Child's Play

I've been reading John Dower's "Embracing Defeat" and there's a fascinating section on how Japanese children's games changed during the post-war period and were in many ways a mirror of adult society. There were certainly no toys to be had in such dismal economic times and playing war vanished in the wake of the defeat. Here are a few examples of the new types of games that came into play:

• Yamiichi-gokko: holding a mock black-market.
• Panppan asobi: prostitution play. Panpan was a euphemism for prostitutes catering specifically to GIs. Little boys created GI style hats out of newspaper and little girls pretended to be the panpans.
• Demo asobi: recreating left-wing political demonstrations. Children would run around waving red paper flags.
• Train games: children used the teacher's platform (still found in classrooms today) as their mock train. "Repatriate train" involved pretending be returning soldiers, trembling and afraid, on their way home. "Special train" - an allusion to the Occupation personnel-only train cars - allowed only "pretty people" to ride. In "ordinary train" children crammed together, pushing and shoving, barely fitting on teacher's platform. Eventually a conductor stopped the "train," saying it was broken down, and ordered everyone off.
• Other later inventions included runpen-gokko (pretending to be homeless vagrants), "catch a thief" and "pretending handcuffs" (mirroring the lawlessness of the times), lottery games reflecting the desire for material wealth, and kaidashi-gokko (pretending to leave home in search of food).

As Dower notes a good portion of their play seemed to find pleasure in being colonized, as well as "playing at utter confusion."