The Soundproofed Superpower: American Bases and Japanese Communities, 1945–1972 SARAH KOVNER American military bases and the protests they have elicited have had a major impact on Japanese political culture. But after the end of the formal Occupation, and outside the ter- ritory immediately affected, the cultural consequences of the U.S. military presence are much less clear. This article offers a synthetic analysis that integrates diplomatic and social history and relates the strategies of U.S. policymakers to those of anti-base activists. It shows how much the base system has changed over time and how protests have long focused on the same issues, especially sex work and sexual violence, territorial disputes, and nuclear weapons. In each case, Washington and Tokyo worked together to insulate Japanese society, which made it easier for Japanese men and women to tolerate the bases and easier for U.S. servicemen to live within them. I N 2010, PRIME MINISTER Hatoyama Yukio resigned his premiership after only eight months in office. He yielded to public anger after breaking a campaign promise to re- negotiate a 2006 base agreement with the United States and close a Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa. Without a replacement for the Futenma facility, the United States refused to draw down the 28,000 U.S. troops stationed on the island chain. Hatoyama could seemingly do nothing in the face of Washington’ s insistence that its military would go on occupying nearly one-fifth of Okinawa until Tokyo yielded (Kan 2013, 4; Ministry of Defense 2013, 156). Two years later, the United States and Japan agreed that some 9,000 Marines would be redeployed from Okinawa to other Pacific bases, including Guam and Hawaii. 1 Rather than an answer to Japanese demands, the move was widely perceived to be part of a larger effort to “rebalance” U.S. forces to face the rise of China and North Korea’ s nuclear ar- senals. It was later announced that no move would take place until the first half of the 2020s, a decade later than specified in the 2006 agreement, and that Tokyo would still have to help pay for it (Kan 2013,4–7). U.S. military forces will remain deployed through- out Japan, notwithstanding the continuing and obvious sensitivity of the American pres- ence. Even when there is a major shift, as in this case, it appears to be on an American timetable and serves American strategic interests. Sarah Kovner (sck25@columbia.edu) is Senior Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University. 1 This is an issue in transition. In April 2012, the United States publicized a “consolidation plan” that agreed to total or partial return of six facilities. While the land would be returned, some units would be relocated to other areas in Japan and the timetable remains subject to change (Department of Defense 2013). The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 75, No. 1 (February) 2016: 87–109. © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2016 doi:10.1017/S002191181500159X http:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S002191181500159X Downloaded from http:/www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 19 Sep 2016 at 12:49:33, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at