Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan by Yukiko KoshiroReview by: Lucian W. PyeForeign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1999), p. 186Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049513 .

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Recent Books

Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U S.

Occupation of Japan, by yukiko

koshiro. New York Columbia

University Press, 1999,304 pp. $45.00

(paper, $18.50). A bold exploration of the difficult

subject of American and Japanese racist attitudes. During World War II,

both sides engaged in blatant racist

characterizations of the other. But with

the American occupation, race largely vanished as an overt issue and took on

more complicated and nuanced forms.

The American military's antifrater

nization regulations suggested that

they considered the Japanese inferior,

but at the same time America's con

fidence that Japan could be turned into an effective democracy suggested that

Washington believed that the Japanese could become the equals of Westerners.

Koshiro analyzes with great delicacy the interplay between the two concepts of race and culture in U.S.-Japanese

relations, tracing the strange history of

the introduction of "race" into the new

postwar Japanese constitution through Article 14, which prohibits discrimina

tion because of "race, creed, sex, social

status, or family origin." Although

the author focuses on the war and

the occupation period, he also touches

on Japanese overseas emigration and

mixed-race children in Japan. The

trend of improving race relations

was suddenly shaken by fresh American

anti-Japanese sentiment in the 1980s over Japanese economic successes.

Koshiro concludes by arguing that

both sides can learn lessons from the

occupation to end racism.

Africa GAIL M.GERHART

Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in

Rwanda, by human rights

watch. New York: Human Rights

Watch, 1999, 771 pp. $35.00. The definitive study to date of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when more than

half a million people died in a three-month

campaign of politically orchestrated mass

murder. Adding detail and perspective to accounts published soon after the

events, this work by Rwanda historian

Alison Des Forges offers new information

on the warnings that preceded the geno

cide, the redistribution of the victims'

property, the Hutus who tried to resist

participation in the slaughter, and

retaliation killings by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (rpf). The

study also lays bare the pathetic perfor mance of the U.N. bureaucracy through out the crisis. The business-as-usual

attitude of the Security Council was

relieved only by the perception of four

nonpermanent members (the Czech

Republic, Spain, Argentina, and New

Zealand) that a disaster was occurring.

France, Belgium, and the United

States, who could have headed off the

disaster through forceful U.N. diplo

macy, shirked all responsibility. France

went so far as to furtively support the genocidal regime in the hope of

forestalling a takeover by the anglo

phone rpf. Even for those inured to

the multiple forms of human perversity, this is a sickening tale.

[l86] FOREIGN AFFAIRS-Volume 78 N0.5

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