TRACING TRANSCOLONIAL INTIMACIES: RELATIONAL RESISTANCE THROUGH THE OCCUPATION OF JAPAN (1945-1952)

Abstract

Tracing Transcolonial Intimacies seeks to respond to the central question, “how can we work together across difference?” by exploring rhetorical strategies that bring people together across the divisions of coloniality. I enact a relational approach to rhetorical studies, to decenter individual subjectivity and to spotlight resistant relationalities. I combine this with a transcolonial framework, which grapples with the multiple vectors of coloniality. Such orientations enable the theorization of transcolonial intimacies, or mutual recognitions of humanity which bring the Other into the self. This project thus illuminates transcolonial intimacies as a form of resistant relationality obfuscated by colonial hegemonies. I am particularly invested in locating and analyzing transcolonial intimacies through the Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), a period defined by the collision between the Japanese and US empires, and the subsequent rupture of the Japanese empire. The three case studies thus seek to understand how Japanese civilians and Americans involved with the Occupation found opportunities to connect across three themes: race, gender, and foodways. These transcolonial intimacies reverberate, existing within a lineage of solidarities that draw from the past and extend into the future. To reckon with such relations of resistance, which move across time and space, I trace fragmented texts and artifacts situated in archives across national and cultural borders. Chapter 1 foregrounds relationships between Black American men soldiers and Japanese women civilians during a time of anti-fraternization and shared segregation under global white supremacy. Themes from the early twentieth century, such as the world color line and Black internationalism, regained relevance and functioned to reimagine Black American-Japanese solidarities. Chapter 2 examines how American women working for the Occupation and Japanese women union leaders collaborated on the adoption of menstruation leave. I argue that menstruation leave served dual purposes of liberation and containment, and also interrogate the story of menstruation leave as it is told through Mead Smith Karras, an economist for the Occupation administration. Chapter 3 illuminates how the total war period and the Occupation forced Japanese people to adapt their foodways for survival. I shed light on American participation within this process, including consumption of the Other and the uncomfortable reckonings that ensue. The dissertation concludes by following reverberations of transcolonial intimacies into the present, with an acknowledgment of what dehumanizes and divides, but also with an invitation to turn towards what humanizes and connects.