Curiosity Hunting

Abstract

Recent English-language accounts of the impact of the Occupation upon Japanese sex and gender policies and practices have helped us understand the connection that was made in the minds of the Occupation authorities themselves, as well as the Japanese government, between the proper management of male-female relations and the nation-building project. In some of these accounts, the largely American authorities are afforded a great deal of agency in shaping postwar sexual mores both rhetorically as well as in terms of day-to-day relations. For example, Sonia Ryang has stressed how policies concerning sexual ethics in Japan were among a range of initiatives drafted “under tutelage from the concerned offices of the Occupation.”¹ She points out how the Japanese government, like the Occupation administration, saw “purity and sex education” as a necessary foundation for national security. This point is also stressed by Mire Koikari who considers the restrictive sexual dynamics between Americans and Japanese during the Occupation to be symptomatic of Cold War containment politics.² Igarashi Yoshikuni, too, notes how “American medical discourse” was instrumental in the process whereby Japanese bodies were “cleansed, normalized and democratized by the victor’s hands.”³