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War Brides” in Postwar Japan : Their Representations in Asahi Shimbun and Popular Media from the Late 1940S to the 1970S

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War Brides” in Postwar Japan : Their Representations in Asahi Shimbun and Popular Media from the Late 1940S to the 1970S 関西学院大学 先端社会研究所紀要 第 13 号 Annual Review of the Institute for Advanced Social Research vol.13 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! " 投稿論文 " The Othering of Japanese “War Brides” in Postwar Japan : Their Representations in Asahi Shimbun and Popular Media from the Late 1940s to the 1970s IWASA, Masashi* Abstract This article examines how Japanese “war brides” have been imagined and represented in various media in Japan in the postwar era. These women married servicemen, mostly American GIs, working for the Allied Forces during the occupation period of Japan and the succeeding years in the 1950s, as well as in the early 1960s. The empirical data used here include their coverages in Asahi Shimbun, a major newspaper in Japan, from the late 1940s to the 1970s. In addition, other primary and secondary sources that have taken account of them in one way or other are picked up and analysed. While the data examined here may be limited to a certain degree, it is suggested that the “war brides” had consistently been imagined as Japan’s “others,” or the outsiders of Japanese society, by various media throughout the time under study, as their deviance and extraordinariness tended to constitute the major theme of their media representations since the 1950s and thereafter. It is also contended that, from the mid­1960s to the 1970s, Japanese media even imagined them as strangers who had lost their Japanese­ness due to their long­term absence from Japan. Key words : representation ; othering ; occupation period ; war bride ; fraternity 1. Introduction To date, a dominant tendency in the discussion concerning war and “race” has been to look at the fierce confrontation between different “races”1) as enemy groups. Thus, in the case of the Asia­Pacific War, it is well known that Japan’s rulers during the war period fanatically demonized American and British people with the notorious phrase “Ki-Chiku-Bei-Ei (Devil­ Beast­American­British),” while at the same time adamantly attempting to unite other Asian “races” under the rubric of the “Greater East­Asia Co­Prosperity Sphere.”2) On the other hand, the fact that war can actually promote “racial” mixture under some circumstances is under­ ────────────── *Research Fellow, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo [email protected] １）By this bracketing of “race” and “races”, I mean that race as a category that grounds racial discrimination on biological or genial differences of peoples with different skin colours is not universally accepted any longer. Also, for the reason of my interest in war and “race”, see the acknowledgement attached at the end of this article. ２）A prime example of this is Dower (1986). 1 関西学院大学 先端社会研究所紀要 第 13 号 researched. Particularly important here is the issue of fraternization, i.e., association of military service members with natives of a conquered country or enemy groups. If this takes place, a new social cleavage tends to be constructed within the conquered country between those who have become intimate with enemy groups and those who cannot accept them. I am concerned about this complicated cultural consequence brought about by fraternization that goes beyond the simple binary of allies and foes. In view of this, I will discuss the case of intermarriages that took place between Japanese women and American GIs after the Asia­ Pacific War. The defeat of the Japanese Empire in August 1945 caused the Allied Forces, mainly constituted by the US military, to occupy the entirety of Japan and deploy about half a million GIs throughout this devastated country until it regained its independence in May 1952. This led to an increase of encounters between Japanese women and GIs around the areas where the US bases and related facilities were constructed. As a result, thousands of Japanese women fell in love with and married GIs during and after the occupation period. Soon after such intermarriages became known to the Japanese public, the women concerned started to be called Sensō Hanayome,or“warbrides”3) Not surprisingly, they were against the grain of Japanese society at that time, where the general hatred toward Americans as a former enemy and current occupier still pervaded, and the conservative attitude toward miscegenation was still common. Based on the above observation, this article will examine how Japanese “war brides” have been actually imagined and represented in Japanese media from the late 1940s, an immediate aftermath of the Asia­Pacific War, to the 1970s ; I will also briefly highlight overviews of more recent situations surrounding them in the 1980s and thereafter in the latter part of the fifth chapter. By doing so, I am going to contend that their media representations throughout the time under study involved the desire of Japanese society to construct “others.” While I am not going to delve into philosophical inquiry regarding the concept of “others,” I follow its broad definition as used in postcolonial studies as referring to those people who are separated out from a certain community as “different” and regarded as “inferior” to the community members concerned. In addition, following postcolonial studies, I regard “othering,” or the mental process of constructing “others,” as something that makes it possible for the community members to secure and maintain their stable and coherent identity in relation to the downgraded “others.” My point is that Japanese “war brides” were exactly the target of this “othering” by postwar Japanese society until around the 1970s ; their deviance and extraordinariness from Japanese society tended to be stressed both on the level of daily life and on the level of dissemination in various kinds of media. ────────────── ３）Hereafter, I will maintain the principle of bracketing the term “war brides” both in its singular and plural forms except in the cases of quotation. It is due to my recognition that these women do not generally like to be called this way for the stigmatising connotation it entails. 2 The Othering of Japanese “War Brides” in Postwar Japan 2. Scope of Analysis and the Representability of Empirical Data Before starting the discussion, I should explain the materials cited in this article and their representability in analyzing the images of Japanese “war brides” constructed in Japanese popular media. In fact, there was a vast number of publications in Japan during the postwar era that contain information about them in one way or another. Among these are those materials that could be used as primary sources, such as articles about them in newspapers and magazines, as well as fiction and non­fiction that illustrated them, both published at the time under study. Secondary sources could include the academic works published largely in and after the 1990s authored by scholars and intellectuals doing research on culture and society in Japan during and after the occupation period in general, and the fraternization between GIs and Japanese women in particular. Additionally, both autobiographic accounts and interview comments by Japanese “war brides” themselves started to appear at the turn of this century, which could be utilized as sources of invaluable information for this article. Sorting out all the above sources and making critical observations of them will require an enormous amount of work and a more detailed analysis than a single article could ever cover. In view of this, I will confine the scope of analysis in this article to those primary and secondary sources that I had collected at the time of this research4). For a newspaper, I use Asahi Shimbun as a primary source to examine how Japanese “war brides” have been represented. As one of the major newspapers in Japan, it is widely regarded as having great influence on the formation of public opinions in Japan. It is selected as a focal point of my analysis also partly because its past articles were relatively accessible through its online database, Kikuzō II Visual, 5) unlike those in other major Japanese newspapers at the time of the research. Thus, I will examine the articles in Asahi Shimbun that covered “war brides” ranging from the 1940s to the 1970s. Indeed, the coverage of “war brides” has continued to appear even after the 1980s to date in Asahi Shimbun. However, they will not constitute the major scope of analysis in this article, as most of them are either retrospective, describing the experiences or hardshipsof“warbrides”in the past, such as in the 1950s or the 1960s, as fragments of Japan’s postwar era in broader terms ; or, in other cases, they are indirect and highlight those intellectuals who authored books about “war brides.” In addition to the articles in Asahi Shimbun, my observation will make use of literary and cinematic works that illustrate either Japanese “war brides” or the fraternization between GIs and Japanese women. Some are primary sources, such as books, magazines, or films featuring them that came out at the time under study. Others are secondary sources published more recently that take account of the experiences of “war brides” from more intellectual ────────────── ４）About the background of this research, see the acknowledgement inserted at the end of this article. ５）This archive will be referred to as Kikuzō hereafter. 3 関西学院大学 先端社会研究所紀要 第 13 号 perspectives. In fact, I do not have enough data to testify about the degree of circulation and social influence each of the above­mentioned selected primary sources in Japan at the time of their appearances. However, as they are the major works on Japanese “war brides” most often cited in secondary sources, I am certain that they represent the typical ways in which “war brides” have been imagined in the various media of postwar Japan. I should also note that covering the entire period from the late 1940s to the 1970s in a single article admittedly looks like a rather sketchy description and may concomitantly entail the risk of simplification.
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