Annmaria M. Shimabuku
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282661
- eISBN:
- 9780823285938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282661.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Chapter 1 presents a genealogy of sexual labor in Japan from licensed prostitution and the so-called “comfort woman” system of sexual slavery in the imperial period, through the state-organized ...
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Chapter 1 presents a genealogy of sexual labor in Japan from licensed prostitution and the so-called “comfort woman” system of sexual slavery in the imperial period, through the state-organized system of prostitution for the Allied forces in the immediate postwar, and to the full-fledged emergence of independent streetwalkers thereafter. It links protest against private prostitution in the interwar period to aversion toward the streetwalker in the postwar period through an examination of Tosaka Jun’s Japanese Ideology. There, he defined Japanism as the symbolic communion between the family and state and showed how Japanists attacked private prostitution for purportedly interfering with the integrity of both. What was at stake was the ability of a budding middle class to manage the reproduction of labor power for the biopolitical state. Through Tosaka, this chapter delineates a mechanism of social defence amongst the middle class that targeted life thought to be unintelligible to the state such as the streetwalker and her mixed-race offspring. Further, it shows how this occurred through cultural productions such as anti-base reportage that focused obsessively on the figure of the streetwalker.Less
Chapter 1 presents a genealogy of sexual labor in Japan from licensed prostitution and the so-called “comfort woman” system of sexual slavery in the imperial period, through the state-organized system of prostitution for the Allied forces in the immediate postwar, and to the full-fledged emergence of independent streetwalkers thereafter. It links protest against private prostitution in the interwar period to aversion toward the streetwalker in the postwar period through an examination of Tosaka Jun’s Japanese Ideology. There, he defined Japanism as the symbolic communion between the family and state and showed how Japanists attacked private prostitution for purportedly interfering with the integrity of both. What was at stake was the ability of a budding middle class to manage the reproduction of labor power for the biopolitical state. Through Tosaka, this chapter delineates a mechanism of social defence amongst the middle class that targeted life thought to be unintelligible to the state such as the streetwalker and her mixed-race offspring. Further, it shows how this occurred through cultural productions such as anti-base reportage that focused obsessively on the figure of the streetwalker.
Annmaria M. Shimabuku
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282661
- eISBN:
- 9780823285938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282661.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Chapter 2 gives a brief biopolitical prehistory to Okinawa. From the perspective of economic development, it was not treated like a national or colonial territory by the Japanese state, but ...
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Chapter 2 gives a brief biopolitical prehistory to Okinawa. From the perspective of economic development, it was not treated like a national or colonial territory by the Japanese state, but ambiguously suspended in between both. This foregrounded the sexual politics surrounding the U.S. military in Okinawa because unlike mainland Japan, there was no development of a middle class equipped to reject the formation of a sex industry in base towns on the basis of an established ethno-nationalism. Hence, in contrast to the symbolic structure of Japanism presented in Chapter 1, this chapter positions Okinawa’s alegality in terms of Benjamin’s notion of allegory, or that which constantly fails communion with a totality. It argues that debates surrounding the establishment of a sex industry were driven by the sheer fear of exclusion from the biopolitical order, not by an identification with it, and were subsequently absent of discourses lamenting the racial contamination of the population. It traces the omnipresence of this fear through the Okinawan reception of so-called “comfort women” during the war, the experience of sexual violence and exploitation in the immediate postwar, and the formation of the sex industry after the “reverse course” of occupation in 1949.Less
Chapter 2 gives a brief biopolitical prehistory to Okinawa. From the perspective of economic development, it was not treated like a national or colonial territory by the Japanese state, but ambiguously suspended in between both. This foregrounded the sexual politics surrounding the U.S. military in Okinawa because unlike mainland Japan, there was no development of a middle class equipped to reject the formation of a sex industry in base towns on the basis of an established ethno-nationalism. Hence, in contrast to the symbolic structure of Japanism presented in Chapter 1, this chapter positions Okinawa’s alegality in terms of Benjamin’s notion of allegory, or that which constantly fails communion with a totality. It argues that debates surrounding the establishment of a sex industry were driven by the sheer fear of exclusion from the biopolitical order, not by an identification with it, and were subsequently absent of discourses lamenting the racial contamination of the population. It traces the omnipresence of this fear through the Okinawan reception of so-called “comfort women” during the war, the experience of sexual violence and exploitation in the immediate postwar, and the formation of the sex industry after the “reverse course” of occupation in 1949.
Josephine Nock-Hee Park
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190257668
- eISBN:
- 9780190257699
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190257668.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Chapter 8 reads Andrew X. Pham’s grief-stricken memoir Catfish and Mandala as an exposé of sordid friendly attachment that ultimately detaches him from Vietnam. His memoir uncovers the secret family ...
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Chapter 8 reads Andrew X. Pham’s grief-stricken memoir Catfish and Mandala as an exposé of sordid friendly attachment that ultimately detaches him from Vietnam. His memoir uncovers the secret family business that funded their escape from Vietnam after the war: a brothel that served American GIs. Upon his return to Vietnam, Pham finds himself indicted as a profiteer of the war. This chapter reads Pham’s horror at this order of friendly alliance against two subsequent literary returns to Vietnam, in which he finds healing modes of writing from a post–Cold War vantage point. These later works offer new modes of alliance: Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, a translation of the diaries of a North Vietnamese Army doctor and Under the Eaves of Heaven, an elegiac rendering of his father’s past in Vietnam—both products of active collaboration with his father.Less
Chapter 8 reads Andrew X. Pham’s grief-stricken memoir Catfish and Mandala as an exposé of sordid friendly attachment that ultimately detaches him from Vietnam. His memoir uncovers the secret family business that funded their escape from Vietnam after the war: a brothel that served American GIs. Upon his return to Vietnam, Pham finds himself indicted as a profiteer of the war. This chapter reads Pham’s horror at this order of friendly alliance against two subsequent literary returns to Vietnam, in which he finds healing modes of writing from a post–Cold War vantage point. These later works offer new modes of alliance: Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, a translation of the diaries of a North Vietnamese Army doctor and Under the Eaves of Heaven, an elegiac rendering of his father’s past in Vietnam—both products of active collaboration with his father.
Annmaria M. Shimabuku
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282661
- eISBN:
- 9780823285938
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282661.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Alegal reveals modern Okinawa to be suspended in a perpetual state of exception: it is neither an official colony of Japan or the U.S., nor an equal part of the Japanese state. Today it is the site ...
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Alegal reveals modern Okinawa to be suspended in a perpetual state of exception: it is neither an official colony of Japan or the U.S., nor an equal part of the Japanese state. Today it is the site of one of the densest concentrations of U.S. military bases globally—a truly exceptional condition stemming from Japan’s abhorrence toward sexual contact around bases in its mainland that factored into securing Okinawa as a U.S. military fortress. This book merges Foucauldian biopolitics with Japanese Marxist theorizations of capitalism to trace the formation of a Japanese middle class that disciplined and secured the population from perceived threats, including the threat of miscegenation. Through close readings of poetry, reportage, film, and autobiography, it reveals how this threat came to symbolize the infringement of Japanese sovereignty figured in terms of a patriarchal monoethnic state. This symbolism, however, was met with great ambivalence in Okinawa. As a borderland of the Pacific, racial politics internal to the U.S. collided with colonial politics internal to the Asia Pacific in base towns centered on facilitating encounters between G.I.s and Okinawan women. By examining the history, debates, and cultural representations of these actors from 1945 to 2015, this book shows how they continually failed to “become Japanese.” Instead, they epitomized Okinawa’s volatility that danced on the razor’s edge between anarchistic insurgency and fascistic collaboration. What was at stake in their securitization was the attempt to contain Okinawa’s alegality itself—that is, a life force irreducible to the law.Less
Alegal reveals modern Okinawa to be suspended in a perpetual state of exception: it is neither an official colony of Japan or the U.S., nor an equal part of the Japanese state. Today it is the site of one of the densest concentrations of U.S. military bases globally—a truly exceptional condition stemming from Japan’s abhorrence toward sexual contact around bases in its mainland that factored into securing Okinawa as a U.S. military fortress. This book merges Foucauldian biopolitics with Japanese Marxist theorizations of capitalism to trace the formation of a Japanese middle class that disciplined and secured the population from perceived threats, including the threat of miscegenation. Through close readings of poetry, reportage, film, and autobiography, it reveals how this threat came to symbolize the infringement of Japanese sovereignty figured in terms of a patriarchal monoethnic state. This symbolism, however, was met with great ambivalence in Okinawa. As a borderland of the Pacific, racial politics internal to the U.S. collided with colonial politics internal to the Asia Pacific in base towns centered on facilitating encounters between G.I.s and Okinawan women. By examining the history, debates, and cultural representations of these actors from 1945 to 2015, this book shows how they continually failed to “become Japanese.” Instead, they epitomized Okinawa’s volatility that danced on the razor’s edge between anarchistic insurgency and fascistic collaboration. What was at stake in their securitization was the attempt to contain Okinawa’s alegality itself—that is, a life force irreducible to the law.
