Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

Ancient Japanese poetry and prose had embraced an ideal of reciprocal love in which men and women shared sexual pleasure. In medieval times, however, the feudal elites had drawn an increasingly strict distinction between love and marriage, and certainly between sensual pleasure and marriage. “Good” women were taught that they were inherently inferior to men; that their entire lives were to be subordinated to the patriarchy of three generations of males (father, husband, and, in old age, son); that although men might find it natural to indulge in erotic lovemaking, such desires and behavior were utterly improper for a well-bred woman. The ideologues of the modern state carefully reformulated these feudal prescriptions as a code of behavior for “modern” married couples. In their hierarchical subjugation of private worlds, women bore by far the heavier burden. A woman’s destiny was to become ryōsai kenbo, a “good wife and wise mother.” Her overriding duty was to serve the male-dominated family—and the duty of the family, in turn, was to serve the imperial state. Not surprisingly, to esteem genuine reciprocity in the conjugal relationship, including not only “love” but also mutual sexual gratification, became one way of defying authority and elevating the primacy of individual feelings and private worlds. In the wake of the defeat, such sentiments emerged in many guises, including a variety of popular publications emphasizing not only the appropriateness of enjoyable sex in ma...