냉전기 미일친선과 ‘미국’ 표상의 수사학 — 점령자에서 친밀한 ‘이웃’으로 —

Abstract

This paper examines the magnetic field of the Cold War cultural politics wherein representations of the United States and Japan were mutually produced and circulated. After the GHQ occupation ended, these two nations had to adapt cultural representations of each other to support their alliance during the Cold War. Where on the one hand, the United States wanted to project a desirable image of Japan reflecting onto the past during this phase, as exemplified by Yasunari Kawabata’s winning the Nobel Prize, on the other hand, the United States’ Cold War cultural strategy focused on creating images that portrayed friendly relations between the people of these nations shared in the present. This paper investigates Japanese writer Shono Junzo’s(1921-2009) stay in the United States in 1957 owing to the Rockefeller Foundation creative fellowship and the portrayal of America in his Gambia Taizaiki (1959) based on that experience. Shono spent a year in the small town of Gambia, Ohio. Here, he intimately associated with his neighbors, including John Crowe Ransom, a renowned critic of New Criticism. At first glance, Gambia Taizaiki, which depicts nothing but pastoral landscape, the ordinary people, and everyday scenes, seems far removed from the international political dynamics of his time. However, Shono’s depictions of his interchange with Gambia, which eschews contesting politics of the time in favor of a universal human friendship based on goodwill, may have played a role in mediating a shift in the United States-Japan relationship from “occupier/occupied” to “Cold War allies” in the 1950s. Moreover, it could be argued that representations of America as a benevolent and intimate “neighbor” contributed toward restructuring the Cold War-imagined geography of the Asia-Pacific region by encouraging readers to imagine America standing alongside Japan as a member of the free world community. Seemingly unrelated to each other, the way Kawabata’s Yukiguni and Shono’s Gambia Taizaiki were received in the context of these two nations’ relations share the magnetic field of the Cold War liberalism ideology. Through the mutual images of Japan and the United States projected onto the past and present, they serve as representations that build an imagery of the United States-Japan alliance during the Cold War era.