mary Nolan, “Anti-Americanism and Americanization of Germany”, Politics & Society 33, no. 1 (2005), pp. 88–122. 6 Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Wie westlich sind die Deutschen? Amerikanisierung und Westernisierung im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999). 7 Holger Nehring, “'Westernization': A New Paradigm for Interpreting West European History in a Cold War Context”, Cold War History 4, no. 2 (2004), pp. 175–91; Michael Hochgeschwen1der, “Il Fronte Culturale della Guerra Fredda. Il Congresso per la Libertà della Cultura come esperimento di forma di lotta transnazionale”, Ricerche di Storia Politica 6, no. 1 (2003), pp. 35–60. 8 Julia S. Angster, “The Westernization of the Political Thought of the West German Labor Movement”, in German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic, ed. Jan-Werner Müller (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 76–98. 9 Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, “Transatlantic Exchange and Interaction – The Concept of Westernization”, paper presented at the conference The American Impact on Western Europe: Americanization and Westernization in Transatlantic Perspective, Washington D.C.: German Historical Institute, 1999. All the papers quoted here are freely available at the GHI-Washington website. 10 David E. Barclay and Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt, eds., Transatlantic Images and Perceptions. Germany and America since 1776 (Washington D.C.: German Historical Institute, 1997). 11 Alfons Söllner, “Normative Westernization? The Impact of Remigres on the Foundation of Political Thought in Post-War Germany”, in German Ideologies since 1945, ed. Müller, pp. 40–60. 12 Axel Schildt, “Ein konservativer Prophet moderner nationaler Integration. Biographische Skizze des streitbaren Soziologen Johann Plenge (1874-1963)”, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 35, no. 4 (1987), pp. 523–70. 13 Michael Hochgeschwender, Freiheit in der Offensive? Der Kongress für kulturelle Freiheit und die Deutschen (München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1998). 14 Gilles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Cia, and Post-War American Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002). 15 Julia S. Angster, Konsenskapitalismus und Sozialdemokratie. Die Westernisierung von SPD und DGB (München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2003). 16 Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Wie westlich sind die D1eutschen?; Thomas Sauer, Westorientierung im deutschen Protestantismus? Vorstellungen und Tätigkeit des Kronberger Kreises (München: Oldenbourg, 1999); Gudrun Kruip, Das ‘Welt’‘Bild’ des Axel Springer Verlags. Journalismus zwischen westlichen Werten und deutschen Denktraditionen (München: Oldenbourg, 1999); Frieder Günther, Denken vom Staat her: Die bundesdeutsche Staatsrechtslehre zwischen Dezision und Integration 1949-1970 (München: Oldenbourg, 2004).

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Some examples of the influence of the Westernization paradigm: Katja Kanzler and Heike Paul, eds., Amerikanische Populärkultur in Deutschland: Case Studies in Cultural Transfer Past and Present (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2002); Patrick T. Jackson, Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006); Brian M. Puaca, Learning Democracy. Education Reform in West Germany, 1945-1965 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009). 18 Nehring, “'Westernization'”. 19 Mary Nolan, “Americanization or Westernization?”, paper presented at the conference The American Impact on Western Europe. 20 Volker R. Berghahn, “The Debate on 'Americanization' among Economic and Cultural Historians”, Cold War History 10, no. 1 (2010), pp. 107–30. 21 Daniela Münkel, “Julia Angster: Konsenskapitalismus und Sozialdemokratie'”, Sehepunkte 4, no. 11 (2004); Volker R. Berghahn, Industriegesellschaft und Kulturtransfer. Die deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), p. 134. 22 Markus J. Prutsch, “Frieder Günther: Denken vom Staat her”, H-Net Book Review, no. 1 (2008). 23 Berghahn, “The Debate on 'Americanization'”. 24 Charles Stewart, ed., Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory (Walnut Creed: Left Coast Press, 2007). 25 Takeshi Matsuda, ed., The Age of Creolization in the Pacific: In Search for Emerging Cultures and Shared Values in the Japan-America Borderlands (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2001); David Buisseret and Steven G. Reinhardt, eds., Creolization in the Americas (College Stations: Texas A&M Press, 2010). 26 For a wide-ranging analysis of the U.S. project for the postwar era at the global scale, see: Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 27 Volker R. Berghahn, “Conceptualizing the American Impact on Germany: West German Society and the Problem of Americanization”, paper presented at the conference The American Impact on Western Europe. 28 Charles S. Maier, In Search of Stability. Explorations in Historical Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 183. 29 Reinhard Neebe, Weichenstellung für die Globalisierung: Deutsche Weltmarktpolitik, Europa und Amerika in der Ära Ludwig Erhard (Köln: Böhlau, 2004). 30 Nolan, “Americanization or Westernization?”. 31 Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp, eds., Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). 32 S. Jonathan Wiesen, “Coming to Terms with the Worker: West German Industry, Labour Relations and the Idea of America, 1949-1960”, Journal of Contemporary History 36, no. 4 (2001), pp. 561–79. 33 Berghahn, “Conceptualizing the American Impact on Germany”. 34 As an example, see the history of transnational resistance to the worldwide spread of American Pop Art: Hiroko Ikegami, The Great Migrator. Robert

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Rauschenberg and the Global Rise of American Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010). 35 Jost Hermand, “Resisting Boogie-Woogie Culture, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art”, in Americanization and Anti-Americanism, ed. Stephan, pp. 67–75. 36 Axel Schildt, “Die USA als 'Kulturnation': Zur Bedeutung der Amerikahäuser in den 1950er”, in Amerikanisierung: Traum und Alptraum in Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts, eds. Alf Lüdtke, Inge Marssolek and Adelheid von Saldern (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996), pp. 257–69. 37 Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried, eds., Between Marx and Coca-Cola: Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006). 38 Michael Ermarth, “Counter-Americanism and Critical Currents in West German Reconstruction 1945-1960: the German Lesson Confronts the American Way of Life”, in Americanization and Anti-Americanism, ed. Stephan, pp. 25–50. 39 Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 40 Kaspar Maase, “'Americanization', 'Americanness' and 'Americanisms': Time for a Change in Perspective?”, paper presented at the conference The American Impact on Western Europe. 41 For an illuminating example of this new research field, see: Kaspar Maase, “From Nightmare to Model? Why German Broadcasting Became Americanized”, in Americanization and Anti-Americanism, ed. Stephan, pp. 78–106. 42 Philipp Gassert, “Amerikanismus, Antiamerikanismus, Amerikanisierung. Neue Literatur zur Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des amerikanischen Einflusses in Deutschland und Europa”, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, no. 39 (1999): 531–61. 43 Heide Fehrenbach and Uta G. Poiger, eds., Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000).

CONTRIBUTORS

Duccio Basosi is Assistant Professor of History of International Relations at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His publications include Il governo del dollaro (2006) and Finanza e petrolio (2012). Giovanni Bernardini is a researcher at the Italian-German Historical Institute - FBK, Trento (Italy) and lecturer of International History at the University of Bologna. He specializes on US-European political and cultural relations during the Cold War, and has recently published Nuova Germania, antichi timori. Stati Uniti, Ostpolitik e sicurezza Europea (2013). George Blaustein is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He received his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University. Alide Cagidemetrio holds a Chair in American Studies at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She is the editor of an extensive series of American classics for Marsilio, has published monographs on Djuna Barnes, Western pioneers, Meliville and Hawthorne and numerous essays on British and American literature and culture. She is currently working on a volume on Henry James’ fictions. Federica Carlotto received her Ph.D. in Clothing Environmental Studies (Fashion Sociology). Her research focuses on cross-cultural issues and clothing practises, with specific reference to the Japanese adoption of Western clothing. Rosa Caroli is Associate Professor of Japanese History in the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her main field of research is the evolution of Japan’s modern state with particular regard to identitarian discourses on both the nation and its peripheries. Caroli has also written extensively about Okinawan history (she received the Higa Shunchǀ Prize of the Society for the Research on Okinawa Culture in 2009) and, more recently, about Edo-Tokyo history. An author of various books and articles, she is a visiting researcher at

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Waseda University and Hǀsei University. Eugenio De Angelis is Ph.D Student in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’Foscari University of Venice. His main fields of research are Japanese Cinema and Contemporary Japanese Theatre. In particular his project focuses on the interactions among different media in the cultural milieu of the late sixties and the early seventies in Japan. Ronald Dore is an Honorary Fellow of the LSE, Fellow of the British Academy, the Japan Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Science. A leading authority on contemporary Japan, he is the author of many books, among them Land Reform in Japan (1959), Education in Tokugawa Japan (1965), Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan (1967), City Life in Japan (1971), British Factory/Japanese Factory (1973), The Diploma Disease (1976) and the forthcoming Cantankerous Essays. Marcello Flores teaches Comparative History at the University of Siena, where he directs the European Master in Human Rights and Genocide Studies. His areas of research include totalitarianism, genocide, and human rights. Is is the scientific director of the Institute for the History of the Liberation Movement in Italy. Kyoko Hirano is an independent scholar. She received her Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University on a Fulbright Fellowship, after graduate studies at the University of Tokyo and the University of Belgrade. She was film curator at the Japan Society of New York, and has taught at New York University, New School University, William Paterson University, Keio University, the University of Tokyo, Temple University Japan Campus, Graduate School of Film Producing and Meiji Gakuin University. She has widely published both in English and Japanese. Akira Iriye is Charles Warren Professor of American History, Emeritus, Harvard University. His most recent publications include Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (2012) and (coeditor with Pierre Yves Saunier) The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (2009). Noemi Lanna is Associate Professor of Modern and contemporary history of Japan and History of East Asia in the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. She received her MA from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo)

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Contributors

and her PhD from University of Naples “L’Orientale”. Professor Lanna has published numerous articles and book chapters on historical memory in North-east Asia, Asia Pacific regionalism, and the international relations of Japan. Michael Molasky is a Professor in the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University (Tokyo). His research on modern Japanese culture includes studies of literature, history, music, and urban space. In addition to his book, The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory (1999), he has written six books in Japanese, including Sengo Nihon no jazu bunka (2005) [The Jazz Culture of Postwar Japan], which was awarded the Suntory Prize for Arts and Letters in 2006. His most recent book, Nihon no izakaya bunka [Japan’s Pub Culture], was published in 2014. Maria Roberta Novielli specialised in Japanese cinema at the Nihon University (Tokyo) and now teaches Japanese Cinema and Literature at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She is a contributor to numerous Italian magazines and the author, among other books, of Storia del cinema giapponese (2001), and Metamorfosi - Schegge di violenza nel nuovo cinema giapponese (2010). She is also the chief editor of the web site AsiaMedia, the editor of the book series “Schemi Orientali”, and the Artistic Director of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival. Alan Nadel holds the William T. Bryan Chair in American Literature and Culture at the University of Kentucky, is the author of several books relating to post-World War II American literature, film, television, and drama, including Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age (1995), Flatlining on the Field of Dreams: Cultural Narratives in the Films of President Reagan’s America (1997), and Television in Black-and-White America: Race and National Identity (2005). He is completing Demographic Angst: American Films of the 1950s, under contract to Rutgers University Press, from which this essay is excerpted. Federico Romero is Professor of History of Post-War European Cooperation and Integration at the European University Institute. A specialist on 20th Century international and transnational history, he has recently published Storia della guerra fredda (2009) and “Cold War Historiography at the Crossroads”, in Cold War History 14, no. 4 (2014), pp. 685-703.

INDEX OF NAMES

Abe, Shinzǀ, vii, ix, xxi, 10, 13 Aku, Ynj, 99 Allen, Woody, 60 Armitage, Richard, 12 Asǀ, Tarǀ, 21, 22, 27 Baudrillard, Jean, 61 Belloc, Hilaire, 14 Beloff, Max, 181 Bergen, Candice, 149 Bergmann, Peter, 181 Blackburn, Thomas, 58 Brando, Marlon, 133, 144-5, 149, 150, 151 Brandt, Willy, 193 Bronson, Charles, 59, 63 Browning, Robert, 130 Bukh, Alexander, xvii, 84 Buruma, Ian, 147 Bush, George W., 160 Buss, Claude, 180 Buttons, Red, 150 Carter, Jimmy, 11 Cestre, Charles, 182 Chaze, Elliott, 131 Cheney, Dick, 161 Chiang, Kai-shek, 8, 114 Chiba, Yasuki, 39 Chimura, Michio, 49 Churchill, Winston, 160 Collins, Lawton, 118 Conde, David, 36, 37 Coppola, Sofia, 60, 65 Coppola, Francis Ford, 60 Cortazzi, Hugh, 4 Cumings, Bruce, xix Davis Jr., Sammy, 60, 64 de Matos, Christine, 83 Dean, James, 49 Delon, Alain, 59

Dissanayake, Wimal, 98-9, 100 Doak, Kevin, xvii, 86, 87 Doering-Manteuffel, Anselm, 191, 192 Dower, John, xi, xiv, xvi, 2, 160, 162 Dulles, John Foster, 8, 118-20 Eckersall, Peter, 105 Ehrlich, Linda, 97, 100, 103, 104 Eisenhower, Dwight, 90, 120 Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 136 Endǀ, Shnjsaku, 98 Evans, Richard, 169 Fairbank, John, 19 Fisch, Arnold, 113 Fonda, Peter, 59 Ford, Glenn, 145 Fukuda, Takeo, xiv, 10, 19 Galinsky, Hans, 185 Garson, Greer, 137 Gassert, Philipp, 182 Genba, Kǀichirǀ, 8, 12 Gluck, Carol, xvi Gorbachev, Mikhail, 160 Gordon, Bernard, 28 Grant, Cary, 131 Grew, Joseph, 174 Hagel, Chuck, 162 Hamamura, Michiko, 48 Hatoyama, Ichirǀ, 7, 8 Hatoyama, Yukio, 2, 10, 13, 23, 256 Hayashi, Fusao, 57 Hein, Laura, x, 158 Hepburn, Audrey, 47, 48, 49 Hirohito, ix, 35, 36, 90, 171 Hiroike, Akiko, 68 Hoberecht, Earnest, 130, 136 Huggan, Graham, 131

206

Index of Names

Ikeda, Hayato, 7, 11 Ikegami, Hiroko, 197 Ikuno, Michiko, 39 Imamura, Shǀhei, 96, 97 Inoue, Masahito, 50 Itami, Jnjzǀ, 102 Itǀ, Kinuko, 47 Iwabuchi, Kǀichi, 62 Iwasaki, Akira, 38 Kamei, Fumio, xiv, 35, 36, 37, 38 Kamei, Katsuichirǀ, 57 Kano, Hisaakira, 147 Kawai, Kazuo, 58-9 Kawakami, Tetsutarǀ 57 Keenan, Joseph, 90 Kennan, George, 117 King, Ernest, 116 Kishi, Nobusuke, 90-1 Kitamura, Hiroshi, 168 Kitano, Takeshi, 105 Kobayashi, Hideo, 57 Koikari, Mire, xvi Koizumi, Jun’ichirǀ, 21 Konno, Genpachirǀ, 180 Koshiro, Yukiko, 176 Kurosawa, Akira, 35, 60 LaGuardia, Fiorello, 51, 52 Leser, Tina, 52 Lim, Jie-Hyun, 83 Lipovetsky, Gilles, 50, 51 Lippmann, Walter, xxi Logan, Joshua, 133 Loren, Sofia, 59 Lucas, George, 60 Lynd, Helen, 135 Lynd, Robert, 135 MacArthur, Douglas, ix, x, xi, xii, xix, xx, 3, 5, 6, 38, 89, 99, 100, 116, 117, 137, 156, 157, 171, 186 Magosaki, Ukeru, 11, 12 Mahathir, Mohamad, 25 Marchetti, Gina, 133 Marshall, George, 116 McDonald, Keiko, 102 McGray, Douglas, 63

McIlroy, Brian, 151 Michener, James, 131, 132, 133 Miller, Daniel, 62 Miller, Perry, 184-6 Minobe, Tatsukichi, 5 Miyazawa, Kiichi, 7 Monroe, Marilyn, 150 Montalbán, Ricardo, 150 Mori, ƿgai, 98 Moroi, Saburǀ, 58 Münsterberg, Hugo, 182 Murakami, Haruki, 105-6 Murakami, Takashi, 62 Muravchik, Joshua, 155-6, 157, 158, 160 Murray, Bill, 60, 65 Nakano, Seiichi, 87 Nakajima, Noboru, 74 Nakamoto, Takako, 68 Nakasone, Yasuhiro, 11 Nakayama, Chiyo, 49-50 Nanbara, Shigeru, 5 Natsume, Sǀseki, 11 Newman, Paul, 59 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 186 Nimitz, Chester, 111 Niven, David, 59 Noda, Yoshihiko, 12, 27, 110 Noguchi, Isamu, 62 ƿe, Kenzaburǀ, 85, 97 Ogawa, Tadashi, 122 Oguma, Eiji, 86-7, 88-9 ƿhira, Masayoshi, 10 Okada, Kenzǀ, 62 ƿshima, Nagisa, 96, 97, 98 ƿta, Masahide, 115-6 Owens, Patricia, 150 Ozawa, Ichirǀ, 12 Palumbo-Liu, David, 131 Perry, Matthew, 122, 147 Podhoretz, Norman, 178 Presley, Elvis, 49 Puccini, Giacomo, 134 Pyle, Kenneth, 29 Raz, Aviad, 61 Reagan, Ronald, 160

Legacies of the U.S. Occupation of Japan: Appraisals after Sixty Years 207 Rice, Condoleezza, 160 Richie, Donald, xix, 134, 135, 136, 137 Robertson, Walter, 7 Roosevelt, Franklin, 114 Rothbaum, Fred, 58 Rumsfeld, Donald, 161 Sakaguchi, Ango, 98 Sakai, Naoki, 82 Sano, Zensaku, 74 Sasaki, Yasushi, 39, 102 Sata, Ineko, 68 Schönemann, Friedrich, 182 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 60 Sharp, Jasper, 96 Shibusawa, Naoko, xviii, xix, 130 Shiga, Masaru, 183 Shigemitsu, Mamoru, 2, 3, 7 Shinoda, Masahiro, xvii, 95-105 Simpson, Caroline Chung, 131 Skard, Sigmund, 181-2 Slater, Leon, 145 Snyder, Vernon, 131 Sodei, Rinjirǀ, xx Spigel, Lynn, 148 Suzuki, Jirǀ, 70, 72 Suzuki, Seijun, 97 Suzuki, Zenkǀ, 10, 11 Swann, Sebastian, 89

Takagi, Yasaka, 179, 180, 182-4, 185 Takechi, Tetsuji, 103 Tamura, Tsutomu, 99, 105 Tanaka, Kakuei, 12 Tarde, Jean-Gabriel, 51 Terashima, Jitsurǀ, 13 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 11 Truman, Harry, 6, 116, 117 Tsukamoto, Shin’ya, 105 Tsumura, Hideo, 58 Tsutsumi, Yasujirǀ, 74, 77 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 182 Umeki, Miyoshi, 150 Wakamatsu, Kǀji, 97 Wakamori, Tarǀ, 87 Wang, Hui, 122-3 Weisz, John, 58 Whiting, Robert, 104 Wilhelm II, 182 Wolfowitz, Paul, 158-9, 160, 161 Wolh, Victoria, 130 Yamamoto, Traise, 144, 148-9 Yamaoka, Ken’ichi, 46 Yoneyama, Lisa, 92 Yoshida, Kijnj, 98 Yoshida, Shigeru, 5, 7, 18, 118, 119 Zhou, Enlai, 12, 13