ABSTRACT
The prostitute, together with the war orphan and black market merchant, was an icon of early postwar life. Tamura Taijirō’s “literature of the flesh” (nikutai no bungaku) and the films of Naruse Mikio and Mizoguchi Kenji helped memorialize her, as did popular songs such as “Following the Stars” (“Hoshi no nagare,” 1946).1 Even today one can hear older patrons at Japanese bars crooning this occupation-era tune and pulling out all stops for the poignant refrain, “Who made me into this kind of woman?” The public seemed especially intrigued by the brash, iconoclastic streetwalkers known as panpan, many of whom catered to the occupation soldiers. These women embraced not only the occupiers themselves but American mannerisms and fashion. Decked out in brightly colored dresses, strutting around in high heels and puffing on Lucky Strikes, the panpan elicited ambivalent responses: admiration and disdain, pity and envy, fear and desire. Prurience no doubt contributed to the public’s fascination as well. Yet the panpan was above all a survivor of the postwar chaos, and in this regard nearly every Japanese who lived through the war could identify with her. After the occupation ended, Japanese journalists and activists began writing works of non-fiction aimed at increasing public awareness of prostitution as a social problem. These publications ranged from academic studies and investigative journalism to dubious first-hand confessions by former panpan. While few of these books and articles are remembered today, they commanded a large readership at the time and exerted a tangible influence on Japanese social discourse throughout the 1950s. The present chapter examines several such works
and discerns a common but often overlooked subtext: namely, the desire to contain —through both policy and narrative itself-the threat these women posed to Japan’s social body. On the one hand, the panpan is depicted as a vulnerable and
tragic figure worthy of public sympathy. Yet she also represents free-flowing female desire and uncontrolled sexuality, which threaten middle-class, patriarchal values such as propriety, domesticity, and chastity.
