Love, Sex and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation

Love, Sex and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation




Love, Sex and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation

McLelland, Mark  2012

Abstract
Love, sex and democracy in Japan during the American Occupation is the first book n English to examine the radical changes that took place in Japanese ideas about sex, romance, and the male-female relations in the wake of Japan's defeat and occupation by Allied forces at the end of the the Second World War.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

'With tenacity, diligence, and care, Mark McLelland has dug deep into a mountain of late 1940s' Japanese popular print sources to create a tantalizing new look into Occupied Japan.His story is grounded in fascinating details about Japan's postwar 'sexual revolution' that he weaves into a broader tale of how democracy developed under foreign occupation.Entertaining but never sensationalistic, Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation is required reading for those who wish to better understand the time.' - Mark D. West, Nippon Life Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Michigan Law School

About the Author

MARK MCLELLAND Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Media & Communication at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Product details

Item Weight : 15.9 ounces

Hardcover : 251 pages

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Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation by Mark McLelland (review)

January 2014The Journal of Japanese Studies 40(1):203-207

DOI: 10.1353/jjs.2014.0049

Authors:

Sarah Frederick

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Abstract

This richly detailed and highly readable book examines cultures of love and sexuality during the Occupation of Japan, with particular attention to the places where representation of these topics intersected with master narratives of postwar democracy. The book remains consistently smart in its balanced approach to its subject: Full of memorable, entertaining, and even intimate stories of postwar writings about sexuality, the book never degenerates into the salacious or sensationalizing. While always clear about the particularities of late 1940s Japan, the book does not essentialize this period, or Japanese culture. American models are shown to be highly important, but such influences are never made to be all-encompassing or completely determinative. Boldly exploring the ways in which women often embraced promotion of love marriage and sometimes relationships with GIs as forms of sexual expression, the book is also cognizant of the ways in which women’s situation was compromised by the sex industry, rape, policing institutions, and other power relations of the period. Not lacking in a theoretical perspective, its use of critical theory remains extremely straightforward and accessible. With all of this even-handedness, at times some readers might hope for a more intense or provocative treatment of these subjects. But gained instead is a highly accessible, well-researched, and thoughtful volume that will be fascinating and informative for students and scholars in a range of disciplines. The book largely eschews theoretical terminology, but Mark McLelland sets up his argument about the importance of the occupation era through use of Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of “fields” to elaborate new cultures of dating in postwar Japan: If we consider American-style courtship routines to be a new kind of “field” introduced into Japan after the war, not only through imported Hollywood movies but also through the very visible presence of the many GIs and their Japanese girlfriends on the streets and in the parks of Japan’s major cities, then we can begin to understand why the press was so full of advice on how to navigate this new set of relations. Rather than a model of sexual “liberation” where pent up sexual energies were released by the ending of wartime repression, transformation of censorship practices, or U.S. democracy, McLelland emphasizes the transformation in habitus, with couples learning new ways of being on multiple levels. Referring regularly to Marcel Mauss’s concept of “techniques of the body,” he shows how dating and coupling practices were transformed by a complex combination of new representations and an altered political and social context. Foucault is not a major player here, but his influence is felt in this move away from a repression and release model of discourses of sexuality. McLelland points out that it was not always “democracy” that enabled sexual liberation but rather that democracy “proved a remarkably flexible sign,” so that sometimes “making claims to democratic principles was a useful tactic for reformers who wished to open increased space for sexual expression in Japanese society” (p. 116). This did not necessarily mean that these expressions were “spontaneous or free,” being themselves potentially subject to new forms of power, “a whole new regime of sexual scrutiny and management” (p. 180). Thus, although the book emphasizes the voluminous discussion of and radical change in sexual customs during the occupation era, which on balance the author tends to view positively, the theoretical framework and the close, detailed analysis of specific materials work to present a nuanced view of the dynamics of the period that goes beyond that of a free and easy burgeoning of democratic love and liberalized sexuality. The emphasis on the particular “sexual scripts” (p. 3) in the postwar context is especially important to understanding how this period differs from Meiji and interwar-era transformations in the same realms, a question this topic is likely to evoke in many readers. Indeed, McLelland is highly attentive to the ways that the Meiji and Taisho eras saw major transformations in sexual and romantic relationships in Japan. Chapter 1 is largely devoted to that subject, providing one of the better concise treatments of prewar love relationships I have seen; it uses the more in-depth book-length cultural histories of the prewar...

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