Base Cultures: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Occupied Japan

Kovner, Sarah

doi:10.1017/s0021911809990052

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Tanaka's critique of fraternizing Japanese women resonates with critics in the home islands who vilified sex workers partnering with foreign soldiers but also made use of the image of the fraternizing woman as a symbol of defeat (Kovner 2009). Whether in Tokyo or Seoul, fraternization under Occupation held many of the same meanings.…”

Section: American Occupation In Seoul: Performing Defeatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embracing Defeat in Seoul: Rethinking Decolonization in Korea, 1945

Watt¹

2014

J of Asian Stud

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Revisiting the political and social history of Seoul, Korea, in 1945, this article assesses responses to Japanese defeat and the end of empire in the context of American military occupation. The arrival of the Americans forced Japanese and Koreans alike to rethink their positions in the world. Drawing on past colonial practices, Japanese residents used the immediate post-surrender moment to ponder their future prospects, recording those thoughts in a number of public and private sources. They negotiated the passage from a colonial to a post-imperial society, I argue, by embracing a consciousness of a defeated people while disregarding criticisms of colonial rule. This investigation seeks to interpret the immediate post-World War II moment in Seoul less as a founding moment of the Cold War and more as an important transition in the history of decolonization.

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Section: American Occupation In Seoul: Performing Defeatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embracing Defeat in Seoul: Rethinking Decolonization in Korea, 1945

Watt¹

2014

J of Asian Stud

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“…Sex workers played a similar role during the Meiji period, as karayuki-san formed part of a larger transnational market that sold sex(Mihalopulos, 2001a, 8; 2001b, 181; Warren 1993, 164).5There is a large literature on the political economy of base towns. For the Japanese case, see alsoKovner (2009), Morris-Suzuki (2010), andTakeuchi (2010).…”

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The Soundproofed Superpower: American Bases and Japanese Communities, 1945–1972

Kovner¹

2016

J of Asian Stud

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The Soundproofed Superpower: American Bases and Japanese Communities, 1945Communities, -1972 SARAH KOVNER American military bases and the protests they have elicited have had a major impact on Japanese political culture. But after the end of the formal Occupation, and outside the territory immediately affected, the cultural consequences of the U.S. military presence are much less clear. This article offers a synthetic analysis that integrates diplomatic and social history and relates the strategies of U.S. policymakers to those of anti-base activists. It shows how much the base system has changed over time and how protests have long focused on the same issues, especially sex work and sexual violence, territorial disputes, and nuclear weapons. In each case, Washington and Tokyo worked together to insulate Japanese society, which made it easier for Japanese men and women to tolerate the bases and easier for U.S. servicemen to live within them.Sarah Kovner (sck25@columbia.edu) is Senior Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University.

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Revisiting America's Occupation of Japan

Hein¹

2011

Cold War History

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This essay surveys and evaluates the last decade of English-language scholarship on the Occupation of Japan, locating it within American history, Japanese history, post-colonial studies, and the new international history, noting how new work in each field affects our interpretations.The current US military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have sparked renewed interest in the occupation of Japan, as scholars and policymakers grope for better ways to understand global affairs, particularly since John Dower's multi-prize-winning volume, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II had already energised the field. In a major change, Americans across the political spectrum are far more willing to view their nation as an imperial power than in the past. In a neat parallel, scholars today also see Japan's history of imperial overreach and subsequent loss of its colonies as far more like the histories of other mid-twentieth century places than did previous analysts. Rather than exceptional, these are 'normal nations' . Japanese-language work shows the same trend. 1 In addition to providing a stronger comparative framework, post-colonial analysis also has shifted our attention to new topics within the Occupation experience, such as fraternisation. Meanwhile, the 'new international history' of the United States not only places the Occupation within its international context, but also explores the effects of US experiences overseas on Americans at home. Synthesising these different approaches to history allows for a far more complex and cross-cutting picture of the transnational relationships that characterised Occupied Japan than in the past, as explored below. They anchor the Occupation era far more firmly within American history and also help us better understand the place of the Asia-Pacific region in the Cold War world.

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Base Cultures: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Occupied Japan

Cited by 4 publications

References 5 publications

Embracing Defeat in Seoul: Rethinking Decolonization in Korea, 1945

Embracing Defeat in Seoul: Rethinking Decolonization in Korea, 1945

The Soundproofed Superpower: American Bases and Japanese Communities, 1945–1972

Revisiting America's Occupation of Japan

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