The Remnants of Defeat: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Mixing in the Construction of Postwar Japanese Identity

Masako Endo, Rowan University

This paper examines the impact of interracial intimacy and racial mixing on the reconstruction of Japanese national/racial identity after the U.S. occupation of Japan, 1945-1952. As the occupation approached to end in the early 1950s, the defeated nation attempted to eliminate sexualized elements, or reminders of foreign rule in order to reenter the international arena as a reborn, independent nation. The most sexualized group was the panpan, or postwar unlicensed female sex workers serving Allied servicemen. The panpan were highly visible, showing off flashy fashion to the public and walking down the street snuggling up to foreign soldiers. While addressing their deviant appearance and behavior, I emphasize that the panpan were not an isolated entity because the boundaries between panpan and “ordinary women” became unclear as the occupation progressed. In this context, I focus on two groups of highly sexualized people: Japanese women who had relationships with foreign men; and mixed-blood children born to foreign fathers and Japanese women. While identifying both the similarities and differences between them, this paper demonstrates how both of them were collectively stigmatized as “un-Japanese” due to their association with the foreign, but the dimensions and processes of their stigmatization differed. I argue that the stigmatization of women with foreign partners was fluid and situational while that of mixed-blood children was essentialized and racialized. My aim is to show how these stigmatized people negotiated with the discourse that attempted to present them as the opposite of post-occupation Japanese national/racial identity in the making.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 219. Asians and the Construction of Ethnic Identities: Nationalism, Colonialism, and Power Relations