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Q - EAST LANSING, MICH 48824-1048
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This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

U.S. OCCUPATION AND RECON

AMERICAN CULTURE
JAPANIZATION OF TOKYO

TEXTUALIZATION OF
IN JAPAN:

DISNEYLAND

presented by

REINA TANAKA

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for the

 

 

M.A. degree in AMERICAN STUDIES
\ x _
4 ./
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Major Professor’s Signature
5' [H [2003"
Date

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U.S. OCCUPATION AND RECONTEXTUALIZATION OF
AMERICAN CULTURE IN JAPAN:
JAPANIZATION OF TOKYO DISNEYLAND

By

Reina Tanaka

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM
2005

ABSTRACT

U.S. OCCUPATION AND RECONTEXTUALIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
IN JAPAN: JAPANIZATION OF TOKYO DISNEYLAND

By

Reina Tanaka

I will consider how Japan recontextualized the American cultural
inﬂuences during the US. occupation and created a unique Japanese culture and
identity. This Japanization reﬂected local reactions to the ideological agenda of
the United States during the postwar period, and is represented at Tokyo
Disneyland (TDL) in Japan. The three stages of domesticating American culture in
Japan will be examined: First, the inﬂuences of the hegemonic US. occupation
policy focusing on the civil censorship with the radio program, Truth Box; secondly,
cultural impact of the occupation policy on the Japanese interpretation of the
American culture by looking at the comic Blondie, an example of a Japanese
cultural construct of the American lifestyle; ﬁnally, Japanese cultural negotiation
or Japanization of TDL. This part considers consumerism and the leisure boom,
which contributed the popularity of TDL to see how TDL has been modiﬁed to
satisfy the demands of the Japanese as a result of the US. occupation. This
thesis examines the importation of American culture not from the point of
American cultural imperialism, but how Japan has proactively domesticated both
the US. occupation policy and American cultural products for their own good. It
will conclude with an examination of Tokyo DisneySea to show the evolving

example of the Japanization of American culture.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1

CHAPTER 1

HEGEMONIC U.S. OCCUPATION POLICY: CIVIL CENSORSHIP .................. 5

CHAPTER 2

CULTURAL IMPACT: JAPANESE INTERPRETATION OF THE AMERICAN

CULTURE .......................................................................................... 29

CHAPTER 3

CULTURAL NEGOTIATION: “JAPANIZATION” OF TOKYO DISNEYLAND

......................................................................................................... 42
3.1 CONSUMERISM ........................................................................ 52
3.2 FAMILY LEISURE ...................................................................... 63

CHAPTER 4

FROM MANUALIZED SMILE TO MORE HUMAN SPACE: TOKYO DISNEYSEA

......................................................................................................... 76

CONCLUSION .................................................................................... 83

NOTES ............................................................................................. 86

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................. 93

INTRODUCTION

Japan has been importing cultures from other nations from the beginning
of its history. Therefore, it is accustomed to recontextualizing exotic cultures and
to recreating the unique culture and identity of Japan. Among the encounters with
other cultures, the United States has had the biggest inﬂuence on Japanese
culture in two historically signiﬁcant moments in the past. Japan’s ﬁrst encounter
with the United States was in 1853 when the Commander in Chief US. East India
Squadron, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry came to Uraga, Japan, to
request that Japan end its closed-door policy and open trade. When Perry came
in “Black Ships,” it surprised and confused the Japanese because those warships
seemed to “menace the idyllic peacefulness of the countryside.”1 After Perry’s
insistent negotiation and a threat of resorting to arms, Japan ﬁnally yielded to
open the ports and signed US-Japan Treaty of Peace and Amity when he
returned Japan in 1854. The Japanese were impressed to see the gifts they
received from Perry which were “chosen for their utility rather than for their
costliness”: the quarter-size locomotive and tender with railway, the telegraph
instruments and a wire, the agricultural implements, weapons, etc. The Japanese
showed “insatiable curiosity not only about the mechanical devices of the Western
world, but even about the dress and personal effects of the Americans."2 This
shows that the Japanese were extremely interested in the American culture,
including both technology and the lifestyle, and they were eager to try and learn
the new culture, even though Japan was forced to open the nation by the United

States.

The second encounter with the United States was in 1945 when Japan
lost World War II (WWII), beginning of the us. occupation policy led by the
General Douglas MacArthur of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers
(SCAP). Under the US. occupation, the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD)
censored all the possible civil communication media from letters, telephones,
newspapers, radio programs, etc. The Japanese were obviously controlled by
SCAP to achieve its goals of democratization and demilitarization of Japan.

‘ However, Japan positively accepted the situation under the occupation and
received and recontextualized the American inﬂuence in order to achieve the
economic development and material afﬂuence, such as electric appliances, of the
United States. As a result, Japan became one of the biggest economic powers in
the world.

I would like to examine the three stages of domesticating the American
culture in Japan. First, I will look at the inﬂuences of the deliberate US.
occupation policy in the postwar period especially focusing on the civil censorship
policy with the radio program, Truth Box. Secondly, how the information control of
the United States was interpreted by the Japanese and how it impacted the
Japanese thoughts in catching up with the United States, will be considered. The
comic Blondie which was introduced by the Japanese newspapers from 1949 to
1951 during the occupation is an example to portray the image that the Japanese
had towards the American lifestyle as a result of the occupation policy. I would like.
to clarify what the Japanese mindset was when they were reading Blondie in
postwar Japan. Finally, I will study how the inﬂuence of the US. occupation and
postwar period are represented and domesticated at Tokyo Disneyland (T DL)

2

which opened in 1983. Since Disneyland is one of the biggest American cultural
idioms along with McDonald’s, many cultural critics study them from the point of
American cultural imperialism: the American hegemony in its cultural exports that
dominate less powerful cultures. Nevertheless, I would like to analyze Disneyland
in Japan with the same approach that I look at the occupation policy of the United
States in postwar Japan: how Japan imported Disneyland, the symbol of
American culture; how it has been domesticated to suit the Japanese culture; how
it has created a unique culture of Japan; and the reason for the huge success of
Tokyo Disneyland. In this section, i will ﬁrst consider the Disney generation who
grew up with Disney in postwar Japan, and then theme parks and the original
Disneylands in the United States. I will then talk about Tokyo Disneyland and the
intentions of Oriental Land Co. Ltd., that introduced the Disneyland to Japan. Next,
the two major demands of the Japanese in the 19805 — consumerism and the
leisure boom— will be examined to see how TDL has been modiﬁed to satisfy the
demands of the Japanese. In regard to consumerism, I will focus on four
distinctive characteristics of the Japanese consumption culture which have been
generated as a consequence of the combination of the newly emerged consumer
society and the original Japanese culture: souvenir culture, commodiﬁed nostalgia,
an age-govemed system, and brand-name consciousness. I will also pay
attention to the consumption culture of the new generation that dominates the
large visitor’s population to TDL today. Not only the arrangement to meet the
cultural demands of the Japanese in the late nineteenth century as a
consequence of the US. occupation, but also some modiﬁcations considering

Japanese traits will be mentioned.

Lo)

Finally, I will look at Tokyo DisneySea (T DS) which opened in 2001 and
think of it as another good example of the Japanization of American culture. TDS
has more interactive human communication than TDL while TDL is famous for its
manuals to control everything from the theme of the park to employees. The
criticism towards this manualized management of TDL will show another
important reason of TDL’s success in regards to the manualized Japanese society.
The creation of TDS shows the necessity of creating a new type of theme parks to
satisfy the new demands of Japanese society today. The main purpose of my
thesis is to analyze how the inﬂuences of the US. occupation policy are
represented at Tokyo Disneyland and how Japan has localized the American

culture at the Park.

CHAPTER 1
HEGEMONIC U.S. OCCUPATION POLICY: CIVIL CENSORSHIP

Japan was placed under US. occupation in August 1945 with the end of
WWII. The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Douglas
MacArthur, was tasked to “rebuild a nation that had been almost completely
destroyed by the war." MacArthur notes that, “Japan had become the world’s
great laboratory for an experiment in the liberation of a people from totalitarian
military rule and for the liberalization of government from within."3 Anticipating the
surrender of Germany in June of 1943, the United States was already considering
its censorship operation strategy in Japan.4 The Joint Chiefs of Staff told the
Director of the US. Ofﬁce of Censorship, Byron Price, who was the chief editor of
The Associated Press, that the United States must launch the largest civil
censorship in US. history that had ever taken place. That effect would be aimed
at Japan. The Japanese communication system was complicated, the Japanese
language was unique, and it was expected that military management, which
included censorship, would be necessary for quite a long period after Japan's
defeat.5 The operations of the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) were not
MacArthur’s arbitrary decision but the order by the US. Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt.‘5 Jun Eto states that according to the US. War Department’s
instructions to McArthur, civil censorship used on the people under occupation
was far more complicated than the military censorship used on military personnel.

There were two functions of civil censorship: to gather information about the

5

public opinion and morale of the people in order to execute occupation policy
smoothly; to be the vanguard of occupation policy. This meant to control
information about the policy, stabilize the economy, and to prevent information
leaks and underground activities.7 Roosevelt’s executive order left all the
censorship against mail, telegrams, radio programs, etc. to the discretion of the
Director of the Ofﬁce of Censorship.8 This order allowed the Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to censor all the possible means of civil
communication in Japan. The CCD established thirty categories for deletion or
prohibition of printing and publication with censorship policy. These categories
included criticism of SOAP and the US. Occupation Forces, and the United
States in general; mention of the censorship operation; and the use of
propaganda for defending the war, promoting Shintoism and militarism, and
exaggerating the food crisis.9

It was hard to ﬁnd personnel in the United States who had a good
command of Japanese. It was also difﬁcult to train the Americans to be proﬁcient
in Japanese in a short period of time; hence, the US. Counter Intelligence Section
employed Japanese American soldiers - Nisei. However, only 3 percent of the
Niseis demonstrated a proﬁciency in Japanese because the majority of them had
assimilated into American society more fully than the US. Army Forces had
thought.10 Therefore, the CCD had no choice but to hire the Japanese as
censorship examiners. Yet those Japanese examiners were not trusted
completely by the CCD, so important works such as a word-for-word translation
were sent to the Nisei soldiers. According to Eto, no Japanese censorship

examiners showed either resistance or hostility, and if they did, they skillfully hid

6

these feelings. About 30 percent, or more than 1,500 Japanese examiners,
worked in the Press, Pictorial and Broadcast Division (PPB) in the CCD section.
Eto states that almost all the motives of the Japanese who applied to be
examiners were economic. The Japanese were starving at that time, so it was
necessary for them to make the best use of their ability to earn money and get
food. The CCD paid them between 700 yen (about US$2 of the time) and 1,200
yen (about US$3).11 Considering that the average monthly salary of the era in
Japan was 212 yen, the job the CCD offered was extremely well paid. Over
10,000 Japanese worked for SCAP in both the CCD and Allied Translators and
Interpreters Section (ATIS). Eto points out that it has become an open secret that
some of these workers later became prominent ﬁgures such as company CEOs,
professors and journalists, though none of them mention in their records that they
once worked for the CCD.12 They probably felt guilty to have worked for an
enemy country, the United States, although there was no choice for them at that
time in order to survive because the Japanese were starving. Eto interestingly
points out the accomplice relationships between the censor and the censored.
Once “the censored” were involved with the censor, whether the censored wanted
it or not, the censored were under an obligation to cooperate with the censor and
to hide the existence of the censorship. Accordingly, they were forced to share the
values of the censor. This secret or taboo was something that both the censor and
the censored shared.13 When the Japanese publishers of the newspapers,
magazines and books etc. realized the existence and the details of the SCAP
censorship through their publication, they were forced to conceal it. It is possible

to say that SCAP took advantage of the psychological condition of the Japanese

7

who were involved with censorship because SCAP knew that it could make the
censored take sides with the censor through the censorship operation.

As to postal censorship, the CCD made a “Watch List” based on
information from the black list created by the US. Federal Government. All the
letters received and sent with the names on the “Watch List” were subjected to be
opened and censored.“ The CCD also minutely investigated private
correspondence. The number of letters received by the postal service averaged
from 19,000,000 to 20,000,000 a month, and of those CCD opened 4,000,000
private letters. Furthermore, it censored 3,500,000 wires a month, and wiretapped
25,000 phone conversations. As a result of censoring private conversations in
letters and phones, SCAP succeeded in grasping the public opinion of the
Japanese.15

Through the highly reliable information about the public sentiment of the
Japanese collected by the CCD, SCAP felt the need of War Guilt lnforrnation
Program (WGIP), the propaganda program to implant in the minds of the
Japanese a sense of guilt and responsibility for starting the war. As the ﬁrst stage
of WGIP, SCAP Civil lnforrnation and Education Section (CIE) started to print
“The History of the Paciﬁc War" in all the newspapers in Japan from December
8th to 17th in 1945. It was prepared by CIE and proofread by the US. Army G—3,
and they revealed the unknown facts and also emphasized the cruelty of the
Japanese Military in Nanjing, China and Manila, Philippines.16 The second stage
of WGIP began in early 1946. It emphasized democratization and hope for the
future of Japan to become an orderly and peaceful member of international

society. SCAP consistently kept mentioning the cause of the war, the guilt of the

8

Japanese who started the war, and war crimes.17 The third stage of WGIP
reﬂected the tense situation in the ﬁnal days of the Tokyo Trial which started in
1946 and ended in 1948. The Tokyo Trial was carried out to judge the war
criminal, Hideki Tojo, who was the former Prime Minister of Japan. This third .
stage emphasized the political information and education against ultranationalism
to avoid the possible revival of an ultranatinalist movement.18 Among those three
stages, the ﬁrst stage of WGIP will be focused in the following because it had the
‘ strongest inﬂuence on the thoughts of the Japanese.

“The History of the Paciﬁc War” was the American perspective on WWII,
and it was a propaganda which strongly affected the Japanese. Eto discusses
that “T he History of the Paciﬁc War” played an important historical role to change
the name of WWII.19 The Japanese used to call WWII “Greater East Asia War,”
because the Japanese government used a slogan during the war, “Greater East

Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere,” in order to justify Japan’s act of aggression in Asia.

The Japanese envisioned the Co-Prosperity Sphere to be an
autarkic bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of
Western powers. The idea of Japanese cultural superiority
over other Asian races had been expounded as early as the late
nineteenth century and steadily grew in intensity until the end of
World War II. For example, the famous Japanese educator
Fukuzawa Yukichi wrote "Japan's Mission in Asia" in 1882 to
support the idea of Japanese imperialism and the "manifest
destiny" of Japan to be the leader of Asia. Japanese leaders
used the Co—Prosperity Sphere in its propaganda for the people
both in Japan and in other Asian countries. ...The Co-Prosperity
Sphere turned out to be just another form of oppressive
imperialism in place of the imperialism previously imposed by
Western nations.20

However, SCAP changed the name of WWII from “Greater East Asia War” to
“Paciﬁc War" from the second newspaper serial of “T he History of the Paciﬁc
War.” By replacing the Japanese perspective on WWII with that of the American
perspective, SCAP tried to inculcate the sense of guilt on Japanese imperialism in
Asia into Japanese minds. One of the other purposes of “The History of the
Paciﬁc War” was to create a confrontation between the Japanese militarists and
the Japanese citizens. Eto argued that by doing so, SCAP attempted to transform
the idea of war from the war between Japan and the United States to the war
between the Japanese militarists and the Japanese citizens. This would make the
Japanese blame the Japanese militarists, and not the United States. For example,
SCAP tried to have the Japanese denounce their own government and militarists
for the present and the future sufferings and poverty, and also the consequence of
the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.21 ln other words, SCAP
tried to shift the responsibility of the war to the Japanese government and the
militarists so that it would make it easier for SCAP to carry out the occupation
policy.

On December 9 in 1945, the day after “T he History of the Paciﬁc War”
began in the newspapers, another step of the ﬁrst stage of WGIP began: the radio
program Shinso wa ko da (Now It Can Be Told).22 Radio broadcasting was made
subject to SCAP supervision and guidance. SCAP took advantage of
broadcasting as a powerful medium for implementing the occupation policy on
democratizing and demilitarizing Japan. SCAP made full use of the radio
particularly because of its capacity for pervasive inﬂuence among the general

public. SCAP continued to censor broadcasts until October 1949, two months

IO

before NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) established its own broadcast
program standards, and ensured that the programs content was in line with the
occupation policy.23 The radio program was a part of the US. occupation policy.
It was a dramatized version of “The History of the Paciﬁc War” and was broadcast
once a week for ten weeks until February 1946.24 It was basically “a campaign
denouncing the prewar and wartime governments and the actions of the
Japanese military, and criticizing those responsible.”25 The plot is that a boy asks
questions about the war and an anti-militarist Japanese writer answers and
teaches the boy the crimes and collapse of militarist Japan, and the beginning of
the democracy. The scenario was written by the SCAP Civil lnfonnation and
Education Section (CIE) and they directed it in every detail; however, SCAP hid
the fact that it was involved with it. Any news about the Allied Forces was strictly
restricted under the occupation, and reporting that the radio program was made
by SCAP was also forbidden.26

As Eto reports, American journalist Paul Vlncent Miller wrote that SCAP
was aware that although the attitude of the Japanese toward SCAP and its
occupation policy was favorable in general, repugnance was aroused by
censorship of newspapers and mail. Even within the United States, the existence
and the details of the censorship operation had to be kept a close secret, even
though the establishment of the Ofﬁce of Censorship was ofﬁcially announced.
This was because SCAP knew that some Congressional representatives and
citizen groups were opposed to the censorship operation because censorship
goes against the very idea of the nation of freedom — the United States.27

MacArthur does not refer to the SCAP censorship in his Reminiscences at all. He

II

instead states that the Japanese were given the freedom of speech by SCAP:

The shackles of militarism, of feudalism, of regimentation of body
and soul, have been removed. Thought control and the abuse of
education are no more. All now enjoy religious freedom and the
right of speech without undue restraint. Free assembly is
guaranteed. The removal of this national enslavement means
freedom for the people, but at the same time it imposes upon
them the individual duty to think and to act on his own initiative.
The masses of Japan now have the power to govern and what is
done must be done by themselves.28

The national enslavement by the Japanese government was removed when the
war ended, but the Japanese were then enslaved by SCAP. However, MacArthur
writes as if SCAP did not control any information. Also, more directly, the

censorship violated Article 10 of the Potsdam Declaration:

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 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.29

Miller continues that the United States tried to restrict the activities of special
correspondents in Japan, which made it difﬁcult for the American public to know
what was happening there.30 Yet SCAP could not fully control American or other
international journalists in Japan because they were not the people under
occupation, and it would be inconsistent with the democratic ideals of the United
States. Thus, some of the international journalists who came to Japan like Miller

were obstructive to the CCD, and their criticism, being uncontrolled, became

important proof of the essence of the CCD censorship.31

Since the radio program, Now It Can Be Told, was presented as a
program of NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Japan’s public broadcasting,
people thought that NHK was independently responsible for the program. For
example, NHK’s use of “our nation,” meaning Japan, was scripted by SCAP.”
While trying hard to disguise the agent of the radio program, SCAP sometimes
had its defects exposed. The Japanese non-ﬁction writer Masayasu Hosaka
indicates that it is bizarre when a Japanese announcer talks about the intention of
the United States regarding Pearl Harbor: US. military authorities felt it necessary
to retaliate immediately against Japan when they had a tremendous damage in
Pearl Harbor.33 The other example of SCAP’s trick was to use the word
tennOheika (His Majesty the Emperor) instead of just tenno (the Emperor)
suggesting that SCAP was not involved; Americans normally called the Emperor
of the Showa era just “the Emperor" or “Hirohito.”34 SCAP used both media, the
newspapers and the radio, to try to control the thoughts of the Japanese by vision
and sound.35 It is important to know that the radio was the only source of
entertainment at that time and that the radio programs of the era brought people
relief and hope amid the hardships of the postwar era.36 Under such a
circumstance, the program was broadcast and rebroadcast repeatedly ﬁve days a
week, so there were only two days when SCAP did not air it on the radio. Sakurai
argues that it is obvious from this that SCAP clearly intended to let as many
Japanese as possible listen to the radio under the excuse of enlightening them?7
NHK reevaluated radio programs produced under CIE direction and began

planning and producing original programs when the peace treaty between Japan

q

I.)

and the Allied Powers came into effect and Japan’s independence was restored
with the end of the occupation in April 1952.38

The radio program Now It Can Be Told provoked the strong antipathy of
the Japanese, especially those who believed in militarism during the war when it
ﬁrst started. lntellectuals such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the era, Shigeru
Yoshida, displayed the strong opposition to the radio program because they
believed that Japanese history should be made by the Japanese, and not
presented from the American perspective.39 When Now It Can Be Told ended on
February 10, 1945, it changed its name to ShinsObako (Truth Box) and continued
from the following week for the next three years until January of 1948. Having
learned from the strong objection toward Now It Can Be Told, SCAP changed to a
softer tone in Truth Box.40 From 900 to 1,200 letters were sent to Truth Box every
week. This shows the people’s great interest in the program.“1 Sakurai states that
Japan under US. occupation was like a socialist nation because all the
information was controlled and a certain ideology was formed under SCAP during
the occupation period.42 Through these radio programs, SCAP spread
propaganda for Japanese demilitarization and democratization, and told the
Japanese how Japanese militarism was evil and how the United States
endeavored for peace.“

The radio program Tmth Box not only negated everything about Japan
but also approved some Japanese culture such as Kinku Chokugo (the Imperial
Rescript on Education). The Imperial Rescript on Education signed by the
emperor of Meiji was distributed to every school in Japan in 1890 along with the

goshinei (imperial photograph) to be enshrined. It was the imperial message on

14

moral and civil instruction, emphasizing traditional values of Confucianism.“ By
approving the Imperial Rescript, SCAP was skillfully telling the Japanese that the
sign of democratization was already rooted in Japan, so the US. occupation
policy was not something completely unfamiliar to them; indeed, the United States
was just trying to help lead Japanese history in a better direction. Furthermore,
SCAP did not mention a suicidal attack by the Japanese soldiers, being afraid of
the war bereaved burning with vengeful thoughts toward the United States.45 Also,
Truth Box emphasized that Japan lost the war because of technology rather than
political and military strategies. According to Hosaka, the United States was trying
to tell the Japanese that Japan was defeated not by its spiritual weakness but by a
more realistic reason: inferior technological power. Hosaka points out that the
idea of Japanese defeat in WWII caused by inferior production power and fewer
amounts of materials is the origin of materialism in postwar Japan. The Japanese
may have lost important values because of this.46 SCAP propaganda was
effective because of their technique of weaving some truth into the falsehood.
Since truth was also included there, it was hard for listeners to distinguish what
was truth and what was false.47 One of the truths the Japanese were sure of was
that their nation and its government had been telling them a lie by saying Japan
was winning the war when it was not. Because of this one big lie, the Japanese
general public came to believe by listening to this radio program that the
Japanese government and militarists were the cause of all the evils that were
deceiving them. “Idolatry for their feudalistic masters and the warrior class was
transformed into hatred and contempt, and the hatred and contempt for their foe

gave way to honor and respect,” notes MacArthur.48 Also, with the information

I5

obtained from the radio program, the Japanese were likely to think that the United
States which was the symbol of the most powerful and wealthy nation of the time
was honest and telling them the truth.49

General MacArthur’s food policy convinced the Japanese of their idea of
the United States as a reliable nation who seemed to help Japan. The Japanese
were starving when they lost in the war in 1945. The ﬁrst big problem SCAP and
MacArthur confronted was Japan’s food situation. Diseases caused by
‘ undemourishment reached their peak in the summer of 1946. As the country was
driven by the fear of starving to death, more than one million Japanese
participated in a demonstration march to call for food on May 1, 1946.50 Eating
was the priority for three years from 1945 to 1947.51 This is the social background
of the postwar period in Japan. lwamoto indicates that Japanese did not only
tighten their guard against America that they had immediately after the end of the
war, but it had transformed to be more than the favorable impression, and it
unsurprisingly led to the good image toward the United States.52

MacArthur tried very hard to get food for the Japanese. In order to keep
the burden of American citizens to a minimum, it was stated in the Basic Directive
for Post-Surrender Military Government in Japan Proper that SCAP would not be
responsible for the economic poverty of Japan. However, according to lwamoto,
MacArthur ignored this clause and insisted on the necessity of the food
exportation from the United States to Japan. MacArthur even sent out a warning
to the president of the United States that refusing the food exportation would

surely be denounced in the future.” MacArthur recalls in his Reminiscences:
The Appropriations Committee of the United States House of

I6

Representatives wanted to know howl could justify the
expenditure of Army appropriations to feed our late enemy. I
explained. To cutoff Japan’s relief supplies in this situation
would cause starvation to countless Japanese - and starvation
breeds mass unrest, disorder and violence. Give me bread or give
me bullets. I got bread.“

The US. army released their food packets in 1946, and many Japanese local
authorities sent a letter of appreciation to MacArthur.55 MacArthur’s food policies
succeeded in increasing food in Japan, and the people paraded a ﬂoat and
celebrated the urgent help by the United States and a good harvest: “My Dear Mr.
GI. Thanks Giving. Gratitude for Saving One’s Life. Thank you, Mr. America!” Also,
there was a festival entitled “In Appreciation of General MacArthur’s Sincere Aide
for Japan’s Food Crisis” in 1946.56 MacArthur realized the feeling of the
Japanese, stating that they came to regard him “not as a conqueror, but as a

protector”:57

The effect was instantaneous. The Japanese authorities changed
their attitude from one of correct politeness to one of open trust.
The press, which had been dubious at ﬁrst, now began to voice
unanimous praise.58

The food policy succeeded in giving the Japanese good impression about
MacArthur and the occupation policy, which made it easier for SCAP to operate
the policy.

Food policy was one example which was appreciated by the Japanese
under occupation. Another example is that some Japanese people felt that they
were given the freedom as the result of the information control by SCAP. These
people were those who were dissatisﬁed with the speech control by the Japanese

government before and during the war. For example, the Emperor of Showa

visited MacArthur on September 27, 1945. The picture of the small Emperor in
striped trousers and formal morning coat, and tall open-shined MacArthur
shocked the Japanese because they had never seen the Emperor except in the
Imperial Photograph (goshinei) distributed along with the Imperial Rescript on
Education in 1890. When this picture appeared in newspapers, the Japanese
government prohibited the sale of the newspaper, but SCAP removed the ban.
According to Daizaburo Yui, the Japanese writer, Jun Takami, was very glad but
ashamed at the same time to be given a freedom to write whatever he wanted not
by his own nation but by the occupation army.$9 According to the Japanese
author, Rinjiro Sodei, since thought control by the military and secret police had
been pervasive under wartime regimes in Japan, public criticism had been
completely banned, and it was impossible for the Japanese to appeal directly to
the ruling authorities. Therefore, when this oppressive burden was lifted, the
Japanese were suddenly free to express themselves, and many seized the
opportunity.60 As examined above, it was clear that all the information was
skillfully controlled to beneﬁt the SCAP occupation policy. Yet, the example of
Takami shows that there were people in Japan who were pleased with the
measure taken by SCAP. Many Japanese wrote letters to MacArthur and SCAP
to show their appreciation, and according to Sodei, many of them also sent gifts to
him such as ﬂowers, fruits, his portraits, sticks, a canary, traditional Japanese
textile fabrics, etc. Sodei continues that the estimate of 500,000 letters sent to
MacArthur and SCAP were not only read but also prepared in English summaries
by SCAP. When the Japanese knew that their opinions and requests would be

heard if they wrote to MacArthur, the ﬂow of letters increased until an average of

l8

several hundred letters were arriving every day.‘51 Here is one example of those

letters:

Ever since you entered Japan, the face of the country has been
changing. Your leadership is truly godlike. Your vision penetrates
every corner of Japanese society, and every one of your
directives is supeme on target. We are all deeply grateful that
your guidance is humanitarian, and that your directives are good
government that Japanese politicians will never match.62

The Japanese government even gave MacArthur honorary citizenship when he
left Japan, and many Japanese were very sad that he left.63 The SCAP
occupation policy was successful in persuading the Japanese to think that the
United States was trying to help Japan, accordingly making it easier to let them
follow the policy. MacArthur wished to be called an “educator” or a “missionary”
and not a military leader or an occupation ruler.‘54 Thus, he must have been
satisﬁed with his job as the supreme commander of SCAP.

Japan controlled the information before and during the war as well to raise
the morale of the Japanese. In August 1937, the cabinet of Prime Minister

Fumimaro Konoe adopted guidelines for building national morale:

This was a sweeping, nationwide campaign to spur Japan’s war
effort under the slogans of “indomitable fortitude" and “national
unity" to encourage frugality and curb consumption. In October
the same year, the government carried out a “Mobilization of
National Morale Reinforcement Week,” during which radio
stations carried out special programming. The program kokumin
chorei no jikan (National Morning Meeting) included to broadcast
of Kimigayo (Japan’s national anthem), an appeal for listeners to
pay obeisance in the direction of the Imperial Palace, a lecture on
current affairs, the radio calisthenics routine, and the song Umi
yukaba (Going Out to Sea), a ballad of the traditional warrior
ethos.“5

When the war began, daily radio broadcasting time was extended and the
Japanese listeners were urged to leave their radios on throughout the day in order
to serve the country through broadcasting. Recording of military marchers
preceded news reports on Japan’s successes in the war, and morale-boosting
programs of music and entertainment were also aired. The works of composers of
enemy nations such as the United States and Britain disappeared from music
programs. Also, the study programs of foreign languages were all suspended
prior to the outbreak of the war, in line with the Japanese military’s policy of
banning foreign languages.66 With regard to speech control, the Japanese
government used asterisks to delete certain expressions but it was possible to
read and understand what was censored. More importantly, people in Japan knew
that the Ministry of Interior was censoring. However, SCAP censorship was more
cunning because it, for example, deleted a few sentences and inserted other
sentences; the Japanese did not even realize the existence of the censorship.67
Eto writes that Japanese censorship before and during the war prohibited the
people from dealing with tabooed topics such as the Emperor, national policy and
any dangerous thoughts which would put the community at risk. For example, the
Japanese government prohibited the Japanese from desecrating the Emperor's
dignity. Contrary to this Japanese censorship, SCAP censorship intentionally
involved the Japanese in their censorship operation as an “accomplice” through
its secrecy, so that those Japanese could be censoring other Japanese.6a The
Japanese censorship examiners were ﬁred in some occasions if they violated the
SCAP policy. Some examples of this were to discuss the publication censorship,

to forget asking about the use of a picture on newspapers, etc. In this way, SCAP

20

censorship policy ﬁrst permeated the Japanese censorship examiners, and then
the other Japanese through them.69

SCAP censorship policy distorted the story of how Japan lost the war.
Namely, the Potsdam Declaration did not prescribe Japan’s “unconditional
surrender,” but they prescribed the “unconditional demilitarization of Japanese
military.” However, SCAP and radio programs continuously used the expression
“unconditional surrender" and the Japanese believed this. SCAP tried to occupy
Japan as “unconditional surrender” because it would make it easier to control
Japan. Sakurai insists that whether “unconditional surrender” or not is critical
because it is about whether Japan loses its sovereignty or not. Therefore, Japan
was supposed to be able to decide how to reconstruct Japan by negotiating with
SCAP instead of being controlled thoroughly by them.70 Hosaka also suggests
that Japan was defeated by its military power, and not by its politics, ideology, and
culture. However, many Japanese felt that the loss made all aspects of their ideas
seem erroneous.71

Then why did Japan only have to do as SCAP dictated without resisting
and doubting it? The problem lies on the side of the Japanese as well. Hosaka
argues that they lack the awareness of being citizens of Japan, that is, they
lacked an idea of nationalism.72 Unlike the United States, Japan is a relatively
homogeneous nation where most of the people are from the same background on
the small island. The Americans become “Americans” by sharing the same ideas
such as democracy, freedom, and the American dream no matter where they
come from. Anyone can be an American if they agree with American ideals. On
the contrary, the Japanese are already “Japanese” when they are born in Japan.

71

h

The Japanese were manipulated by the Japanese government during the war to
have nationalism and to believe that Japan was the nation of God (Shintoism) and
that Hirohito, the Emperor of Showa, was a God. However, the Japanese
originally have a much smaller sense of belonging and also much less nationalism
because of the geographic condition than the Americans do. The Japanese were
not aware of Japanese identity. They had never thought about themselves and
their country deeply or questioned themselves because they did not need to.
Hosaka continues that the other big weakness of modern Japan was that Japan
did not have any knowledge with regard to colonial rule.73 That is why Japan did
not know what to do when SCAP came to control everything in Japan. The
Japanese did not even know about their nation well enough to resist SCAP when
they were given the wrong information about their own country.

As MacArthur felt it a mission to “educate” the Japanese by demilitarizing
and democratizing Japan, the ethnocentric attitude of the United States can be
seen everywhere in Truth Box. When talking about the dropping of the atomic
bomb in Japan on the radio, they tried to show the Americans’ sympathy. Yet, at
the same time, they told the Japanese that there was no other way to end the war
except to drop the bomb, and that the cruel weapon was used by the people who
protected the civilization the most — the Americans. According to Hosaka, it can
be inferred from this passage that the United States dropped the atomic bomb on
Japan because they despised the “Jap.” He goes on to say that this logic exists
even within the United States by quoting from The New York Times saying that
the atomic bomb would be a stain in US. history. The perplexity of the United
States can be seen in SCAP censorship. They were most sensitive to the news

22

about the atomic bomb and completely forbade making any reports about it."
When Hosaka entered elementary school in 1946, he was educated that
Japan did a wrong thing, and the United States was right in the war and justice
always won.75 “The History of the Paciﬁc War" was published after it ﬁnished
serializing in newspapers in 1946, and it sold over 100,000 copies because it was
ordered by SCAP to use as a text in school. Therefore, the War Guilt Information
Program (WGIP) became inﬁltrated in the area of education.76 Japanese history
' was changed by SCAP after Japan lost the war, and the Japanese were forced to
believe the American perspective on WWII. The inﬂuences of the American
perspective can still be seen in education today. The Japanese who were
educated to think that Japanese militarism and imperialism were evil by SCAP
respond sensitively about showing nationalism and patriotism. This is because
nationalism and patriotism were intensely related to the militarism and imperialism
of Japan during the war. These people are opposed to any kind of activities that
remind them of the patriotism during the war. For example, the ofﬁcial visit of the
current Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine aroused severe

criticism in both domestic and other Asian nations such as China and Korea:

Koizumi has also provoked controversy by announcing his
intention to worship at the Yasukuni Shrine to Japan’s war dead in
an ofﬁcial capacity on August 15 - the anniversary of Japan’s
surrender in World War II. Wartime leader and convicted war
criminal Hideki Tojo, as well as ﬁve other hanged war criminals,
are buried in the shrine. Japanese politicians have shunned
ofﬁcial worship due to the perception in both Japan and Asia that
it amounts to commemorating the wartime regime. A deﬁnite logic
is contained in the various efforts to legitimize and resurrect the
history and symbols of Japanese militarism. It amounts to clearing

23

 

the ideological decks for an aggressive reassertion of the
interests of Japanese imperialism in Asia and elsewhere against
those of its rivals.77

Moreover, those Japanese even indicate a strong refusal to sing the Japanese
national anthem and hoist the national ﬂag. The Japanese national anthem,
Kimigayo (The Emperor’s Reign), praises the emperor. The translation of the

lyrics is as follows:

May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight
thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small
pebbles to grow into a great rock and become covered with
moss.78

Both the anthem Kimigayo and the national ﬂag of Japan, Hinomam (Rising Sun),
are the symbols of painful wartime militarism which are associated strongly with
colonialism and war.79 Thus, some people who were educated to hate the
Japanese militarism which led to the war strongly oppose to these two symbols.
On the other hand, there are also some people who want to express
patriotism toward their nation - Japan. These people regret that Japanese history
was distorted under SCAP occupation by being forced to adopt the American
perspective. It resulted in a strong sense of guilt and rejection of patriotism.
Therefore, some Japanese try to recover nationalism and patriotism today. Prime
Minister Koizumi’s ofﬁcial visit to the Yasukuni Shrine is one form of representing
his wish to revive patriotism. With regards to the anthem and the ﬂag, controversy
erupted in 1999 when the Kimigayo and Hinomaru were legalized as the national
anthem and the ﬂag of Japan: “The formal recognition of these two symbols -
holdovers from World War II - has sparked a debate between Japan's many

paciﬁsts and its small but growing number of nationalists. One high-school

24

principle was so torn over the issue that he committed suicide.”80 Furthermore,
the Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro lshihara, began imposing harsh penalties on
deﬁant teachers who do not honor the ﬂag, stand up and sing the anthem at

school ceremonies:

The board of education of the Tokyo metropolitan government
has decided to reprimand about 180 teachers at metropolitan
senior high schools and schools for disabled children. The
government claims the teachers disobeyed the board’s orders
and behaved “unprofessionally” during graduation ceremonies
held in Marcy — simply by refusing to stand while the national
anthem was being sung and other actions. Here is a list of
things the board required of all metropolitan schools: The national
ﬂag must be placed at the front of the auditorium stage; all
teachers must stand and face the ﬂag; all must sing the national
anthem.81

The board even sent ofﬁcials to schools to monitor teachers if they followed the
ﬂag-and-anthem routine at the graduation ceremonies. This law enforcement is
another expression to show the patriotic attitude toward Japan though some
critics call it “forced patriotism” and say that it does not belong in Japan’s modern
democracy.82 Enforcing people to respect the anthem and the ﬂag and punishing
those who disobey the law may go too far, but citizens of a nation are supposed to
naturally respect their own country. Thus, it is possible to say that this strong
opposition toward the anthem and the ﬂag of Japan is a result of the education
operated by SCAP which skillfully made the Japanese believe that Japan was
such a cruel nation which committed many horrible deeds in the past. The
ambivalent attitude towards Japanese nationalism is one example of the US.

occupation which can still be seen in Japan today.

25

Those Japanese who have feelings of regret regarding Japan with no
nationalism and patriotism formed “The Japanese Society for History Textbook
Reform.” They try to create “The New History Textbook” based on their own
Japanese perspective, which was authorized by the Ministry of Education in 2001.

According to the Society’s website,

After its defeat in World War II, Japan was occupied by US troops.
To render it incapable of attacking them a second time, the
Americans forced Japan to reorganize all of its institutions, even
its constitution. Not content to stop there, they attempted to alter
the Japanese perception of history. They expunged Japan’s
history, injecting in its place a history fabricated by the victors.
Japan became the source of all evils in accounts of wars
subsequent to the Manchurian Incident.83

The Society’s attempt leads to the justiﬁcation for militarism and the revival of the
imperialist. It is a rebound to the “masochistic” perspective on history forced by

the United States during the era of occupation.

A conservative movement toward reform in the Japanese history
curriculum set out to “correct history” by emphasizing a
“positive view” of Japan’s past and removing from textbooks any
reference to matters associated with what he calls “dark history.“

However, the attempt to revive patriotism by modifying the “American-made”
history became the focus of harsh criticism in Japan and in other Asian nations.
The complaints of Japanese historians and history educators centered around
“the text’s presentation of Japan’s foundation myths as historical fact and its
characterization of wars launched by modern Japan as wars to liberate Asia."85

Asian countries responded the following ways:

China Radio lntemational announced that the Chinese
government and people were “strongly indignant about and
dissatisﬁed with the new Japanese history textbook for the year

26

2002 compiled by right-wing Japanese scholars.”

[A]ngry Koreans continued to stage anti-Japan protests ignited by
the new Japanese “textbooks that allegedly gloss over atrocities
by Japanese soldiers during World War "3’86

Since both the Japanese citizen and the media has become too sensitive to
nationalism and patriotism and also anything which may sound contradictory to
democracy because of the control by WGIP, it is generally considered by the
Japanese today that being nationalistic and patriotic is dangerous. Citizens are
scared of being called ultranationalists. One of the reasons of their unwillingness
to be called ultranationalists is that most of the right-wing organizations in Japan
are related to yakuza (Japanese gangsters). As a result, the new textbook has
been shunned and nearly all of Japan’s school districts rejected it.87 Yet, the
objective of The Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform is “not to expose
the role of imperialism in Asia but to replace one set of historical distortions with
another.”88 The purpose of the debate over the textbook here is not to argue
whether it is correct or wrong to modify Japanese history, but it is signiﬁcant to
understand that both viewpoints the Japanese have today are polar opposites due
to the inﬂuence of the US. occupation policy. Eto insists that the reason why the
Japanese still repeat the words of the CIE propaganda is because the postwar
generation who were educated with “The History of the Paciﬁc War" is beginning
to form the backbone of Japanese society.89

The information control by SCAP, the ﬁrst stage of the US. occupation
policy in Japan, was examined in this chapter. The control was a starting point of
constructing a new Japanese identity in postwar Japan. While controlled

systematically by the occupation policy, the Japanese formed their own ideology

and values by domesticating the condition under the occupation. The new values
and ideas they constructed as a consequence of the inﬂuence of the occupation,
such as the ambition to become a developed nation like the United States where
people can enjoy a pleasurable life enabled by material affluence and the leisure

culture will be considered next.

CHAPTER 2
CULTURAL IMPACT: JAPANESE INTERPRETATION
OF THE AMERICAN CULTURE

Yui points out that postwar US. occupation was the second wave of
westemization in Japan. The same spiritual structure of datsua nyao (out of Asia,
entering in to the West) was seen both in the Bunmei kaika (civilization and
enlightenment) in the Meiji era and the postwar Japan.90 In 1868, the Meiji era
began with the end of Tokugawa shogunate, and it entered the era of
modernization with the Meiji Ishin (Meiji Restoration). Since Japan was culturally
behind other modern nations because of the closed-door policy, the Meiji
government made desperate efforts to absorb western culture in order to become
a member of modern nations. lt encouraged changing the old lifestyle of a feudal
society to the westemized modern nation focusing on aspects such as hairstyle,
dress, food, etc. In the early Meiji era, Japan and the United States were not
turning against each other, so there was no economic or political obstacle for the
Japanese to accept the American culture. In the late 18803, when the nationalist
movement to revive traditional Japanese culture started, and the Japan — U.S.
relationship had become tense because of the racial discrimination of the
Japanese in California, the American culture seemed to have less inﬂuence.
Nevertheless, as Kamei explains, the American materialistic culture kept ﬂowing
into Japan. The United States was the very model of Bunmei kaika for Japan in its
material progress and the liberated, rational ideology.91 US. occupation in the

postwar period was not the ﬁrst time Japan faced and admired American

29

civilization. In other words, wishing to be a modern and technological nation like
the United States has been rooted in Japanese history. Thus, when Japan faced
the second stage of modernization with the US. occupation, the Japanese knew
what it was like to be modernized, and they recalled the Meiji Restoration in the
Meiji era. Kamei claims that it may be natural to see that the Americanization in
Japan from the Meiji era was discontinued because of the war, and it resumed
when the war ended.92
The ideal state that Japan was trying to achieve in postwar time can be
seen in many things from textbooks to advertisements, according to lwamoto.
Japan used various media to penetrate the Japanese with the ideal image of the
predominant nation - the United States. “The American Fair” was held in Japan in
March 1950 for three months sponsored by the Japanese newspaper company,
the Asahi Shimbun Company. Two million tickets were sold in advance. The
project of the fair was to lay emphasis on the United'States which occupied the
most interest of the Japanese of the time, and to show its history, politics,
economics, education, arts, culture, and lifestyle.93 lwamoto provides some
examples of children who went to the fair. A sixth grade student paid attention to
the many home electric appliances and recognized that these appliances would
realize the rationalization of housework and give his mother spare time. The other
middle school student stated that the technology was what enabled the United
Sta 1es to be the top nation in the world, and he felt the necessity of Japan to learn
fro-“Ii the United States. Children of the era recognized that the United States was
the most advanced nation in technology, and that democratic living could be

DOS sible if the technology was reﬂected at home.94 The fair was successful in

30

giving the children who would be constructing the future Japan the recognition of
what was necessary to be a modern nation like the United States. lwamoto quotes
from Yojiro Ishizaka, the author of the ﬁrst postwar bestseller Green Mountains,
and shows lshizaka’s objective of the book as describing the democratic lifestyle
which the Japanese would have to construct. Newspapers and the Japanese
famous comic Sazaesan referred to Dagwood, the husband of Blondie, in the
famous American comic Blondie, to set an example of an ideal husband who
helps with the housework.95 The important point here is that the American Fair
was held under the aid of SCAP, and it was also sponsored by the Asahi Shimbun
Company.96

The Asahi Shimbun brought Blondie to Japan, which ran in serial from
1949 to 1951 in The Asahi Shimbun newspaper. It is a comic which often appears
in discussion among the Japanese today for its impact of introducing them the
American lifestyle. Interestingly, Blondie stopped appearing in newspapers
suddenly along with MacArthur’s departure without any explanation.97 Since Mr.
Hasegawa of the Asahi Shimbun Company who introduced Blondie has passed
away, there are no exact materials. Therefore, it is impossible to clarify whether
Blondie was a part of US. occupation policy or not.98 Yet, Eto notes that the
Japanese journalism had completely become the “CCD-made journalism” by the
end of 1946 because of the censorship on all the possible publicity media. He also
gives an example of the article in The Asahi Shimbun newspaper to prove that the
author of the article was surely contacted by CIE and, thus, played a part of the
SCAP propaganda project.99 Moreover, an American journalist Miller commented

in 1947 that the Japanese had the impression that the newspapers in Japan had

a

.JI

become the media which reﬂected the SCAP occupation policy.100 Considering
these factors, it seems quite probable to think that the Asahi Shimbun Company
was related to SCAP and that both the American Fair and Blondie were a part of
the occupation policy to make the Japanese admire American culture. At least, by
analyzing the responses to them, it is possible to see the occupation policy’s
inﬂuence on the Japanese and to say that the policy convinced them that the
United States was a nation of justice, and also a nation of technology which was
the reason of their victory in the war.

The general agreement on Blondie is that it inﬂuenced the Japanese
admiration of American culture because of the lifestyle of the Bumsteads, the
family in Blondie. Shunsuke Kamei states that Blondie imprinted an enjoyment of
an American lifestyle on the Japanese.101 lwamoto insists that although there
may not be many people who directly feel nostalgia when they hear the word
“Blondie,” repeated appearances of Blondie today on television and in people’s
conversations reconstruct it as the comic which induced the Japanese to admire
the American lifestyle. For the young generation who do not know Blondie, the
comic has become a myth that played a historical role to introduce the American
culture to the Japanese.102 lwamoto gives examples of Blondie’s image today as
the device to increase the actuality of the postwar era by picking up one scene
from the Japanese television drama which was produced in 2000. The scene is in
1949 where children at elementary school state their thoughts on Blondie in front
of soldiers of the SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) who came
to school for an inspection. One of the students says that “there is an electric
refrigerator and vacuum cleaner in Blondie. They also have a private car. I do not

32

even have an icebox at home. I think that the United States is great and I wanted
to be born there.” Then, one student states, “I envy when they eat such a thick
sandwich,” and the other says, “When I grow up, I will study English and want to
go to the United States.” The name of the drama was Hyakunen no Monogatari,
meaning A Story of One Hundred Years. It was broadcast by Tokyo Broadcasting
System (TBS) for three consecutive nights from August 28, 2000 in Japan.
lwamoto points out that Blondie was used in this drama to produce the postwar
atmosphere in Japan.”3 The scene explains that the children in a class are
impressed to learn American lifestyle in Blondie and admire the American culture
because it is very different from Japanese culture. This is the common perception
of Blondie by the general public and critics of today. Other than above mentioned
Kamei’s statement, lwamoto also cites other cultural critics of today to show this
viewpoint.

However, lwamoto argues that admiration towards the United States like
this is a perception from the stance of Americanization, which is accepting the
American culture rather passively. Namely, it is to think that the Japanese came to
think of America as a great nation as the result of the occupation policy. lwamoto
challenges the previously recognized idea of Blondie and tries to propose that
Japan enthusiastically used the positive aspects of American culture to better
create their own Japanese culture. According to him, there are two very opposite
perceptions of Blondie between the general readers and the former cultural critics
of the time. There are three images readers received from Blondie: “home electric
appliances,” meaning that technology has inﬁltrated the home; “wealthy life”

symbolized in food; and “democracy” which can be seen in the initiative of

33

housewives at home.‘°" Then lwamoto analyzes the numbers of the appearance
of each electric appliance in Blondie statistically, and compares it with that of
other non-electric appliances in the story. He contrasts the difference between the
numbers of the actual appearance of these appliances in Blondie and the
people’s imagination of their appearances. He concluded that the analysis does
not prove that Blondie gives the readers an impression of “wealthy life surrounded
by home electric appliances" because in spite of the readers’ strong impression,
the total numbers of electric appliances, except electric refrigerators, which
appeared in the newspapers, does not tremendously exceed other non-electric
appliances. Also, he points out that the readers of the time who did not even own
an icebox could not possibly identify the simple illustration in the comic to
recognize electric appliances correctly. Furthermore, even some objects such as
a car and a television which are not shown at the Bumsteads in Japanese
newspapers, are owned in the representation of Blondie in Hyakunen no
Monogatari, and also in some former studies, according to lwamoto.105 These
inaccurate perceptions show that the readers were imagining the lifestyle in
Blondie based on the positive view toward the American culture instilled during
the occupation. lwamoto calls it a “social perception,” meaning a socially
constructed perception.106 As shown earlier, the Japanese were told by SCAP
that the reason of their defeat in World War II was the inferior technological power
of Japan, so they naturally looked at the United States as the nation with superior
technology. Therefore, when they read Blondie, they equated the United States
with technology. They admired the United States for its technology because it was

the victorious nation and Japan was the defeated nation.

34

In 1947, SCAP showed the educational documentary ﬁlm in Yamanashi
prefecture in Japan to show how American citizens chose government ofﬁcials,
congressmen, presidents, etc., and tried to explain American democracy.
However, children’s interests were focused on the wealthy and comfortable life
the Americans lived. Girls dreamed to have a big electronic washing machine
someday, and boys wanted to have the American car. Adults were also
impressed by the American material living standard.107 One SCAP ofﬁcer states
that the Japanese had misunderstood about the living standard of the Americans
in the late 19405. They asked questions as follows: “Does everybody have a jeep
or a car?” “Do families go out for dinner every night?” “Do the Americans travel
overseas every year?” “ Does every family have a maid?”‘°8 These are the
preconceived opinions about the wealthy American society the Japanese had
when reading Blondie.

As mentioned earlier, the Japanese were starving immediately after the
war, and therefore appreciated MacArthur and his food policy, and accordingly the
United States, for giving them food. As a consequence of this favorable attitude,
readers of the time read Blondie and interpreted that everything about the
American culture was splendid by especially focusing on the food and electric
appliances in the kitchen in the comic. This impression resulted in the belief that
they saw a car and a television as well along with all the electric appliances,
despite the fact that these were not actually owned by the family in the part of the
comic printed in Japan. According to lwamoto, while the readers perceived
Blondie favorably, the cultural critics in the 1950s pointed out the negative side of

capitalism such as the loss of humanity and the sorrows of workers in Blondie.

35

lwamoto states that there are only a few studies about Blondie from those days.
To take examples, the ﬁlm critic, Taihei lmamura, mentioned in 1953 that the life
of the Bumsteads brought the miserable salaried worker as wage slave in relief.
He showed no material admiration or afﬂuence as shown in the general
impression of Blondie today. Similarly, a philosopher, lsaku Yanaihara,
emphasized the problem of the machine civilization which dehumanizes the
people, although unlike lmamura, Yanaihara apprehended the material affluence.
From these, lwamoto discusses that there is no analysis by the cultural critics of
the time to deﬁne that the Japanese learned what the American afﬂuent life was
like from reading Blondie, and dreamed of having such a lifestyle.109 The
philosopher, Tetsuro Watsuji, displays an anti-American sentiment with regards to
modernization, writing in 1944 that the American machine civilization does not
mean that the Americans have morally or artistically improved; rather, it means
that the mechanical power has made their lives easier and their entertainment
more exciting. No civilization exists without machines for the Americans. There
exists no culture for the “slaves of machinery.”110
While the social perception of the readers was the favorable attitude
toward the United States, the perception of the cultural critics was inﬂuenced by
Marxism, states lwamoto. They analyzed Blondie with an intension to criticize the
social structure of the capitalism which exploited workers.111 Marxian criticism

towards the American capitalism in Blondie can be seen in the analysis of the

Soviet Journalists’ Union twenty years later in 1975:

Cruel reality more and more invades the limited little world of their
family, and their main concern is the worrying thought of how to
make ends meet in conditions of growing exploitation... The

36

worried and concerns of Dagwood and his wife are shared by tens
of millions of workers in the countries of capital.112

However, Dean Young, the son of the author of Blondie, Chic Young, and Rick
Marschall, the comics scholar, insist that those critics forget that Dagwood forsook
a millionaire’s inheritance years ago to many Blondie, and that both of them have
been happy ever since.113 That is to say, the perception of both readers and
former cultural critics of the era were preoccupied. Then why has the perception
of the readers beat the perception of the critics of the time and become the
I common recognition of today’s critics and the general public? There were various
images of American culture, both positive and negative as shown in the reaction
to Blondie. However, the image of the United States as an affluent nation
surrounded by electric appliances has become the general perception today. This
is because Japanese society supported that image.114

It was true that the Japanese saw what the American lifestyle was like
through Blondie. In spite of the common perception, however, Blondie was not the
medium which made them admire the United States. Before reading Blondie, they
had some knowledge about the American culture and already had a favorable
feeling toward it. The image of Blondie shows the reﬂection of the social attitude in
Japan toward the American culture as a result of experience to be under the US.
occupation. Namely, the Japanese society at that time was encouraging the
readers to admire the American lifestyle and culture, and this social background is
teﬂected in the image of Blondie. The analysis of lwamoto shows that the
Japanese in the postwar era were looking at American culture in their own

Japanese way, which can be considered as preconceived. He concludes that the

37

postwar Americanization in Japan was the Japanese version of Americanization;
Japan projected its ideal on the United States, and then Japan looked at itself
from its projected image of the United States.115 This type of Americanization can
be called the “Japanization” of American culture, which will be examined in detail
later with Tokyo Disneyland in Japan. Kamei also calls the Americanization in
Japan “Japanization of the United States,” saying that accepting the American
culture does not collapse the value system of the Japanese culture, but rather it
enables the Japanese culture to be expanded and enriched.116 For example,
Japan has absorbed the positive aspects of American culture and achieved the
technological development of the United States. Therefore, by imagining
American culture in Blondie, it is possible to ﬁnd the subjective attitude and the
policy of Japan regarding how to deal with the United States and its culture under
the US. occupation. In other words, Japan was not just passively accepting the
American culture as they were forced to by the United States during the
occupation period. On the contrary, as MacArthur frequently advised the
Japanese in public statements to seek “a healthy blend between the best of theirs
[the Japanese] and the best of ours [the Americans],” the Japanese proactively
interpreted the situation and encouraged the people to have a favorable
impression on the American culture under the supervision of the United States so
that Japan could be a modern, democratic, and technological nation like the
United States.117 Sodei claims that the Japanese were willing to be reformed by
SCAP because the Americans looked attractive and the American democracy did

not seem so bad:

the Japanese “went to bed with the occupation.” The American

38

occupation and its subsequent reforms were the equivalent of
consensual sex, not rape, at least to the majority of the ordinary
public.118

The Japanese made the most of the situation given for its own development.

Another medium which was used to spread the idea of constructing a
democratic and technological Japan was through “education.” CIE also consulted
with NHK and the Ministry of Education and used radio program for school

broadcasting as a tool in rebuilding the Japanese education system.

Broadcasts for teachers were ﬁrst resumed in October 1945 and
broadcasts for elementary school students in December. Program
content and scripts had to be translated into English and
approved by the CIE. Lines such as, “If you’re a man, don’t cry"
were cut because they encouraged gender discrimination, while
the expression “Kodomo wa kaze no ko” (children should play
outdoors even when it’s cold) was avoided as a careless
statement lacking any scientiﬁc basis. On the advice of the CIE,
straight talk shows were avoided and content increasingly

"‘3'”de diSCUSSionS. plays, quizzes, and live broadcasts.119

lwamoto suggests that the history textbook in Japanese middle school inspected
by the Ministry of Education in 1951 indicates that although industry was
rationalized by technological development, domestic duties of the housewives
had been the same as before, and that it was necessary for Japan to change the
situation of the era by introducing the electric appliances which the Americans
owned.120 Shiba analyzes the guidelines for the high school home economics
course published in 1949. CIE of SCAP was deeply involved in making the
guidelines focusing on home management, consumer education, and family
relations.121 Shiba also inspects the educational ﬁlm Fora Bright Home Life

which was used in high school home economics classes during the occupation. It

39

is clearly speciﬁed that the ﬁlm was produced by SCAP CIE.122 Thus, the US.
occupation policy was widely inﬁltrated in the area of education as well.

Advertisements are also an effective manner to give the products a
positive image of American technology. As stated by lwamoto, those
advertisements put the word either “in America” or “technology,” and tried to add
the value of the products with the image of the highly technological, democratic,
and modern American lifestyle.123 Yet, all the advertisements lwamoto takes up
are the ones from 1949 to 1951, during the occupation period. Thus, it is
appropriate to see the inﬂuence of SCAP on advertisements as well. While
inﬂuenced incredibly by the US. occupation policy, the Japanese proactively
sought their own way of accepting and interpreting the American culture. Kamei
argues that it was the reﬂection of the extraordinary situation of the US.
occupation that postwar Japan was inﬂuenced by the United States in almost all
aspects. However, this nationwide Americanization in Japan could not be fully
explained by the situation under the occupation. He explains the reasons of the
phenomenon as: the longtime accumulation of the American culture in Japan, and
afeeling of liberation that they can legitimately enjoy‘the American culture?“
Various media has been inﬂuenced by the occupation policy and promoted the
Japanese to consume American culture with the purpose of letting them become
aware that Japan should break down the old customs if they want to have an
American lifestyle. Consumer culture is one of the biggest inﬂuences the
Japanese received from the American culture. Consequently, the Japanese
competed with others in buying home electric appliances.

A lifestyle full of electric appliances like the one in the United States had

40

become the ideal for the Japanese and they thought that they could achieve the
dream of an American lifestyle by purchasing the appliances. According to
lwamoto, the highest two income earners in 1954 in Japan were both company
presidents of the household electric appliances.125 A black-and-white television,
electric washing machine, and electric refrigerator were the “Three Sacred
Treasures” for the Japanese from 1960 to 1965. A color television, air conditioner,
and their own car replaced the three previous “Treasures" from 1965 to 1970.
These commodities were what they dreamed of and also the goal they wanted to
achieve.126 This process of consumption in order to acquire the added value in
their life was the beginning of the domestic consumer society, which lasted about
twenty years from mid 1950s until the end of Japan’s high economic growth.
Japanese children were also educated how to become consumers at school.
People who have gone through this period of US. occupation and the rise of
consumption culture enjoyed Disney animation which was broadcast in 19503,
and went to Tokyo Disneyland (T DL) when it was opened in 1983. These people
are the generation who have learned how to enjoy the leisure time with all the
family members because housewives were released from the burden of
housework, thanks to home electric appliances. The impression of Blondie is one
representation of the images the Japanese had toward the United States in those

days.

41

CHAPTER 3
CULTURAL NEGOTIATION: “JAPANIZATION” OF TOKYO DISNEYLAND

Tokyo Disneyland (T DL) opened in Japan in 1983, and it attracted 9.9
million visitors in its ﬁrst year. The next year, the number of visitors was a little
over 10 million, and this has grown to around 16 million in each of the years since
1990, according to sociologist Aviad E. Raz. Moreover, TDL saw 125 million
visitors in its ﬁrst ten years, a number nearly equal to the entire population of
Japan, and the number of visitors to TDL is almost the same as the sum total of
visitors to all the other theme parks.127 TDL has achieved the greatest success
among the whole Disneylands in the world both in the number of visitors and in
store sales at the Park. The reasons for TDL’s huge success are profoundly
related to the inﬂuences of the US. occupation period in Japan: consumerism and
the leisure boom. These two were what had been growing in Japan’s high-grth
period from the late 1950s for twenty years after the end of the occupation era.
Then in the 1980s, the period of stable economic growth, TDL opened and fulﬁlled
the cultural demands of the Japanese of the time. Thus, consumerism and the
leisure boom were the important factors of TDL's success. In order to match what
the Japanese wanted in the 1980s, there were many modiﬁcations of Disneyland
at TDL, which demonstrates the Japanization of American Disneyland and
American culture.

As examined above, the Japanese positively accepted the condition
under occupation to recontextualize and add the new aspects of the Japanese

culture, and they treat TDL, the symbol of the American culture, the same way.

42

There is an idea to look at American cultural artifacts in other nations as
Americanization or cultural imperialism. For example, Disneyland in France,
EuroDisney, is the only example of failure of Disneyland, which a French critic
termed a “cultural Chernobyl.” However, there are some studies which have
examined TDL from the point of Japanization and not from Americanization or
cultural imperialism. Masako Notoji, a Japanese pioneering analyst on TDL,
discusses that “American imports were quickly absorbed into the indigenous
system of values and practices in Japan” by being “reconstructed and redeﬁned
within the contexts of the importing societies,” and Japan digests and
domesticates American cultural symbols into “powerful vehicles of its own social
change.”128 Also, Mary Yoko Brannen refers to it as “the importation of the artifact
rather than its exportation" or “Japanese form of cultural imperialism.”129 Brannen
argues that the recontextualization of Disneyland takes two forms: “making the
exotic familiar” and “keeping the exotic exotic.” The former is to make the park
“more comfortable and accessible to its primary client base, the Japanese,” and
the latter one is to distance the self from the other by maintaining the distinction
between inside and out.130 Raz uses Brannen’s idea of “making the exotic
familiar” and “keeping the exotic exotic” and attempts to analyze the “active
appropriation of Disney by the Japanese” by “translating and editing it to project a
Japanese national identity and consuming it in unique ways,” which he calls

“Japanization of Disneyland”:131

TDL represents a case study where the acculturated - the
Japanese - are not passively dominated but rather make an
active and manipulative use of Western culture (i.e., Disneyland).
By focusing on the active role of the Japanese in importing,

43

modifying, and consuming Disney, this study undermines the
taken-for-granted premise that a Disney park is the same
everywhere and hence a model of cultural imperialism.132

These previous studies look at domestication of Disneyland in a Japanese way by
investigating how TDL has made the exotic familiar and also kept the exotic exotic.
In this chapter, I would like analyze how the inﬂuences of the US. occupation era
are represented at TDL, and how American Disneyland is arranged for the
Japanese visitors based on the inﬂuences. First, I would like to begin with the
‘ Disney animation which was the ﬁrst contact of the Japanese people with Disney.
The generation that has gone through the US. occupation in postwar
Japan watched Disney animation in the 19503 and 19603, at the very early stage
of the development of television broadcasting in Japan. The ﬁrst television drama
was broadcast in 1940, but few people were able to see it since television sets
were not yet on sale to the Japanese public. NHK (Japan Broadcasting
Corporation) began its early experiment in television in 1939, but NHK suspended
all television experiments to prepare for the coming war in 1941. Because of the
defeat in the war and the US. occupation, television broadcasting did not
reappear in Japan until the 1950s. The ﬁrst ofﬁcial television broadcast to the
Japanese public was an NHK production in February 1953.133 However, still not
many people could afford to buy a television because an average 17-inch set
retailed at 245,000 yen (under US$700) when the starting salary for a college
graduate in 1953 was only US$42 a month.134 By 1956, private ownership of a
television was rising as rapid economic growth was generating higher personal
income and mass production was bringing the price of television sets down.

Nevertheless, Japan did not have enough technology to produce many programs

44

and also it was much cheaper to pay for the rights to broadcast foreign shows
than to produce equivalent entertainment programs domestically. Therefore,
Japan imported broadcasting from the United States, which had a ten-year-old
industry. The ﬁrst American series to be shown on Japanese television was the
ten minute Cartoon series Superman in 1955, soon followed by Popeye,
Hucklebeny Hound, and The Flintstones. The color television appeared in 1960,
and the ﬂood of foreign program imports slowed in the late 1960s when Japan
had established many traditions of modern television drama. At the time of the
Royal Wedding of Crown Prince Akihito (current Emperor) to Michiko Shoda
(current Empress) in April 1959, television ownership had jumped rapidly to watch
the wedding. Japanese television reached a state of maturity at the end of the
19503.135 In the beginning of the 19603, national per capita income in Japan was
not especially high, but the number of television sets owned was 100 per
thousand persons, which was an extremely high ﬁgure compared to other
countries.136 This is how television has penetrated the home. The postwar
generation in Japan, also known as the baby boomers, grew up along with the
development of television in a newly emerging consumer society. As noted in the
beginning of this chapter, Japan aired many imported television programs from
the United States. When Germany surrendered in May and Japan in August of
1945, the Walt Disney Company (WDC) held great hopes for the reopening of the
foreign markets for its ﬁlms.137 Thus, WDC seemed to be enthusiastic in
exporting cartoons and ﬁlms to Japan.

One of the popular television shows imported from the United States was

the Mickey Mouse Club. It was broadcasted during the 19503 in Japan, and many

45

Japanese in their late ﬁfties watched this Disney show on television as children.138
In the United States, the Mickey Mouse Club was a variety television series
originally conceived as a way to promote and raise funds for Walt Disney’s new
Disneyland theme park which opened in July 1955. The television show ran from
October 1955 to September 1959.139 The Mickey Mouse Club was the popular
children’s television program of the 19503 in the United States. The show, which
aired daily, featured a variety of entertainment such as singing, dancing by the
cast of teenage performers called the “Mouseketeers” and various guest stars,
along with Disney cartoons and serials.”0 The Japanese baby boom generation
born in late 19403 was inﬂuenced by the Mickey Mouse Club, and this strongly
affected the popularity of TDL when it opened in Japan in 1983. One of the
interviewees of Raz made the following comment regarding the memory of Disney,

which reﬂects the typical opinion of the interviewee’s generation:

Our generation probably received the biggest Disney inﬂuence
because of the popular TV show. We later became parents when
TDL was opened. So naturally, we wanted to take our children to
TDL.“"

With regard to Disney cartoons, the ﬁrst Disney feature animation ﬁlm, Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs, was released in Japan in 1950, and then Pinocchio
and Bambi followed. The Disney studios had produced these movies during the
war, but they were banned in Japan, as was everything American. Then, the
“Japanese children became fans of both the Disney television show and Disney
feature animation ﬁlms,” continues Raz.”2 A Japanese animator and a critic of

cartoon and comics, Kosei Ono, says:

Walt Disney cartoons charmed the Japanese. My father’s
generation was amused by the jovial adventures of a mouse full of

46

ﬁghting spirit who challenges an opponent much bigger than him
out of concern for his girlfriend’s safety. From Disney’s cartoon
characters the Japanese came to grasp the image of America and
its jovial, cheerful national traits.”3

As examined with Blondie, the people in Japan already had a favorable attitude
toward the United States as a result of the US. occupation policy, so the
Japanese children were watching the Disney shows and animations favorably as
well. The children did not recognize the SCAP censorship or what Japan was
going through at that time. To the Japanese children, American soldiers were
people who looked very cool in neat uniforms and jeeps and who were very kind
to give them chocolates. Watching the Disney cartoons had a bigger impact than
simply enjoying the popular children’s television shows, and the children were
also quietly inﬂuenced by SCAP to have favorable feelings toward the United
States. This is deeply associated with the enormous popularity of Disneyland in
Japan.

Now I would like to talk about theme parks. Theme parks originate from
Disneyland which was ﬁrst built in Anaheim, Los Angeles in 1955 by Walt Disney.
A “theme park” is a specialized environment with a particular theme, and project
leaders are responsible for maintaining and developing this basis. That is to say,
they must keep offering the exotic environment of the happy atmosphere that
customers expect. Consequently, theme parks exclude everything that is not
within the theme. For example, at Disneyland, visitors cannot bring musical
instruments or lunch boxes.” The guests are not even allowed to disturb the
theme by bringing outside substances or by behaving inappropriately to utilize the

effects of the mechanisms at the Park to create an exciting experience for all

47

visitors. There are also many other devices to enable artiﬁcial themed
environments such as Disneyland “[m]ore real than the real” by maintaining the

theme.145 This is what Jean Baudrillard calls “hyperreal”:

It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a
hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it
survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory -
precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory, and if one
must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds
slowly rot across the extent of the map.146

Hyperreality of Disneyland results from the elaborate details. For example, there
is a hidden passage for “cast members” which cannot be seen by “guests” in
Disneyland.”7 Besides, Disneyland has a special painting technology named
“aging,” which enables new buildings to look dark and dull, to appear dirty and
have repair marks.148 They maintain everything to look the same as it was when
the park opened. Nothing will change, but at the same time, it keeps providing the
new excitement and discovery every time people visit. Walt Disney stuck to
expressing the actual presence and was absorbed in developing technology from
sound, to lights, to animatronics, etc.”9 The modern world has depended too
much on the visual and auditory senses, so devices which appeal to senses of
smell and taste should be provided to add depth of the themed environments.‘5°
Customers can give full scope to their imagination and experience hyperreality
more if they use their senses. Film can only tell the story or atmosphere to the
audience through vision and sound, but Walt Disney realized a strong medium to
control ﬁve senses by adding smell, touch and taste to sight and sound in the
actual existing space — Disneyland.151 Accordingly, with all the efforts and

devices to create hyperreal environment in Disneyland, it becomes “more real

48

than the real,” which Baudrillard calls a “simulacrum” as to the world created at
Disneyland.

Disneyland is the realization of a three-dimensional world of the
two—dimensional Disney animation ﬁlms. People can not only “see” but also
“experience” there, and it broke into the new theme park industry period.
Disneyland was constructed with Walt Disney’s clear intension of creating a
thoroughly different recreation facility from amusement parks. The biggest
difference of theme parks from amusement parks is this “experience.” Following is

the dedication of Disneyland on July 17, 1955 by Walt Disney:

To all who come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your
land. Here age relives fond memories of the past and here
youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.
Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard
facts which have created America with the hope that it will be a
source of joy and inspiration to all the world.152

Disneyland was the world’s ﬁrst space designed of splendid landscape which
realized “the happiest place on earth.” Walt created a new ﬁeld and also the new
culture as well.153 What Walt meant by “happy place,” is the world of fantasy
which completely blocks off the routine life.154 Because of this entire utopian
“fantasy,” Disneyland becomes “hyperreal.” Baudrillard explains the hyperreality

of Disneyland which reproduces the nostalgic good old days of the United States:

Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of
simulacra. It is ﬁrst of all a play of illusions and phantasms.... But
what attracts the crowds the most is without a doubt the social
microcosm, the religious, miniaturized pleasure of real America,
of its constraints and joys. Thus, everywhere in Disneyland the
objective proﬁle of America, down to the morphology of
individuals and of the crowd, is drawn. All its values are exalted by

49

the miniature and the comic strip. Embalmed and paciﬁed.
[Disneyland is] digest of the American way of life, panegyric of
American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory
reality.155

Disneyland is after all a utopia because it is created to be “the happiest place on
earth.” Disneyland has been considered a technological utopia by many cultural
critics because it is perfectly controlled by technology to make it look “real.” Raz
cites Stephen M. Fjellman that transportation, energy, waste disposal, and water
control systems of Walt Disney World (VVDVV) are a model of technological
utopia.156

The theme park era began with Disneyland in 1955 in the United States,
and thirty years later it went to Japan with Tokyo Disneyland in 1983. The purpose
of TDL was to create something that would contribute to the happiness of the
Japanese, according to Toshio Kagami, the current president of Oriental Land Co.,
Ltd. (OLC), the company which introduced Disneyland to Japan.157 OLC is a
partnership between Mitsui Real Estate Development and Keisei Electric Railway,
and it was formed in order to reclaim a part of Tokyo Bay near Urayasu City in
Chiba prefecture. OLC was licensed by Disney in return for 10 percent of
admission fees, and 5 percent of stores sales such as food and souvenirs."58 As
to license agreement, WDC insisted on forty years, and OLC twenty years. Both
made a compromise agreement and settled in forty-ﬁve years. Such a long-term
license agreement was very exceptional. Royalties reached 20 million dollars in
its ﬁrst year including various other payments. Yet, the president Kagami now
thinks that forty-ﬁve-year agreement was a right decision because OLC can

acquire and absorb the technology and information from WDC.‘59

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OLC tried to avoid creating a Japanese version of Disneyland and insisted
on constructing an exact copy of American Disneyland. According to the
spokesperson of TDL, “We wanted the Japanese visitors to feel they were taking
a foreign vacation by coming here, and to us Disneyland represents the best that
America has to offer.”160 TDL created a “foreign village” park boom in Japan in
19803. It is a type of a theme park that reproduces old streets and introduces its
culture and history based upon the theme of a particular country: Holland,

' Spanish, and Russian villages etc. It is surprising to ﬁnd almost no “foreign
village” theme parks in the world except in Japan, though there are theme parks
that deal with the history of their “own” country.161 Raz explains the background

of this “foreign village” boom:

The upsurge of foreign lands was facilitated by certain economic
trends. These included governmental support projects, such as
the 1987 law on resort zones and the provision of “100 million yen
for every hometown project”; the spread of the ﬁve-day workweek
during the 19803; and the bubble economy of the late 19803.162

Since overseas travel has become extremely popular in Japan today, Japanese
have the chance to look at different cultures in abroad; therefore, these “foreign
village” theme parks are no longer popular for the Japanese. At any rate, the
remark of the TDL spokesperson is understandable considering the boom to offer
foreign experiences to the Japanese people at that time. Brannen analyzes the
OLC’s intention to construct an exact copy of the original with the theory of

keeping the exotic exotic by denying to familiarize TDL for the Japanese:

The process of assimilation of the West, the recontextualization of
Western simulacra, demonstrates not that the Japanese are

being dominated by Western ideologies but that they differentiate
their identity from the West in a way that reinforces their sense of

51

their own cultural uniqueness and superiority, or what we might
call Japanese hegemony.163

In spite of OLC’s claim that they constructed the exact copy of the American
Disneyland, there are actually many modiﬁcations done at TDL to meet the needs
of the Japanese in the 19803 when it opened. I would like to investigate how TDL

has been appropriated from the next chapter.

3.1 CONSUMERISM

One of the biggest social changes in postwar Japan is consumerism. With
high economic growth, developed nations such as Japan and the United States
have become wealthy, and ﬁlled with consumer objects. The concept of
“consumption” has changed; it used to mean to buy daily necessities, which
Baudrillard referred to as the “use-value” of objects?“ Now, Baudrillard argues,
postindustrial nations have entered “a fundamental mutation in the ecology of the
human species” in which “the humans of the age of affluence are surrounded not

so much by other human beings, as they were in all previous ages, but by

object3”‘65:

Few objects today are offered alone, without a context of objects
which ‘speaks’ them. And this changes the consumer’s relation to
the object: he no longer relates to a particular object in its speciﬁc
utility, but to a set of objects in its total signiﬁcation. Washing
machine, refrigerator and dishwasher taken together have a
different meaning from the one each has individually as an
appliance.166

The “speciﬁc utility” is what he calls “use-value,” while the object in its signiﬁcation

is called “a social function,” “a symbolic value” or “exchange-value” of signs.'67 In

52

another way, Mark Gottdiener calls it “value-consumption” with a comparison to
“price-consumption.”168 According to Baudrillard, in the consumption society,
objects are consumed not by their “use-value” but by “sign exchange-value.”
What people in developed nations seek today has changed; today people would
like to consume for pleasure rather than necessity. That is, the value of
commodities is different from before: commodities people want now are not
inevitable for living like food and water, but people enjoy the added value of
objects. They can obtain the added value with “distinctive signs.” People want to
distinguish themselves from others by “acquiring the status of distinctive signs
and class (or caste) privileges.”169 Then “distinctive signs” are often appeared as

“a surplus” and “a superﬂuity”:

All societies have always wasted, squandered, expended and
consumed beyond what is strictly necessary for the simple reason
that it is in the consumption of a surplus, of a superﬂuity that the
individual — and society — feel not merely that they exist, but that
they are alive.170

Therefore, new rights which can be acquired only by those with “distinctive signs”
have been emerging. For example, even the “right to leisure” and the “right to
clean air” which apparently seem like the equal rights to everyone have become
one of the privileged statuses.171 Those new rights mean that the contemporary
society makes any “sign exchange-values” into objects to be consumed: “The
‘right to clean air’ signiﬁes the loss of clean air as a natural good, its transition to
commodity status and its inegalitarian social redistribution.”172 Baudrillard gives

another example of “distinctive signs”:

Now, admittedly, the rich man who drives a 2CV no longer
bedazzles. What he does is more subtle: he super-differentiates

53

himself, super-distinguishes himself by his manner of consuming,
by style. He maintains his privilege absolutely by moving from
conspicuous to discreet (super-conspicuous) consumption, by
moving from quantitative ostentation to distinction, from money to
culture.173

In the consumer society, people “never consume the object in itself (in its

use-value)”:

you are always manipulating objects (in the broadest sense) as
signs which distinguish you either by afﬁliating you to your own
group taken as an ideal reference or by making you off from your
group by reference to a group of higher status.174

The above mentioned society where people consume signs has led to the era of
the theme parks in the United States in the 19503 and then in Japan thirty years
later when the nation has become postindustrial. The consumerism is a legacy of
the US. occupation. Notoji notes that the coming of Disneyland to Japan was a

“natural evolution of the Americanization of postwar Japan”:

During this period of rapid economic growth, the idea of
democracy was strategically tied to consumerism by both
government and corporate sectors, and America has played a
signiﬁcant role as a model of the good life and an equitable
middle-class society.175

According to Raz, consumption plays an important role in Japan in “shaping
tastes, desires, lifestyles, and ultimately identities.” He continues to say that it is a
means of self-discovery and it is particularly effective in the context of “consuming
“things Western’ (especially American) which are “re-made in Japan.”176

Looking at adjustments at TDL, “we begin to get a sense of the difference
between consumer capitalism in Japan and the United States,” states Brannen.177

Like Brannen says, Japanese consumerism has been blended with Japanese

54

traditional culture and has evolved uniquely and different from the American
consumerism, and the huge adaptations are made according to this consumerism
in Japan. Main Street, USA in Disneyland in the United States is replaced with
World Bazaar at TDL. Main Street, USA reconstructs the good old days of
America and it produces nostalgia, which is the main theme of Disneyland in the

United States. According to Raz,

DL’s Main Street, USA has a red-brick Victorian train station, a
“real” carriage drawn by a real horse, a city hall, a ﬁrehouse
and a barbershop All these are lacking at TDL’s World Bazaar,
which is basically a glass-covered mall.178

Brannen calls it “a large suburban shopping mall rather than a quaint town

center”:

Tokyo Disneyland has more commercial space than the Disney
complexes in Anaheim or Orlando, and the owners complain that
it still is not enough. There is much more emphasis on
shopping... .179

One of the most pleasurable things the Japanese come to TDL for is shopping as
well as popular attractions. Many Japanese spend a large amount of money for
souvenirs both for their friends and themselves. Average visitors to TDL spent
about 3,290 yen (US$30) at shops in 1991. Per capita expenditure at TDL is the
highest among all Disneylands in the world.180 Furthermore, gifts at TDL are of
higher quality and consequently cost more.181

There are four types of unique Japanese consumption culture: souvenir
culture, commodiﬁed nostalgia, age-govemed system, and brand-name
consciousness. These four consumption cultures inﬂuence the highest sales of

the store revenue at TDL among all the Disneylands in the world.

55

First of all, there is a peculiar “souvenir culture” in Japan. Brannen points

out that “World Bazaar serves the gift-giving needs of the Japanese.”

The Japanese system of senbetsu obliges the traveler to repay
this farewell gift money with a return gift, which must conform to
three rules: it must be worth half the yen value of the original gift;
be a specialty of the locale visited on the trip - a meibutsu; and
have a legitimating mark - kinen, the tag or wrapper proving that it
was purchased on site182

This feeling of obligation in Japanese souvenir culture comes from Japanese
concept of on and gin'. American anthropologist Ruth Benedict explains this in her
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946), a
report of an attempt to interpret Japanese culture during WWII. Benedict

describes on as “a debt and must be repaid”:

Both the Chinese and the Japanese have many words meaning
‘obligations.’ The words are not synonyms and their speciﬁc
meanings have no literal translation into English because the
ideas they express are alien to us [Americans]. The word for
‘obligations’ which covers a person’s indebtedness from greatest
to least is on. On is in all its uses a load, an indebtedness, a
burden, which one carries as best one may. A man receives on
from a superior and the act of accepting an on from any man not
deﬁnitely one’s superior or at least one’s equal gives one an
uncomfortable sense of inferiority. ‘Remembering one’s on’
may be a pure outpouring of reciprocal devotion.183

She explains how to say “thank you” when receiving on. For instance, an'gato and
sumimasen both means “thank you” but the former literally means “Oh, this
difﬁcult thing," and the latter, “Oh, this doesn’t end.” Katajikenai also means “thank
you” but it is written with the character “insult” and “loss of face,” which means

both “I am insulted” and “I am grateful.” She examines this and insists that “In this

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phrase you explicitly acknowledge your shame in receiving on, and shame, haji, is
a thing bitterly felt in Japan."184 As for gin', there is no possible English
equivalent either and it is one of the most curious among all the strange
categories of moral obligations which anthropologists ﬁnd in the culture of the

world:

It is a Japanese category and it is not possible to understand their
courses of action without taking it into account. No Japanese can
talk about motivations or good repute or the dilemmas which
confront men and women in his home country without constantly
speaking of girl.185

Benedict goes on to mention that the Japanese must avoid the dreaded
condemnation: “a man who does not know girl.” They are very frightened of those
obligations. Benedict maintains that to avoid shame the constant goal for
Japanese is honor and it is necessary to command respect, and that the supreme
task of life as fulﬁlling one’s obligations.186 As shown in Benedict’s explanation
above, on and gin' culture is deeply related to souvenir culture, and this
consumption culture is the main reason for the extremely high store sales at TDL.
The second characteristic of Japanese consumerism is “commodiﬁed
nostalgia.” The Japanese tend to spend quite a large amount of money to buy
souvenirs for themselves, too. They like to keep their happy memories in the form
of commodities so that they can recall it after they go home. Nostalgia has
become a commodity. A stereotypical ﬁgure of the Japanese tourists hanging a
camera from their neck also shows that they want to keep their happy memory
with the form of picture. There are also some services to comme nostalgia for

the Japanese at TDL. For example, if you mail a card or a letter in the mailboxes

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within the Park, they can have a special Mickey Mouse stamp on them. Also, if
you go to Photo Express at TDL, you can develop your pictures in three hours
with the Disney illustration frame. It is safe to say that Japanese are sensitive to
nostalgia, so theme parks or whatever business which deals with nostalgia as its
concept is successful with the Japanese. The Japanese have a different feeling
mechanism than Americans, and it is related to nostalgia as well. I cannot ﬁnd the
best translation which describes the Japanese word jo-kan, because there is no
' such thing in the West. It is close to the word “sentiment” or “feeling.” For example,
Japanese are said to be the only people who become sentimental and lost in
thought when they hear the munnuring of a stream, or the chirps of insects.
Western people feel those sounds as just noise.187 This is probably related to
wabi (beauty of simplicity) and sabi (elegant and quiet simplicity) though it is hard
to explain to those who are not raised in this culture. It can also be explained like
this: the philosophy of transient beauty toward nature or people. For example, the
Japanese feel deeply moved to see the falling cherry blossoms. They react
sensitively to things disappearing and try to keep the memories and recollect
them. Rides are not the only business in theme parks. After the excitement
caused by attractions appears in the form of consumption at restaurants or shops,
it ﬁnally becomes a business.188 Thus, how to prolong the excitement is important
in the theme park business. The Japanese are sensitive and are easily moved, so
they can ﬁnd much pleasure in themed environments, which leads to the sales
revenue in shops at TDL.

Thirdly, I would like to talk about the “age-govemed system” in Japan.

TDL is one of the most popular destinations for children to visit on school trip. I

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went to TDL on a school trip when l was in the ninth grade in 1992. Seven percent
of the total number of visitors to TDL in 1994 was those children on a school
excursion.189 It is very unique about Japan but the students wear school uniforms
in most of the schools and they move in groups of ﬁve or six students with their
well prepared plan. Raz argues that consumerism and age groups are
signiﬁcantly linked in Japan: “In Japan, age cohorts tend to be more coherent in
terms of behavior.” Raz cites Millie Creighton that Japanese consumerism is “less
a way of ‘ﬁnding oneself’ and more a way of linking selves to others.”190 The
reason why linking selves to others in the same age cohort is important is
because Japanese society is hierarchical, and there is a clear line between the
older and the younger. The younger ones always have to use different polite
language to the older, and this hierarchy is remarkable especially in a middle
school and high school. Therefore, TDL functions to create “age-speciﬁc images
of identity” by sharing the Japanese consumption in World Bazaar and also
sharing to consume the happy memory of their childhood with their classmates.191

The last characteristic of Japanese consumption culture is “brand-name
consciousness.” It will probably surprising to non-Japanese to see how high
brand-name products such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton are popular among the
Japanese, even for the young university or high school students. As shown earlier
with Brannen’s idea of the gift-giving needs of the Japanese, the Japanese like to
purchase something that has “a legitimating mark.” Brannen refers that all TDL
mementos have TOKYO DISNEYLAND marked on them, while Disneylands in
the United States have no such identiﬁcation.192 Raz points out that this

identiﬁcation comes from the brand-name consciousness of the Japanese: “All

59

these conscious references to Walt Disney, his vision, and his worlds obviously
have a clear marketing rationale: showing off the brand name.”193 When I was in
a middle school, Disney products were very popular among students, but the
authenticity of Disney brand was a topic of controversy. Authentic Disney
products have a small 0.5 inch square sticker which changes its color if touched.
Besides World Bazaar, there is another gift shop called Promenade Gifts
right outside the Park and visitors can buy souvenirs if they do not have enough
time to shop before the park closes.194 Moreover, the biggest Disney retail shop
opened next to Maihama JR train station, the station nearby TDL, in 2001, which
opens until 11:00 pm. TDL is evidently focusing more and more to serve the
Japanese consumer fever. The postwar Japan has achieved a rapid economic
development. During the occupation era, the Japanese admired the American
material afﬂuence, and then they realized the wealthy life surrounded by electric
appliances. Consumerism is one of the biggest factors of TDL’s success because
it satisﬁes the needs of the Japanese consumers, and this Japanese consumer
culture is inﬂuenced greatly by the US. occupation era. World Bazaar and
consequently TDL serving as a big shopping mall is a Japanization of the original
Disneyland which is arranged for the Japanese in the age of consumer capitalism.
Four peculiarities of Japanese consumerism have been examined above.
Now, I would like to add the new consumer phenomenon of the young generation.
Sixty percent of the visitors consist of young women who are older than eighteen
years. The largest age group who spends the most, 33 percent of the total, at the
Disney retail stores in Japan is between twenty to twenty-nine years old, and that

53 percent are single females. Raz states that many Americans are surprised to

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see the “‘inscrutable’ zeal of young Japanese women toward things Disney.”195

Young women are deﬁnitely the most important customers for TDL who spend
great deal of money at the Park. The young generation has a distinctive character
different from former generations. Notoji states that “Disney culture has in general
assumed a more feminine image in Japan than in the United States.”196 This
group has distinctive features, and it has produced a new type of consumption
which results dominating a large part of store revenue. As Raz points out, many
young Japanese women remain at home living with their parents as long as they
are single. Therefore, they can use their income as they like for shopping and

consumption. Raz continues that:

OLs [“ofﬁce lady,” a female ofﬁce worker who are not involved in
professional or managerial tasks and just handling miscellaneous
administrative tasks such as making teas and copying] therefore
attract massive marketing efforts through the media, which in turn
reinforce their image as easygoing, leisure-(and husband-)
seeking “moratorium people.”197

These moratorium people who stay with their parents and do not become
independent are called “parasite single” because they are literally “parasite” of
their parents. “Cute” (Kawaii in Japanese) has become a cultural idiom among
those young women. Anything can be cute: cartoon characters, fashion,
antiqueness, brand-name products, pets etc. Even Prime Minister Koizumi can be
cute for them. Because of this “cute” boom, young Japanese women buy and
wear cute paraphernalia, and Disney products are one of the most popular “cute”
goods. The childishness and the innocence of trying to show cute are an
important part of the original Disney appeal, says Raz.198 Lately, there is a

“Disney Princess” boom in Japan. All the princess characters of Disney such as

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Ariel from the Little Mermaid to Belle from the Beauty and the Beast become
stationeries, clothes, bags, comforters, interior goods, and everything. There was
also a special event, “Disney Princess Days,” from January to March of 2005 at
TDL. These princesses and other Disney characters are originally for the little
children, but today’s “cute” boom targets the young women. When they have
children, they buy their favorite cute things for them, so this is almost like a
never-ending cycle of Disney consumption, which results in the ever-lasting
popularity of TDL. Raz gives an account of this phenomenon of “cute” boom as
“neoteny,” “a retention of youthful characteristics in the adult form": Mickey Mouse
embodies both the physical evidence of neoteny and the behavioral juvenilization,
reﬂecting a “wish to recapture some aspect of lost childhood.”199 However, being
this generation and consuming this boom myself, I do not think this is a reﬂection
of “neoteny.” Not many of them purchase goods of Disney and other childish
characters such as Hello Kitty for the nostalgia for a lost childhood. Rather, this is
simply a new form of consumption today. This “cute” boom can also be regarded
as Japanization of Disney consumption, which is very different from the United
States.

TDL features numerous kinds of events according to both Japanese and
Western holidays and seasons. One of the most famous and popular one among
the young Japanese is a countdown party on the New Year’s Eve. There are also
special events on Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, New Years, and so on.
There are always some events going on at TDL. On New Years, Mickey and
Minnie appear in Japanese traditional costumes, kimonos, and there are

Japanese New Year’s ornaments as well.200 With each event, all kinds of new

62

souvenir lines are made such as Mickey and Minnie dolls in kimono, and this
attracts many repeat visitors especially the young generation, who spends a lot of

money in stores.

3.2 FAMILY LEISURE

Consumerism enables the people to enjoy “distinctive signs” by buying a
surplus to their necessity in life. It brought a leisure boom in Japan in the 19603 in
its high-grth period, and the Japanese people were looking for how to spend
their leisure time. A leisure boom is one of the backgrounds of the theme park era
in Japan. Many Japanese enjoy golf, ski, marine sports, but those aristocratic
activities require time and money to practice, so they were calling for popular
recreation which any consumer from kids to an elderly can enjoy. Theme parks
are suited for their needs?“ TDL was a new form of popular entertainment and it
was what the Japanese needed in the 19803 when the leisure boom had ripened.
Notoji states that TDL ﬁlled the cultural void as the Japanese were making the
transition from work-oriented to leisure-oriented values?02 Then, TDL has
become “a kind of ‘secular ritual,’ a ‘post-modern leisure pilgrimage’ worked into
everyday life,” says Raz.203 Brannen argues that a signiﬁcant increase in per

capita disposable income created a new attitude toward relaxation and recreation:

Another major factor in Tokyo Disneyland’s success is that the
Disney philosophy of creating a “dream world” coincides with the
current consumer trend of yuttarism (from yuttari, meaning easy,
comfortable, and calm), an attitude of attaching importance to
relaxation and comfort.“

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This yuttarism is another phenomenon of distinguishing themselves from others
by acquiring the status of distinctive signs and class privileges with a surplus and
a superﬂuity as shown before.

The leisure boom facilitated families spending their weekend in a family
unit by going to leisure places by car, which was a symbol of consumerism of the
era. The fascination of the Japanese with the home electric appliances during the
occupation period was examined before. One of the main purposes of the US.
occupation policy was democratization, and the policy democratized in a home as
well. Housewives had become able to be liberated from all the domestic duties so
that they could have time for their relaxation and recreation with their families. By
purchasing home electric appliances, mothers could ﬁnd a time with their families,
and by purchasing cars, families could go out on weekends together.
Consumerism enabled family entertainment and this entertainment in family unit
enabled them to feel more like a family. In this way, consumerism and family
entertainment is well related. Disneyland was constructed with Walt Disney’s
clear intention of creating a thoroughly different recreation facility from
amusement parks after he had seen Coney Island in New York. It looked dirty and
degraded and was an inappropriate place for children to play. Raz explains that

Walt wanted to create a place where family could enjoy safely:

Besides his ﬁxation with cleanliness, Walt Disney also wanted a
controlled family entertainment. Disneyland was intended to be a
complete contrast to Coney Island’s freak shows and libertarian
seashores, which emphasized the grotesque and the sexual, and
its many attractions that encouraged visitors to break away from
social control.205

Therefore, anything that does not suit this concept of family entertainment such as

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alcohol and tobacco must be excluded from Disneyland. To take another example,
when TDL opened, there were tired fathers taking a nap in a sleeping bag on a
sheet to reserve a seat for his family until the parade started. It is not an unusual
scene for the Japanese, but it appeared strange to the head ofﬁce of Disney Co.
Now guests can reserve a seat only an hour before the show starts under the idea
that the scene of father doing it does not match with the concepts of the park
which offers a dream world, and which families should enjoy together.206 The

' opening of TDL offered housewives who had just been released from house
chores to enjoy in the world of dream and magic with their families.

TDL was the most popular place to go with family. The main theme of
Disneyland in the United States is nostalgia, and the Americans go to Disneyland
to enjoy the theme park speciﬁcally designed for nostalgia. At TDL, the theme of
nostalgia is modiﬁed so that people of various backgrounds can enjoy different
experiences there. The founder, Walt Disney’s childhood was full of craving and
suppression, and he could obtain nothing he wanted. He built his utopia late in life
in his mid-fifties, but his Disneyland project was greatly inﬂuenced by his sense of
his lost childhood. Walt said that he included everything in Disneyland that he
wanted but could not get when he was little.”7 He regained his childhood at
Disneyland, that is, Disneyland is realization of Walt’s happy boyhood though he
could not have it while he was a real kid.

Besides, Disneyland is also a reproduction of the American Golden Age.
In the late nineteenth century the rural landscape of the United States was
changing into an industrialized society with the advance of modernization and

urbanization. Many social problems emerged with this change. Walt wanted to get

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the United States back to the ideal situation as it was in the Golden Age.

The nostalgic model drew upon antiurban feelings and a
yearning for the close community of past village life. Both
metropolitan regional development and suburban sprawl were
considered undesirable settlement patterns. Instead, it was the
small town or village that ﬁred the imagination of reformers who
sought to regain the sense of human scale and community in the
environment.208

At Disneyland, American history from the beginning of the nineteenth century
whenthe vast wilderness was transformed into the civilized nation, to the early
twentieth century is condensed in one hundred years. Guests are carried from
Frontierland to the Tomorrowland by a steamship and a steam locomotive, the
nineteenth-century leading transportation. Americans see the past symbols of the
Golden Age and have nostalgic feeling at Disneyland.209 In other words,
Disneyland expresses nostalgia for the two happiest moments that people want to
remember — childhood and pastoral America - which embodies Walt’s personal
nostalgia as well. I

Brannen points out that the layout of the original Disneyland in the United
States follows “a distinctly modern progression in which guests may relive the

American romantic journey by heading ‘out West’ from Main Street” clockwise:

They ﬁrst ﬁght their way through the turbulent waters of
Adventureland, encountering savages and beasts along the way.
They relax for a while in the civilized settlement of New Orleans
Square before they push forward on their quest for the American
dream through the rough terrain of Frontierland. Finally, they
reach Fantasyland, where their dreams come true. Tomorrowland
is a fantasized extension of this limitless dream - the new
frontier.210

This nostalgic vision is the main theme throughout Disneyland. However, as

66

Brannen insists, things such as romantic narrative and nostalgic feeling toward
American history are meaningless for the Japanese. Brannen calls this “the
context-bound account,” meaning “what it means in the United States and
therefore is meaningless when transferred to Japanese culture” while “the
context-free account” is that either “Tokyo Disneyland means the same thing in
Japan as in the United States” with regards to exported cultural artifacts.211 Under
the US. occupation, the Japanese touched the American culture of around the
1950s both directly and indirectly, so they feel nostalgia when they see the United
States of the period. To the Japanese, the American culture before the occupation
does not induce in them any reminiscences but something unfamiliar simply
because they do not know it. According to Notoji, the original Disneyland which
opened in 1955 in Los Angeles has “freeze-dried the cultural vitality and dazzling
youth imagery of ﬁfties’ America, and the Japanese can thus daydream their own
eternal youth and prosperity.”212 This is what the Japanese know about the
United States and it is what they want to experience at TDL. Hence, some
attractions and zones are renamed to be familiar to the Japanese. Main Street
U.S.A. becomes the World Bazaar as discussed above. F rontierland becomes
Westemland because the Japanese being islanders are not familiar with the
concept of the frontier. Yet, they can identify with the West because they grew up
with Westerns such as “The Riﬂeman,” “Laramie,” “Wyatt Earp,” and “The Lone
Ranger.”213 The Golden Horseshoe Revue becomes the Diamond Horseshoe
because gold does not have much cultural signiﬁcance in modern Japan whereas
diamonds are a sign of wealth for the Japanese, says Brannen.214 The railroads

are also very different at TDL and Disneylands in the United States. While the

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original Disneyland Railroad encircles the entire Park, TDL’s Western River
Railroad only surrounds Westemland and Adventureland. Brannen explains that
this was the structural reason to maintain the sense of fantasy: if it had been
constructed to encircle the entire park, “the elevation of the tracks at various
points along the route would have allowed guests to catch glimpses of the
surrounding Chiba area” which results in disrupting the foreign vacation
experience of the visitors.215 As shown in Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden
(1964), the railroad means a symbol of the civilization and the progress of the
United States for the Americans: “In the popular culture of the period the railroad
was a favorite emblem of progress - not merely technological progress, but the
overall progress of the race.”216 Yet, the railroad does not mean anything to the
Japanese, so limiting the railroad course at TDL is not a big problem. For the
postwar Disney generation, TDL is where they can experience the nostalgic
American atmosphere and Disney stories that they watched in Disney television
shows and animations in the 1950s and 1960s.

The young generation who do not know W" or the occupation period
goes to TDL not to enjoy the American culture like their parents’ generation, but
for consumption and self-discovery. There are still some people who go to TDL for
“a mini-pilgrimage to ‘America”’:

Tokyoites with whom I spoke claim that such visitors are usually
from the countryside, an impression that is in line with OLC data.
They refer to this group of “native repeaters” as onobon'san
(literally, “Mr. Climber,” or “people who ‘come up’ to Tokyo”).

Even for onobon'san, however, TDL is gradually becoming a
symbol of Tokyo - the big city — rather than of America.217

The use of English after the war until about the 1960s could be viewed as a

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symbol of a strong American inﬂuence, but now the Japanese have created the
original Japanese-English vocabularies which are not understandable for the
native speakers of English, according to Raz.218 The loss of authenticity of
English as an American inﬂuence can be seen in the change with the restaurant

menues at TDL:

once they had large English words for the food items, and

below that there were smaller katakana [one of the two Japanese
phonic alphabets]. Now the English is slowly coming down and
replaced by larger katakana. The American experience is not that
important anymore. TDL is no longer an American experience.219

The young generation does not receive TDL as America, but as a fun “foreign
land” which is “a total environment, complete-unto-itself a spacious, clean, and
safe utopian space.”22° As discussed above, TDL offers various kinds of
experiences which suit each generation. This is an essential factor of TDL’s
success. Among various age groups, according to Raz, 40 percent of TDL’s
visitors are middle-aged.221 They come to TDL to enjoy their nostalgic Disney
experiences which they grew up with in the postwar era. They bring children but
children enjoy different way from their parents.

Modiﬁcations of TDL made for the sake of the Japanese people based on
their two demands of the 1980s, consumerism and family leisure, have been
discussed above. These two are the artifacts of the US. occupation policy. There
are also some other arrangements made at TDL considering the original
Japanese culture. These are not the direct influences of the occupation period,
but made to arrange TDL for the place for the family entertainment destination.

First of all, the Japanese restaurant Hokusai opened in the World Bazaar

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in 1984, a year after TDL started. Since the restaurants at TDL originally served
only Western food, there were too many complaints from visitors, especially the
elderly, because they used to enjoy Japanese boxed lunch but they were banned
from bringing it into the Park.222 The restaurant Hokusai serves tempura, udon,
sushi, and the Japanese formal cuisine consisting of fresh vegetables and ﬁsh,
and the Japanese sweets as well. Now, all the family including the elderly can
enjoy TDL together. Also, the Hungry Bear Restaurant in Westemland has added
curried rice to its menu, which is a favorite item for the Japanese, according to
Brannen.223 There is also the Chinese restaurant named China Voyager at TDL
because Chinese food, especially ramen, is very popular among the Japanese.
Brannen adds that there are not as many food vendors on the street at TDL as at
the original Disneyland in the United States because the Japanese consider it
impolite to eat while walking. There are many arrangements for the Japanese
even only with regard to the food at TDL.

As to the attractions at the Park, a boat of Splash Mountain at TDL was
improved to avoid too much splash because WDC thought that the Japanese
customers would not accept it.224 In Jungle Cruise at TDL, the guides who pilot
the boats use puns in the Japanese spiel - “the hallmark of Japanization” —
according to Raz.225 There is the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland in Los
Angeles while the Cinderella Castle is in the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World
(WDW) in Florida. Then, at TDL, Cinderella Castle was constructed. Brannen
notes, “it is no wonder that Tokyo Disneyland chose to feature Cinderella instead,
whose rags to riches story relate more directly to the Japanese historical

experience."226 Nevertheless, her remark does not seem accurate. Unlike the

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American society where the self-made man such as Abraham Lincoln is valued,
the Japanese society is hierarchical and it tends to emphasize on the family
background and despise a nouveau riche. It may be just because that Cinderella
is much more popular than Sleeping Beauty in Japan. Cinderella Castle in WDW
has no ride, but there is an attraction called the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour at
TDL. It is the only attraction which visitors walk by foot. Raz insists that the
Mystery Tour is more close to the Japanese ghost-house, the most popular
traditional amusements, rather than Haunted Mansion: the ghosts in the Haunted
Mansion are foreign to the Japanese speaking in English, but in the Mystery Tour,
the mirror, the guide, and some monsters all speak Japanese.227 Also, this
walking type tour in a Japanese style haunted house reminds them of the popular
Japanese entertainment in summer called, kimodameshi: a spooky walk through
the cemetery or the woods at night to test one’s courage. This is the popular
attraction for children on their school trip. The Mystery Tour is the only attraction
that visitors can take an active role, which gives them more excitement than just
sitting in a moving ride.

The very unique Japanized attraction at TDL was Meet the World.
According to Raz, there was nothing Disney in Meet the World. It was a free show,
combined ﬁlm and audio-animatronic technologies, with three mechanical ﬁgures
as narrators explaining Japanese history through its relations with the world,
China, Portugal, Holland, and the United States. The guides were wearing a
kimono-like costume.228 The message of Meet the World was to show that “the
Japanese, despite their numerous encounters with other cultures through trade,

remain a unique people,” says Brannen?“9 For example, by showing that the

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Japanese two syllabaries — hiragana and katakana - are stylized and abbreviated
form of certain Chinese characters, it implies the following: “China’s gifts were
imported and developed by the Japanese. They were seeds that, having been
transplanted, grew to form a unique Japanese culture,”230 Raz argues that “Meet
the World replicates in miniature the larger narrative of TDL as a whole, since TDL
itself is a living proof of the success of, and the beneﬁts inherent in, cultural
importation.”231 Meet the World gave a correct depiction of how Japan imported
foreign culture and arranged into its original culture. This is applied to TDL on the
whole, and to the US. occupation policy after the end of WWII. That is, the
Japanese are used to domesticate the cultural artifacts from foreign countries.
Raz states that national identity of the Japanese is not an essential part, but does
exist within speciﬁc fragments of TDL such as Meet the World.232 However, Meet
the World closed in June 2002. From this, it is quite likely to think that Meet the
World was too far away from the Disney theme; the‘Japanese no longer look for
the “American” experience at TDL, but they obviously do not intend to have the
“Japanese” experience, either. Still, this attraction was a good example to show
the history of Japanizing foreign cultures.

Above mentioned domestications of Disneyland at TDL are examples of
what Brannen calls “making the exotic familiar" which are recontextualized
according to the Japanese culture. I would like to look at how Disney has been
familiarized outside the Park in the daily lives of the Japanese because this
inﬂuences the number of visitors at TDL. As Notoji mentions, Disney characters
are the mascot of the Tokyo-Mitsubishi Bank, and one of the most common gifts

for babies are Disney products.233 Kindergarten teachers use Disney music and

72

characters for exercise, festivals, and so on. Children watch Disney animations
and ﬁlms. Disney products are ﬂooded everywhere in Japan, so it is not surprising
that many Japanese children believe that Mickey Mouse is Japanese, as Raz
notes.234 This proves how much Disney has been localized in the context of the
Japanese culture. Also, Disneyland is carefully designed about the size of the
Park to have guests feel that they leave 20 percent unseen.235 These inﬂuence
more than 90 percent repeat visitors to go back to TDL. The president of OLC,
Kagami, says that theme parks are a living entity. When they stop evolving, it is a
start of aging. Constant metabolism to make visitors excited by introducing new
attractions, or discontinuing existing ones etc. is a key to successful theme
parks.”6

On the other hand, the other form of recontextualization of Disney,
“keeping the exotic exotic” are as follows. According to Brannen, it is well shown

in the treatment of foreign employees at TDL:

Although gaijin [foreigner] employees occupy high-status
positions at Tokyo Disneyland, they are not integrated into the
Disney experience of the customers like their Japanese
counterparts. Instead they are treated as exotic specimens. To
maintain their distinction as exotic, gaijin employees are asked to
speak only in English and not to wear name tags, presumably so
that guests do not relate to them as individuals.237

By keeping foreign employees as “foreign,” TDL can offer the visitors the foreign
experiences.

The charge system of theme parks is different from amusement parks, too.
There are two ways in which they are different: one is to collect admission fee and

facility fee separately, and the other is to collect both in a lump sum. Although

73

some theme parks in Japan still use the former way, the latter way is normally
adopted in the United States. Like TDL, there is a uniﬁed theme in every corner of
theme parks from a path, plants to architecture and shopping, but customers are
unwilling to pay for each attraction, so it is better to collect in a lump-sum
system.238 While the main purpose of amusement parks is attractions, what is
important in theme parks is to have an “experience” in a themed environment.
Thus, elements which remind visitors of the world in which they live outside the
park have to be removed. TDL adopts a passport system. Once customers pay at
the entrance, they do not have to think about fees anymore every time they get on
attractions, so exclusion of money at the Park is one of hyperreal elements, so as
in utopia. The place where money does not exist is one of the conditions of a
utopia as well as time, an ideal place.

There are other “keeping the exotic exotic” examples with regard to
racism. As Brannen points out: while Meet the World emphasized on Japan’s
uniqueness in relationship to China, any mention of Korea is completely absent.
This was because Korea is “the Asian country most similar to Japan and therefore
the one most difﬁcult for the Japanese to differentiate themselves from,” says
Brannen.239 The conﬂict between the Japanese and the Koreans both in Japan
and Korea due to the history may be another reason of the complete omission in
Meet the World. TDL employee interviewer says that a Korean is a less likely
candidate for hiring even if he has a Japanese citizenship and lives in the area.
The reason of TDL willing to hire on the Japanese is because they want to hire “a
relatively homogeneous population, all Japanese, Tokyo accent, etc., another

Asian type will stand out and interfere with the show."240 In the Jungle Cruise,

74

almost all of the human characters are people of color in the original Disneylands
in the United States. Then this is copied to Japan, and it seems to appeal to the

Japanese as well because it gives visitors a notion of “exotic others?”1

75

CHAPTER 4
FROM MANUALIZED SMILE TO MORE HUMAN SPACE: TOKYO DISNEYSEA

TDL is the most popular place for family entertainment. Parents like to
take their children to TDL because it is clean, safe, and everything is controlled,
so parents feel relieved. However, this perfectly controlled space is only possible
through the manualized scenario and plot of TDL, and also manualized
employees. Disneyland is famous for Disney manuals to control everything for
maintaining the theme. Even the smile of employees is manualized. New
employees are made to practice of the “Disney Smile” at the OLC’s orientation.
They are told to smile, but smile honestly, and if they anyhow cannot smile, they
have to remember that they “get paid for smiling.”242 Disneyland considers
employees as actors/actresses who perform on the stage. This is because they

are called “cast members”:

It is a show, but it must look real, including the production of
spontaneity and the stage-management of emotion-conveying
behavior such as smiling, welcoming, or thanking. 2‘3

Cast members learn the basics of the service in Disneyland: “S-C-S-E,” Safety,
Courtesy, Show and Efﬁciency. Moreover, they work each day as if they give the
performance on the stage for the ﬁrst time with a pride as a professional.
President Kagami says that the job of cast members is very natural thing, and
they just have to wait on guests as if they invite their friend to their house.244 In
consumer society where people consume signs, everything exists in the “fantasy”

of consumers, argues Baudrillard. He states the connection between “the real”

and “hyperreal": “We may, admittedly, say that it is, then, our fantasies which

76

come to be signiﬁed in the image and consumed in it.”245 Manualization began
with McDonald’s. George Ritzer explains in The McDonaIdization of Society
(2000) about the “fantasy” fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s give to

consumers. Ritzer uses the word “illusion” instead of “fantasy”:

If it really isn’t so efﬁcient and it really isn’t so cheap, then what
does McDonaldization - more speciﬁcally, the fast-food
restaurant - offer people? One answer: an illusion of efficiency
and frugality. As long as people believe in the illusion, the actual
situation matters little. McDonald’s, for example, creates the
illusion that people are having fun, that they are getting lots of
French fries, and that they are getting a bargain when they
purchase their meal.246

In the hyperreal world, it tries to give consumers the “fantasy” or the “illusion” of
the “reality.” Baudrillard analyses that even the human relations have become

signs and they are consumed “in the form of signs”:

The loss of (spontaneous, reciprocal, symbolic) human relation is
the fundamental fact of our societies. It is on this basis that we are
seeing the systematic reinjection of human relations - in the form
of signs - into the social circuit, and are seeing the consumption
of those relations and of that human warmth in signiﬁed form. The
receptionist, the social worker, the public relations consultant, the
advertising pin-up girl, all these apostles of the social machine
have as their secular mission the gratiﬁcation, the lubrication of
social relations with the institutional smile?"

The “institutional smile” can be seen with the McDonald’s manual not only for
cooking, but also for making the “smile” of workers, which is too artiﬁcial. This is
same as the Disney manual. Ritzer talks about “scripting interaction” between

employees and customers:

Much of what is said in fast-food restaurants by both employees
and customers is ritualized, routinized, even scripted. Not only

77

are general scripts given to employees but also a series of
subscripts that can be followed in the case of unusual requests or
behaviors. There might be a subscript for customers who object to
being subjected to the same scripted interaction as everyone else.
In fact, the subscript might be written to appear as if it reﬂects the
“real” feelings of the employee and is not scripted.248

“Scripting interaction” functions to give consumers the “fantasy” of intimate human
relationships. The “fake friendliness” of scripted interaction reﬂects the “insincere

camaraderie” which characterizes not only fast-food restaurants but also all other
elements of McDonaldized society, and this attracts customers to come back.249

Raz summarized things McDonald’s and Disneyland have in common:

the Disney and Hamburger universities are acclaimed as training
centers; both are renowned for the excellence of their service;
and they share a deep concern with order and cleanliness, a

target audience of middle-class families, and worldwide
250

success.

Raz goes on to mention that the differences between “Disneyﬁcation” and
“McDonaldization” are as follows: “McDonald’s had tougher training, but the work
is more boring. In Disney, it’s more important to show that you are enjoying
yourself.”251

Both Disneyland and McDonald’s require a “fanatical loyalty” of employers
to strictly follow the manual, but the Japanese employees feel no paradox in their
situation because they have already been used to the manual society since their
childhood in school.252 In Japanese schools, students usually wear the same
uniforms, leather backpacks, shoes, and there are many strict school regulations

about appearances from hairstyle, hair color, makeup, etc. Teachers even

measure the length of girls uniform skirt with a ruler not to let them wear a short

78

skirt in high schools although many girls out the hem of a skirt. It is common to
hear that hair-dyed students are sprayed a black hair color spray by teachers.
WDW emphasizes the importance of teamwork in orientation, but TDL does not
because the Japanese employees also know about teamwork well in Japanese
society?53 Japanese casts members at TDL accommodate more easily with the
onstage - backstage line than their American counterparts because this dual
distinction is a part of the Japanese society as well: tatemae — hon’ne.254 Also,

there is the “caste system” at TDL:

at the top of the pyramid are the tour guides, followed by those in
operations (ride operators, ticket sellers, and custodians, in that
order); below that are those who work in merchandising; at the
bottom of the ladder are the hood workers.255

Yet, Japanese society is originally a class society, and this kind of the caste
system in a part-time job in Japan is very distinctive. Hence, it is again not very
extraordinary to the Japanese. Furthermore, the standard of the Japanese service
culture in restaurants and stores is much higher than the United States, so making
an “institutional smile” is not something very special for TDL workers. As Raz
states that the TDL’s hiring and training procedures are another aspects of the
Japanization of Disney, TDL manual called “Tips on Magic” is a translated version
of a Disneyland manual in the United States but there have been many
modiﬁcations to suit the Japanese culture?‘56 When Disney manuals are
recontextualized into the Japanese culture which is manualized already, it created
Japanese-style Disney employees who do not feel a paradox with Disney
manuals and their work. This employee management is another big reason of

TDL’s success.

79

As discussed above, original Disneylands in the United States and also
TDL are too manualized and employees are almost like a robot instead of a
human. Although the manualized employee management is successful in Japan
because the Japanese are used to the manuals in a society, Japan is trying to
create more human space which is what people want today. OLC was formulating
a plan for the second park from around 1986, and Tokyo DisneySea (T DS)
opened in 2001. When TDL opened in 1983, the former president of OLC,
Masatomo Takahashi, said that they would create something spectacular next
time because the land they used to build Disneyland was from the Japanese
national sea.257 He died in 2000 before TDS opened, but as his word promised,
OLC achieved the completely new type of the theme park especially designed for
Japanese. As we have looked above, TDL is a Japanization of the original
American Disneylands. However, TDS is the very ﬁrst one in the world, and all
attractions but one were developed only for TDS.258 Namely, all the Japanization
of the American culture from the US. occupation to TDL is compiled into TDS.
OLC had an earnest wish to develop by themselves without depending on WDC
this time. It had to be the place where visitors can have a different experience
from TDL.259 The theme of TDS is “sea” against “land” of TDL. OLC liked the idea
of the sea because it would be a familiar theme for the Japanese considering
Japan’s location as an island.260 The concept of the second park is to create what
pleases the Japanese?"51 OLC and WDC had many arguments due to the cultural
difference between Japan and the United States. To give an example, they
argued over the icon of TDS. WDC suggested a “lighthouse." To the Americans, it

is a symbol of a guardian angel of adventure. On the other hand, it is an image of

80

sorrow to the Japanese. Because Japan is an island nation, sea is always the
place for a departure from homeland. Thus, a lighthouse could not be an icon of
TDS because it had to be something jovial that attracts children and family?”

One of the most distinctive features of TDS is its target audience. It is
often heard that TDS is a theme park for adults compared to TDL. The target is
extended to more adults and the elderly, facing the aging society of Japan. TDL
was best matched with the demands of the family entertainment of the late
nineteenth century in Japan, but what is needed today is a place where the elderly
can also enjoy. TDS is the world’s ﬁrst theme park for the elderly.263 The biggest
difference from TDS is its serving alcohol. In order to attract its target audience,
TDS employs diverse strategies. Other than alcohol, there is more live
entertainment in TDS than TDL, and also guests do not see as many characters
at TDS as in TDL.264 TDS provides a more luxurious time than TDL, which is
probably inﬂuenced by the Park design that almost 20 percent of the Park is water.
People feel calm on the shore.265 At TDS, people do not have to ride attractions;
they can just have a relaxing experience on the seaside. The second park
corresponds to the period in which people need to be healed or relaxed.
Furthermore, there is an effort to prevent the elderly from getting tired. Some
attractions function as transporting vehicles, and there are benches
everywhere.266 Another different attempt is three types of guided tours, and one
of them is an experience-style tour.267 TDS is a theme park carefully designed for
the Japanese. Japan learned many things from constructing TDL by

domesticating the American cultural artifact. Now at TDS, Japan has evolved into

the next stage of creating the more original theme park culture produced in Japan

81

based on the experience at TDL.

In Japan, for example, visitors can have a wedding in the hotels of TDL
and TDS though they cannot do this in front of the Cinderella Castle as in Los
Angeles. Yet, there is a possibility that people will be able to do this in the near
future. OLC calls TDL and TDS and the area around them “Tokyo Disney Resort”
and they aim at completing it as “Destination Resort” as WDW in Florida.
“Destination Resort” means the resort place as a ﬁnal destination. Visitors do not
have to go outside because it is their destination. They can get everything they
want there. In order to embody the plan, the resort strategy section became
independent in 2002 and OLC tries to offer the experiences of relaxation and
healing.268 lt matches with today’s Japanese relaxation boom. This is one of the
new services. OLC is expanding their comprehensive entertainment facilities as a
name of “Tokyo Disney Resort" including TDL and TDS. Raz shows the cultural
ﬂow which best explains the process of recontextualization of the American
Disneylands at TDL: Jungle Cruise is the most American which stands for the
“imported-modiﬁed model”; Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour is unique to TDL
which illustrates “Disney made in Japan”; and Meet the World is an extreme case
of Japanization which shows “‘Japan’ inside Disneyland.”269 TDS and Tokyo
Disney Resort are similar to the Mystery Tour type — “Disney made in Japan.”
Japan imported Disneyland from the United States, and now it has been evolving

into the Japanese own unique culture.

CONCLUSION

US. occupation policy in postwar Japan controlled information and
impacted the thoughts of the Japanese. The occupation period was not the ﬁrst
time to be inﬂuenced by the United States. In 1853, one hundred years before the
end of WWII, Commodore Perry visited Japan which was under closed-door
policy and urged to open the port for commerce. When Japan reluctantly decided
to agree to end the isolation policy, the Japanese soon realized that Japan was
long behind the times because of its isolation. The Japanese people were very
interested in the American technology, and they were eager to learn and become
a modern nation like the United States. Since then, the Japanese have always
been inﬂuenced by the American culture.

When Japan lost WWII in 1945, it was placed under the US. occupation.
The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) operated a strict civil
censorship on all the possible communication media and controlled the Japanese
thoughts to achieve its goals of democratization and demilitarization of Japan.
However, since Japan has been used to internalize imported cultural products to
create a unique Japanese identity and culture, it positively accepted the situation
under the occupation and recontextualized the American cultural inﬂuence as it
did when Commodore Perry came. As a result, Japan succeeded in becoming
one of the biggest economic powers in the world.

In my thesis, I have analyzed the three stages of the localization of the
American culture: First, hegemonic operation of the US. occupation policy in

Japan; secondly, Japanese interpretation of the American culture; and ﬁnally,

83

 

creation of the unique Japanese identity and culture in the process of
domesticating the American culture. As discussed earlier, these three stages are
well shown in Raz’s gradient cultural ﬂow of three attractions at Tokyo Disneyland
(T DL): Jungle Cruise as the “imported-modiﬁed model”; Cinderella Castle Mystery
Tour as “Disney made in Japan”; and Meet the World as “‘Japan’ inside
Disneyland.”270 There are many modiﬁcations at TDL according to the Japanese
interpretation of the American culture. Tokyo DisneySea (T DS) opened in 2001,
which is the ﬁrst theme park dealing with the theme of sea in the world, and the
target audience is rather adults than children so alcohol is served at TDS. TDL
has been arranged to fulﬁll the cultural demands of the Japanese of the 1980s,
and it makes TDL unique and different from other Disneylands in the United
States, and accordingly, very successful. In a larger sense, TDS is a compilation
of all the knowledge that Oriental Land Co., has accumulated since ﬁrst
introducing Disneyland in Japan in 1983. It is actually not just a compilation, but it
is a Japanese cultural artifact which is produced in the process of the
Japanization of American Disneyland. Thus, examination of how Disneyland in
Japan has been evolving from TDL to TDS gives a good clue to how to
recontextualize a foreign culture while maintaining the Japanese identity and
reﬂecting the demands of the Japanese society. For example, TDS is a reﬂection
of the aging society and relaxation boom of Japan today.

Although there are many studies on Disneyland in the United States,
there are few on TDL in English because of the language problem and also
because of the common belief that the basic structure of Disneyland is the same

in TDL because TDL is a copy of the original, as Raz points out.271 Even in Japan,

84

 

most of the studies on TDL are about its management skills, such as employee
education, and mostly about consumerism in cultural studies point of view. As I
have shown in this thesis, the US. occupation policy inﬂuenced the mindset of the
Japanese and this is profoundly related to the amazing popularity of TDL, but I
have never seen any studies that connect US. occupation and TDL yet.
Therefore, I would like to develop this theme in my future research. I will start with
investigating the following ﬁve points: the inﬂuence of the US. Cold War cultural
policy and propaganda on the Japanese imagination towards the American
culture; global manifestation of American culture in other countries; other
deliberate policies of US. occupation which impacted the Japanese in forming
their thoughts and identity; other representations which show the Japanese
interpretation of the American culture in the postwar era; ﬁnally, other cultural
phenomena of the new generation today which contribute the large numbers of
visitors at TDL and TDS, and its connection with the US. occupation period. By
clarifying these, I would like to narrow down my research theme, and contribute to
the future studies on Tokyo Disney Resort as an example of Japanization of

American culture.

85

NOTES

Arthur Walworth, Black Ships Off Japan: The Story of Commodore Pen'y’s Expedition (New
York: Alfred. A. Knopf 1946), 71.

:,Walworth 194- 96.

:Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences(1964; reprint, Maryland: Naval Institute Press 2001) 282.

Jun Eto, Tozasareta gengokakan: SenryOgun no ken ’etsu to sengo nihon [Closed Space of
Speech. The Censorship Operation of the Allied and the Postwar Japan] (Tokyo. Bungeishunju,
2000), 29.

5 lbid., 36.

5 lbid., 48.

lbid., 37, 39.

lbid. 53.

0lbid., 237.

°lbid., 113- 14.

“ lbid., 228 30.

‘2 lbid., 230.

‘3 lbid., 221-22.

“ lbid., 136.

‘5 lbid., 246-67.

‘6 lbid., 261-63.

‘7 lbid., 274-75.

‘8 lbid., 281-83.

‘9 lbid., 267.

2° Bill Gordon, “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,"
http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/papers/coprospr.htm (accessed March 3, 2005); Daizaburc Yui,
Mikan no senryo kaikaku [Unﬁnished Occupation Reform] (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press,
1989) 94.

Eto, Censorship, 270-71.

Masayasu Hosaka, “Shinso bako” ni miru amen‘ka no senno kOSaku. Nihon kaitai [Dissolution of
Japan: American Brainwashing Maneuver In “Truth Box":](Tokyo Fusosha,2003), 19; Eto,
Censorship 273.

3Hisateru Furuta, ed., Broadcasting in Japan. Twentieth Century Journey form Radio to
Multimedia (Tokyo NHK [Japan Broadcasting Corporation] 2002), 5-6 79.

Yoshiko Sakurai “Shinso bako” no jubaku o toku [Breaking the Spell of “Truth Box" ] (Tokyo:
Shbgakukan, 2002), 14; Hosaka, Dissolution, 19.

:,Furuta Broadcasting, 87

:Sakurai, Spell, 13- 15, 52

7,Eto Censorship, 56, 59, 253- 54.

28 29,MacArthur Reminiscences, 295

”,Eto Censorship, 152; East Asian Studies Documents, “Potsdam Declaration, Article 10," UCLA
Asia Institute. http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/documents/potsdam.htm (accessed January 20.
2005).

:0 Eto, Censorship, 254.
‘ lbid., 259.
32 Hosaka, Dissolution, 76-77.
3; lbid., 236.
lbid., 96-97.
3“ lbid. 21
36 Sakurai, Spell, 14, Furuta Broadcasting 5.

3:Sakurai, Spell, 14.

38,Furuta Broadcasting 93.

39 Sakurai, Spell, 50; Hosaka, Dissolution 30.

809‘]

86

‘° Sakurai, Spell, 14, 56.

Hosaka, Dissolution, 20.

‘2 Sakurai, Spell, 15.

‘ lbid., 17; Hosaka, Dissolution, 48.

Hosaka, Dissolution, 129; The modern version of the translation of Kinku Chokugo (The
Imperial Rescript on Education) is as follows: “I, the Emperor, think that my ancestors and their
religion founded my nation a very long time ago. With its development a profound and steady
morality was established. The fact that my subjects show their loyalty to me and show ﬁlial love to
their parents in their millions of hearts all in unison, thus accumulating virtue generation after
generation is indeed the pride of my nation, and is a profound idea and the basis of our education.
You, my subjects form full personalities by showing ﬁlial love to your parents, by making good
terms with your brothers and sisters, by being intimate with your friends, by making couples who
love each other, by trusting your friends, by reﬂecting upon yourselves, by conveying a spirit of
philanthropy to other people and by studying to acquire knowledge and wisdom.
Thus, please obey always the constitution and other laws of my nation in your profession in order
to spread the common good in my nation. If an emergency may happen, please do your best for
Our nation in order to support the eternal fate and future of my nation. In this way, you are my
good and faithful subjects, and you come to appreciate good social customs inherited from your
ancestors. The way of doing this is a good lesson inherited from my ancestors and religion which
you subjects should observe well together with your offspring.
These ideas hold true for both the present and the past, and may be propagated in this nation as
well as in the other countries. I would like to understand all of this with you, Our subjects, and hope
sincerely that all the mentioned virtues will be carried out in harmony by all of you subjects." A
Modern History of Japan, “The Imperial Rescript on Education,"
http://www.oxfordjapan.com/documents/imperial_rescript.html (accessed March 10, 2005).
“5 Hosaka, Dissolution, 130, 197.
“6 lbid., 103-107.
‘7 Sakurai, Spell, 55-56; Hosaka, Dissolution, 20.
‘8 MacArthur, Reminiscences, 310.
“9 Sakurai, Spell, 23-24.
5° Steven Joseph Fuchs, “Beikoku senryc ka no SCAP shokuryo seisaku to nihon no keizai
fukko,” America no tainichi senryo seisaku to sono eikyo [“SCAP’s Food Policy and the Economic
Revival of Japan," US. Occupation Policy towards Japan and Its Inﬂuence] (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten,
2004), 48, 56-57.
5' Shigeki lwamoto, Sengo Amerikanizéshon no genfakei: "Blondie ”to tOei sareta amen‘ka 20
[The Image of Postwar Americanization: “Blondie” and the Reﬂected Image of America] (Tokyo:
5Illarvest, 2002), 75.

lbid., 82.
:3 Fuchs, “Food Policy,” 49, 58-59.

MacArthur, Reminiscences, 306-307.

55 Taiheiyo senso kenkyt‘I kai [Research Institute for the Paciﬁc War], ed., Zusetsu: Amerika gun
ga satsuei shita senryo ka no nihon [Pictures of Japan during the Occupation Taken by US. Army]
gokyo: Kawadeshobo Shinsha, 1995), 76.

lbid., 77.

MacArthur, Reminiscences, 283.

5" lbid., 285.

“9 Yui, Unﬁnished, 219-221.

6° Sodei Rinjird, Dear General MacArthur: Letters from the Japanese during the American
Occupation (Maryland: Rowman & Littleﬁeld Publishers, Inc., 2001), 3.

6‘ lbid., 7.

“2 lbid., 25.

63 lwamoto, Blondie, 83; Research Institute, Pictures, 187.

6‘ Hosaka, Dissolution, 45.

65 F uruta, Broadcasting, 57.

87

5“ lbid., 64.
‘57 Hosaka, Dissolution, 63; Sakurai, Spell, 106.
5" Eto, Censorship, 223.
“9 lbid., 236-37.
7° Sakurai, Spell, 36-37, 179.
7‘ Hosaka, Dissolution, 39.
’2 lbid., 59. 70.
7“ lbid., 68.
:; lbid., 244-48, 253, 262.
lbid., 60.
7“ Eto, Censorship, 268-70.
77 World Socialist Web Site, James Conachy, “Japanese History Textbook Provokes Sharp
Controversy,” http://www.wsws.org/articlesl2001/jun2001/text-j07.shtml (accessed March 3,
2005).
78 Flag and National Anthem of Japan, “Kimi ga Yo,”
http://www.timwerx.net/culture/japan/hinomaru.htm (accessed March 3, 2005); japan-guide.com,
“Japanese Flag, Country Name and Anthem,” http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2270.html
(accessed March 3, 2005).

9 ZNet, “The Flag and the Anthem: Enforcing Japanese Patriotism by Asahi Shimbun; April 05,
2004,” http:llwww.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemlD=5269&sectionlD=17 (accessed
March 3, 2005); World Socialist Web Site, James Conachy, “Japanese History Textbook Provokes
Sharp Controversy," http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/text-j07.shtml (accessed March 3,
2005)
8° National Public Radio, “Japan - Flag & Anthem,”
httpzl/www.npr.org/templateslstorylstory.php?storyld=1054382 (accessed March 1, 2005).

3‘ ZNet, “The Flag and the Anthem."
’32 CNN.com, World, “Teacher Temper over Japan Flag Laws,”
http2/ledition.cnn.com/2004NVORLD/asiapcf/05/03/japan.patriot/ (accessed March 1, 2005).
83 James Conachy, “Japanese History Textbook."
8‘ U.S. - Japan Database, Japan Digest: National Clearinghouse for U.S.-Japan Studies,
Kathleen Woods Masalski, “Examining the Japanese History Textbook Controversies,"
EI‘Isttpzllwww.indiana.edul%7Ejapan/Digests/textbook.html (accessed February 20, 2005).
lbid.
“6 lbid.
“7 lbid.
88 James Conachy, “Japanese History Textbook."
89 Eto, Censorship, 272.
9° Yui, Unfinished, 292-94.
9‘ Shunsuke Kamei, Meriken kara Amerika 9 [From “Meriken” to America] (Tokyo: University of
Tokyo Press, 1979), 18, 45-46, 141.
“2 lbid., 322.
“3 lwamoto, Blondie, 122.
9“ lbid., 123-25.
“5 lbid., 128, 132-33.
96 Nomura Co., Ltd., “Kokunai hakurankai: Chiiki shinké no katuryoku," Disupurei Dezain no
rekishi [“History of Display Design,” Domestic Exhibition: Vitality of the Community Promotion],
httpzllwww.nomurakougei.co.jp/displaydesign/history/domestic.htmI (accessed January 20, 2005).
97 lwamoto, Blondie, 84.
9" lbid., 163-64. See the notes.
99 Eto, Censorship, 291.
‘°° lbid., 250,255,291.
‘°‘ Kamei, America, 322.
1°? lwamoto, Blondie, 7.
‘°3 lbid., 5-6.

88

“’1 lbid., 37.
“’5 lbid., 43-53.
‘°’°‘ lbid., 11.
'07 Jacob Van Staaveren, An American in Japan 1945-1948: A Civilian View of the Occupation,
trans. Yukio Suwa and Takashi Mikuni (Tokyo: Satsuki Shobo, 1998), 147- 48.
‘°“ Staaveren, Civilian, 93.
‘°9 lwamoto, Blondie, 25-30.
"0 Kamei, America, 304-5.
‘" lwamoto, Blondie, 72-74.
"2 Dean Young and Rick Marschall, Blondie and Dagwood’s America (New York: Harper and
Row, 1981), 30.
“3 lbid., 30.
‘“ Iwamoto, Blondie, 103-104.
"5 lbid., 157-58.
“6 Kamei, America, 326-27.
"7 MacArthur, Reminiscences, 283.
"8 Sodei, Letters, 120-21.
"9 Furuta, Broadcasting, 88.
'2° lwamoto, Blondie, 136-37.
'21 Shizuko Shiba, “Showa 24 nendo gakushu sido yéryo kateika hen k6to gakko yo" no seiritsu
jijyé ni tsuite” [Circumstances of Making Teaching Guidelines for Home Economics in 1949],
J-Stage, http:/lwww.jstage.jst.go.jp/articleljheel46/0/46_45/_articlel-char/jal (accessed January 20,
2005)
‘22 Shizuko Shiba, “Tainichi senryc seisaku to shite no CIE kyciku eiga ‘Akarui katei seikatu’" [CIE
Educational Film, Fora Bright Home Life, as the US. Occupation Policy toward Japan], J-Stage,
http:llwww.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jheel44l0/44_40/_articlel-charlja/ (accessed January 20, 2005).
‘23 Iwamoto, Blondie, 139-144.
124 Kamei, America, 58.
'25 lwamoto, Blondie, 147.
'26 Kamei, America, 321.
‘27 Aviad E. Raz, Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland (Boston: Harvard University
Asia Center, 1999), 148.
‘28 Notoji Masako, “Cultural Transformation of John Philip Sousa and Disneyland in Japan,"
Reinhold Wagnleitner and Elaine Tyler May, ed., “Here, There and Everywhere”. The Foreign
Politics ofAmen'can Popular Culture (New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2000),
219, 223.
'29 Mary Yoko Brannen, “Bwana Mickey”: Constructing Cultural Consumption at Tokyo
Disneyland," Joseph J. Tobin ed, Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a
Changing Society, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 217, 219.
‘3° lbid., 219.
13‘ Raz, Black Ship, 3, 7.

2 lbid., 12.
‘33 Jonathan Clements and Motoko Tamamuro, The Dorama Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese
TV Drama since 1953 (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2003), xi in the introduction.
13‘ lbid., Drama, xii in the introduction.
‘35 lbid., xv-xvii in the introduction; Furuta, Broadcasting, 8; Mariko Takahashi, “The Development
of Japanese Television Broadcasting and Imported Television Programs” (master’s thesis,
Michigan State University, 1992), 30.
'36 Furuta, Broadcasting, 137.
‘37 Dave Smith and Steven Clark, Disney - The First 100 Years (New York: Disney Editions, 2002),
58.
‘38 Raz, Black Ship, 160; Brannen, Mickey, 223.
‘39 Peter Thorogood, “Mickey Mouse Club," The Menzies Era: Popular Culture from 1949 to 1972,
httpzllwww.menziesera.com/people/mickey.htm (accessed March 25, 2005).

89

“° Collaborative Content, LLC., “The Mickey Mouse Club,” TV Tome: Guide to the Television
Shows You Love, http: l/www. tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServIet/showid-3640
(accessed March 25,2005).
Raz, Black Ship, 160.
“2 Ibid 161
“3 lbid., 161.
“ Masami Ito, Hito ga atsumaru téma paku no himitsu [The Secret of Attractive Theme Parks]
(Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Sinbunsha,1994),94.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981; reprint. Michigan: The University of
Michigan Press, 2004), 81
46lbid., 1.
“7 Shin Yamada, Dizunirando rya shinri gaku: “Hito to okane ga atsumaru" karakuri [Disneyland
Style Psychology: Mechanism of “Attracting People and Money”] (Tokyo: Mikasa Shobo, 2002),
28; In Disneyland, employees are called “cast members” and customers “guests” because they
think of Disneyland as a stage
“8 lbid., 32- 33.
5:Lto Secret, 50- 51.
:‘1’Shinya Hashizume, Shakyaku toshi [Visitor City] (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Sinbunsha, 2002), 153.
Masako Notoji, Dizunlrando to iu seichi [Disneyland as Sacred Land] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
115990), 41-42.
2Disneyguy’s “Disneyland: The Happiest Place on Earth!”
http:/lwww.geocities.comlHollywood/Boulevardl1877/ (accessed 15 July 2004).
‘53 54lt,o Secret, 44.
5"Notoji, Sacred, 31.
15556Baudrillard, Simulacra, 12
5:,Raz Black Ship 8.
Toshio Kagami, Umi o koeru sOZOIyoku. Tokyo dizuni rizOto tanjyo no monogatari [Imagination
across the Sea: The Story of Producing Tokyo Disney Resort] (Tokyo. Kodansha, 2003), 50.
58,Raz Black Ship 4, 23.
59 GOKagami, Imagination, 52- 53; Raz, Black Ship, 27.
6°,Brannen Mickey, 216.
6' Yuji Nemoto, Tema paku jidai no tOrai [The Coming of Theme Parks Era] (Tokyo: Diamond Co. ,
1990), 26-28.
1623Raz, Black Ship, 153
6:Brannen, Mickey, 219.
64Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (1970; California: Sage
Publications Inc., 2002), 43.
“5 lbid., 25.
‘6“ Ibid. 27.
’67 lbid., 43, 45, 134.
‘68 Mark Gottdiener, The Theming of America (Colorado: Westview Press, 2001), 42.
‘69 Baudrillard, Consumer, 58.
‘7° lbid., 43.
‘7’ lbid., 58.
”2 lbid., 58.
"3 lbid., 54-55.
"“ lbid., 61.
"5 Notoji, Sousa, 224.
‘7 Raz, Black snip, 16.
'77 Brannen, Mickey, 222.
‘78 Raz, Black Ship, 66.
"9 Brannen, Mickey, 222.
18° Raz, Black Ship, 4, 66.
18‘ Brannen, Mickey, 223.

15

m

90

‘82 lbid.

‘83 Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946;
Tokyo: Tut’tle, 1991), 99-100, 114.

‘8“ lbid., 105-106.

‘85 lbid., 133.

‘86 lbid., 171,192.

‘87 Ito, Secret, 23.

‘88 Yuji Nemoto, Maruchi entateimento bijinesu [Multi-Entertainment Business] (Tokyo: Diamond
Co.,1995]), 99.

"’9 Raz, Black Ship, 167.

‘9” lbid., 158-59.

‘9‘ lbid., 157.

’92 Brannen, Mickey, 223.

‘93 Raz, Black Ship, 62.

‘9‘ Tokyo Disneyland Guide at TDL (September 2004, Halloween version).
‘95 Raz, Black Ship, 169.

‘96 Notoji, Sousa, 224.

‘97 Raz, Black Ship, 171-72.

‘98 lbid., 174.

‘99 lbid.

2°° lbid., 68.

2°‘ Nemoto, Multi, 29-33.

202 Notoji, Sousa, 224.

2°“ Raz, Black Ship, 6.

20‘ Brannen, Mickey, 217.

2°“ Raz, Black Ship, 187.

2°6 Kagami, Imagination, 66.

2°“ Notoji, Sacred, 68-69.

208 Gottdiener, Theming, 24.

209 Notoji, Sacred, 85.

21° Brannen, Mickey, 219.

2“ lbid., 218.

2‘2 Notoji, Sousa, 225.

2‘3 Brannen, Mickey, 225.

2“ lbid., 226.

2‘5 lbid., 221, note 11 In 232.

2‘6 Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (1964; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press,
1967), 27.

2" Raz, Black Ship, 179.

2‘“ lbid., 120.

2‘9 lbid., 64-65.

22° lbid., 179.

22‘ lbid., 176.

222 Brannen, Mickey, 225; Raz, Black Ship, 63.
223 Brannen, Mickey, 225.

22‘ Kagami, Imagination, 77.

”5 Raz, Black Ship, 36-38.

226 Brannen, Mickey, 222.

227 Raz, Black Ship, 46-47.

22” lbid., 51-52; Brannen, Mickey, 227.
229 Brannen, Mickey, 227.

23° Raz, Black Ship, 54.

23‘ lbid., 58.

232 lbid., 200.

9]

”3 Notoji, Sousa, 223.
23“ Raz, Black Ship, 160.
235 lto, Secret, 257.
23'" Kagami, Imagination, 72, 84.
237 Brannen, Mickey, 230.
23" Ito, Secret, 271-72.
239 Brannen, Mickey, 228.
2° Raz, Black Ship, 86-87.
‘ lbid., 38.
2‘2 lbid.,80, 114-15.
2‘3 Ito, Secret, 71; Raz, Black Ship, 116.
2“ Kagami, Imagination, 65, 68.
2‘5 Baudrillard, Consumer, 33.
2‘6 George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (California: Pine Forge Press, 2000), 126, 129.
2" Baudrillard, Consumer, 161.
2‘8 Ritzer, McDonaldization, 88-89.
2‘9 lbid., 90.
25° Raz, Black Ship, 104.
25‘ lbid.,104.
25” lbid., 103.
253 lbid., 88.
25‘ lbid., 125.
25“ lbid., 121.
25“ lbid., 82-83.
25’ Kagami, Imagination, 17.
25“ lbid., 142.
25“ lbid., 105.
25° lbid., 109.
26‘ lbid., 118.
262 lbid., 120-21.
263 Yamada, Mechanism, 165.
:2 Kagami, Imagination, 142.
Yamada, Mechanism, 71-72.
2““ lbid., 84.
267 Kagami, Imagination, 153.
2““ lbid., 250.
2““ Raz, Black Ship, 32-33.
27° lbid.
27‘ lbid., 31.

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