The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory

ISBN-13: 9780415260442 / Angielski / Miękka / 2001 / 256 str.

Michael S. Molasky; M. Molasky

Opis

This title is an exploration, through literature, of Japan's experience of American military occupation. It provides textual analysis and discussions of post-war history, and juxtaposes literature from men and women, by writers from mainland Japan and Okinawa. The author examines whether Japanese womens' writing provides a counter-history to predominantly male narratives of the occupation, and also how Okinawan writers represented their region's distinct experience of American military occupation and what Okinawan literature teaches us about historical memory in Japan today. American forces still remain in Okinawa at the beginning of the 21st century, and are a source of political controversy. Through careful analysis of literary texts and attention to writers and works long excluded from Japan's post-war literary canon, this book introduces fresh perspectives on the occupation era.

Spis treści

Preface. Introduction: Burned-Out Ruins and Barbed-Wire Fences. 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 (1945-1972). Chapter Summaries. Notes Chapter One: 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. Notes Chapter Two: A Base Town In The Literary Imagination. An Okinawan Boy. The Town That Went Pale. Children of Mixed Blood and the Remaking of Koza. Notes Chapter Three: A Darker Shade of Difference. Representing Blacks in Postwar Japan. Race and Narrative Ambivalance in Prize Stock. Reporting Truth, Imagining Motives: Painting on Black Canvas. Poetry of Protest: Arakawa Akira's The Coloured Race. Notes Chapter Four: Female Floodwalls. The Recreation and Amusement Association. Prostitution After the RAA. Prostitution and the Japanese Publishing Industry. The Chastity of Japan. Female Floodwall. Notes Chapter Five: 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: The Women of Chitose, Hokkaido. Notes Chapter Six: The Occupier Within. Reproducing The Occupation: Human Sheep. Style as Story: Narrative Technique and Memory in American Hijiki. Notes Epilogue: Occupation Literature in the Post-Vietnam Era. Okinawan Literature Since the Vietnam War. Saegusa Kazuko's A Winter's Death. Notes.

O autorze

Molasky, Michael S.