Uneasy Warriors Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army [Paperback]

Following World War II, Japan's postwar constitution forbade the country to wage war or create an army. However, with the emergence of the cold war in the 1950s, Japan was urged to establish the Self-Defense Forces as a way to bolster Western defenses against the tide of Asian communism. Although the SDF's role is supposedly limited to self-defense, Japan's armed forces are equipped with advanced weapons technology and the world's third-largest military budget. Sabine Fr?hst?ck draws on interviews, historical research, and analysis to describe the unusual case of a non-war-making military. As the first scholar permitted to participate in basic SDF training, she offers a firsthand look at an army trained for combat that nevertheless serves nontraditional military needs.

Sabine Fr?hst?ckis Professor of Modern Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author ofColonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan(UC Press, 2003).

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Asterisked Names and Abbreviations
Introduction

1. On Base
2. Postwar Postwarrior Heroism
3. Feminist Militarists
4. Military Manipulations of Popular Culture
5. Embattled Memories, Ersatz Histories

Epilogue
Notes
References
Index

This is one of the bestmost surprising, insightful, provocativebooks I've read on the complex interplay of memory, militarism and masculinity. Japan specialists will be sure to find it thought-provoking. But it should also be 'must reading' for all students of masculinity, femininity, militarization, and soldiering. This is comparative feminist ethnography at its smartest. Cynthia Enloe, author ofThe Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire

Uneasy Warriorspresents a rare and intimate view into the psychological and social workings of the Self-Defense Forces. lã-