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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
This chapter entitled “Sex and Censorship During the Occupation of Japan” is excerpted from Mark McLelland's Love, Sex and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation (Palgrave MacMillan 2012). The book examines 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. Although there have been other studies that have focused on sexual and romantic relationships between Japanese women and US military personnel, little attention has been given to how the Occupation impacted upon the courtship practices of Japanese men and women. This book adds an important dimension so far lacking in studies of Japan's sexual mores during the Occupation period.
1 Shimokawa Kōshi, Nihon ero shashinshi (History of Japan's erotic photographs), Tokyo: Shōkyūsha, 1995, 32.
2 He refers to the “wild parties” that were staged in some neighbourhoods after news of the defeat; Igarashi Yoshikuni, Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000, 48.
3 Tanaka Yuki, Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation, London: Routledge, 2002, 160. Kate Haste, Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain: World War 1 to the Present, London: Chatto & Windus, 1992, also notes that the spread of VD among US troops stationed in the UK tended to be blamed on British “good time” girls, not the troops themselves, 134.
4 Mire Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy: Feminism and the Cold War in the US Occupation of Japan, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008; Shibusawa Naoko, America's Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008; Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women.
5 Morris, The Phoenix Cup: Some Notes on Japan in 1946, London: Cresset Press, 1947, 18.
6 Ibid., 20.
7 Igarashi, Narratives of War, 53.
8 Mishima Sumie Seo, The Broader Way: A Woman's Life in the New Japan, New York: John Day Co., 1953, 90.
9 About 20 percent of youth were estimated to have lost or left their families by the war's end. Many of these ended up working in the black market or the sex trade. Police round-ups of sex workers sometimes brought in girls as young as ten. See Shimokawa Kōshi, Sei fūzoku nenpyō: Shōwa sengo 1945-1989 (A sexual customs almanac of the postwar period 1945-1989), Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha, 2007, 28.
10 Mishima, Broader Way, 96.
11 Ibid., 183.
12 On the black market see John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: WW Norton, 1999, 139-48.
13 Shimokawa, Sei fūzoku nenpyō, 15.
14 Morris, Phoenix Cup, 21.
15 Other areas in Japan, such as the prefectures surrounding Hiroshima, were under the supervision of other Allied powers, particularly the British Commonwealth forces. However it was American culture that had the most impact on Occupation mores.
16 The term is Benedict Anderson's; see Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983.
17 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession 91, New York: MLA, (1991): 33-40, 4. For a detailed description of how this mentality was achieved, see Emiko Ohnuki- Tierney, Kamikaze: Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, especially chapter 4.
18 Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” 4.
19 Koikari, “Rethinking Gender and Power in the US Occupation of Japan 1945-1952,” Gender and History 11, no. 2 (1999): 313-35, 314.
20 Cited in Pharr, “The Politics of Women's Rights,” in Democratizing Japan: The Allied Occupation, edited by Robert Ward and Yoshikazu Sakamoto. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, (1987): 221-52, 224-45.
21 Ibid., 231.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 241.
24 Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 112-16.
25 Shimokawa, Sei fūzoku nenpyō, 14.
26 Igarashi, Narratives of War, 35.
27 Takemae Eiji, The Allied Occupation of Japan, New York: Continuum, 2002, 41; Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 116-25.
28 Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 13.
29 On the foundation and eventual demise of the RAA see Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 141-50.
30 Theodore Cohen, Remaking Japan: The American Deal as New Deal, New York: The Free Press, 1987, 125.
31 Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 146.
32 Ibid., 136.
33 Cohen, Remaking Japan, 126. See also Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 153-54.
34 Shimokawa, Sei fūzoku nenpyō, 15.
35 Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 155.
36 An ex-service member, who was a newly qualified doctor serving with the Occupation at the time, told me of an incident involving an army chaplain outside of Sugamo jail (used to house accused war criminals prior to the Tokyo Trials). The street in front of the main entrance to the jail was crowded with makeshift shacks that were used for prostitution services for the many Occupation personnel working in the jail. One chaplain was famous for patrolling these shacks, even going to the extent of dragging army personnel out and shaming them in the street. One afternoon he was shot in the back and killed. Apparently “nobody saw anything” since it was neither in the interests of the women working as pan pan, nor their American customers, to cooperate with the investigation.
37 Sarah Kovner, Prostitution in Postwar Japan: Sex Workers, Servicemen, and Social Activists, 1945-1956, PhD. thesis, Columbia University, 2004, 29.
38 Ibid., 30.
39 Ibid., 26-7.
40 Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, 160-61.
41 Cohen, Remaking Japan, 131.
42 Yomiuri newspaper, morning edition, May 31, 1947, p. 2.
43 Asahi newspaper May 31, 1947, p. 4.
44 Cohen, Remaking Japan, 128.
45 Koikare, Pedagogy of Democracy, 166.
46 Ibid., 166.
47 Ibid., 169.
48 Tsubaki Bunya, Seppun nendai ki (Kissing annals), Tokyo: Kindai bunkōsha, 1949, 166.
49 Yamamoto Akira, “Kasutori zasshi” (Pulp magazines), in Showa no sengoshi, edited by Saburō Ienaga, Tokyo: Chōbunsha, 1976, 246-47, 244.
50 Lawrence Beer, Freedom of Expression in Japan: A Study in Comparative Law, Politics, and Society, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984, 282.
51 Cited in Rubin, “The Impact of the Occupation on Literature or Lady Chatterley and Lt. Col. Verness,” in The Occupation of Japan: Arts and Culture, edited by Thomas W. Burkman, Norfolk, Virginia: General Douglas MacArthur Foundation, (1988): 167-74, 169.
52 Catherine Luther and Douglas Boyd, “American Occupation Control over Broadcasting in Japan 1945-52,” Journal of Communication 47, (1997): 39-59, 43.
53 Etō Jun, “One Aspect of the Allied Occupation of Japan: The Censorship Operation and PostWar Japanese Literature,” Occasional Paper, East Asia Program, The Wilson Center, Washington DC, 1980
54 Ibid., 17.
55 See Appendix B: 2a reproduced in Report of Government Section Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, 460.
56 The CCD was based in Tokyo with branch offices in Osaka and Fukuoka. At its height it consisted of 66 officers, 63 enlisted men, 244 civilians and 149 other non-Japanese foreign nationals in addition to a Japanese staff of 5658. See Etō, “One Aspect of the Allied Occupation,” 21.
57 Ibid., 17.
58 Ochi, “What Did She Read? The Cultural Occupation of Post-War Japan and Translated Girls’ Literature,” F-Gens Jyanaru 5 (2006): 359-63, 363.
59 Nishi Toshio, Unconditional Democracy:
Education and Politics in Occupied Japan 1945-1952, Stanford University: Hoover Institution Press, 1982, 101, gives a summary of fifteen categories of articles commonly suppressed by the CCD, none pertaining to morals; Journalist William Coughlin in Conquered Press: The MacArthur Era in Japanese Journalism, Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1952, does not mention obscenity at all in his discussion of CCD grounds for censorship.
60 Etō, “One Aspect of the Allied Occupation.”
61 Rubin, “Impact of the Occupation on Literature,” 167-74.
62 Memo contained in Momo iro raifu microfiche in Gordon W. Prange collection.
63 Hasegawa Takuya, Waisetsu shuppan no rekishi (History of obscene publications), Tokyo: Sanichi shobō, 1978, 36.
64 Ann Sherif, Japan's Cold War: Media, Literature and the Law, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, 227, n. 31.
65 Yamamoto, in Kasutori zasshi kenkyū: shinboru ni miru fūzoku shi (Pulp magazine research: The history of sexual customs seen as a symbol), Tokyo: Shuppan nyūsusha, 1976, 42-3, suggests three possible reasons for the designation kasutori. Firstly, kasutori shōchū was a poor quality alcoholic drink made from a mixture of fermented rice and potatoes that, like the bad journalism of the kasutori press, was best avoided. Secondly, a kasutori drinker was only able to survive three cups before entering into a dangerous state, similarly kasutori magazines were unlikely to survive past their third issue. Finally, it was suggested that kasutori was a term applied to the poor quality paper used to print the magazines, as opposed to the deleterious nature of their contents.
66 Deborah Shamoon, “Misora Hibari and the Girl Star in Postwar Japanese Cinema,” Signs 35, no. 1 (2009): 131-55, 135.
67 See Yamamoto, Kasutori zasshi kenkyū; Matsuzawa, “Kasutori zasshi to ‘Garo’ no Nagai-san (The kasutori press and ‘Garo's’ Mr Nagai),” Sei media 50 nen, Tokyo: Takarajimasha, (1995): 23-31; Shimokawa, Showa seisō shi: senzen, senchūhen (Showa history of sex: prewar and wartime collection), Tokyo: Dentō to gendaisha, 1981.
68 Ningen tankyū, “Zadankai: Onna gakusei no seitai o tsuku (Roundtable: A discussion of the situation of female students),” March (1952): 66-77, 76.
69 Christine Marran, Poison Woman: Figuring Female Transgression in Modern Japanese Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, 138. See also Kōno Kensuke, “Hihyō to jitsuzon: sengo hihyō ni okeru sekushuariti (Criticism and existence: Postwar criticism and sexuality),” Kokubungaku kaishaku to kyōzai no kenkyū 40, no. 8 (1995): 44-51, 46, who also argues that the Japanese authorities used pulp culture as a kind of “camouflage.” Another list of “three Ss” popular in the prewar period comprised “speed, sport and screen.”
70 Front cover of Esu, June 1948.
71 Chapman, “Japan: Propaganda to Pornography,” 8.
72 Ibid.
73 Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: WW Norton, 1999, 150.
74 Ishikawa Hiroyoshi, “Kanzen naru kekkon kara HOW TO SEX e no sengo shi (A postwar history from Perfect Marriage to How to Sex),” Kurowassan, July (1977): 113-15, 113.
75 Donald Keene, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature in the Modern Era, New York: Henry Holt, 1984, 967.
76 Censorship notes following on from the galley proofs of the May 1946 edition of the magazine Toppu microfiche in the Prange collection.
77 Document preserved in Gordon W. Prange Collection, JP/TOK/PPB/c/356.
78 Luther and Boyd, “American Occupation Control over Broadcasting,” 46.
79 Marlene Mayo, “Literary Reorientation in Occupied Japan: Incidents of Civil Censorship,” in Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in West Germany and Japan, edited by Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer, Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, (1991): 135-62, 143-44.
80 In reference to the April 1948 edition of the magazine Jigoku (also entitled L'enfer, i.e. hell) on Jigoku microfiche in Gordon W. Prange collection.
81 Luther and Boyd, “American Occupation Control over Broadcasting,” 49, n. 6.
82 Censorship document signed by S. Nagoshi following on from April 1949 edition of Momo iro raifu on microfiche in the Gordon W. Prange collection.
83 Richard Friman, “The Impact of the Occupation on Crime in Japan,” in Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society, edited by Mark Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita, London: Routledge, 2007, 98.
84 Shikita Minoru and Tsuchiya Shinichi, Crime and Criminal Policy in Japan from 1926 to 1988: Analysis and Evaluation of the Showa Era, Tokyo: Japan Criminal Policy Society, 1990, 81.
85 Hasegawa, Waisetsu shuppan no rekishi, 31-32.
86 Kitagawa Chiyomi, “H taisa fūjin (Mrs Captain H),” Ryōki, December (1946): 40-49.
87 Miyanaga, “Ōchō kōshoku kokkei tan (Humorous tales of dynastic lust),” Ryōki, December (1946): 24-27.
88 Hasegawa, Waisetsu shuppan no rekishi, 31-32.
89 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 149.
90 Cather, The Great Censorship Trials of Literature and Film in Postwar Japan, 1950-1983. PhD. Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2004, 23, notes that the widespread discussion of sexual irregularities in the popular press was introduced by the defense in the 1951 obscenity trial of the publisher and translator of Lady Chatterley's Lover, in an attempt to show that graphic depictions of sex were consistent with community standards. It was however the adulterous nature of the sex described in Chatterley, as in “Mrs Captain H,” that rendered these descriptions problematic, as Cather notes, “the prosecution was attempting to stop adultery in reality via a ban in representation,” 32.
91 Hasegawa, Waisetsu shuppan no rekishi, 34.
92 Kushner, The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006, 67.
93 Ibid., 185.
94 Mark McLelland, “A Short History of Hentai.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific no. 12, 2006, online. Another potential derivation I did not know about at the time is that “H” is the letter that comes between G and I - a reference to the lecherous nature of some of the GIs serving with the Occupation. See Inoue Shōichi, “Ecchi to esuemu (H and SM),” In Sei no yogo shū, edited by Inoue Shōichi and Kansai Seiyoku Kenkyū Kai, Tokyo: Kōdansha gendai shinsho, (2004): 37-44.
95 Hasegawa, Waisetsu shuppan no rekishi, 34.
96 Mayo, “Literary Reorientation in Occupied Japan,” 143.
97 Hasegawa, Waisetsu shuppan no rekishi, 34.
98 Driscoll, Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan's Imperialism 1895-1945, Durham: Duke University Press, 2010, 183.
99 Hasegawa, Waisetsu shuppan no rekishi, 34.
100 Yamamoto Akira, “Kasutori zasshi,” 246-47.
101 Ibid., 246.
102 Sherif, Japan's Cold War, 74. That there was disagreement about the nature of obscenity between Japanese and Occupation authorities is also suggested by the fact that in 1952 the Japanese police prosecuted a cinema owner for showing a “birth-control film” that had been developed in the late 1940s and passed CIE inspection; see Roland Domenig, “A History of Sex Education Films in Japan, Part 2: The PostWar Years and Basukon Eiga,” Midnight Eye, March 2007, online.
103 Cather, Great Censorship Trials, 67. The Lady Chatterley obscenity case has much in common with the prosecution of Ryōki. As Cather notes the Chatterley trial “was an attempt by the government to assert their authority in the realm of representation to deflect attention from their lack of effective control in the realm of reality,” 33.
104 Hasegawa, Waisetsu shuppan no rekishi, 36.
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