UC Santa Barbara

This dissertation interrogates the possibilities and limitations of tourism, particularly in the transimperial system of the postwar Pacific. It reframes Cold War US-Japan relations as symbiosis between two imperial nations. It examines post-World War II tourism to illustrate how the American and Japanese empires engaged in intellectual and population exchanges that aided the maintenance of both Pacific empires. I show how Japanese women served key roles in postwar tourism between Japan and the US. First, they served as a major consumer base. Gender norms and ideals enticed young Japanese women to travel, starting as a trickle in the late 1960s that later became a cascade of millions by the 1980s. I argue that the postwar tourism industry between the US and Japan shifted focus to a new kind of colonizer: the Japanese woman traveler. Second, Japanese women, particularly those who migrated to the US (“Shin Issei”), worked in the tourism industry throughout the Pacific. I examine how these tour guides sit at the nexus of both the US and Japanese empires.By combining archival research cultural history, oral history, and Asian American theoretical perspectives, I consider how the lives of Japanese women were intertwined with international relations and empire. Adopting an intersectional analysis, my dissertation explores these topics through Japanese women born between 1945 and 1979. Using a cultural history methodology, I examine a variety of sources, including Japanese tourism campaign materials, guidebooks, and magazines, to understand the discourses that women of this generation encountered as they were growing up and what incited them to move—both as travelers and as emigrants. Moving beyond the individual, I examine the impact of Japanese tourism on several settler colonies of the Pacific: Hokkaido, Okinawa, and Guam. This dissertation interrogates the linkages of tourism and empire through a postwar, transpacific lens. I advance the historiography of tourism by examining the multiple and layered imperial forces and legacies that structure tourism in the Pacific. I contend that tourism functioned as a key mechanism in Cold War era international relations between these two transpacific empires.