20th century
A01=Sabine Fruhstuck
anthropology
armed forces
asia scholars
asian communism
asian studies
Author_Sabine Fruhstuck
Category=JW
cold war
combat training
cultural memory
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
feminism
gender studies
historians
japan
japanese army
japanese culture
japanese history
japanese society
military history
modern history
nonfiction
popular culture
postwar constitution
postwar japan
self defense forces
social science
warfare
weapons technology
world war ii
wwii
Product details
- ISBN 9780520247956
- Weight: 408g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 14 Aug 2007
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Following World War II, Japan's postwar constitution forbade the country to wage war or create an army. However, with the emergence of the cold war in the 1950s, Japan was urged to establish the Self-Defense Forces as a way to bolster Western defenses against the tide of Asian communism. Although the SDF's role is supposedly limited to self-defense, Japan's armed forces are equipped with advanced weapons technology and the world's third-largest military budget. Sabine Fruhstuck draws on interviews, historical research, and analysis to describe the unusual case of a non-war-making military. As the first scholar permitted to participate in basic SDF training, she offers a firsthand look at an army trained for combat that nevertheless serves nontraditional military needs.
Sabine Fruhstuck is Professor of Modern Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan (UC Press, 2003).
