| This dissertation traces the postwar ramifications of what I will call "swing ideology" in the transnational context of U.S.-Japan relations. Originally a product of the Swing Era of the 1930s, swing ideology first developed as a part of the vaguely leftist celebration of American democracy promoted by the Popular Front cultural activists. The ideology outlived the Swing Era to be revived in the Cold War years, as jazz music became a prominent part of global Americanization and even a tool of anti-communist propaganda toward the decolonizing Third World nations where the U.S. race relations was a major concern.; As one of the major non-white nations and at the same time a former colonial power and wartime enemy of the United States, Japan provided a unique local context in which swing ideology was expressed, contested, and transformed by both Americans and the Japanese. Using the contemporary print media, including books, magazines, and newspapers, as well as the recordings and films, produced in both Japan and the United States, this dissertation traces the swing ideology and its discontents from the wake of the World War II, when the United States began to take charge of democratizing the Japanese nation through the military occupation, to the late 1960s, when the worldwide youth revolt radically questioned the legitimacy of American global hegemony. |
