Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

The relationship between the conquered Japanese and the American conquerors comprises another important theme throughout Embracing Defeat. The author analyzes this relationship by focusing on different aspects of Japanese society: from the sex workers engaged with the American occupying troops to the neocolonial perceptions and racist stereotypes intrinsic to the MacArthur-led democratization of Japan.

Dower examines sex work in Japan serving foreigners, not only to demonstrate the immediate circumstances of postwar Japan but also to use it as a metaphor for the relationship between the United States and its future ally, Japan. He uses the paradigm of gender and sexuality to describe this relationship in its microcosmic and macrocosmic forms. First, many women were forced into sex work due to the dire socio-economic conditions after Japan’s surrender. The author offers documentary support, such as letters sent to newspapers, in which women described being homeless and lacking food only to end up working in dark alleys. Many of these women were from the most vulnerable social groups, including non-Japanese women who already faced discrimination. At first, various Japanese ministries, such as the Home Ministry, organized the Tokyo Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) to protect the reputable Japanese women from foreign male advances and even sexual assault by sacrificing the vulnerable to work in the sex industry. Cases of rape were underreported, according to the author. Dower outlines in graphic detail the aftermath of these political decisions, including sex workers’ suicides. However, the RAA did not last long, and sex workers continued to work in more underground settings after its dismantling.

Despite administrative changes, the sexualization of Japanese women—and Americans perceiving them as an exotic Other—was a consistent trend during the American occupation.

The author believes that the inequality of these roles also colored the relationship between the United States and Japan at the state level. The formal period of American occupation displayed neocolonialist, racist attitudes. The American occupation leadership generally had little understanding of Japanese culture and believed the Japanese to be incapable of democratizing themselves. The conquerors, therefore, imposed democracy in a carefully managed, top-down manner. They supplemented this democratization process with heavy censorship and the purging of the political Left. Considering the military occupation of Japan at this time, the American policy combined classic colonialism with hegemonic cultural suprematism.

Dower also describes how Americans exploited this unequal relationship. For example, the newly demilitarized Japanese were allowed to participate in military-related industries to supply the American troops during the Korean War. Crushing the Japanese progressive Left was in line with the position that the United States adopted in the Cold War—to counter Communism worldwide. Considering that the United States emerged as a superpower out of World War II, it generally viewed its allies as junior partners rather than equals. For Japan, this unequal relationship was later solidified through The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan (1960).

Overall, the relationship between the conquerors and the conquered was complex. On the one hand, imperial Japan engaged in an aggressive expansion throughout Asia. Japan also attacked Pearl Harbor, drawing the United States into the Second World War. On the other hand, American postwar oversight of Japan combined the elements of colonialism (through military occupation and neocolonialism) through its supremacist, racist, paternalistic tutelage. In this sense, American democratization of Japan fits into a broader framework of European and American “civilizing” initiatives abroad as part of the colonization drive. On a socio-cultural level, neocolonialism translated into the Orientalist sexualization of Japanese women—from the treatment of sex workers to the underreported rapes at the hands of American GIs.