• DOI:10.1353/sex.2010.0007
• Corpus ID: 35663215

"Kissing is a symbol of democracy!": Dating, Democracy, and Romance in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952

@article{McLelland2010KissingIA,
  title={"Kissing is a symbol of democracy!": Dating, Democracy, and Romance in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952},
  author={Mark McLelland},
  journal={Journal of the History of Sexuality},
  year={2010},
  volume={19},
  pages={508 - 535}
}

• Mark McLelland
• Published 28 August 2010
• History
• Journal of the History of Sexuality

In 1943 American anthropologist Margaret Mead was in Britain on an important wartime mission: her task was to study the interactions between American servicemen and local residents. In the monograph she published describing the experience Mead uncovered an important cultural difference between the two societies, a source of continual misunderstanding and conflict: English girls didn't know how to date! When it came to dating, a practice that Mead argued American boys and girls began "in the early teens, long before they are emotionally mature enough to be interested in each other for anything really connected with sex," young English people didn't have a clue. Why was there this difference? Mead concluded that British society was more sex segregated than the United States. In fact, she opined, British boys didn't really enjoy the company of girls, and "if they just want to spend a pleasant evening, more often they spend it with other boys."1 Apparently, the British couldn't see the point of a date unless it was a prelude to marriage. That young men and women might want to spend time dancing, going to the movies, or just hanging out struck many British people as odd and not a little suspicious. Mead argued that for Americans, however, "dating is quite different from being in love, or looking for a casual love partner," and resembled a popularity game rather than genuine courtship behavior. She pointed out that when an American took a girl's arm without so much as a "by your leave," he wasn't being forward, since "a casual hand on the arm does not mean anything; it is not a preface to greater and unacceptable familiarity."2 However, to British eyes such a gesture signified a proprietary familiarity and would only have been undertaken in the context of courtship. In her monograph Mead lists a range of such gestures that Marcel Mauss termed "tech-