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Cleansing the Nation: Urban Entertainments and Moral Reform in Interwar Japan1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

ELISE K. TIPTON
ELISE K. TIPTON*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Abstract

This article focuses on Japanese government restrictions and regulation of urban entertainments during the 1920s and 1930s as examples of attempts to rectify what was perceived as the declining morals of a modernizing, industrializing Japanese society. In this respect it adds another dimension to depictions of the Second World War as opposition to the cultural as well as political hegemony of the major Western powers. However, although war no doubt gave added impetus to the state's desire to unify popular support and sense of loyalty to the nation, morality campaigns had been initiated even before war had become an imminent possibility. Restrictions were imposed on cafés, dance halls and other modern entertainments, representing opposition to Westernizing, modernizing trends in social values and behaviour that had become prominent in the cities during the 1920s—individualism, materialism, sexuality, and more particularly, female sexuality. Middle class Protestants played a significant role in promoting and shaping these policies. Although such reformers disagreed with the government on other matters, they actively enlisted governmental support to carry out a moral cleansing of the ‘spiritual pests’ infesting the nation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , July 2008 , pp. 705 - 731
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

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51 Quoted in Ishikawa Hiroyoshi, Goraku no senzenshi (A prewar history of entertainment), Tokyo: Tôkyô Shoseki, 1981, p. 126.

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58 Murashima, ‘Kanraku no ôkyû’, pp. 356–8. There were 100 sen to one yen.

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63 Ibid., pp. 10–11.

64 ‘Shin Tôkyô kôshinkyoku’ (New Tokyo March) was a hit song in 1930. Lyrics by Saijô Yaso.

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72 See for example, Fujii Kenjirô, ‘Teisô no kannen narabini sore no ichimondai’ (The idea of chastity and one of its problems), Josei (Woman), July 1923, pp. 94–108; Chiba Kameo, ‘Otto no teisô mondai’ (The issue of a husband's chastity), Josei, Sept. 1927, pp. 100–07. For a more detailed study of these topics in Josei, see Elise K. Tipton, ‘Sex in the City: Chastity vs Free Love in Interwar Japan’, Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 11 (August 2005). URL: http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue11. For a detailed history of sexology and discussion of sexual issues in 1920s popular magazines as well as academic journals, see Sabine Frühstück, Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2003.

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77 ‘Kakuseikai shuisho’ (Declaration of the Purity Association), Kakusei, July 1911, p. 6.

78 Kakusei, July 1911, p. 3.

79 ‘Kakuseikai shuisho’, p. 9.

80 Abe Isoo, ‘Kôshô seido’ (The system of licensed prostitution), pp. 13–14.

81 Abe Isoo, ‘Fûki torishimari ni kansuru seifu no mujun’ (Contradictions in the government's control of public morals), Kakusei, Dec. 1913, pp. 2–4.

82 Kagawa Toyohiko, ‘Haishô undô no konpon seishin’ (The fundamental spirit of the movement for abolition of prostitution), Kakusei, Jan. 1936, pp. 7–8.

83 Morikawa Hôji, ‘Fûki torishimari ni tsuite’ (On the control of public morals), Kakusei, Oct. 1936, pp. 39–40.

84 Keishichôshi Hensan Iinkai (ed.), Keishichôshi, Shôwa zenpen (The history of the Metropolitan Police Board, the early Showa era), Keishichôshi Hensan Iinkai, 1962, p. 810.

85 Ibid., pp. 811–12.

86 Tamaki, ‘Shakô dansu jûnen no omoide’, p.193.

87 Murashima, ‘Kanraku no ôkyû’, pp. 357–8.

88 Tamaki, ‘Shakô dansu jûnen no omoide’, p. 199.

89 Ibid., pp. 223–7.

90 On the importation and ‘domestication’ of the tango from the West to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, see Savigliano, Marta E., ‘Tango in Japan and the World Economy of Passion’ in Tobin, Joseph J. (ed.), Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992, pp. 239–43Google Scholar.

91 Tamaki, ‘Shakô dansu jûnen no omoide’, pp. 232–3.

92 Murashima, ‘Kanraku no ôkyû’, pp. 359–64.

93 Ibid., pp. 366–8.

94 Keishichôshi Hensan Iinkai (ed.), Keishichôshi, Shôwa zenpen, pp. 812–16.

95 Ibid., p. 815.

96 Ôbayashi Munetsugu, Jokyû seikatsu no shin kenkyû (A new study of the lives of waitresses) in Gomi Yuriko (ed.), Kindai fujin mondai meicho senshû, Shakai mondai hen, dai 3 kan (Selected classics on modern women's issues, Social issues series, vol. 3), Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentâ, 1983, originally published 1937, p. 64.

97 Keishichôshi Hensan Iinkai (ed.), Keishichôshi, Shôwa zenpen, p. 818.

98 Ibid., pp. 825–30.

99 Ibid.

100 ‘Kakuchi no kafê taisaku’ (Measures against cafés in various parts of Japan), Kakusei, vol. 25, Sept. 1935, p. 38.

101 ‘Te mo ashi mo denu—môretsu na ero seibatsu’ (All quashed down: Severe suppression of eroticism), Tôkyô asahi shinbun, 25 November 1930, p. 2; Ishikawa, Goraku no senzen shi, pp. 134–5.

102 ‘Môretsu na ero seibatsu’, p. 2.

103 Ishikawa, Goraku no senzen shi, p. 29. On the role of one such storyteller or rakugoka, the British/Australian Henry Black, see Ian McArthur, ‘Henry Black, Rakugo and the Coming of Modernity in Meiji Japan’, Japan Forum, vol. 16, no. 1 (2004), pp. 135–64.