Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan by Sarah Kovner, and: Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation by Mark McLelland (review)

Sarah Kovner’s Occupying Power explores the Allied Occupation after World War II as a turning point in Japanese society’s understanding of the social significance of sex work. In the prewar period, prostitution in Japan had been licensed and regulated, and it was understood as an acceptable way for poor women to support their families through the sacrifice of their chastity via a form of indentured servitude. In the aftermath of World War II, however, the sex industry took on a very different set of connotations. The influx of soldiers from various Allied countries provided desperately needed economic stimulus to port towns while simultaneously confronting local populations with the specter of fraternization of foreign men with local women, thus rendering highly visible what had heretofore been confined to the seclusion of the licensed quarters.

Kovner’s study demonstrates how Japan’s defeat in war and precarious political positioning as quasi protectorate of the United States during the Cold War altered the terms of debate over sex work, ultimately transforming it in the eyes of Japanese society from a “necessary evil” to a source of moral panic. Although the majority of the book focuses on the years during and immediately after the Occupation, there is also an interesting final chapter (“The Presence of the Past”) that brings discussion up to the present day, situating regulation of the sex industry in Japan within international trends that have shaped and informed discourses of sex work as a source of moral threat.

Kovner does an excellent job of mapping the complex negotiations between occupier and occupied that shaped the debate over prostitution in Japan both historically and geographically. She demonstrates that Occupation-era policy to regulate the sex industry was a product not only of Japan’s own history of commodification of sexuality both domestically and in its Asian colonies but also of policies implemented by the military commands of the various nations that participated in the Allied Occupation. Kovner’s persistent attempt to complicate the perception of the Occupation as an exclusively American endeavor alone is worth the price of admission. Crucially, she is also keen to trouble the perception of sex work as a one-way transaction between victim and victimizer, instead sketching an intricate web of power relationships between sex workers and their clients that resulted in a wide variety of experiences—from the very intimate (marriage and long-term, exclusive relationships between Japanese women and foreign soldiers) to the most predatory (rape, abuse, and other forms of degradation). Because of the book’s nuanced and academic approach to its subject matter, it is likely to be of interest primarily to scholars of Japanese and East Asian history, as well as gender and sexuality studies.

McLelland’s Love, Sex, and Democracy is primarily devoted to a close reading of Occupation-era articles published in popular magazines and journals, with particular attention to the (re)construction of sexuality and romance as part of the larger project of postwar democratization. While most chapters discuss heterosexual encounters both inside and outside the bonds of matrimony, there is also a fascinating final chapter titled “Curiosity Hunting” that details popular press depictions of minority sexualities and sexual practices, supplementing the prolific body of work previously published by McLelland on this topic in other venues. These substantive chapters are prefaced by a brief introduction that lays out the theoretical framework and parameters for the book, as well as an extensive historical introduction to the topic (chapter 1) that offers a helpful primer for the nonspecialist on love, sex, and marriage in Japan prior to the conclusion of World War II.

The author’s prose is engaging and...