On October 19, the IES was delighted to hear a fascinating lecture by Robert Kramm, Doctor of History and Freigeist-Fellow at Munich's LMU. Currently a visiting scholar at the German Historical Institute's Pacific Office, Kramm presented his preliminary thoughts on occupied Germany and Japan after the Second World War from the perspective of global cultural history to an audience of about 20 people.
He began by presenting his unique approach to the experience of occupied Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, adopting a cross-cutting and intertwined perspective in lieu of cloistered narratives. Going beyond the traditional understanding of juxtaposing the two histories in high politics, Kramm focused on a bottom-up analysis, telling the shared and divided story of occupied Germany and Japan through the lived experience of life, race, gender, and sexuality. Opposing the vision of a marginal presence of foreign troops in Japan, Kramm argues instead that intimate physical contact in Japan had a considerable impact on citizens' experience of the occupation, linking it to the experience of Germany.
Kramm discussed racism and wartime propaganda against the Japanese, the sexual interactions of soldiers, from fantasized Geishas to Fräuleins' relationships with black GIs, and the tensions this triggered in occupied societies, all steeped in military racial segregation.
Kramm concluded by saying that this historical moment demonstrated the complexity of race and its various concepts. Vulgar racism in its biological form corresponds to the period of crude exploitation of man. The improvement of the means of production inevitably brings about the camouflage of techniques for exploiting mankind that, unfortunately, are giving rise to new forms of racism.