B003: Cold War, What’s Cookin’: Moral Panic, Gender Equality, Coed Fellowship, and Domestic Culture in 1950’s Japan

Organizer(s)

• AF

  Alisa Freedman

  University of Oregon, United States

Chair(s)

• SL

  Satu Limaye

  East-West Center, United States

Paper Presenter(s)

• AF

  Alisa Freedman

  University of Oregon, United States
• BU

  Benjamin Uchiyama

  University of Southern California, United States
• BS

  Barbara Sato

  Seikei University (Japan), United States
• JL

  John Leisure

  University of California, Los Angeles, United States

Discussant(s)

• SL

  Satu Limaye

  East-West Center, United States

Session Abstract: During the Occupation (1945-1952), GHQ/SCAP established broad parameters for democracy and pacifism in Japan, shifted by Reverse Course (1947-1948) measures to support Cold-War containment and alliance-building strategies. But the 1950s were a moment when many Japanese felt, for the first time since the war ended, that they could fully and openly debate what kind of postwar future they wanted for themselves. Several debates occurred through commercial periodicals, public exhibits, and handbooks—rising forms of 1950s middlebrow culture (accessible culture in between intellectual art and lowbrow pulp). Our interdisciplinary panel examines how Japanese reporters, activists, architects, and students mobilized middlebrow media to advance alternative uses for American imperialist programs in mainland Japan and Okinawa; to react to potentials and failures of material culture to reform daily life; and to address gender inequities and generational divides. Benjamin Uchiyama analyzes how media uproar over Yamagiwa Hiroyuki’s robbery of a Nihon University van incited moral panic about the future of postwar Japan. Barbara Sato discusses why socialist feminist Tanaka Sumiko chose womenʼs magazines as a site for molding gendered identities. John Leisure examines the concurrent American exhibition of “traditional” Japanese houses and promotion of public housing in Japan to present competing visions of Japan’s domestic culture. Alisa Freedman reads educational handbooks to understand how Japanese students used American-sponsored study abroad to negotiate national identities. Satu Limaye synthesizes panel themes and adds perspective on political economy and U.S.-Japan relations. 1950s middlebrow media envision multiple “postwars,” challenging metanarratives of progress and consensus dominant after Anpo (1960).

Presentations:

• Occupied Exchange: A Student's Guide to Surviving American Imperialism in the 1950s
  

  Paper Presenter: Alisa Freedman – University of Oregon
• The Nichidai Gang Incident and the Terrors of “After-War” in Defeated Japan
  

  Paper Presenter: Benjamin Uchiyama – University of Southern California
• Tanaka Sumiko and Her Struggle to Create a Gender-Equal Society in Postwar Japan
  

  Paper Presenter: Barbara Sato – Seikei University (Japan)
• Constructing Housing Culture: From MoMA's Japanese Exhibition House to the Cold War Kitchen (1954-1959)
  

  Paper Presenter: John Leisure – University of California, Los Angeles