ABSTRACT
A young GI on a street corner, towering over a crowd of children and playfully tossing out treats of chocolate and chewing gum. Few images appear more often in Japanese literary accounts of the occupation era, and none better captures that historical moment in Japan’s social memory when apprehension dissolved into cautious relief, when the nation’s worst fears about the American occupiers were belied. This image also evokes the ambivalence and bittersweet nostalgia with which so many Japanese remember the occupation years. The soldier’s intimidating size attests to his supremacy, yet his spontaneous goodwill and boundless supply of sweets allays the children’s fears and begins to assuage the suspicions of Japan’s war-weary adults. Of course, the GI’s magnanimity also reinforces the occupied subject’s recognition of his authority. Gift-giving is an act of exchange, a tacit contract defining the hierarchical relationship between giver and receiver, and chocolate and chewing gum serve as humiliating reminders of Japan’s material deprivation following the nation’s defeat. The occupation soldier’s authority derives not only from his physical size and military might but from his material endowment and conspicuous displays of generosity. Yet there is another component to the authority of this soldier-cum-Santa Claus occupying Japan’s postwar street corner: he is, invariably, white. While it seems likely that nisei and black GIs also availed themselves of the local PX (military base store) and tossed out their share of chocolate and chewing gum to eager Japanese children, non-white members of the occupation forces seldom appear in these canonical scenes of postwar life. Despite the predominance of white GIs in Japan’s social memory of the occupation era, African-American soldiers have held a special fascination for postwar Japanese writers and are featured in numerous works of literature, three of which I discuss in this chapter. The first two are works of fiction, Ōe Kenzaburō’s “Prize Stock” (“Shiiku”) and Matsumoto Seichō’s “Painting on Black Canvas” (“Kuroji no e”), which
appeared in respected Japanese literary magazines early in 1958.1 Although “Prize Stock” is vaguely set at the war’s end rather than during the occupation, its thematic concerns overlap with those of Ōe’s occupation literature, and I have therefore included it in this chapter. The third work I discuss is a protest poem from occupied Okinawa, Arakawa Akira’s “The Colored Race” (“Yūshoku jinshu”).
