Singing Exoticism: A Historical Anthropology of the G.I. Songs “China Night” and “Japanese Rumba”

Abstract

This essay is a historical anthropological discussion of the production and consumption of two “G.I. songs”—“China Night” and “Japanese Rumba”—and an analysis of how American officers and soldiers in post–World War II Japan experienced that music. “G.I. song” is a translation of shinchu-gun songs, a phrase coined by the Japanese music critic Toyo Nakamura, referring broadly to songs composed, sung, or consumed by Allied occupation forces (shinchu-gun) in postwar Japan—although the term does not denote occupation itself—and to American and Hawaiian songs containing stereotypical Japanese images and sounds. Minako Waseda defines G.I. songs as “compositions addressed to American soldiers stationed in Japan during this occupation period through the 1950s”; most were composed and performed by G.I.'s. As I suggest in this essay, however, many Japanese songs were not written specifically for American G.I.'s, but servicemen still enjoyed listening to the songs (and the parodies of them that the soldiers created). In some cases, determining if G.I. songs written and performed by military personnel were truly addressed to servicemen is simply impossible.1