Whereas many studies on postwar Japan focus exclusively on US–Japan relations, this stimulating book positions Japanese culture in the global context of the Cold War. Ann Sherif categorizes Japanese cultural production between 1945 and 1960, which has been widely regarded as “postwar Japanese culture,” as “Cold War culture.” Drawing on Marukawa Tetsushi's Cold War Culture, she argues that Japan, despite suffering from historical “amnesia regarding the impact of the Cold War” on its culture (p. 8), was always part of the global battle.
Sherif's analysis of Kurosawa's Record of a Living Being sets the tone for the book (Ch. 1). The film is about an elderly patriarch who is so consumed with the dangers of H-bomb testing and radioactive fallout that he becomes obsessed with his plan of moving his entire family to Brazil. His family not only rejects his plan, however, but also resorts to having the patriarch ruled incompetent in a court of law. For Sherif, this is the “quintessential Cold War film” (p. 173), not only because of its focus on the nuclear arms race but also because of its associations with the free world ideals such as Western liberal democracy, a large middle class, domesticity, consumerism, and youth culture. To link the film to Cold War culture, she contrasts the old-fashioned authoritarian father with the other family members who resist “predemocratic” patriarchal authority by taking legal action against him. Her emphasis on the patriarch's illegitimate teenage son is particularly effective, as his rebellious attitude and trendy fashion represent Cold War youth culture.
This rebellious youth culture is a recurrent topic in the book. In Chapter 5, Sherif closely examines the novelist Ishihara Shintarō and the Sun Tribe (Taiyōzoku) that originated in his novels: hedonistic privileged young characters rebelling against their elders and rejecting old sexual norms. Although Ishihara is better known as Japan's prominent right-wing firebrand to younger generations, he initially came to prominence as a novelist at the age of 23 when he won the prestigious Akutagawa prize for his novel Season of the Sun (Taiyō no kisetsu) in 1956. Sherif discusses how Japanese media extensively covered Ishihara and the Sun Tribe in the 1950s, and how he manipulated the media to enhance his image as a novelist/politician.
Treating youth culture as a product of the Cold War culture, Sherif cogently likens the Sun Tribe to its American/Western European counterparts such as James Dean and the rebellious youth seen in the media. On the other hand, she carefully differentiates between the two groups. While the James Dean film Rebel Without a Cause problematizes “the neuroses and materialism of individual parents,” Ishihara's Season of the Sun emphasizes “the problematic behavior and attitudes of the children rather than of the older generation” (p. 191). Sherif connects the latter's flaw with the controversy surrounding Ishihara's winning of the Akutagawa Prize, by demonstrating how the judges for the prize deemed the novel immature because of its focus on shock value rather than the complexities of sexuality, desire, and obsession. Then, why did Ishihara win the Akutagawa Prize? According to Sherif, “despite its stylistic conventionality and lack of innovation in plot and character,” his work's preoccupation with novel things such as sailing and aloha shirts helped the judges come to the decision that “Ishihara had created a text that was somehow new” (p. 188). Since the Akutagawa Prize targets the newcomer to pure literature, the committee attached great importance to “fresh” (shinsen).
Although this book provides excellent explanations of the impact of the Cold War on Japanese culture, it is not without flaws. First, although the Cold War paradigm it proposes is certainly useful, it does not explain all aspects of cultural production during the Cold War. For example, Sherif regards Season of the Sun as a Cold War novel, despite its avoidance of the war, defeat, and anxiety about the A-bombs, because it represents a desire for renewed, revitalized masculinity after the post-occupation period (Ch. 5). As she juxtaposes the Sun Tribe with “Elvis Presley and other promiscuous and emphatically materialistic expressions of youth culture” (p. 192), Japan's revitalized masculinity is relevant to the Cold War. Nevertheless, it seems much more relevant to the US occupation than the Cold War. Japan's masculinity, which had been suppressed by US military strength, was reclaimed after the occupation ended in 1952. Although the US occupation was influenced by Cold War politics, Japan's renewed masculinity, expressed in Ishihara's work, clearly symbolizes the end of American rule and implicitly deals with the war, defeat, and the occupation. In this sense, Japan's revitalized masculinity should be examined in the context of the US–Japan relationship rather than Cold War culture.
My second quibble relates to Sherif's brief reference to Ishihara Shintarō's famous brother, Yūjirō (p. 174), as it seems a little inefficient to convey the powerful public appeal of the Ishihara brothers at that time. While the elder Ishihara was a celebrated writer in the mid-1950s, the younger Ishihara was the most popular movie star in Japan. This helped them multiply one another's fame. In real life, too, the brothers were the wealthy bad boys from the popular beach community of Shōnan, represented in the Sun Tribe novels and films. Their lifestyle epitomized the Sun Tribe.
Another possible weakness is Sherif's translation of the Japanese word mizumizushii. In examining “fresheness,” she writes, “[o]ther descriptive terms paired with fresh included ‘moist’ (mizumizushii) …” (p. 188). However, mizumizushii (瑞々しい) does not mean moist although it sounds similar to the word mizu (水) meaning water. Finally, Sherif misspells the name of Ōoka Shōhei while she refers to him as one of the prominent novelists.
These are minor problems, which should not take away from the value of the book as a whole. Sherif's insightful analysis of Japanese culture during the “high Cold War” era makes the book a strong contribution to the studies of Japanese history, literature, cinema, US–Japanese relations, and the Cold War.
