Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa

Women, Militarized Domesticity, and Transnationalism in East Asia

Mire Koikari author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:15th Jul '15

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Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa cover

This book examines roles of gender, race and nation in the geopolitics of Cold War East Asia on the Island of Okinawa.

In this innovative and engaging examination of the role of gender, race and nation in the geopolitics of Cold War East Asia, Mire Koikari explores the complex relationship between militarism and domesticity, and the involvement of women as agents in American empire building on the island of Okinawa.In this innovative and engaging study, Mire Koikari recasts the US occupation of Okinawa as a startling example of Cold War cultural interaction in which women's grassroots activities involving homes and homemaking played a pivotal role in reshaping the contours of US and Japanese imperialisms. Drawing on insights from studies of gender, Asia, America and postcolonialism, Koikari analyzes how the occupation sparked domestic education movements in Okinawa, mobilizing an assortment of women - home economists, military wives, club women, university students and homemakers - from the US, Okinawa and mainland Japan. These women went on to pursue a series of activities to promote 'modern domesticity' and build 'multicultural friendship' amidst intense militarization on the islands. As these women took their commitment to domesticity and multiculturalism onto the larger terrain of the Pacific, they came to articulate the complex intertwinement of gender, race, domesticity, empire and transnationality that existed during the Cold War.

'Cold War Encounters is a closely argued study that explores the intersections of rhetoric, policy, and the ambitions of individual actors by analyzing a rich variety of cases.' Jan Bardsley, Japanese Studies
'[Koikari's] book constitutes an important corrective to the existing literature on occupation-era Japan and Okinawa, and will hopefully usher in additional studies that follow its lead …' Ryan Masaaki Yokota, Social Science Japan Journal

ISBN: 9781107079502

Dimensions: 235mm x 158mm x 15mm

Weight: 530g

245 pages