Synopses & Reviews
Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation is the first book in English to examine the radical changes that took place in Japanese ideas about sex, romance and male-female relations in the wake of Japan's defeat and occupation by Allied forces at the end of the Second World War. It is based on extensive archival research into popular magazines and newspapers as well as a range of sexological publications including sex guides, reports and manuals published during the Occupation and immediately after. Although the main focus of the book is on heterosexual discourse and practice, the postwar period also saw the rapid development of a range of sexual minority subcultures: both male and female homosexuality are discussed, as are a range of heterosexual 'perversions,' including both male and female cross-dressing and sado-masochism, that were sources of fascination in the early postwar years. The book examines all these in relation to ideas of democracy brought and embodied by the Occupation, adding an important dimension to studies of Japan's sexual customs during the Occupation period.
Review
"With tenacity, diligence, and care, Mark McLelland has dug deep into a mountain of late 1940s Japanese popular print sources to create a tantalizing new look into Occupied Japan. His story is grounded in fascinating details about Japans postwar “sexual revolution” that he weaves into a broader tale of how democracy developed under foreign occupation. Entertaining but never sensationalistic, Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation is required reading for those who wish to better understand the time."--Mark D. West, Nippon Life Professor of Law and
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Michigan Law School
Review
'With tenacity, diligence, and care, Mark McLelland has dug deep into a mountain of late 1940s' Japanese popular print sources to create a tantalizing new look into Occupied Japan. His story is grounded in fascinating details about Japan's postwar 'sexual revolution' that he weaves into a broader tale of how democracy developed under foreign occupation. Entertaining but never sensationalistic,
Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation is required reading for those who wish to better understand the time.' - Mark D. West, Nippon Life Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Michigan Law School
'This path-breaking, authoritative study offers fresh insights into the cultural terrain of occupied Japan through an analysis of discourses linking love and sexuality with democracy. McLelland's rich and extensive research into popular journalism, middle-brow commentary, and the punditry of 'experts' reveals much about disjunctures between prewar and postwar Japanese attitudes toward romance, both among heterosexual couples and among sexual minorities. McLelland trains attention on the ways that the physical presence of Americans and American popular culture in occupied Japan helped shape new 'sexual scripts' by analyzing the conversations taking place among Japanese people themselves about new sexual mores. Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan not only provides compelling new research on the occupation, but suggests provocative new ways to understand the emergence of contemporary expressions of Japanese sexuality.' - Jan Bardsley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
'In this marvelous book, Mark McLelland digs deep into the occupation-era popular press to uncover the new coupledom of late 1940s and 1950s Japan. Without overestimating American influence, McLelland carefully lays out how the new couple was following a script devised in Hollywood on a stage furnished with American consumer goods. At the same time, many Japanese were keen to reclaim the sexual knowledge of Japan's past; sexual custom research refused to align itself with the American-style homophobia of the time; and, quite generally, non-normative sex was never shot through with the same moral and political overtones. An impressive accomplishment and a must-read for students of sexuality studies and occupation-era Japan more generally.' - Sabine Fruhstuck, chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies and professor of Modern Japanese Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Synopsis
This is the first book in English to examine, through material in the popular press, the radical changes that took place in Japanese ideas about sex, romance and male-female relations in the wake of Japan's defeat and occupation by Allied forces at the end of the Second World War.
Synopsis
This is the first book in English to offer a general overview of the radical changes in Japanese ideas about sex, romance, and male-female relations in the wake of Japans defeat and occupation by U.S. forces based on a “bottom up” account of material in the popular press. Although there have been previous studies that have focused on sexual and romantic relationships between Japanese women and U.S. army personnel, little attention has been given to how the Occupation impacted upon courtship practices between Japanese men and women.
About the Author
Mark McLelland is an associate professor in the Sociology Program at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and was the 2007/08 Toyota Visiting Professor of Japanese at the Centre for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. He is author or editor of eight books on Japanese popular culture, sexuality studies and media studies.
Table of Contents
Love, Sex and Marriage on the Road to War * Sex and Censorship during the Occupation * Sexual Liberation * The Kiss Debate * The New Couple * Curiosity Hunting * Afterword: Postwar Legacies