Postwar Influence: United States & Japan

This essay analyzes the ebb and flow of cultural influence between two opposing superpowers in the aftermath of World War II.

Because Japan made a losing gamble during World War II, it has suffered an identity crisis which has been perpetuated by American influence. It’s spectacularly complex how war can shape the character, development, and behavior of a nation; especially a nation whose defeat remains historically devastating. Postwar effects exist, but do so under the radar. The United States and Japan have evolved, in the aftermath of World War II, into a bizarre symbiotic tug-of-war. To the victor, go the influence. Yet there are winners on both side of the spectrum. Upon closer inspection, we can see the chinks in a Japan’s armor about protecting their coveted sense of culture and what it means exactly to be Japanese.

There’s a two-way exchange between the ultimate winner, the United States, and the defeated, Japan. Many ideologies become lost in translation but it’s important to note the ones that did not. It’s strikingly clear how much can change in a war that amplified stereotypes and eschewed forgiveness. This paper will focus on stylistic influence and perception, both ways, between the United States and Japan. It’s important to focus on both nation’s perceptions of each other before delving into influences both culturally and stylistically.

At first, the Americans greatly underestimated the capabilities of the Japanese. “Before Pearl Harbor, it was common wisdom among the Westerners that the Japanese could not shoot, sail, or fly very well. Nor could they think imaginatively” (Guarneri, 311). Post Pearl Harbor, the American’s use of propaganda generally depicted the Japanese as inferior. “—they rendered the Japanese as plain, homogenous “Japanese” caricatures: short, round-faced, bucktoothed, slant-eyed, frequently myopic behind horn-rimmed glasses” (Guarneri, 311). War is a very ugly reality; especially when that reality means killing another human being. In order to make such a notion easier to handle, both nations had to deprive one another of positive human qualities.

It was easier to kill an enemy once you dehumanize them. To do so, Americans used metaphors and caricatures of vermin or rodents to drive the ‘extermination’ point home. “Fighting Japanese in the jungle was like going after ‘small game in the woods back home’ or tracking down a predatory animal.” (Guarneri, 312). The Japanese looked back to their lineage to bolster their country morale, often taking a superior stance when comparing their culture and status to others. They trace their lineage to the ‘Yamato soul’ of their first emperor. “By turning purity into a racial ideology for modern times, the Japanese were in effect nationalizing a concept traditionally with differentiation within their society” (Guarneri, 317). Having the divine Emperor suffer such a defeat at the hands of the U.S. further struck a demoralizing blow to Japan’s sense of self. This war against any impure nation, America in this case, was depicted as a battle with demons. “Devilish Anglo-Americans was the most familiar epithet for the white foe” (Guarneri, 321).

Thus, the unfathomable and decisive conclusion to the war created a very different cultural landscape for both the U.S. and Japan. It paved the way for a very identity deprived Japan to become a constantly absorbing entity of borrowed cultures and art forms.

If you look at Japan’s capital city of Tokyo, it becomes clear how much it has borrowed from the rest of the world. Nothing really differentiates it from the other capital cities. Tokyo Tower is really just a slightly taller version of the Eiffel Tower. The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone building is a carbon copy of New York’s Empire State Building. Odaiba, an island in Tokyo Bay, welcomes incoming ships with a replica of the Statue of Liberty. Even their skyscrapers are plagiarized versions of other capital cities. “Tokyo is about mimicry and hybridization, borrowing influences and recreating them in the context of local culture” (McKenzie, 252). Tokyo has become a symbolic catalyst for what Japan is going through in terms of having an identity crisis.

Tokyo’s identity is rooted in its postwar history—a hybridized, post-industrial megalopolis of the twenty-first century, an urban center that questions the value of originality through its native acquisitions, its astute borrowings of what symbolizes other cities, even as it reinvents itself out of necessity. (McKenzie, 255).

Although a lot is iterated from other cities, Tokyo continues to to thrive and pulse with an intensity all its own. Tokyo is an easy target of Japan’s loss of identity, of the uphill struggle to break free of U.S. influence. Besides the capital city, World War II had dire repercussions on the collective conscious of the Japanese as a whole, which in turn forced expression through unorthodox methods such as manga comics and animation.

Consider one of the landmarks of Japanese animation, Akira. Released in 1988 and adapted from an impressive 2,182-page manga epic, Akira broke through and exceeded expectations of narrative and animation. It is regarded as the quintessential masterpiece that broke through every barrier and increased popularity in Japanese anime, especially in the United States. Akira introduced a dystopian version of Tokyo that was engulfed in an atomic blast, only to be rebuilt 30 years later into a former shell of its former self. The creator of Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo, makes no qualms about aligning the subject matter with what happened during World War II. Jenny Kwok Wah Lau argues that “Otomo grounds the work in recent Japanese history and culture, using the atomic bombing of Japan during World War II, alongside the economic resurgence and issues relating to over-crowding, as inspirations and underlying issues” (Lau, 43). Right in the beginning, it’s extremely easy to make a direct correlation of World War II and the animated film’s tone and narrative.

In Japan, no one had the tools or capability to convey, through art form, how the war impacted them. “Many of these demons could only find expression in the comparatively underground forms of Japanese comics (manga) and animation” (Kelts, 4).

Both mediums were cheap to produce and were distributed quickly and efficiently with very little corporate oversight. Akira has left its own culturally relevant mark, citing influence from U.S. pop culture icons such as the band M83, Kanye West, and the creators of Star Trek.

Animation isn’t the only art out of Japan to influence the Western world. The art form kawaii, which means 'an extreme cuteness' in Japanese pop icons; like Hello Kitty, Pikachu from Pokemon, and Tamagotchi virtual electronic pets, emanates from the wounds of World War II and the American occupation. Takashi Murakami, an internationally renowned Japanese contemporary artist, has his own take on why kawaii even exists.

Evolution teaches us that cuteness is a symptom of dependence, urging adults to care for infants, puppies and kittens who are, after all, entirely helpless. A Japan shaped by its reliance upon big brother/big daddy America would naturally perfect this form of expression. (Kelts, 7).

Takashi believes that America has become a symbolic ‘big brother’ to a now passive and defeated Japan. Kawaii and other similar art forms evoke that helplessness that many Japanese feel and find expression through subconsciously. Takashi also postulates a theory of how Japan evolved culturally into what it is now, citing the trauma of defeat, the unprecedented dropping of two atomic bombs, and the loss of its divine emperor all engendered a medley of psychological woes on Japan’s collective conscience.

The Japanese assimilated anything they could from U.S. culture, mainly because of the amount of troops occupying their cities due to their loss in the war. To many contemporary artists, there seems to be a strong resentment of their countrymen’s ignorance. Ryu Murakami, a critically acclaimed writer who has been able to cross over to western audiences, believes many Japanese people only perceived the superficial qualities of American life.

The Japanese easily adopted cultural nodes that they didn't really understand like designer clothing, music genres, cuisine, and consumerism. Losing the war struck a huge blow to their self-confidence. “Japan, designed since the end of World War II to be America’s most passive and dependable Pacific ally, has finally hit paralysis” (Kelts, 2).

There’s this period of isolation and loneliness that pervades and creates a nation that solely depends on another for guidance on what to do and what to like next. What other choice did the Japanese have but to adapt and conform to American ideals and culture. “They [Japanese] didn’t understand the soul of America, or its essence. And they cast aside their own cultural core for a life guided by, and limited to, borrowed surfaces” (Kelts, 5). The trauma Japan suffered at the end of World War II capitulated them relinquishing creative control of what they found culturally relevant.

In conclusion, the evidence reveals a sobering view that we, as a human race, will never completely overcome idioms of culture, race, and status. It will always permeate through time and lurk at the roots. War brings out the grotesqueries of people and open them up for dehumanizing propaganda and racial profiling. War also captures a moment where entire nations are captivated by another’s intellectual manifestations. We see both parties acquiring stylistic assets and reinventing the status quo in terms of art forms and mediums.

We can also see how Japan was brought to its knees with spine-chilling destruction the likes of which the world has never known. And yet, somehow, Japan was still able to overcome many obstacles to reinvent itself from the ashes. Land of the rising sun, rising up like the phoenix full of courage and grit.

Discerning monumental strides of cultural influence from both the United States and Japan allows a rare glimpse into the immense consequences and human costs of waging war. We can appreciate, exactly, what it is you stand to gain and what is lost in the process.

Works Cited