The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa : Literature and Memory
How do the Japanese and Okinawans remember Occupation? How is memory constructed and transmitted? Michael Molasky explores these questions through careful, sensitive readings of literature from mainland Japan and Okinawa. This book sheds light on difficult issues of war, violence, prostitution, colonialism and post-colonialism in the context of the Occupations of Japan and Okinawa
History
1 online resource (275 pages).
9780203981689, 0203981685
1048580450
Book Cover
Hlaf-Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Introduction
The occupation of Japan as history
The occupation in mainland Japanese literature and criticism
Okinawa: From premodern kingdom to Japanese prefecture
The Battle of Okinawa and the American Occupation (1945-72)
Chapter summaries
1 Roads to no-man's land
Language, landscape, and gender in "The American School"
Gender, history, and the construction of victimhood in The Cocktail Party
Fact and fiction
2 A base town in the literary imagination
"The Town That Went Pale"
"Children of Mixed Blood" and the remaking of Koza
3 A darker shade of difference
Representing blacks in postwar Japan
Race and narrative ambivalence in "Prize Stock"
Reporting truth, imagining motives: "Painting on Black Canvas"
Poetry of protest: Arakawa Akira's "The Colored Race"
4 Female floodwalls
The Recreation and Amusement Association
Prostitution after the RAA
Prostitution and the Japanese publishing industry
The Chastity of Japan
Female Floodwall
5 Ambivalent allegories
The generational logic of "Guests From Afar"
Prostitution and other honest jobs: "The Only Ones"
Caste and outcasts: "Women of a Base Town"
Marriage, money, and desire in "The Women of Chitose, Hokkaido"
6 The occupier within
Reproducing the occupation: "Human Sheep"
Style as story: Narrative technique and memory in "American Hijiki"
Epilogue
Okinawan literature since the Vietnam War
Saegusa Kazuko's A Winter's Death
Notes
Bibliography
English-language works cited
Japanese-language works cited
Newspaper articles
Index