Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army / Edition 1

by Sabine Frühstück

Overview

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 Frühstück 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520247956
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/14/2007
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	275
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Sabine Frühstück is Professor of Modern Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan (UC Press, 2003).

Read an Excerpt

Uneasy Warriors

Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army

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By Sabine Frühstück

University of California Press

Copyright © 2007 The Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-24795-6

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Chapter One

On Base

We must remember the true nature of our role as members of the Self-Defense Forces, and refrain from taking part in political activities, reflect deeply on the distinguished mission bestowed on us as members of the Self-Defense Forces, and take great pride in our work. By the same token, we must devote ourselves unstintingly to training and self-discipline and, in the face of events, be prepared to discharge our duties at risk to ourselves.

From "The Ethos of Self-Defense Forces Personnel," adopted on June 28, 1961 (cited in Boeicho 2005:546-547)

With the help of private first class Tama Keiko, it had taken me about half an hour to get into thick cotton fatigues and boots whose leather had been hardened by the sweat of dozens of soldiers who had worn them before me. The pants needed to be stuck into the boots. Superfluous cloth had to be tightly folded back. The boots had to be evenly laced up, and the laces tucked into the boot shafts. The shirt had to be tucked into the pants so that the creases on the front and back of the shirt formed extensions of the creases on the front and back of the pants. The belt was supposed to hold everything in place, without hindering movement. All buttons had to be properly closed. The cap had to be placed on my head and pulled down to right above my eyebrows so that my eyes were protected against the bright summer sun but still could be seen by others when I looked straight ahead.

I had left my pleasantly air-conditioned office at the University of Tokyo and taken the bullet train for several hours and a local train for another two, arriving in the small town of Kibita at mid-morning on July 16, 2001, to spend a week of "basic training" at a GSDF base. Two uniformed men had jumped out of a Jeep to greet me at the station and drive me to the base. Entering the base through the guarded gate, the two men showed their identification cards and exchanged salutes with the service members on guard duty. The younger of the two men was a private who did not introduce himself. The older one was Major Ono Shun*, the man in charge of the public relations office on the base. Ono had carefully prepared my visit and was in charge of arranging interviews with new recruits and their drill sergeants. In this chapter, I take a close look at the internal mechanisms of a GSDF base through the lens of a week of basic training. Narrating this experience allows me to identify and introduce some of the key sites, people, and issues that make up a base and characterize the everyday lives of Japanese service members.

THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

This book draws from the methods of anthropology and cultural studies, including intensive interviews and participant observation, as well as the analysis of historical and present-day documents, texts, and visual materials. Between the summer of 1998 and the spring of 2004, I spent about nineteen months conducting fieldwork in Japan. I believe that these stints-the longest was for a period of eight months in 1998-99-considerably added to the credibility I had as someone interested in "understanding" (with all its ambiguities) the Self-Defense Forces. Altogether I interviewed about 195 people: officers, officer candidates, noncommissioned officers, and privates serving in the infantry, artillery, transport, communications, airborne, medical, and public relations; and international cooperation units and departments. The service members I spoke to related their motivations, experiences, and visions of their own futures and that of the Self-Defense Forces.

I encountered service members at all stages of their careers, from lieutenants to three-star generals and admirals, first- to fourth-year cadets at the NDA, and new recruits just three months into basic training. In general, these men and women were between the ages of eighteen and fifty, but my subjects also included veterans in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. Service members talked to me in the field in between training sessions, in meeting rooms of base headquarters, in their offices, in coffee shops and restaurants, and in their homes. In geographical terms, their experience ranged widely, including bases in Kyushu, Shikoku, Kansai, Tokyo, and Hokkaido in Japan, as well as foreign postings. In some cases, tours of duty had been extended for up to six months for missions to Mozambique, Cambodia, the Golan Heights, and Honduras. Japanese defense attachés could be posted abroad for as long as several years. About 90 percent of my interviewees were men. They can roughly be categorized into members of the GSDF chief of staff (Rikujo bakuryocho), officers (shoko kurasu no kanbu), noncommissioned officers (kashikan), and enlisted service members (rikushi). I will refer to all of these people as "service members" throughout the book unless a more precise definition is necessary. In addition to service members, I interviewed other people with close ties to the Self-Defense Forces. Among these were academics at both the NDA and the NMDA. I also consulted with researchers at a number of research institutes, which are in some way affiliated with the Self-Defense Forces, the JDA, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and deal with military research. I interviewed a retired commander of the U.S. Northern Army who was at the time the CEO of a military technology corporation; a former member of the Japanese Imperial Army; a representative of the Self-Defense Forces' veteran association, and a retired general (who was then a security consultant to Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintaro); and foreign defense attachés to Japan from South Korea, Italy, Germany, and the United States. Lastly, I spoke with journalists who report primarily on military matters in newspapers and magazines, ranging from the Yomiuri Shinbun and Mainichi Shinbun to Securitarian and Jane's Defense Weekly.

Several service members and veterans allowed me to take a closer look at their personal lives by inviting me to their houses, where I talked with my (usually male) interviewee for many hours over lunch, dinner, or coffee and cake. In most cases I met their wives, who participated in the conversation, provided their views of their lives as service members' wives, and commented on their husbands' statements. In a few cases I also met their children, some of whom had never talked to a foreigner before.

By visiting many different military sites, I was able to trace typical service members' careers, which take them all over Japan. As a formal visitor of base commanders, I was allowed to spend full days at various bases, including Iruma ASDF base, Nerima GSDF base, and Matsudo GSDF base. Although arrangements at each base differed, generally an aide to the base commander picked me up at the nearest station or at the entrance to the base, took me to the commander's office, and after a polite exchange of greetings and a brief introduction of myself and my project, a guide was appointed to show me around. The guides provided me with general information about the base and introduced me to several people engaged in their respective activities. On one base I interviewed Self-Defense Forces personnel individually but in the presence of my guide. At other bases I had the chance to both interview people individually at work or during lunch, and away from my guide in more casual, less controlled settings.

I spent time on several bases on open house days and attended military festivals. At the annual open house of the NDA, which allows, like any Japanese festival, for a great deal of playfulness despite the otherwise rigid character of the institution, some cadets showed up in Imperial Army uniforms, a few appeared in former German SS (Schutzstaffel) uniforms, and others had nude photographs of themselves pinned onto a board next to a brief self-introduction in the hopes of finding girlfriends among the visitors. I explored the NDA campus, ate lunch in the cafeteria, visited classrooms, and spoke to people in meeting rooms and study rooms. All of this gave me insight into what the daily life of cadets is like on the hills above Yokosuka Bay, a few minutes away from the American base, and on the very spot where, during the first half of the twentieth century, Imperial Army officers had also been trained. In addition, I visited the campuses of the NMDA and the General Staff College in Ebisu. I attended the annual parade of the GSDF base in Asaka, where then-prime minister Obuchi Keizo spoke on the need for the tough training of the Self-Defense Forces in the aftermath of the 1999 North Korean "missile incident" (a threat to Japanese territory). During a second trip to the Iruma ASDF base, along with thousands of visitors, I watched different kinds of airplanes flying overhead. There, I also closely followed a Miss ASDF Contest. A female officer introduced the participants; representatives of various companies congratulated them; and uniformed Self-Defense Forces veterans presented them with gifts. I spent an incredibly hot day in early August 1999 at the Matsushima ASDF festival watching a performance by the Blue Impulse Team, who after a round of applause, were joined by a female model for visitor photographs. Several days on two different occasions at the muddy training ground at Mt. Fuji and the Fuji Officers' Candidate School (Fuji Gakko) in Gotemba provided me with insights on senior cadets' last maneuver before graduation (figure 1). They chatted with me, dug defense holes, and prepared for and went on a 30-kilometer night march, greeting me in the morning upon their arrival. I returned to the Fuji school a few years later, in 2003, for the school's forty-ninth anniversary festival.

Some of my interviewees were wary, and some were delighted to talk with me. They often took on the role of social elder and/or military expert as they related the lessons of their lives and their hopes for the future. Against the backdrop of the Self-Defense Forces' rather unfavorable reputation, and-in many cases-their individual socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, many service members seemed eager to talk to me about their careers. Service members of all ranks were surprised and pleased that someone from the outside was interested in their everyday lives, their relationships, and their opinions of their work and the world in general. For some, I must have provided the first opportunity to be singled out to speak about their lives. The relative openness of many interviewees-especially of those at the end of their careers-might also be attributed to the sense that the Self-Defense Forces are not duly recognized and appreciated. For the first time, here was their chance to tell all to somebody who was willing to listen.

Officers transfer every two or three years, and thus contacts I made were often temporary. On the one hand, it has been difficult to keep in touch and follow up on conversations I had over the years. On the other hand, these circumstances have led to new opportunities. I was able to repeatedly interview a number of officers who had transitioned from desk posts in the JDA to base commander positions in rural Japan or from international posts back to desk posts in the JDA, undergoing at least one major promotion in the process. I also had the opportunity to interview successors to various positions, thus being able to observe the considerable range of differences in personality, ambition, and vision that each individual brings to a post.

Other important contacts developed through several encounters-some formal, others almost coincidental. In one case, an official visit to the JDA was unsuccessful until I ran into the officer I was looking for at a live-firing demonstration at the foot of Mt. Fuji. He was excited about having just achieved a major promotion. He told me right then and there that he would be able to arrange a base visit for me, during which I would be able to interview ten service members who had just returned from a prestigious international mission.

Another important contact developed out of a farewell party for a foreign defense attaché in Tokyo. There, an ASDF general told me I reminded him of his son, a sociologist (who did not intend to follow in his father's footsteps). Two days later, he sent me an email and invited me to the base. Later he arranged for me to attend the annual live-fire demonstration at the Mt. Fuji Training Ground (Kita Fuji Enshujo) and introduced me to a GSDF base commander he had been friends with since his days at the NDA. In another case, a young female GSDF veteran, who had self-published comics about her experiences in the Self-Defense Forces, not only told me about her career as a service member, but also introduced me to an officer couple and accompanied me to their house, where I was able to speak with them for an entire afternoon. I found that the more often I returned to the field, the less dependent I became on higher-ranking officers; each time I met people who knew somebody in the Self-Defense Forces or knew somebody with a connection to the Self-Defense Forces. A friend's sister-in-law, for example, turned out to be a nurse in a Self-Defense Forces' hospital, and a scholar friend's advisee was a graduate of one of the Self-Defense Forces' high schools. Many of them were outspoken about their appreciation for and their criticism of the Self-Defense Forces.

More than most other institutions, military establishments are held together by clear-cut hierarchies of rank, specialization, and branch of service. The hierarchical structure is instilled in service members from the day they join, and it is represented on everything they see and wear: uniform chest pockets, sleeves, shoulders, caps, and unit banners in the form of colors, cherry blossoms, stripes, and a variety of other symbols. Given these fairly conservative norms in the Japanese military (and the conservative nature of the larger Japanese society), I was not sure what kind of response I could expect from service members. Furthermore, as suggested by the walls and fences around bases, the presence of guards at the entrance to bases, and the procedures required to enter bases-the need to show identification cards, and in the case of visitors, fill out visitor forms-the armed forces are, to a considerable degree, closed to outsiders. Setting aside the relative unease that many Japanese men and women feel when dealing with a foreigner, the Self-Defense Forces administration might well have suspected that I would at least inconvenience, if not unduly burden, the base authorities. I often had to be accompanied, driven, and picked up again, and thus I took up a lot of somebody's time in that regard. The number one rule of the Self-Defense Forces-safety-applied to me as well, and occasionally I had to be kept out of the way of combat and other field exercises where (fake) ammunition was used. My health and fitness also were not taken for granted. I did not carry heavy equipment when I accompanied units to their various field trainings, but dealing for hours at a time with the summer heat, high grass, and unwieldy ground meant that I had to frequently assure the drill sergeants that I was all right. And if I was the only woman present, the lack of bathrooms became an additional potential problem.

As with any institution (Douglas 1986), the military depends on a high degree of secrecy in order to monitor and control its image. This was true of the Self-Defense Forces, as well, and all the information that they produce and disseminate about themselves. Scholars who have analyzed organizations as varied as theater troops, sports teams, and confectionary factories have suggested that Japan's organizations and institutions are particularly rigid in how they close themselves off (Edwards 2003; Kondo 1990; Robertson 1998). But some concerns about secrecy are specific to the military. Commanders I spoke to felt that a base and its units are the core of their organization, and they worried that both the service members who talked to me and I myself were to some degree beyond their control. They worried about what I would hear and see, and how I would interpret that.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Uneasy Warriors by Sabine Frühstück Copyright © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents

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

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Well-observed, thoughtfully analyzed portrait of the military. . . . A must read in the canon of recent ethnographies of Japan."—Journal of Japanese Stds

"An important and thoroughly enjoyable contribution to the field of Japanese studies . . . An enlightening book."—Japanese Studies

Editorial Reviews

An important and thoroughly enjoyable contribution to the field of Japanese studies . . . An enlightening book.

Japanese Studies - Beatrice Trefalt

Well-observed, thoughtfully analyzed portrait of the military. . . . A must read in the canon of recent ethnographies of Japan.

Journal Of Japanese Stds - Amy Borovoy