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Through careful analysis of literary texts and attention to writers and works long excluded from Japan's postwar literary canon, this book introduces fresh perspectives on the occupation era.
List of contents
Preface. Introduction: Burned-Out Ruins and Barbed-Wire Fences. The Occupation of Japan as History. The Occupation in Mainland Japanese Literature and Criticism. Okinawa: From Premodern Kingdom to Japanese Prefecture. The Battle of Okinawa and the American Occupation (1945-1972). Chapter Summaries. Notes Chapter One: Roads to No-Man's Land. Language,Landscape and Gender in The American School. Gender, History and the Construction of Victimhood in The Cocktail Party. Fact and Fiction. Notes Chapter Two: A Base Town In The Literary Imagination. An Okinawan Boy. The Town That Went Pale. Children of Mixed Blood and the Remaking of Koza. Notes Chapter Three: A Darker Shade of Difference. Representing Blacks in Postwar Japan. Race and Narrative Ambivalance in Prize Stock. Reporting Truth, Imagining Motives: Painting on Black Canvas. Poetry of Protest: Arakawa Akira's The Coloured Race. Notes Chapter Four: Female Floodwalls. The Recreation and Amusement Association. Prostitution After the RAA. Prostitution and the Japanese Publishing Industry. The Chastity of Japan. Female Floodwall. Notes Chapter Five: Ambivalent Allegories. The Generational Logic of Guests From Afar. Prostitution and Other Honest Jobs: The Only Ones. Caste and Outcasts: Women of a Base Town. Marriage, Money and Desire: The Women of Chitose, Hokkaido. Notes Chapter Six: The Occupier Within. Reproducing The Occupation: Human Sheep. Style as Story: Narrative Technique and Memory in American Hijiki. Notes Epilogue: Occupation Literature in the Post-Vietnam Era. Okinawan Literature Since the Vietnam War. Saegusa Kazuko's A Winter's Death. Notes.
Summary
Through careful analysis of literary texts and attention to writers and works long excluded from Japan's postwar literary canon, this book introduces fresh perspectives on the occupation era.
