Ideology and Libraries: California, Diplomacy, and Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

Abstract

burgeoning metropolises in Asia. An interesting area of discussion, for example, is women’s sexual pleasure in a ‘normal’ context that witnesses rampant sexual abuse while upholding masculinity and marriage as equally sacrosanct. Kotiswaran (2012), when describing advocacy movements in India that were helping sex workers’ struggles to be recognized as a labor force, uses a materialist argument that explores how endemic sexual violence propels vulnerable women into abandoning false morality, and embracing sex work. Charging money for sex, instead of it being extorted out of them in lieu of money, vulnerable women work in terms of a deficit model, transforming sex into an exchange currency, that accords them freedom, sexual safety, sexual pleasure, and dignity, simply by alleviating their poverty, and reducing the looming specter of constant sexual violence. While Koch discusses women’s disappointment with the employment sector in Japan, while also describing how sex turns violent; the Indian case stands in contrast, pointing to the additional variable of pleasure and safety, that influences women’s commitment to work and advocacy. It is instructive that a sexually violent society where the trafficking of women is high, in addition to a male dominated workforce, produces sex work as healing for women, who make the choice to enter, or remain within the industry. It is therefore possible in the Japanese context, that the sex work industry conceals narratives of feminine pleasure, autonomy, dignity, safety, and affluence, that both produces and subverts a masculine, gendered economy.