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Book Review

Comparative/World

Yukiko Koshiro. Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan. (The United States and Pacific Asia: Studies in Social, Economic, and Political Interaction.) New York: Columbia University Press, for the East Asia Institute, Columbia University. 1999. Pp. x, 295. Cloth $45.00, paper $18.50.

Race is a subject that has become laced with postmodernist complexity. In the world of political correctness, antidiscrimination laws, and genetic manipulation, race is a hypersensitive issue that is usually addressed through euphemism, liberally endowed with noble sentiment, and manifested in shape-shifting intangible yet powerful forms. 1

     Racism exists as an object of vehement denial, but its positive existence is elusive. In racism, the historian is confronted with a Sherlock Holmes-type challenge. It is the significance of the dog that did not bark in the night, rather than the one that did, that assumes importance. For a professional historian, this poses a serious dilemma. How is empiricism to be achieved, when the subject is not visible? 2

     This is the challenge tackled by Yukiko Koshiro. In the attempt, the lack of conventional evidence impedes the author somewhat; however in the process she performs the invaluable service of exposing and delineating a hitherto neglected dimension of occupied Japan and the U.S.-Japan relationship. 3

     It is tempting to regard Koshiro's book as taking up the story from John Dower's War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986). However, this is not a fair comparison. Dower's materials were abundant in the form of overtly racist propaganda, for which no apology was regarded necessary in its day. Koshiro is writing of a different world, and her materials are consequently much less accessible and obvious. When read alongside Dower's more recent book, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999), and Naoko Shimazu's Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (1998), Koshiro's book helps further elucidate Japanese thinking on race in its modern history. . . .

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