Asia Pacific Modern, no. 15. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017. xiii, 299 pp. (B&W photos) US$70.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-520-29597-1.
Based on a discourse analysis of historical records such as memoranda, reports, petitions, veterans’ narratives, memoirs of servicemen, and visuals, Robert Kramm highlights three major themes of security, health, and morality in the regulation of sexuality, prostitution, and venereal diseases during the American occupation period in Japan (1945–1952). Kramm contends that a study of the various attempts to sanitize sexuality sheds lights on the power dynamics between the occupier and the occupied and the hierarchies of race, class, and gender during the occupation period. In doing so, Kramm argues that the American “neocolonial rule” and imperialism in Japan during the occupation period catalyzed the empire building, dominance, and hegemony of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
The historic records about the regulation of sexuality, prostitution, and venereal disease were compiled and composed by occupation officials, Japanese administrators, and city society activists. Kramm treats these documentations not only as bureaucratic files of the occupier and the occupied, but also as narratives that bridge the official and unofficial accounts and unearth the everyday experiences of American and Japanese military commanders, police officers, public health administrators, and educators. Despite a lack of voices from sex workers in these records, Kramm strives to reconstruct their everyday lives from the narratives of clients, observers, and regulators.
The book treats prostitution as a significant political issue to highlight the exploitative mechanism in organizing, regulating, recruiting, and patronizing sex workers by the occupier and the occupied. Kramm shows that the occupiers affirmed their racial superiority and militarized masculinity through objectifying the obedient and sexually available Asian women. At the same time, the occupier and occupied shared a pejorative and discriminatory attitude toward sex workers and prostitution. Hence, a closer study of prostitution reveals the “male-dominated struggle for control, superiority, and subjectification” (7).
The book eschews previous interpretations of the occupation: as a liberation from Japanese militarism and colonialism, as a means of establishing a democratic system, and as a way to integrate Japan into the global economy. Instead, Kramm argues that a study of the regulation of prostitution, venereal disease, and intimacy demonstrates that, inherent in the occupation policy are the racist, imperialist, gendered, and sexist attitudes and behaviours of the occupiers in Japan. As Kramm contends, the occupation of Japan led to the “disintegration of Japan’s empire and the rise of American hegemony in the postwar era” (16), manifested by Japan’s continuous economic and military dependence on the US and the US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
The book includes an introduction, four chapters, and an epilogue. The introduction discusses the two underlying themes of prostitution and empire, methodology, and an overview of the book. Chapter 1 first discusses the ways in which prostitution was perceived as a “female floodwall” by the Japanese authorities to satisfy the needs of the occupiers while preserving the purity of Japanese women in general. Kramm demonstrates that the Japanese authorities appropriated the incidents of sexual violence of rape and molestation of Japanese women by the American and Allied servicemen to amplify the victimization and violation of Japan by the occupiers.
Chapters 2, 3, and 4 examine the historic regulation of prostitution as a security issue, a health crisis, and a moral failure. Chapter 2 investigates the issue of security and law enforcement by the occupied and the occupier. In the wake of the emergence of unlicensed prostitution after 1946, the law and law enforcement stigmatized sex workers as carriers of venereal disease. While the occupier and the occupied worked together in police raids and other regulatory activities, they differed in their perceptions of Japanese women. While the occupier conceived of Japanese women as a potential threat to national security, the occupied separated the low-class, diseased prostitutes from the upper- and middle-class Japanese women, who were construed as respectable and pure.
Chapter 3 investigates the efforts and reforms of public health to increase venereal disease control. These efforts and reforms include the education of Japanese doctors, a new report system to track disease contacts, and prophylactic stations where servicemen could clean their private parts after sexual exposure. It was the occupier who developed and implemented these strategies.
Chapter 4 discusses the ways in which occupation personnel were indoctrinated with sex education and character guidance that included cultural ideals of masculinity, middle-class family values, and white community building. These ideals were inculcated to ensure that occupation personnel maintained their physical and spiritual health to serve as qualified leaders, soldiers, and fathers. This chapter also analyzes the moral debates on streetwalkers by Japanese agents including feminists, bureaucrats, writers, journalists, photographers, social scientists, and ethnographers. The contentious debate perceives streetwalkers as an emblem of occupied Japan, as well as symbolizing moral and social decay. The epilogue reiterates the significant repercussions the occupation period had on everyday life in occupied Japan.
This book employs a rich variety of historic sources and materials to capture the complexity of the regulation of intimacy, prostitution, and venereal disease in the occupation period of Japan. Since configurations of race, class, and gender are the book’s central tenets, it would have benefitted from an analytical account and critical literature review of the intersected relationships between the three subjects. As it stands, there seems to be a disconnect between the purported argument of US neocolonialism in the introduction and the bulk of the book, which investigates the Japanese and American authorities’ joint efforts to regulate prostitution, sex workers, and venereal disease. Each chapter is also fragmented into two distinct sections with two separate summaries. That said, the book will be welcomed by a wide array of scholars interested in sexuality, gender, race, and prostitution in Japan and beyond.
Tiantian Zheng
State University of New York, Cortland, USA