The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory (Asia's Transformations)

275 Pages·1999·4.77 MB·English

by  M. Molasky

The American Occupation of Japan and
Okinawa
This book is an exploration of Japan’s experience of American military
occupation. It provides textual analysis and discussions of postwar history, and
juxtaposes literature by well-known and obscure writers from mainland Japan
and Okinawa.
The author examines whether Japanese women’s writing provides a “counter-
history” to predominantly male narratives of the occupation. He also explores
how Okinawan writers represented their region’s distinct experience of American
military occupation and what Okinawan literature teaches us about historical
memory in Japan today. This helps to shed light on the difficult issues of war,
violence, prostitution, race and colonialism in occupied Japan and Okinawa.
American forces still remain in Okinawa and are a source of political
controversy. Through careful analysis of acclaimed literary works coupled with
attention to texts long excluded from Japan’s postwar literary canon, this book
introduces fresh perspectives on the occupation era.
Michael S.Molasky is Associate Professor of Japanese at Connecticut College
and co-editor of Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from
Okinawa. He has spent over a dozen years in Japan, where he worked as a
freelance translator and jazz musician before pursuing an academic career.
ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN ASIA’S
TRANSFORMATIONS
Edited by Mark Selden, Binghamton and Cornell
Universities
The books in this series explore the political, social, economic and cultural
consequences of Asia’s twentieth century transformations and look toward their
impact on the twenty first century. The series emphasizes the tumultuous
interplay of local, national, regional and global forces as Asia bids to become the
hub of the world economy. While focusing on the contemporary, it also looks
back to analyse the antecedents of Asia’s contested rise.
This series comprises two strands:
Routledge Studies in Asia’s Transformations is a forum for innovative new
research intended for a high-level specialist readership, and the titles will be
available in hardback only. Titles include:
1. The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa
Literature and Memory
Michael Molasky
Asia’s Transformations aims to address the needs of students and teachers as
well as scholars, and the titles will be published in hardback and paperback.
Titles include:
1. Debating Human Rights
Critical Essays from the United States and Asia
Edited by Peter Van Ness
2. Hong Kong’s History
State and Society under Colonial Rule
Edited by Tak-Wing Ngo
The American Occupation of
Japan and Okinawa
Literature and Memory
Michael S.Molasky
London and New York
First published 1999 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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© 1999 Michael S.Molasky
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-98168-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-19194-7 (Print Edition)
For Sarah and Jack
I mean this in only the most abstract sense, but when we lost the war it might
have been best had the victors raped every woman in Japan.
(Kōno Taeko, “Jikai”)
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Burned-out ruins and barbed-wire fences 1
The occupation of Japan as history 5
The occupation in mainland Japanese literature and criticism 9
Okinawa: From premodern kingdom to Japanese prefecture 12
The Battle of Okinawa and the American occupation (1945–72) 15
Chapter summaries 23
1 Roads to no-man’s land 26
Language, landscape, and gender in “The American School” 31
Gender, history, and the construction of victimhood in The Cocktail 40
Party
Fact and fiction 50
2 A base town in the literary imagination 55
An Okinawan Boy 58
“The Town That Went Pale” 65
“Children of Mixed Blood” and the remaking of Koza 67
3 A darker shade of difference 73
Representing blacks in postwar Japan 75
Race and narrative ambivalence in “Prize Stock” 78
Reporting truth, imagining motives: “Painting on Black Canvas” 86
Poetry of protest: Arakawa Akira’s “The Colored Race” 97
4 Female floodwalls 107
The Recreation and Amusement Association 109
viii
Prostitution after the RAA 112
Prostitution and the Japanese publishing industry 114
The Chastity of Japan 120
Female Floodwall 129
5 Ambivalent allegories 136
The generational logic of “Guests From Afar” 139
Prostitution and other honest jobs: “The Only Ones” 149
Caste and outcasts: “Women of a Base Town” 152
Marriage, money, and desire in “The Women of Chitose, Hokkaido” 156
6 The occupier within 164
Reproducing the occupation: “Human Sheep” 166
Style as story: Narrative technique and memory in “American Hijiki” 175
Epilogue: Occupation literature in the post-Vietnam era 186
Okinawan literature since the Vietnam War 186
Saegusa Kazuko’s A Winter’s Death 191
Notes 198
English-language works cited 235
Japanese-language works cited 242
Newspaper articles 253
Index 254
Preface
With enthusiasm bordering on bluster, I decided in 1990 to write a doctoral
dissertation exploring how Okinawan as well as mainland Japanese writers have
represented life under American military occupation. Until that time, my reading
in Japanese literature and history had taught me virtually nothing about
Okinawa, so I found myself embarking on a comparative study for which I was
woefully unprepared. Nine years later, and considerably humbled, I have finally
completed a semblance of the book I first envisioned. What I could not envision
when I finished the dissertation in 1994 was that the following year, three
American servicemen would abduct and rape a twelve-year-old Okinawan girl,
sparking massive protests on the islands and catapulting Okinawa into the public
consciousness on both sides of the Pacific. My dissertation examined how male
authors use metaphors of rape and emasculation to represent their own sense of
loss when confronted with the foreign occupiers; now a real act of rape was
drawing widespread attention to Okinawa, where a massive U.S. military
presence remained among the most visible yet overlooked legacies of the
American occupation years. As someone studying the occupation’s mixed
legacies, I was gratified at the public’s newfound interest in Okinawa. Yet I also
shared the disappointment of the prefecture’s citizens at what it took to win
public attention.
Few of us wish to benefit from another person’s suffering, and I must confess
to being ambivalent about this book’s potential “topicality.” At the same time, I
must state for those readers expecting a work solely devoted to Okinawa that this
is a comparative study concerned with writing from Japan’s main islands as well.
In fact, most of this book is devoted to “mainland” Japanese literature—although
it will quickly become apparent that my conception of literature extends well
beyond canonical works, and that my interests spill over into social and cultural
history.
Despite my ambivalence, I do hope that this book will attract a wider range of
readers than is usual for academic studies of Japanese literature, and I have tried
to spare non-specialists the narrow theoretical debates likely to engage only a
handful of literary scholars. I have also attempted to provide sufficient linguistic
and historical information for those unfamiliar with Japan but interested in the
book’s topic. To address the needs of these different readers, I have