Sublime

From 1912 to 1938 it had been stationed in Tientsin, China, guarding American commercial interests in accord with the protocols imposed on China in 1901 after its defeat in the Boxer Rebellion.

Emperor Kōmei sent the two buke densō to Edo with an imperial message: the shogun was informed that his most important task as the “great general and subduer of barbarians” was to reassure the people of the country by driving off the foreign ships, in this way avoiding national disgrace and future troubles.

Complex and ambiguous, women's engagements with sojourning U.S. personnel encapsulate the wider society during the years of occupation.

The occupation lasted six years and eight months. Yet even after it ended, in 1952, nearly two hundred thousand troops remained on more than two thousand base facilities on the Japanese main islands. This kept Japan “bound hand and foot” to the United States, a leading politician charged. Only 18 percent of those polled after the occupation’s end

Yet even for Japan, the most prosperous site in Baselandia, success came at a cost. In exchange for its privileged position within the world economy, Japan surrendered a great deal of autonomy. It had to stand aside as the United States used Japanese land to launch Asian wars, spy on the Soviet Union, and store nuclear weapons, with all the dangers