New release: Sanitized Sex. By Robert Kramm
20. October 2017
Regulating Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Intimacy in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952
Oakland: University of California Press 2017
Reference
The book analyzes the development of new forms of regulation concerning prostitution, venereal disease, and intimacy during the American occupation of Japan after the Second World War, focusing on the period between 1945 and 1952. It contributes to the cultural and social history of the occupation of Japan by investigating the intersections of ordering principles like race, class, gender, and sexuality. It also reveals how sex and its regulation were not marginal but key issues in postwar empire-building, U.S.-Japanese relations, and American and Japanese self-imagery.
Shedding new light on the configuration of postwar Japan, the process of decolonization, the postcolonial formation of the Asia-Pacific region, and the particularities of postwar U.S. imperialism, Sanitized Sex offers a reading of the intimacies of empires—defeated and victorious. (publisher)
Dr. Robert Kramm is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, University of Hong Kong. Between October 2016 and September 2017, he conducted research as a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study Konstanz about “Radical Utopian Communities: A Global History from the Margins, c. 1890–1950.” He also has revised the manuscprit of the present book during his research stay in Konstanz.