The Occupation of Japan: Arts and Culture: The Proceedings of a Symposium at Norfolk,

Virginia, 18-19 October 1984 by Thomas W. Burkman

Review by: Sey Nishimura
Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 583-584
Published by: University of California Press
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Reviews of Books 583
enemy
should recover an
"empire
to the south." The
Japanese
themselves, however,
had no little
say
in such matters. And it is
another of the merits of
Schonberger's
work that it
brings
out
the extent to
which,
vis-a-vis
radical-reforming
and conservative-
capitalist
Americans
alike,
Japan's
own conservative
elites,
their
domestic
position only mildly
disturbed
during
the aftermath
of
defeat,
were able to
procrastinate, sidestep,
and
manipulate
to
considerable and
lasting
effect.
University of
Sussex CHRISTOPHER THORNE
The
Occupation of Japan:
Arts and Culture: The
Proceedings of
a
Symposium
at
Norfolk, Virginia,
18-19 October 1984. Edited
by
Thomas W. Burkman
(Norfolk, Va.,
General
Douglas
MacArthur
Foundation,
1988. viii + 262
pp. $13.75)
Since the
conference,
"The
Occupation
of
Japan:
Arts
and
Culture,"
took
place
in
1984,
"Satire under the
Occupation:
The Case of Political Cartoons"
by
R. Sodei was
published
in
English
in
H6gaku
Shirin, LXXXII,
no. 3/4
(1985);
and the essence
of
J.
Rubin's "The
Impact
of the
Occupation
on
Literature,
or
Lady Chatterley
and Lt. Col. Verness"
appeared
condensed in
the conclusion of his article in
Journal
of Japanese
Studies, XI,
no. 1
(1985).
On the other
hand,
M.
Mayo's
"The War of Words
Continues: American Radio Guidance in
Occupied Japan"
adds
to her
previous
work in Americans as
Proconsuls,
edited
by
R. Wolfe
(1984). "Japanese
Art under the
Occupation," by
D. Waterhouse and "The
Occupation
and
Japanese
Cinema,"
by
K. Hirano are notable for their
original
and
exacting
research.
Arts and culture in
early occupied Japan
were under
"guid-
ance"
by
the Civil Information and Education Section
(CIE),
and
"censorship" by
the Civil
Censorship
Detachment
(CCD).
Guidance
may pass,
but
censorship
is a sensational
topic (e.g.,
A. Haruhara asserts in "The
Impact
of the
Occupation
on the
Japanese
Press" that
"censorship
cannot be
justified
under
any
circumstances").
Thus R. M.
Spaulding,
a former chief of the
Press,
Pictorial and Broadcast Division of the
CCD,
was recruited
as the
keynote speaker
of this conference. The
Japanese
transla-
tion of his
presentation
has
already appeared
in Shinbun
Kenkyi'
(No.
403,
Feb.
1985),
but
here,
through
his comments made sub-
sequent
to his
presentation,
we
perceive
better his attitude and
ideas. He criticizes
"Japanese
revanchist writers" and "Western
zealots" for the
dogma
of the inherent evil of
censorship;
for
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584 Pacific Historical Review
failure to
quantify (note by
reviewer: based on statistics in the
Gordon W.
Prange
Collection,
over
ninety-nine percent
of the
material was
passed
without
any changes);
for
perpetuating
the
bias that all censors had a
military mentality,
when most were
actually
civilians;
for
confusing
the CCD with the CIE and other
organizations;
and for
failing
to
compare
the Allied
occupation
with other
military occupations,
such as
Japanese
or Soviet
sys-
tems in their
respective occupied
territories
(pp. 12-13).
Extreme views
regarding
the
occupation
of
Japan
diminish
in the face of facts. For this
reason,
the
present
volume is
signifi-
cant,
as was the
publication
of the four
previous symposium
proceedings,
The
Occupation of Japan
and Its
Legacy
to the Postwar
World
(held
in
1975), Impact of Legal Reform (1977),
Economic
Policy
and
Reform (1978),
and The International Context
(1982).
A
thorough
index for all these volumes would make the series
even more accessible for future research.
University of
Toronto SEY NISHIMURA
Great Britain and the United States:
Special
Relations since World War
II.
By
Robert M.
Hathaway. (Boston, Twayne
Publishers,
1990.
xix + 173
pp.
$22.95
cloth,
$12.95
paper)
Robert
Hathaway
has written a
study
of
Anglo-American
relations in the modern era. Unlike his earlier
work,
Ambiguous
Partnership:
Britain and
America, 1944-1947
this
present
book sur-
veys
relations between London and
Washington
from the 1940s
to the last
year
of the Ronald
Reagan
administration.
Hathaway
recounts the
"special relationship"
that
grew
out of the war and
postwar
era,
and then discusses the demise of that
partnership
because of events such as the Korean War and Suez
Crisis,
or
because of
policies
such as America's massive retaliation idea.
To the
British,
the author notes with
appropriate
understate-
ment,
the islands of
"Quemoy
and Matsu were not worth a
global
war"
(p. 43).
The book is
particularly
useful in
tracing
the events
since the
1960s,
for British-American archival sources are lim-
ited for this
period
and scholars
generally
have left it unex-
plored.
In the 1960s relations declined as Britain withdrew from
its former
imperial power
status and concentrated on
European
affairs,
and as the U.S.
expanded
its war in Southeast Asia.
America's
preoccupation
with Vietnam contributed to
estranged
relations,
which the author feels hit the
postwar
nadir
during
the
Jimmy
Carter administration: "It is now
beyond
doubt,"
the
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