Sanitized Sex: Regulating Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Intimacy in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 by Robert Kramm (review)

At its heart, Robert Kramm's Sanitized Sex examines how two communities sought to halt the spread of venereal disease (VD) in early postwar Japan. More broadly, Kramm surveys cooperative and conflicting endeavors undertaken by American and Japanese actors that shaped sex work during the occupation era, specifically, regulatory, hygienic, and educational efforts at "sanitizing" heterosexual prostitution and sexual interactions involving foreign servicemen and Japanese women. Kramm concludes that "sexual encounters between occupiers and occupied left … deep traces in Japan's long postwar history" (p. 220), and he investigates how "transnational circulations of knowledge and practices of governance" (p. 23) determined the contours of sex work and sexual intimacy during the occupation. Kramm's research fits snugly alongside scholarship concerning gender, sex work, public health, and international exchanges in occupied Japan (and afterward), as well as general academic studies about the occupation.¹ Moreover, Sanitized Sex effectively details a mesh of "transnational entanglements" (p. 223)—carnal, commonplace, or otherwise—that drew people closer together in occupied Japan.

Rather than merely rehash arguments made by others, Kramm nudges the study of Japan under foreign control more decidedly under the umbrella of postcolonial studies. One of the book's many strong features is its clear introduction, which frames the occupation period as "an instance of imperial encounter" (p. 16). In Kramm's words, "Sanitized Sex proposes to think of the occupation of Japan as a relay of older forms of imperialism to the Cold War era and a laboratory for future occupations in the postwar period" (p. 20). Even so, Kramm warns that the occupation of Japan must not be regarded as a pattern for later U.S.-led military occupations but rather as the precursor to the sustained overseas presence of U.S. military forces around the world. His objective, actually, is to link the occupation to earlier global power dynamics in intimate and all-embracing ways: "The way sexuality, prostitution, and venereal disease were regulated during the occupation of Japan between 1945 and 1952 bears striking resemblances to previous imperial settings" (p. 22). If the occupation was in fact an imperial encounter, then it was an anxious one, and the next chapter skillfully depicts the jittery preparations for occupation that took place both in Japan and among its occupiers-to-be. Readers will or will not be convinced about this characterization of the occupation as a late-in-the-game imperial pursuit on the part of the United States and its allies, but, respectably, Kramm pokes and prods us into critically assessing (or reconsidering) the occupation's place in world history.

As mentioned earlier, chapter 1 examines the planning that preceded and accompanied the occupation's onset, specifically U.S. and Japanese arrangements for establishing licensed modes of prostitution for foreign servicemen. Here, Kramm introduces some of his narrative's key actors, including Japan's Home Ministry and its police system, General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), and entities like the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA), "a right-wing, semigovernmental association for organizing brothels and other recreational facilities for the occupation forces" (p. 44). Many of these groups, and in fact the shared interest in creating a "female floodwall" of Japanese sex workers to protect women and girls from an imagined horde of predatory gaijin, have been discussed elsewhere, too, but Kramm productively illustrates the charged, libidinous environment of the early weeks of the occupation by presenting accounts of sexualized violence that occurred between occupiers and occupied.

This chapter makes for harrowing reading because of its depictions of cruel deeds—case estimates vary, but, really, how many instances are too many when discussing rape?—and also Kramm's characterization of SCAP's wan efforts at acting transparently when addressing claims of sexual assault reported by Japanese nationals. Kramm asserts that these early moments and fears...