Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan by Sara Kovner (review)

Occupying Power is a well-researched investigation that sheds new light on the nature of the Allied Occupation of Japan and the Japanese response to it. Author Sara Kovner emphasizes the importance of sex workers in the economic, social, and political history of the Occupation. Her arguments are refreshingly free of the moralizing cant and ideological axe-grinding that has marred studies that compare postwar sex workers with wartime comfort women, who worked in China and other regions in Asia then under Japanese control.¹ The book clearly shows that the experience of the sex workers patronized by Allied servicemen cannot be equated with that of the military comfort women. As Kovner astutely observes, “when critics of the Allied Occupation compare sex workers to sexual slaves, it has the unintended effect of supporting a nationalist agenda that depends on portraying Japan as a victim” (p. 157).

The infringement of Japanese sovereignty by a Western power engaging in sexual or medical imperialism is a phenomenon that began long before the Allied Occupation. The Russians carried out inspections of brothels in Nagasaki after 1858 in order to help protect the crews of their visiting ships, and a decade later concern for the health of British soldiers and sailors garrisoned in Yokohama led to pressure on Japanese authorities to institute compulsory testing of Japanese prostitutes for venereal disease (VD) and confinement to lock hospitals for those found to be infected. In making these demands, British officers gave very little consideration to the rights and sensibilities of Japanese, especially of Japanese women who were blamed for spreading syphilis. Their goal was to maintain the efficient operation of the Royal Navy in Japanese waters, and it was completely fortuitous if this also contributed in any way to the health of the Japanese people. Yokohama was a key location within the British network of naval bases and supply depots that maintained the Pax Britannica throughout East Asia, and VD had to be controlled in that port city if similar measures taken in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and India were to have any chance of being effective.

When Occupation authorities exerted similar pressure on Japan in the postwar era that Kovner investigates, they, too, were motivated by a desire to alleviate military problems associated with the spread of VD among their troops. What differed from circumstances in the late nineteenth century was the far greater number of foreign troops and their presence throughout a much wider area of Japan. The Japanese response to the extraordinary challenges posed by these circumstances would have profound consequences for Japanese society and politics even after the Occupation ended. Kovner notes that the “transition from regulated sex work, to outright deregulation, to criminalization—all in a period of unprecedented social upheaval—remains unique in the annals of the ‘oldest profession.’ Sex work in occupied Japan therefore permits us to grapple with fundamental questions about imperialism and individual agency, political economy and cultural change, and the political use and misuse of history” (p. 3). Occupying Power emphasizes “the vital importance of discovering how sex workers themselves experienced different regulatory regimes, and whether simply prohibiting prostitution actually improved their lot. In the case of Japan under the Occupation, sex workers still had choices. In fact, while the nation lay prostrate, they were uniquely empowered, with control over their fortunes, their families, and their fates” (p. 157).

The implications of sex work varied, as did reactions to the trade by those it affected. The Allied Occupation authorities in Japan, for their part, did not have the initial advantages that their counterparts in Germany enjoyed. At the time of the German surrender, large numbers of Allied troops, backed by supply lines, communications infrastructure, and interpreters, were already present in the country. In contrast, the Allied troops who took up posts in Japan in the fall of 1945 had trained for invasion but were not prepared for the logistic and other challenges entailed by...