Rethinking Gender and Power in the US Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952

Examines gender & power in the US military occupation of Japan, 1945-1952. Drawing from the insights provided by feminist colonial & postcolonial studies, it is argued that the occupation was a US imperial intervention in which Japanese women, especially their bodies, became the primary "battleground" between the US & Japan. A close reexamination of primary documents in Japan & the US shows how gender, racial, & sexual discourses & practices of the occupiers & occupied shaped the complex process of political negotiations between the two & produced contradictory effects on Japanese women's lives. Adapted from the source document.