Japan Session 266
Loss and Recovery in Modern Japanese Literature
Jonathan Glade
University of Chicago
Mourning the Loss of Empire and Hayashi Fumiko's Floating Clouds
Abstract:
The August 15, 1945 broadcast of the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War instantly
reduced Japan’s territorial possessions from a vast empire to that of the Japanese archipelago.
While this marked an end to the tremendous violence of the war, surrender also brought with it
occupation by a foreign military power and a crisis in subjectivity, which could no longer be defined
vis-à-vis the colonial "other." Similar to the decolonization processes of former colonies, Japan,
through defeat to the Allied Powers, was propelled toward a process of "deimperialization"—a
reformation of subjectivity and reassessment of imperial institutions and hierarchical structures.
This paper examines how Hayashi Fumiko, a writer who had enthusiastically supported Japan’s
imperial expansion, deals with and represents the process of deimperialization in her postwar
work, specifically that of "Ukigumo" (Floating Clouds, 1951). "Ukigumo" symbolically addresses
nostalgia for lost colonies by using "colonial landscape"—landscape that evokes memories of
colonial spaces—to juxtapose a cold and dreary postwar Japan with a bright and vibrant wartime
French Indochina. This "mourning" of the death of the Japanese empire, always mediated by U.S.
military occupation, is subtle and implicit, with the attempt of the protagonist to deal with the
"imperial past" and find a place in postwar Japan ending in failure with her death. This paper argues
that the text's "indirect" approach suggests an ongoing effect of the US Military occupation's
ideological controls and censorship system which severely limited postwar discourse on and
recovery from Japan’s imperial losses.
Introduction
Early on in Hayashi Fumiko’s novel Floating Clouds (1949-1951), the third-person narrator
describes the protagonist Yukiko’s recollection of a morning scene in French Indochina: “The glass
door opened up to the veranda and a view of a canal lined with siris trees on its. Rare small birds
chirped away in the background. Covered in a light mist, the canal had several moored Annamese
boats floating on it. She felt something indescribable as she leaned on the stone veranda and took in
the morning air. Thinking that she had no idea such a dreamlike country existed, Yukiko listened to
1
the singing voices of the birds and gazed vacantly at the canal.”1 This scene, which takes place
during Yukiko’s journey to her post in the highlands of Annam where she will work as a typist for
the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, occurs right after Yukiko awakes from an actual dream.2 In
the dream, Yukiko recalls the abusive relationship she was subjected to by her brother-in-law’s
younger brother Sugio, whose family she lived with while attending typing school in Tokyo. In the
text, then, reality and fantasy are inverted; the horror of Yukiko’s abusive living situation in Japan is
left behind and transforms into a dream, whereas her escape to a “dreamlike” French Indochina
becomes her reality, as if she is awaking from a nightmare that was her life in Japan.
The contrast made in the text between wartime Japan and the colonial periphery is further
complicated by the fact that the narrative is set in postwar Japan. All descriptions of Yukiko’s life in
French Indochina, therefore, are made from the narrative present of postwar Japan. Upon Japan’s
defeat, Yukiko is forced to return to a repressive Japan still based on patriarchal order; her
“dreamlike” escape to the colonies is short-lived and she must face the nightmare that is postwar
Japan. “Loss” in the text, then, is both the loss of freedom available to Yukiko in the colonies and the
loss of the privileged status of “colonizer” afforded to her as Japanese woman in Japan-occupied
French Indochina.
As demonstrated by the passage quoted above, Hayashi’s Floating Clouds employs what I will
term “colonial landscape”—descriptions of landscape that evokes memories of colonial spaces—as
a means through which to both address nostalgia over the loss of empire and criticize Japanese
imperialism. Juxtaposing a cold and dreary postwar Japan with a bright and vibrant wartime French
Indochina, the narrative revolves around Yukiko and her doomed quest to recreate her fantastical
1
Citations of Floating Clouds will be parenthetical. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
Hayashi Fumiko, Ukigumo (Floating Clouds), Shinchō: 1953, 21. All subsequent citations of this text will be
given parenthetically.
2 In order to reflect the language used in Floating Clouds and emphasize the “colonial” environment
represented in the text, I will use the geographical designations of Annam and French Indochina rather than
the currently appropriate term Vietnam.
2
existence in French Indochina in the harsh environment of postwar Japan. Yukiko focuses her
efforts on rekindling a romance with her wartime lover, Tomioka, but this only leads to inevitable
failure, since Japan has gone through an irreversible transformation. In the end, Yukiko and
Tomioka’s desire to reconstruct their imperial past takes them to the southernmost point of Japan
at that time, Yakushima.3 Although much closer to Japan’s vanished colonies, it is still not enough
and the narrative ends with Yukiko’s death in Yakushima. In a way, Yukiko’s experience mirrors
Hayashi’s own life in that she died in the summer of 1951—just a few months after returning from
Yakushima to do research for the book—while Japan was still under US Military Occupation.
The August 15, 1945 broadcast of the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War
instantly reduced Japan’s territorial possessions from a vast empire to that of the Japanese
archipelago. While this marked an end to the tremendous violence of the war, surrender also
brought with it occupation by a foreign military power and a crisis in subjectivity, which could no
longer be defined vis-à-vis the colonial "other." Postwar Japan was permanently altered by the
presence of “foreign” occupiers during the postwar period. Similar to the decolonization processes
of former colonies, Japan, through defeat to the Allied Powers, was propelled toward a process of
"deimperialization"—a reformation of subjectivity and reassessment of imperial institutions and
hierarchical structures. Explicit expressions of nostalgia for empire, however, were often silenced,
or at least curbed, by the structure of censorship implemented by the US Military Occupation,
making a full reckoning with Japan’s imperial past difficult if not impossible.4 Although it could be
argued that the attempt to eradicate imperialist thought in Japan was a good thing, censorship and
ideological controls certainly limited postwar discourse. Japan was not allowed to grapple with its
imperial past—whether that be depictions of the brutal mobilization of comfort women or the
3
Okinawa remained under U.S. authority until 1972.
Although the occupation was officially that of the Allies, with General MacArthur being the “Supreme
Commander of Allied Powers,” for all intents and purposes the occupation was administered by the
Americans with little to no interference. For this paper I will therefore designate the occupation as the “US
Military Occupation.”
4
3
process of dealing with the subjective transformation from the privileged status of colonizer to that
of a “defeated national” in occupied postwar Japan.
This paper, through a close reading of Floating Clouds combined with an examination of its
representations of “colonial landscape,” will look at how Hayashi, as someone who enthusiastically
supported Japan’s imperial expansion, deals with and represents the process of deimperialization
in her work. Hayashi was not a stranger to censorship—several of her works were censored during
the postwar period. I will trace these cases of censorship and argue that the four-year period of
censorship under US Military Occupation (1945-1949) had a lasting effect on later literary attempts
to openly address Japan’s imperial past and participate in the process of deimperialization in
Japan.5
Defining Deimperialization
In comparison to decolonization, the process of “deimperialization” is not often addressed in
scholarly work.6 In his discussion of decolonization, W. J. T. Mitchell mentions deimperialization:
“I’m speaking…of the process of ‘decolonization,’ a term that suggests as its necessary corollary
some related transformations in the corresponding centers of empire, a ‘deimperialization.’”7 This
correlating relationship, however, is not a parallel one, but rather an uneven one that converges at
5
Major studies on postwar censorship in Japan include the following: Monica Braw, The Atomic Bomb
Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan, M.E. Sharpe, 1991; Etō Jun, Tozasareta gengo kūkan:
senryō no ken’etsu to sengo Nihon (Closed Linguistic Space: occupation censorship and postwar Japan),
Bungeishunjū, 1989; Marlene J. Mayo, “Literary Reorientation in Occupied Japan: Incidents of Civil Censorship”
in Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in West Germany and Japan, Ernestine Schlant and J.
Thomas Rimer, eds., Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, 135-161. Jay Rubin, “From Wholesomeness to
Decadence: The Censorship of Literature under the Allied Occupation.” Journal of Japanese Studies 11, no. 1
(Winter 1985), 71-103; Yokote Kazuhiko, Hisenryōka no bungaku ni kansuru kisoteki kenkyū (Basic research
of occupation literature), Tokyo: Musashino Shobō, 1996 and Haisenki bungaku shiron (Essays on war defeat
literature), Tokyo: E.D.I., 2004.
6 In regards to Japan, Lori Watt’s When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan
provides a detailed study of the repatriation process of Japanese nationals from the “colonies” and warfront
to the Japanese islands, analyzing the difficulties faced by those trying to reintegrate in Japanese society and
the fates of those who were left behind.
7 W. J. T. Mitchell, “Postcolonial Culture, Postimperial Criticism,” Transition, No. 56 (1992), 13.
4
certain points and diverges at others. Kobayashi Tomoko addresses the relevance of
deimperialization to Japan in her discussion of “cleansing the past” (kako no seisan).8 Kobayashi
argues that the process of “cleansing the past” cannot be carried out without the recognition and
cooperation of the former colonizer.9
Kuan-Hsing Chen defines “deimperialization” as the process through which “the colonizing or
imperializing population to examine the conduct, motive desires and consequences of the
imperialist history that has formed its own subjectivity.”10 The dissolution of an empire is combined
with the loss of colonies and the privileged status inherent in the elevated position of “colonizer.”
Deimperialization, therefore, not only entails an examination of “conduct, motive desires and
consequences of the imperialist history” but also a reworking of the “colonizer’s relation with its
former colonies” through the overcoming of a sense of loss and nostalgia for colonial possessions
and/or the status of colonizer. Chen’s definition of “deimperialization,” however, is problematic for
two reasons. The first is that it divides deimperialization into a sequential process of clearly defined
steps, arguing that it “must be performed by the colonizer first, and then on the colonizer’s relation
with its former colonies.”11 I would argue, however, that deimperialization necessitates a
simultaneous reformation of subjectivity and restructuring of colonial hierarchies, which cannot be
done separated from the former colonized.
The second problem is the sharp distinction that Chen makes between the colonizer and the
colonized. I argue that the hierarchical social and class structures established by imperialism
cannot be reduced to these two categories. For example, starting in the 1930s, Korea and Taiwan
8
The phrase “cleansing the past” (kwagŏ ŭi ch’ŏngsan) is still widely used in South Korea when discussing the
need to deal with the colonial past (particularly the issue of collaboration). For a discussion of the history of
movements to “cleanse the past” in South Korea see Kim Dong-Choon, “The Long Road Toward Truth and
Reconciliation,” Critical Asian Studies, 42:4 (2010), 525–552.
9 Kobayashi Tomoko, “Misai no teikoku kaitai—zainichi Chōsenjin no sengo” (Unfinished dismantling of
Empire: postwar Koreans in Japan) in Teikoku no sensō keiken (War experiences of empire), Iwanami kōza
Ajia/Taiheiyō sensō (Iwanami series on the Asia/Pacific War), 2006, 210.
10 Chen, Kuan-Hsing, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, Duke University Press: 2010, 4.
11 Chen, 4.
5
took on the position of “semi-periphery” in the Japanese Empire as it expanded into Manchurian
and mainland China. Koreans and Taiwanese living in the “peripheral space” of Manchuria became
semi-colonizers, occupying a “middle” status level in between the Japanese and Chinese.12 This
racial/status hierarchy only grows more complex when the range of class among the Japanese or
Koreans is taken into consideration.
My definition of decolonization, therefore, moves beyond a simple colonizer/colonized binary
by combining a transformation in consciousness and subjectivity with the dismantling of all
colonial hierarchical structures and institutions. In the simplest of terms, then, deimperialization
can be defined as the process of reforming subjectivity while also tearing down imperial
institutions and deconstructing the hierarchical structures of empire. Clearly, decolonization and
deimperialization traverse a similar plain with numerous points of intersection, but it is of crucial
importance that these concepts be separated out from one another in that “deimperialization”
properly emphasizes the integral role of the former colonizer—one that is often overlooked when a
sole reliance is placed on the concept of “decolonization.”
It is also important to note that Japan’s “deimperialization” differs from that of the empires of
Britain, France or the US (to the extent that they have “deimperialized) in that Japan, upon losing
the war, was subjugated to the rule of an external power—the United States, which had a profound
effect on how Japan dealt with its imperial legacy. That is to say, “deimperialization” was imposed
on Japan in the form of the disarmament and dismantling of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy
and the war crimes trials of wartime government and military leaders (excluding members of the
imperial family), but the US Military Occupation, reversing original plans for direct military rule,
also allowed for the maintenance of imperial institutions, such as the cabinet and imperial throne,
12
See Akita, Shigeru, and Nicholas J. White, The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s, Ashgate:
2010, 114.
6
by operating through existing government structures.13 As will be discussed below, the policies of
the US Military Occupation, which in some ways imposed deimperialization on Japan, and the
establishment of a Cold War political structure severely curtailed efforts to deimperialize.14
Hayashi Fumiko in the Colonies
Starting with her best-selling work Diary of a Vagabond (Hōrōki) serialized from 1928-1930,
Hayashi enjoyed a great deal of popularity throughout her career.15 In a 1951 (the year of Floating
Clouds was published as a single-volume book) survey that asked university students to name
writers of fiction, Hayashi was mentioned the fifth most often.16 The popularity of Flouting Clouds is
also demonstrated by the release in 1955, just four years after the publication of the novel in a
single-volume format, of a Naruse Mikio-directed film based on the novel.
Hayashi’s popularity in Japan led to numerous opportunities to travel to the warfront and
throughout the empire. During Japan’s invasion of China, Hayashi Fumiko volunteered to be a
member of the Pen Corps (Pen butai)—a group writers who ventured to the warfront to support
the troops and write about the war effort.17 Even before the establishment of the Pen Corps in 1938,
13
Takemae Eiji gives the details of how Japanese government leaders convinced MacArthur to abandon plans
for direct military rule and adopt a policy of indirect rule through the Japanese government, The Allied
Occupation of Japan, Continuum: 2002, 60-64.
14 Kobayashi Tomoko, in “Unfinished Dismantling of Empire” (misai no teikoku kaitai,
),
addresses the need to resolve lingering post-imperial problems in Japan—compensation for forced labor, the
handover of the remains of the deceased to their descendants, the comfort women issue, etc.—through a
). These ongoing issues suggest a continued need for
“settlement of the past” (kako no seisan,
deimperialization in Japan, 209-234.
15 For biographical information on Hayashi and an English translation of Diary of a Vagabond see Joan E.
Ericson, Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’s Literature, University of Hawai’i Press,
1997.
16 The number of mentions is as follows: 1. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō 156, 2. Shiga Naoya 81, 3. Osaragi Jirō 75, 4.
Mishima Yukio 63, 5. Hayashi Fumiko 53, 6. Funahashi Seiichi 47, 7. Ishizaka Yōjirō 46, 8. Niwa Fumio 44,
Kawabata Yasunari 44, 10. Ishikawa Tatsuzō 42, 11. Tamura Taijirō 40. Joseph K. Yamagiwa, “Fiction in PostWar Japan,” The Far Eastern Quarterly. vol. 13, No. 1 (Nov., 1953), 7.
17 Donald Keene describes the formation of the Pen Butai, “In August 1938 the Information Section of the
Cabinet (Naikaku Jōhōbu) had held a meeting with various literary men to discuss the participation of writers
in the projected attack on Hankow…An organization known as the Pen Unit (Pen Butai), was formed, but so
7
Hayashi traveled to China in 1937 to cover the war for the Tokyo nichi nichi shimbun (now the
Mainichi shimbun), where she was the first woman to enter Nanking after Japan’s brutal takeover of
the city.18 Returning to China again in 1938 as a member of the Pen Corps, Hayashi published her
thoughts on the war in a book titled Sensen (Warfront, 1938), in which she describes Japanese
troops in glowing terms and praises their efforts highly.19
Hayashi returned to China again in 1938 as a reporter for Asahi Shimbun and traveled
throughout Korea, Manchuria, and Japan-occupied areas in China as part of the Pen Corps in an
effort to give support to Japanese troops. Hayashi’s relationship with Asashi Shimbun continued in
the early 1940s with trips to the Asian continent in 1940 and again in 1941 with another wellknown woman writer Sata Ineko. From October 1942 to May 1943 Hayashi traveled to Borneo, Java,
Singapore, and French Indochina as part of an information team.20 It was these “colonial” settings
where Hayashi traveled during the height of the Pacific War that would serve as the backdrop for
Floating Clouds, as well as Hayashi’s earlier short story on comfort women in Borneo entitle
“Borneo Diamond” (Boruneo daiya, 1946).21
US Military Occupation and Censorship
The Potsdam Declaration set forth the basis for the eventual military occupation of Japan:
We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a
nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who
many writers wished to join that not all could be accommodated.” “The Barren Years: Japanese War
Literature.” Monumenta Nipponica. vol. 33. 1 (Spring, 1978), 84.
18 Joan Ericson quotes an article entitled “Hayashi Fumiko shi, Nankyō ichiban nori” (Miss Hayashi Fumiko:
The first into Nanking) which reports, “Swelling with pride, she claims ‘You know, I’m the first Japanese
woman in Nanking.’” Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’s Literature, University of
Hawai’i Press: 1997, 90.
19 Hayashi Fumiko. Sensen. Tokyo: Yamani Shobō, 1938.
20 For details about Hayashi’s travels to these places see Mochizuki, Masahiko, Hayashi Fumiko to Boruneo-tō:
Nanpō jūgun to "Ukigumo" o megutte (Hayashi Fumiko and the Island of Borneo: Southward Travel with the
Army and Ukigumo), Yashinomi Bukkusu: 2008.
21 Originally published in the June 1946 issue of Kaizō (Reconstruction). As will be discussed below, this short
story is a tragic one that presents a vastly different image of life in the colonies from that of Floating Clouds.
8
have visited cruelties upon our prisoners. The Japanese Government shall remove
all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the
Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect
for the fundamental human rights shall be established.22
This grand gesture of “freeing” defeated Japan was quickly followed by various restrictions on
expression. Just over a week after Japan’s official surrender aboard the battleship Missouri, US
Military Occupation authorities issued the “Freedom of Speech and Press Directive” to the Japanese
government, outlining the limits to be placed on expression in occupied Japan (SCAPIN-16).23 The
second article of this directive declares: “The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers has
decreed that there shall be an absolute minimum of restrictions on the freedom of speech.” The rest
of the directive includes a few slightly more specific guidelines about what these “minimum of
restrictions” will be, such as “Allied troop movements” and “false or destructive criticism of the
allied Powers, and rumors.” The final article of the directive, through the use of vague wording,
establishes a standard that will make it possible for the US Military Occupation to censor anything it
deems harmful: “The Supreme Commander will suspend any publications or radio station which
publishes information that fails to adhere to the truth or disturbs public tranquility.”24
A significant amount of scholarly work has been done on censorship in occupied Japan—all
reaching different conclusions about the lasting effects of this system of censorship.25 Etō Jun, one
22
“Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender,” July 26, 1945. Text of the document can be found
at http://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/etc/c06.html.
23 “Freedom of Speech and Press Directive,” SCAPIN-16, September 10, 1945. SCAPIN is an abbreviation for
Supreme Commander of Allied Powers Instruction Note. These were instructions directed at the Japanese
government through which the US Military Occupation indirectly ruled.
24 Ibid.
25 Major studies include the following: Monica Braw, The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in
Occupied Japan, M.E. Sharpe, 1991; Etō Jun, Tozasareta gengo kūkan: senryō no ken’etsu to sengo Nihon (Closed
Linguistic Space: occupation censorship and postwar Japan), Bungeishunjū, 1989; Marlene J. Mayo, “Literary
Reorientation in Occupied Japan: Incidents of Civil Censorship” in Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction
and Culture in West Germany and Japan, Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer, eds., Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1991, 135-161. Jay Rubin, “From Wholesomeness to Decadence: The Censorship of
Literature under the Allied Occupation.” Journal of Japanese Studies 11, no. 1 (Winter 1985), 71-103; Yokote
Kazuhiko, Hisenryōka no bungaku ni kansuru kisoteki kenkyū (Basic research of occupation literature), Tokyo:
Musashino Shobō, 1996 and Haisenki bungaku shiron (Essays on war defeat literature), Tokyo: E.D.I., 2004.
9
of the harshest critics of occupation censorship, describes the occupation period as a “closed
linguistic space” (tozasareta gengo kūkan).26 Referring to the US Military Occupation’s censorship
policies, Etō states, “Through the operation of that ‘giant trap’ (kyodai na wana), the occupation
authorities placed the Japanese people in a ‘giant cage’ (kyodai na ori).”27 Describing the lasting
impact of the system of censorship put in place by the US Military Occupation, Etō further argues:
“This structure of censorship and propaganda took root in the Japanese education system and
institutions of expression and was maintained there. This resulted in an internal breakdown (naibu
hōkai) in Japanese identity and trust in history that persisted long after the disappearance of the
CCD [Civil Censorship Detachment] and the end of the occupation.”28 Although Etō’s analysis of US
Military Occupation censorship and “propaganda” focuses on what he refers to as damage to the
Japanese language—found in such instances as the inability to use honorific language (keigo) in
reference to the emperor (arguments that have been widely adopted by right wing groups in Japan),
his claim that the US Military Occupation’s repressive censorship policies had a lasting impact on
Japan has merit.
Much of the English-language scholarship on occupation period literature has been dismissive
of Etō’s critique.29 Jay Rubin claims that it was the "opening" of the linguistic space, not its closing,
that had the largest impact on Japanese literature: “The predominant influence of the Occupation on
postwar writers, however, came not from the imposition of this alien censorship system. Rather, it
26
While the occupation period represents a "closed linguistic space," it could be argued that all "linguistic
spaces" are limited to some degree, certainly some much more so than others. The task then becomes to
identify the structure of limitation and its effect.
27 Etō, 44.
28 Etō, 345.
29 J. Victor Koschmann in his study on the literary strategies of the Japanese Communist Party explicitly
expresses agreement with Jay Rubin’s conclusion that occupation censorship had a limited effect, with the
notable exception of coverage of the atomic bomb, “The Japanese Communist Party and the Debate over
Literary Strategy under the Allied Occupation” in Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in
West Germany and Japan, Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer, eds., Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991,
163-186. Monica Braw is much more critical of the US Military Occupation's censorship, Braw 1991.
10
came from the liberation of writers from prewar censorship.”30 Marlene Mayo takes a more critical
stance regarding occupation censorship policy, referring to it as “an intricate mixture of
indoctrination and censorship.”31 According to Mayo, numerous topics were censored, “The taboos
designated in SCAP’s Press Code, issued in late September 1945, embraced the broad categories of
militarist propaganda, inaccurate statements, incitements to unrest or remarks disturbing to public
tranquility, and criticism of the United States, the Allies, the occupation, or General MacArthur.”32
The guidelines for censorship were modified throughout the occupation, with topics such as
“fraternization”—relations, including prostitution, between US servicemen and Japanese women—
and communist ideology drawing more scrutiny later on.
Hayashi and Censorship
Censorship during the occupation started out as pre-publication censorship (1945-47),
transitioning to then post-publication censorship in 1948, which lasted until the end of official
censorship 1949. The works of Hayashi Fumiko were censored numerous times during the
occupation.33 The essay “Street Children” (Furōji) is one of the several works of Hayashi’s to be
30
Rubin, 72. Rubin’s support of this argument is quite convoluted. For example, he argues that the prohibition
of mentioning censorship under US Military Occupation was necessary to promote democracy: “The CCD's
strict prohibition against any mention of their censorship should be seen in the context of the American
promotion of democracy. Censorship for the sake of free speech was a hypocritical stance that could only
have compromised the effectiveness of the Occupation reforms. By contrast, the prewar censors, as part of an
authoritarian tradition, did not have to hide their existence. The presence of a higher authority which
arrogantly expected compliance was simply a fact of life, and so there was no objection to the use by
publishers of fuseji to replace controversial vocabulary. Not until the war years was any attempt made to
cover up the system, and that was done primarily in the interest of presenting a united front abroad rather
than out of domestic consideration (97).”
31 Marlene J. Mayo, “Literary Reorientation in Occupied Japan: Incidents of Civil Censorship” in Legacies and
Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in West Germany and Japan, Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer,
eds., Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, 136.
32 Mayo, 137.
33 According to the “Occupation Period Newspaper and Periodical Information Database” (Senryō ki shimbun
zasshi jōhō dētabēsu, http://m20thdb.jp/) Hayashi’s works published in magazines were censored eight times.
A novel serialized in a newspaper was also censored. A discussion that Hayashi had with Sakaguchi Ango
11
censored in 1946.34 In the essay, two references to “chocolate” were marked for deletion with the
reason of “black market” (i.e., discussion of black market activities) given as the grounds for the
deletions.35 Of the two passages, only one actually mentions the act of selling, demonstrating that
even hinting at involvement in or the existence of the black market, particularly that related to
symbols of America such as chocolate, would result in censorship.
One of the primary objects of censorship was so-called “fraternization”—interaction or
relations between occupation forces and Japanese women.36 Jay Rubin discusses the silencing of
voices that mentioned fraternization: “Nagayo Yoshirō came closer to stating what was on
everyone's mind when he had a character in one of his stories remark bitterly on the coming crop of
blue-eyed babies, and of course this was ordered deleted.”37 In a discussion with the famous
postwar author Sakaguchi Ango, Hayashi raises the issue of interaction between occupation troops
and Japanese women, “For example, when foreigners (gaikokujin) pass by, the eyes of girls, even the
serious ones, sparkle. When average men pass by they don’t think anything, but they try to attract
the attention of foreigners who walk by.”38 Hayashi does not specifically mention “troops,” using the
ambiguous term “foreigner.” This passage was marked for deletion by the examining censor with an
examiner’s note that reads, “Above talk is objectionable from the standpoint of fraternization.
Deletion is suggested.”39 Interestingly, this passage was deemed tolerable during the second stage
which was printed in Fujin Kōron was also centered but does not show up in the database. This will be
discussed further below.
34 Hayashi Fumiko, “Street Children” (Furōji), Bungei Shunjū, Oct. 1946, 66-72.
35 Prange Collection. Passages deleted from page 69 of pre-censored version of the story.
36 Jay Rubin claims, “By far, the single largest group of deletions from fiction in the Prange Collection concerns
fraternization” (Rubin, 92). Mayo argues that “militarist or nationalist propaganda” was the most common
reason for censorship in printed materials (Mayo, 143). While Mayo’s assertion is the more accurate
statement and addresses overall censorship (not just fiction), Rubin’s point that there was heavy censorship
of “fraternization” in fiction is an important one.
37 Rubin, 92.
38 “Rinraku sono ta” (Degeneration, etc.), Fujin Kōron, Oct. 1946, 1946. The conversation was between
Hayashi Fumiko and Sakaguchi Ango with Fujin Kōron’s Yagioka Eiji moderating. Cited passage appears on
page 70.
39 Prange Collection.
12
of the review process.
However, the subsequent portion of the conversation between Hayashi and Sakaguchi, which
had also been marked for deletion by the first censor to examine the text, was deleted. Below is the
censor’s English translation of the “objectionable" portion (parts that were eventually deleted are in
italics):40
Yagioka: That is an instinct.
Hayashi: Yes, it is. [Japanese women’s] eyes are bright and beautiful somewhat like
grapes.41
Sakaguchi: They are pretty. Supposing that all the soldiers of the occupation troops were
women, we (men)…
Hayashi: You would do the same thing, wouldn’t you?
Sakaguchi: But they are not as pretty as that. That point differs very much.42
Reading the passage without the deleted sentences (italicized portions), alters the meaning
significantly, making it seem as though Sakaguchi was saying that Japanese women’s eyes “are not
as pretty as that.” The second examiner also wrote “incite resentment of occupation” over the top of
“standpoint of fraternization,” changing the reason given for censorship. This was again changed in
the final censorship report to “incite unrest.” Here, then, it is the hypothetical discussion of a
possible “fraternization” between Japanese men and female “occupation troops” that is prohibited.
While it seems curious that this would be censored, the phrase “you would do the same thing,
wouldn’t you?” implies in a very nonchalant manner that there is fraternization between American
troops and Japanese women and that such relationships would therefore be expected if the gender
dynamic was reversed.
Hayashi’s most heavily censored occupation period work is the story “An Author’s Notebook”
which appeared in six installments during the latter half of 1946 in the magazine Konjō (Deep Blue).
40
Many of the translations given by the censors are rough and somewhat grammatically awkward. Due to the
heavy workload this is certainly understandable, but points to how censorship could be arbitrary and
inconsistent.
41 I would translate the sentence where Hayashi is talking about eyes as follows: “Yes, it is instinct. They are
trying to look fresh and beautiful.”
42 Prange Collection. The deleted portions have been blacked out and are difficult to make out.
13
Two multi-sentence passages were deleted from the final installment of the story. A portion of the
first deleted passage as translated by the censor reads, “Speech is not free at all and no speech can
be made out of the limits. Writers are still not free to write and express the real phases of life,
though these phases are shown plainly before the eyes of the public. They only write at least
harmlessly and are not free to write the real state of life.”43 Here the text very explicitly addresses
how the structure of censorship found in Imperial Japan continues under US Military Occupation.44
The US Military Occupation was supposed to bring “freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought”
as mentioned in the Potsdam Declaration, but as the text asserts and Hayashi and other writers
were well aware, that was far from the case, for even pointing out that there censorship existed was
grounds for censorship. Silencing discussion of official censorship helped the US Military
Occupation maintain a facade of promoting liberal democracy, but as I will argue further below, the
limitations placed on expression during the first four years of the occupation had a lasting effect not
only on literary expression in Japan but also on the ability for Japanese people to deimperialize by
reckoning with the past.
Addressing the Imperial Past
In addition to the limits placed on how literary works could represent occupation-related
43
Censorship documents found in Prange Collection. The original Japanese has been blacked out by the
censor, and cannot be read fully, leaving only the English translation provided by the censor. Censored
version published as “An Author’s Notebook,” Konjō (Deep blue), vol. 1.6 (Dec. 1946), 100-108. This is the last
of six installments of the story—serialized in the first six issues of the publication. Two passages were deleted.
The censor’s English translation of the second deleted passage reads: “I have resolved not to have any hope in
my life. I believe and I do not doubt that there can be no true freedom in the human society. I feel only the
uneasy life that stands on the slope.”
44 Mentions of censorship were strictly forbidden. Jay Rubin discusses the differences between US Military
Occupation and that of pre-1945: “The CCD's strict prohibition against any mention of their censorship should
be seen in the context of the American promotion of democracy. Censorship for the sake of free speech was a
hypocritical stance that could only have compromised the effectiveness of the Occupation reforms. By
contrast, the prewar censors, as part of an authoritarian tradition, did not have to hide their existence. The
presence of a higher authority which arrogantly expected compliance was simply a fact of life, and so there
was no objection to the use by publishers of fuseji to replace controversial vocabulary” (Rubin, 97).
14
issues such as the black market, “fraternization,” or the lack of freedom of expression as seen in the
examples of censored Hayashi Fumiko texts outlined above, dealing with Japan’s imperial past also
proved difficult during the occupation. One of the main objectives of the occupation was to stamp
out Japanese ultranationalism and militarism, resulting in “militarist or nationalist propaganda”
given most often as the reason given censorship.45 Certainly, rightwing writings were heavily
censored, especially during the first two years of the occupation, but it is important to note that
critical representations of Japanese imperialism were also censorship.
For example, discussion of Imperial Japan’s systematic mobilization of comfort women, a
particularly contentious issue, was severely limited by US Military Occupation policy. Yoshimi
Yoshiaki’s discovery of official documents that verified the Japanese military’s involvement in
establishing comfort stations ignited a flurry of activity surrounding the issue in the early 1990s.46
It is a mistake, however, to infer that the previous lack of attention paid to this issue demonstrates a
lack of knowledge or a complete erasure of “memory” about comfort women in postwar Japan.
During the early years of the occupation, Hayashi Fumiko’s short story “Borneo Diamond” (Boruneo
daiya, 1946) and Tamura Taijirō’s “Story of a Prostitute” (Shunpuden, 1947) took up theme of
comfort women and comfort stations.47 “Borneo Diamond,” differing greatly from Flouting Clouds,
does not represent the colonial space as a paradisiacal escape from the Japanese islands, although a
desire to “escape” Japan was the reason given for why most of the female characters in the text
ended up as comfort women in Bornea; their situation there was far from ideal.
45
Mayo, 143.
See Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Jūgun ianfu shiryōshū, Otsuki Shoten,1992.
47 Hayashi Fumiko, “Boruneo daiya,” Kaizō (Reconstruction), vol. 27.6 (June 1946). Tamura Taijirō,
“Shunpuden,” in Shunpuden, Ginza Shuppansha, 1947. The censored version of “Shunpuden” discussed here
was suppressed from the inaugural issue of Nihon Shōsetsu (Japanese literature, May 1947), but the story
with over references to Koreans had actually already been approved in January of that year for Tamura’s
collection of short stories that was also titled Shunpuden. For further discussion the two versions of this story
and Tamura’s self-censorship see H. Elanor Kerkham, “Pleading for the Body: Tamura Taijiro’s 1947 Korean
Comfort Women Story, Biography of a Prostitute,” in War, Occupation and Creativity: Japan and East Asia
1920-1960 (University of Hawaii Press, 2001).
46
15
Tamura Taijirō, similar to Hayashi’s experience of traveling to the warfront and throughout the
Japanese Empire, spent several years in China after being drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army
in 1940; He wrote “Story of a Prostitute” shortly after his repatriation to Japan in 1946.48 Tamura’s
short-story was originally dedicated to “Korean prostitutes,” or what would now be referred to as
Korean comfort women: “This story is dedicated to the tens of thousands of Korean prostitutes who
went to the battle fronts of the Asiatic Continent during the recent war to comfort and entertain the
Japanese soldiers. They went where Japanese women feared and disdained to go, and this resulted
in the destruction of their youth and their bodies.”49 This text was only approved for publication
after this introduction and all overt references to Koreans were removed. Although the short story,
especially the introduction, is much more critical of Japanese than Koreans, Americans working
within Civil Censorship Detachment determined that this literary work should be suppressed for
“criticism of Koreans.”
The introduction to the text, along with any direct mention of Koreans, disappeared from the
self-censored second version of the text. Kawasaki Kenko points out that the term pī—a derogative
used to refer to prostitutes—was actually Chōsen pī, or “Korean prostitute” in the original.50 The
removal of the word “Chōsen” alters the text significantly, as it allows for the blurring of the
comfort women’s ethnicity. It is impossible to know exactly what the censors objected to, as they
48
In the aforementioned 1951 survey of Japanese university students about well-known writers, Tamura was
mentioned the eleventh most (Yamagiwa, 7).
49 Prange Collection. The censorship report is dated May 22, 1947. The censorship records for this particular
text contain the names of three Japanese examiners (each reviewed the text at different times) with the final
typed reported attributed to “Kunzman.” An examiner’s note included in the censorship report reads, “Per
check with Mr. W. H. Fielding, chief of Ryukyu-Korea Division, officer of the Executive Officer, chief of staff.”
This points to the ongoing consultation of a “Korean Division” regarding Korea-related content even at this
date over a year and a half after the end of the war. “Shunpuden” was not actually published until January of
1948 after references to Korea and leftist ideology were removed.
50 Kawasaki Kenko, “GHQ senryōki no shuppan to bungaku: Tamura Taijirō “Shunpuden” no shūhen.” Shōwa
Bungaku Kenkyū, vol. 52 (March 2006), 43. According to the website “A Public Betrayed” (a companion to the
book A Public Betrayed by Adam Gamble and Takesato Watanabe, 2004), “They [comfort women] were often
shipped to the front lines in trucks right along with ammunition, and were referred to by soldiers as pi
(pronounced "pea"), a Chinese term literally meaning "goods" or "articles," but which is also slang for female
genitals, http://www.apublicbetrayed.com/case_studies/case_study5.htm.
16
simply banned the story without giving directions on what corrections to make.51 Since the second
version successfully gained approval, it can be concluded that Tamura’s removal of the label
“Korean” throughout the text made it possible to avoid censorship. H. Eleanor Kerkham compares
the censored and non-censored versions of the text: “The apparently self-censored version of the
novel…excises all uses of the words Korea or Korean, as well as other key terms such as race, ethnic
characteristics, or phrases that would identify to a Japanese audience Korean as opposed to
Japanese women.”52
Kawasaki Kenko draws a parallel between the censorship of “Shunpuden” and the publication
guidelines that prohibited the discussion and/or portrayal of relations between Japanese women
and American soldiers, along with criticism of the occupation force.53 Kawasaki goes on to argue
that these regulations prompted Tamura to self-censor another work, “Nikutai no mon” (The Gate
of Flesh, 1947). This work also narrates a story of prostitution, but in this case the setting in
postwar Japan with the women working in a brothel near a U.S. military base. Echoing the use of pī
in “Shunpuden,” “Nikutai no mon” uses the word panpan to designate prostitutes. According to
Kawasaki, this word was understood as a prostitute who served U.S. soldiers, but oddly enough
none of the actual customers in the text are American soldiers.54
In both cases—the self-censorship of “Shunpuden” and “Nikutai no mon,” ethnic markings are
removed or blurred in order to conceal interaction between soldiers and prostitutes. Clearly, as the
censorship guidelines indicate, the U.S. military was highly concerned about connections being
made between U.S. soldiers and Japanese prostitutes. This suggests that the actual reason for the
ban of the first version of “Shunpuden,” which clearly did not criticize Koreans, was that the US
Military Occupation wanted to avoid drawing attention to military prostitution (whether forced or
nto), even that of the colonized women mobilized by Imperial Japan to serve as comfort women
51
Ibid.
Kerkham, 323.
53 Kawasaki, 40-41.
54 Kawasaki, 41-42.
52
17
since in could implicate US complicity in the contemporary situation in Japan.
This trend to downplay the comfort women issue continued throughout the occupation.
Discussing the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, Yuki Tanaka states, “The tribunal, which lasted two and
a half years, was presented with massive evidence of such war crimes as rape, murder, and illtreatment committed by the Japanese against Allied soldiers and non-combatants. Yet the issue of
comfort women—a crime against humanity on an unprecedented scale—was never dealt with by
this trial.”55 The U.S. military, then, was well aware of the systematic mobilization of sex workers by
the Japanese military. It can only be deduced that the U.S. military chose to ignore this issue. The
decision to ignore the comfort women issue, as with the completely arbitrary reason of “criticism of
Koreans” used to justify the ban of “Story of a Prostitute,” demonstrates that the US Military
Occupation deliberately silenced and modified discussions of military prostitution. The US Military
Occupation, evidently, did not want the issue of its own involvement in prostitution to be raised.
The censorship of “Story of a Prostitute” highlights the active role that the US Military
Occupation played in forming postwar Japan. Not only did the decisions made to absolve emperor
Hirohito from any responsibility for the war and to reinstate purged wartime leaders only a few
years after the war had ended, as part of the “reverse course,” influence the formation of historical
narratives, but the censorship of writers like Tamura’s also served to silence potential voices of
opposition.56 US militarism and the emerging Cold War, then, greatly impacted postwar Japan and
limited the ability to have an open dialogue about the exploitative and oppressive policies and
actions of Japan’s imperial past.
55
Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US
Occupation, Routledge: 2002, 84.
56 For discussion of MacArthur and the US Military Occupation’s decision to indirectly rule through the
Japanese government and spare the imperial family see Eiji Takemae, The Allied Occupation of Japan,
Continuum: 2002, 60-64.
18
Floating Clouds and Deimperialization
By the time that Hayashi began serialization of Flouting Clouds in the fall of 1949, the US
Military Occupation was phasing out censorship.57 This does not mean that censorship disappeared
after this, for the red purge of 1949-1950 included the suspension of numerous leftist publications.
It does, however, mark the shift from meticulous, systematic censorship of individual texts and
publications to a strategy of suspending publications and arresting violators.58 Ostensibly, then,
Hayashi was now free to address in Floating Clouds the issues circumscribed by the censorship
policies of 1945-1949.
Floating Clouds takes up, at least tangentially, the topics of comfort women, colonial
exploitation, and the Nanking Massacre. Hayashi’s support of the war, along with her physical
presence in Nanking during the direct aftermath of the Nanking Massacre, renders the inclusion of
comfort women and colonial exploitation in Floating Clouds all the more striking. The text begins
with Yukiko’s journey back to Japan after the end of the war. The narrator discloses Yukiko’s
thoughts about some of her fellow travelers, “Yukiko heard on the boat that the geisha had worked
for two years at a restaurant in Phnom Penh. Calling them geisha actually meant they were comfort
women (ianfu) who had been brought over by the military” (8). The text, then, explicitly casts the
military as responsible for the mobilization of comfort women. This has been a topic of much
debate in the postwar period—whether the military was directly involved in the establishment of
comfort stations and the often-forced recruitment of the women, but here the connection is
mentioned casually, as if it is common knowledge.
In the next sentence of the text, the narrator detaches from Yukiko’s thoughts and describes
57
Floating Clouds was serialized in Fūsetsu from Nov. 1949 to Aug. 1950. After the closing of Fūsetsu, the
novel was serialized in the magazine Bungakukai from Sep. 1950 to April 1951; the novel appeared as a
single-volume book published by Rokkō shuppan the same month it finished serialization.
58 For example, MacArthur sent a letter to Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru ordering that he suspend Akahata,
the official organ of the Japanese Communist Party (MacArthur Memorial Archives, RG 25, reel 950, box 2,
July 18, 1950). Numerous other leftist publications were also suspended after the outbreak of the Korean War.
19
the women who had stayed in the Haiphong relocation camp with Yukiko, “The women who
gathered in the Haiphong relocation camp included nurses, typists, and office workers, but most
were groups of comfort women. Comfort women (ianfu) assembled in Haiphong from various
cities—so many that it was hard to believe all these Japanese women were here”(8). Although this
is not a literal account of a relocation camp, it is clear that the mobilization of large masses of
women to serve as prostitutes for the Japanese military was an acceptable topic within the realms
of popular discourse. These brief discussions about comfort women are not presented in a negative
manner and are only referred to parenthetically and possess no stake in the development of the
narrative. This suggests that, during the US Military Occupation, knowledge of the military’s
comfort women operation was openly shared and not considered a taboo subject.
Since Hayashi Fumiko arrived in Nanking right after its fall to the Japanese Army, It is
significant that she included a reference to what is now called the Nanking Massacre in Floating
Clouds. Once again, similar to the brief mentions of comfort women at the beginning of the novel,
Nanking is only brought up in passing. Yukiko’s arrival in Dalat to work as a typist in an office of the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry office causes quite a stir since there are no other Japanese
women in the area. Immediately after her arrival, a coworker, Kano, takes an interest in Yukiko and
eventually tries to force himself on her. Yukiko fights off Kano until her future lover, Tomioka,
appears on the scene to save her. After reflecting upon his actions, Kano regrets his use of violence,
which in turn provokes a painful memory from his military past:
It was better than being a soldier. That word, it hurt like an almost forgotten old
wound that had been touched again. That gloomy war—the attack on Nanking which
he took part in after being drafted into the Akabata Corps of Engineers—flared in the
back of his mind. The memory of participating in some frenzied play with a woman,
who he had snuck onto a boat out on a lake, appeared like a shadow before Kano’s
eyes. (42)
The reference to Nanking is muddled, and it is extremely vague as to what exactly Kano did in
Nanking. Even without a detailed account of Kano’s experience, however, it can be inferred that he
is remembering an act of sexual violence, as the memory is revived by his attempt to force himself
20
on Yukiko. This short passage does not detail a straightforward description of Kano’s participation
in the Nanking Massacre, but there is certainly an implicit reference to sexual violence committed
by Japanese soldiers in Nanking.
Floating Clouds also touches on the exploitative extraction of materials from French Indochina
and the cruel treatment of the colonized peoples there. “Japanese had made it all the way here.
However, they haphazardly cut down fifty to sixty year-old Kaccha Pines with little reservation,
merely reporting to the military the number of felled trees” (55). When comparing the Japanese
colonial officials negatively to their French predecessors, the narrator describes, “Knowing nothing
about its forests—without any preparatory knowledge—Tomioka and the others thought French
Indochina would be a flat plain with a sparse forest when they set out for French Indochina on the
command of the military” (153).
The depiction of the careless extraction and lack of expertise of the Japanese colonizers is
further exacerbated by the portrayal of how they treat the local population: “The Japanese soldiers
busily abused the simple and clumsy Moi people as slaves” (155). The representation of the
Japanese in French Indochina, then, is rather negative, particularly that of the military which is the
force behind the abuse of local people, disorganized deployment of civilian officials, and the
mindless extraction of resources. This is a far cry from the glowing reports that Hayashi gave of
Japanese soldiers in Sensen. While it is important to note that Floating Clouds is not, for the most
part, highly critical of Japanese imperialism, that this narrative of longing for and mourning of lost
colonies and the status of colonizer includes references to and criticism of Japan’s exploitative
imperial policies and brutal war tactics suggests that the text is attempting to participate in the
process of deimperialization by reckoning with Japan’s imperial past.
Floating Clouds, then, thematically engages with the exploitation and excessive violence of
Japanese imperialism but only, for the most part, implicitly. As mentioned above, Floating Clouds,
represents a work published during the latter part of the occupation, when the US Military no
21
longer directly censored publications. The lifting of censorship restrictions, however, did not
necessarily lead to an open discussion of previously forbidden topics. Michael Molasky, in his study
on the occupation of Japan and Okinawa, points out that American involvement in prostitution or
acts of rape was not explicitly addressed in literary works until after the occupation ended.59
Floating Clouds does depict scenes of “fraternization,” but similar to representations of the
destruction caused by Japanese imperialism, the references are vague. Jay Rubin discusses this
ambiguity, “The heroine of Hayashi Fumiko's Floating Clouds is…struggling to stay alive in the
difficult postwar world, and in this novel a primary means of support comes from a liaison with a
G.I. The references to fraternization are, of course, quite open here, but still the terminology is
euphemistic. The G.I. is referred to only as a ‘tall foreigner.’”60 Most likely, “fraternization” was not
the only instance where censorship and pro-USA ideology had a long-lasting effect. It could be
argued that expressions of “militarist or nationalist propaganda,” which were censored most
frequently during the occupation, also remained cautious.
Mourning the Loss of Empire and Coming to Terms with New Borders
Floating Clouds juxtaposes thriving wartime French Indochina with dismal postwar Japan
through a narrative that seamlessly enters into the space of memory, narrating the past from a
present perspective in the form of flashbacks and then shifting back to the narrative present of
postwar Japan. This narrative technique highlights the contrast between Imperial Japan and
postwar Japan by placing them side-by-side, rather than narrating chronologically from past to
present through an entirely retrospective vantage point, which would lessen the impact of the
opposing images of the two periods. Hayashi’s writing style utilizes rich descriptions landscape
throughout the narrative. It is this careful portrayal of setting that provides the sharpest contrast
59
Molasky, Michael S. The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory. London:
Routledge, 1999, 11.
60 Jay Rubin, 92.
22
between postwar Japan and colonial Indochina. Postwar Japan is a land of eternal winter filled with
cold winds and dark, dreary weather. Even after Yukiko has settled back into a life in Japan, the
environment is still harsh:
“Yukiko set out for Shinjuku with
no purpose in mind. It was
evening and a cold wind was
blowing. Shinjuku was like a
lonely desert, since even most of
the street stalls were closed”
(108).
The bleak atmosphere of
Image 1 Yukiko wandering through postwar Tokyo (Naruse, 1955)
postwar Japan is combined with
unstoppable change. Again and again, throughout the text, change is pointed out: characters claim
that others around them have changed, point out transformations in Tokyo’s landscape, and
perceive a permanent shift in Japanese society brought about by defeat. Change is one of the first
things Yukiko thinks about upon returning to Japan, “From time to time, astonishing women
wearing red lipstick descended the stairs holding hands with foreigners. Yukiko stared at the
gaudily dressed women as if she had never seen anything like this before. Previous life in Tokyo had
been changed from the roots up” (10).61 The presence of “foreigners” has infiltrated the Tokyo
landscape and altered its structure. Suffering defeat at the hands of the Americans, Japan has
transformed completely, losing its previous glory: “What had happened to Japan? The faces of the
soldiers who had been sent off with a wave of flags were nowhere to be seen now” (9). The
transformation undergone in postwar Japan, then, is not a positive one, as the enthusiasm of
61
According to Michael Molasky, “After 1945 a writer merely had to refer to a woman’s brightly-colored dress,
high heels, red lipstick or Anglicized nickname to convey her line of work [prostitution]” (11). This suggests
that Hayashi is making reference to the existence of “pan pan,” or prostitutes catering to US servicemen,
without stating it explicitly.
23
wartime Japan has been
replaced by submission to the
dominance of a foreign power.
For Yukiko and Tomioka,
the downfall of Japan is
exacerbated by their past glory
as colonizers in a tropical
paradise, producing an
exponentially deeper sense of
loss. In the flashback scenes of
French Indochina, Hayashi
Image 2 Yukiko shortly after her arrival in French Indochina (Naruse, 1955)
once again employs a meticulous descriptive technique to construct the landscape, which in this
case is a lush, almost utopian colonial space. Upon Yukiko’s arrival in Dalat, where she will be
working as a typist, the narrator describes, “To Yukiko the plateau town of Dalat looked like a
mirage in the sky. The terraced city of Dalat, with Ranbyan Mountain in the background and a lake
in the forefront, eliminated her uneasiness and mind wanderings” (25). Not only is Dalat portrayed
as a place with abundant natural beauty, but the physical landscape of this colonial space has
healing power which provides Yukiko with the means to escape a repressive and abusive “Japan”
and forge a new beginning. This description of Dalat as a mirage is later echoed by both Tomioka
and Yukiko in their repeated references to life in French Indochina as a dream.
The term nostalgia, or nostalgic (natsukashii), is constantly evoked by Yukiko and Tomioka in
their recollections of French Indochina. The narrative follows them as they struggle to rekindle the
romance they had shared in French Indochina; their attempts, however, always fall short, and they
are unable to recover their nostalgic past. Their journey to recreate their lost colonial paradise
takes them to the southernmost point of Japan at that time, Yakushima. With the significantly
24
reduced borders of postwar Japan in comparison to the vast borders of Imperial Japan in the early
1940s, this is as far as they can go. Tomioka takes in the island landscape as their boat approaches
Yakushima: “For the first time in a long time, Tomioka looked out on the rich green color of an
island and felt exhilarated” (343). Similar to the scene of Yukiko’s arrival in Dalat, Yakushima’s
landscape possesses healing power which seems to reproduce the paradisiacal space of French
Indochina.
Their journey to Yakushima, then, represents an attempt to rekindle their romance by
reconstructing the colonial landscape of French Indochina within the newly delineated borders of
occupied Japan. Yet, even in Yakushima, where the landscape closely resembles the colonial space
of Dalat, the reconstruction of a colonial paradise is unattainable. Shortly before Yukiko dies,
marking the end of this effort to reclaim an imperial past, the narrator remarks, “That youthful
experience will never return…that moment cannot be returned to. Tomioka and Yukiko have come
to the southernmost point of Japan, but several years have already passed since that time” (365).
Japan’s borders have contracted considerably and regardless of a comparable landscape,
Yukiko and Tomioka are unable to reconstruct the glory of Imperial Japan. Their effort ends in
failure, and their love disappears as Yukiko passes on. Shortly after Yukiko’s death Tomioka leaves
Yakushima for Kagoshima and decides not to return. Tomioka leaves Yukiko’s ashes behind,
symbolizing their separation and, in turn, a desire to separate from Japan’s imperial past. This is not
to say that that the text overtly criticizes Japan’s imperial past although criticisms are certainly
made implicity; rather it is Japan’s defeat and inability to manage and hold onto its empire that is
disparaged. This loss of empire and defeat at the hands of more capable imperialists is what leads
to the necessarily bleak and dismal existence of postwar Japan. The deimperialization represented
in the text, therefore, is almost a forced one—there is no choice but to accept Japan’s current
situation and move on.
25
Conclusion
It is impossible to know what shape Japan would have taken without the US Military
Occupation. In Japan, there obviously would have been voices both for and against
"deimperialization," with a considerable variance among factions supporting deimperialization
about how such a process should be carried out. Thus, it is most certainly an oversimplification to
merely say that deimperialization efforts in Japan were obstructed by the US Military Occupation
since this is only one of many forces that shaped postwar Japan. On the other hand, it is clear that
the US Military Occupation, as well as the Japanese government through which it indirectly ruled,
had an effect on literary expression in occupied Japan. Floating Clouds represents a memorialization
of the Japanese Empire, much in the same way that “Story of a Prostitute” memorializes colonial
comfort women. This raises the question of what is accomplished by writing a narrative that
memorializes the imperial past. In the case of “Story of a Prostitute,” although the exploitation of
and brutal mobilization of Korean women is not represented in an overtly critical matter, the mere
representation of a comfort station near the warfront by a popular postwar writer serves to insert
this issue into the popular discourse of the time. However, the inability to label the “prostitutes” as
Korean, as dictated by censorship of the text, disallows an examination of “conduct, motive desires
and consequences of the imperialist history” and a reworking of the “colonizer’s relation with its
former colonies,” and thereby interferes with the process of deimperialization.
Since it was published after the end of official censorship, the role that self-censorship may
have played in the writing of Flouting Clouds is impossible to ascertain. It is not a stretch, however,
to claim that the indirect ways of addressing issues such of fraternization and colonial exploitation
as necessitated by the censorship policies of the first four years of the occupation had a lasting
effect on literary expression in postwar Japan. The implicit way in which the continuity from
Imperial Japan to US Military Occupation in terms of sexual violence, exploitation, and racial
hierarchies is addressed in Flouting Clouds suggests an inability to directly engage with these issues
26
even after the end of censorship. Clearly, then, the rule of an outside force in the form of the US
Military Occupation, while compelling those such as Hayashi who had supported Japan’s imperial
expansion to overcome nostalgia for the imperial past, also served to suppress an open reckoning
with the past and obstruct efforts to deimperialize.
27