Several recordings were in circulation, including one by Harry Belafonte, and another by a popular female Japanese singer named Cheimi Eri. American Men and Japanese Women. This interpretation takes on new dimensions when we consider the implications of an American male fantasizing about a Japanese female. Widows, orphans, and Korean and Chinese women already working in pleasure and entertainment districts were among those recruited for this duty. The RAA also employed large numbers of musicians and ran a nationwide system of cabarets, nightclubs, and dance halls that featured Western music for the entertainment of the GIs and their Japanese escorts.
Almost powerless to stop fraternization between American men and Japanese women under these circumstances, the U. Army resorted to scare tactics to try to keep men from overindulging.
The American media and even the military leadership depicted geishas as dangerous seductresses. Sex is one of the oldest and most effective weapons in history. The Geisha girl knows how to wield it charmingly. She may entice you only to poison you. She may slit your throat. Stay away from the women of Japan—all of them. The nightclub scene catering to GIs, however, continued through the Occupation and beyond its official end. Some women moved directly from the sex trade into the entertainment industry.
At the same time, American GIs believed that their behavior toward Japanese women was helping to liberate them, and they rationalized their actions—and even sexual violence—by believing in their own superiority over Japanese men.
The new constitution imposed on Japan by its occupiers did include legal reforms benefitting women, including the right to vote. On the other hand, Japanese women had almost no recourse against abuse or neglect by American servicemen. Only thirty-nine percent of approximately five thousand Occupation babies were supported by their American fathers, and their Japanese mothers were often financially devastated and socially outcast. And, between and , Eugenic Protection Commissions ordered compulsory sterilizations of more than eight thousand women with an aim of preventing the births of mixed-race children.
Some panpan made themselves up to look like Hollywood starlets in the hopes of attracting an American, while others donned kimonos in efforts to play to exotic geisha fantasies. Hibari was the most famous of the many young women who dominated the Japanese music industry in the s in every venue from military nightclubs to broadcast singing competitions to the tops of the popularity charts.
And in the late s, many of them were performing rock and roll. Her modest demeanor, coupled with the aura of glamour around her, makes her what every Japanese girl aspires to be these days—a combination of Madame Butterfly and Betty Grable. Her slim body, tucked into skirt and sweater, arches to the rocking rhythm.
Her comely oriental features slide into a fun loving laugh. She looks Japanese. She looks American. Nice, you think. Incongruous, you think. Sexy, you think. Not unlike the panpan , many of the women who were successful performing American genres of music came from the lower classes and ultimately used their earnings to support their families.
For girls, this means they are not taught to be shy and retiring in public, and their voices are not ruined for Western-style singing by the completely different requirements of Japanese singing. Each of these stars came to the genre after recording other styles of American music, including GI songs, country music, and big band jazz.
Not all of the rockabilly material was of American origins, however. This is emphasized by the fact that the song was also covered in the s by at least two Japanese women: Izumi Yukimura and Tamaki Sawa. Both of the Japanese renditions of the song retain the references to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and both also insert Japanese-language verses between the original English ones. Once I set my mind to it, voila!
Nobody can stop me, voila! This was unsettling. Whatever reasons American audiences in the mid-twentieth century may have had for their reluctance to accept twenty-year-old Wanda Jackson singing the song, one thing is certain: contemporary audiences love the woman who sings it now.
In that sense, perhaps the song has become a symbol of power. Epilogue: I did most of the work on this article in Billboard printed a profile of Jack Hammer in February of , noting that he was a singer, songwriter, emcee, and dancer. When Jackson got back from Japan, she put together her own band for the first time — and unusually for country music at the time, it was an integrated band, with a black pianist.
She had to deal with some resistance from her mother, who was an older Southern white woman, but eventually managed to win her round. That pianist, Big Al Downing, later went on to have his own successful career, including a hit single duetting with Esther Phillips:. Downing also had disco hits in the early seventies, and later had a run of hits on the country charts. In , Jackson returned to the studio. All her future sessions were going to be purely country, to avoid diluting her brand.
She was obviously confused by this, but Nelson explained that a DJ in Iowa had taken up the song and used it as the theme song for his radio show. So many people had called the DJ asking about it that he in turn had called Ken Nelson at Capitol and convinced him to put the track out as a single, and it had made the pop top forty.
As a result, Capitol rushed out an album of her previous rockabilly singles, and then got her back into the studio, with her touring band, to record her first proper rock and roll album — as opposed to her first album, which was a mixture of country and rock, and her second, which was a compilation of previously-released singles. At the time, Brenda Lee was a big star, and a friend of Jackson. Wanda had written a song in that style, and since she was now once again being pushed in a rock and roll direction, she thought she would give it to Lee to record.
Even so, her switch to pure country music ended up being good for Jackson. Jackson was a fairly major star in the country field through the sixties, even having her own TV show, but she was becoming increasingly unhappy, and suffering from alcoholism. In the early seventies she and her husband had a religious awakening, and became born-again Christians, and she once again switched her musical style, this time from country music to gospel — though she would still sing her old secular hits along with the gospel songs on stage.
But then her career got a second wind. In Europe in the early s there was something of a rockabilly revival, and a Swedish label, Tab Records, got in touch with Jackson and asked her to record a new album of rockabilly music, which led to her touring all over Europe playing to crowds of rockabilly fans.
In , she recorded her first new album of secular music for the American market for several decades, featuring several of her younger admirers, like the Cramps and Lee Rocker of the Stray Cats. But the most prominent guest star was Elvis Costello, who duetted with her on a song by her old friend Buck Owens:. Even though their records will always be thrilling, their sound is not really heard in echo. Look around today and you can hear lots of rocking girl singers who owe an unconscious debt to the mere idea of a girl like Wanda.
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