Female Subordination and Spatial Representation under The US Military Occupation of Japan and Okinawa：Focusing on Tatsuhiro Oshiro’s <i>White Season and Akiko Hiroike’s Only ones</i>

SAKUMOTO, Kana

doi:2021.12.1.157

The Journal of Japanese Language Literature Studies > Volume 12(1); 2021 > Article

Article

Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 2021;12(1): 157-173.
doi: https://doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2021.12.1.157

Female Subordination and Spatial Representation under The US Military Occupation of Japan and Okinawa：Focusing on Tatsuhiro Oshiro’s White Season and Akiko Hiroike’s Only ones

Kana SAKUMOTO

PhD student, Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of Language and Society

米軍占領下の女性管理と空間表象―― 大城立裕｢白い季節｣と広池秋子｢オンリー達｣を中心に

佐久本佳奈

一橋大学大学院言語社会研究科博士後期課程。日本近現代文学、沖縄文学。

Correspondence Kana SAKUMOTO ,Email: ld181004@g.hit-u.ac.jp

Published online: 30 June 2021.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

This paper will examine how public health measures instituted under the U.S. military occupation of Japan and Okinawa were reflected in the spatial organization of novels of the period through a comparison of the novels White Season by Tatsuhiro Oshiro and The Only Ones by Akiko Hiroike. It will then re-read “Koza” and “Tachikawa” as connected spaces of the occupation of the female body. The description of the entertainment district in the newspaper novel White Season, evinces the results of the laws promulgated by the U.S. military. The collusion between the U.S. military and a local doctor through the exchange of a prostitute leads to the gaze on the part of the doctor that evokes both the city and the female body as hotbeds of crime. The novel’s conclusion reveals that the elimination of the military base leads to the rediscovery of the natural landscape and true love. Next, I will argue that the representation of the “rental room” in The Only Ones is a space that produces money while masking women’s sex work, and at the same time it is a place where prostitutes evade the law and live together. I will also argue that the depiction of the most corrupted of the multiple prostitutes captures the military space of the Korean War.

Keywords: Okinawa, Occupation, Newspaper, Woman, Literature

キ―ワ―ド: 沖縄, 占領, 新聞, 女性, 文学