The year was 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops poured into war-torn Japan and spread throughout the country. The effect of this influx on the local population did not lessen in the years following the war's end. In fact, the presence of foreign servicemen also heightened the visibility of certain others, particularly panpan-streetwalkers-who were objects of their desire. Occupying Power shows how intimate histories and international relations are interconnected in ways scholars have only begun to explore. Sex workers who catered to servicemen were integral to the postwar economic recovery, yet they were nonetheless blamed for increases in venereal disease and charged with diluting the Japanese race by producing mixed-race offspring. In 1956, Japan passed its first national law against prostitution, which produced an unanticipated effect. By ending a centuries-old tradition of sex work regulation, it made sex workers less visible and more vulnerable. This probing history reveals an important but underexplored aspect of the Japanese occupation and its effect on gender and society. It shifts the terms of debate on a number of controversies, including Japan's history of forced sexual slavery, rape accusations against U.S. servicemen, opposition to U.S. overseas bases, and sexual trafficking.
"Sarah Kovner's path breaking study of the Japanese sex industry during the Allied occupation brings to light that the Japanese historical toleration of state-regulated prostitution nonetheless has its limits when confronted with a new reality . . . Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan otherwise makes a compelling case and should be regarded as an indispensable read for all
American Historical Review
"Rich, theoretically-informed, and based on extensive archival research in several countries, Sarah Kovner's study sheds new light on a hitherto unexplored aspect of the Allied occupation of Japan-its sexual politics."
University of Wollongong, and author of Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment
"Occupying Power addresses an important subject, the multiple roles and shifting statuses of sex work in occupation-era Japan. . . [P]repares the ground for global perspectives and comparisons on sex work wherever occupation has occurred. Students and scholars will find the book a welcome addition to their readings in the modern history of Japan and the still understudied occupation era in particu
