# Panpan girls

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Post–War Japanese sex worker

*Panpan* girls

***Panpan* girls** ([Japanese](/source/Japanese_language): パンパンガール, [Hepburn](/source/Hepburn_romanization): *panpan gāru*), also ***pom-pom*** (パンパン) or ***pansuke*** (パン助),[1] were Japanese women who were either coerced or voluntarily engaged in sex work with Allied soldiers during the [occupation of Japan](/source/Occupation_of_Japan). As the government (with the aid of police) set up unlicensed [brothels](/source/Brothels), some women engaged in sex work to secure everyday officially provided necessities. *Panpan* girls were generally looked down upon by Japanese men, and cultural renditions of *panpan* girls have seen the phenomenon as a challenge to masculine identity. The reality of *panpan* girls is likely different from their cultural identity; since the end of the occupation, the term has shifted somewhat in understanding.

## Definition

According to film historian David A Conrad, the term *panpan* originates from a term Japanese and American soldiers brought from the southern Pacific.[2] Contemporaneously, *panpan* girls were considered a form of [sex worker](/source/Sex_worker) or [escort](/source/Call_girl). Sometimes the term was used to imply an exclusivity to the relationship or arrangement between the woman and the soldier,[3] while some authors used it to refer to all kinds of sex workers, including those working in clubs and brothels.[4] Those who engaged in private sex work were often not coerced into any vertical structure by [pimps](/source/Pimps) or police because they formed self-defence groups. Women who worked only for Americans were called *yōpan*, women who had one client were referred to as only (オンリー, *onrī*), while women with multiple clients were called butterfly.[5]

## History

Following Imperial Japan's surrender at the end of the [Second World War](/source/Second_World_War), but before the arrival of [the Allied occupation forces](/source/Occupation_of_Japan), the interim Japanese government—with the help of police—set up a series of officially sanctioned, but unlicensed, [brothels](/source/Brothels) out of anxiety that the military forces would commit mass rape.[6] Due to the extreme reluctance of women to engage in sex work, the police of [Hiroshima Prefecture](/source/Hiroshima_Prefecture) provided women who signed up with guaranteed daily provisions of beef, rice, sugar, and cooking oil.[7]

Japanese women employed to mix with Allied servicemen.

Following the American arrival in Japan, the women who were sex workers or hung around with Allied soldiers were viewed pejoratively by Japanese men. A contemporary public intellectual, [Kanzaki Kiyoshi](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kanzaki_Kiyoshi&action=edit&redlink=1) [[ja](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A5%9E%E5%B4%8E%E6%B8%85)], wrote in the 1950s that soldiers referred to *panpan* girls and sex workers as "yellow [stool](/source/Human_faeces)". According to scholar Masakazu Tanaka, this language of Japanese men describing Japanese women who worked for Allied soldiers at [cabarets](/source/Cabarets), clubs, and brothels as 'public toilets' was created as an image of disgust by Japanese men who felt [feminised](/source/Feminisation_(sociology)) by the loss of the War. *Panpan* girls would often escort soldiers, wearing high heels and dancing to American music.[8]

After the occupation, some women who entered relationships with non-Japanese men voluntarily took a different, more accepting attitude towards the term *panpan*; with changing social mores around sex, a term referring to a black *panpan* girl (ブラパン, *burapan*) was coined by Japanese women who dated black men.[9] The term *burapan* has also been used disparagingly by Japanese men in [hip-hop communities](/source/Japanese_hip-hop) to refer to Japanese women who have a black boyfriend.[1]

## Culture

Most cultural renditions of *panpan* girls have common signifiers of appearance, i.e., lipstick, perfume, chewing gum, and speaking a hybrid of Japanese and English. Despite the image of them as hyper-sexual, Rumi Sakamoto argues that many existing photographs of them don't frame them as such, and that they were likely just young women with more access to commercial goods than others.[10]

To Andrea Mendoza, the visibility of Allied soldiers walking around with Japanese girls established a metaphor of Western masculinity against an imagined feminine Japan.[11] In [Ango Sakaguchi](/source/Ango_Sakaguchi)'s short stories, "One Woman and the War" and its sequel, the sexual experience of a woman (identified as an ex-streetwalker) is used as a prism to re-create a sense of Japanese masculine identity at the expense of the protagonist's agency.[12] Similarly she criticises [Taijiro Tamura](/source/Taijiro_Tamura)'s *[Gate of Flesh](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gate_of_Flesh_(novel)&action=edit&redlink=1)* for reinforcing the idea of *panpan* girls as a kind of "double-defeat".[13] East Asian scholar [Ian Buruma](/source/Ian_Buruma) identifies the absence of *panpan* girls in the film *[Drunken Angel](/source/Drunken_Angel)* (1948) to be conspicuous, and an intentional shift of focus away from western intrusion into Japanese life.[14]

## See also

- *[Akasen](/source/Akasen)*

- [Comfort women](/source/Comfort_women)

- [Geisha and prostitution](/source/Geisha_and_prostitution)

- [Prostitution in Japan](/source/Prostitution_in_Japan)

- [Rape during the occupation of Japan](/source/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Japan)

- [Recreation and Amusement Association](/source/Recreation_and_Amusement_Association)

- [War Brides Act](/source/War_Brides_Act)

## References

### Citations

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTECondry2007656_1-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTECondry2007656_1-1) [Condry 2007](#CITEREFCondry2007), p. 656.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEConrad202257_2-0)** [Conrad 2022](#CITEREFConrad2022), p. 57.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTETanaka200429–31_3-0)** [Tanaka 2004](#CITEREFTanaka2004), pp. 29–31.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEMendoza2015182_4-0)** [Mendoza 2015](#CITEREFMendoza2015), p. 182.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTELie1997258_5-0)** [Lie 1997](#CITEREFLie1997), p. 258.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTETanaka2002133_6-0)** [Tanaka 2002](#CITEREFTanaka2002), p. 133.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTETanaka2002136_7-0)** [Tanaka 2002](#CITEREFTanaka2002), p. 136.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTETanaka200428–31_8-0)** [Tanaka 2004](#CITEREFTanaka2004), pp. 28–31.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTETanaka200434_9-0)** [Tanaka 2004](#CITEREFTanaka2004), p. 34.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTESakamoto20104–6_10-0)** [Sakamoto 2010](#CITEREFSakamoto2010), pp. 4–6.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEMendoza2015184_11-0)** [Mendoza 2015](#CITEREFMendoza2015), p. 184.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEMendoza2015185–188_12-0)** [Mendoza 2015](#CITEREFMendoza2015), pp. 185–188.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEMendoza2015190_13-0)** [Mendoza 2015](#CITEREFMendoza2015), p. 190.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEBuruma2007_14-0)** [Buruma 2007](#CITEREFBuruma2007).

### Bibliography

#### Books and articles

- Condry, Ian (2007). "Yellow B-Boys, Black Culture, and Hip-Hop in Japan: Toward a Transnational Cultural Politics of Race". *Positions*. **15** (3). [Duke University Press](/source/Duke_University_Press): 637–671. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1215/10679847-2007-008](https://doi.org/10.1215%2F10679847-2007-008). [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [1067-9847](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1067-9847).

- Conrad, David A. (2022). *Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan*. McFarland & Co. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [978-1-4766-8674-5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-1-4766-8674-5).

- Lie, John (1997). "THE STATE AS PIMP: Prostitution and the Patriarchal State in Japan in the 1940s". *[The Sociological Quarterly](/source/The_Sociological_Quarterly)*. **38** (2): 251–263. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1111/j.1533-8525.1997.tb00476.x](https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1533-8525.1997.tb00476.x). [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [1533-8525](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1533-8525). [JSTOR](/source/JSTOR_(identifier)) [4120735](https://www.jstor.org/stable/4120735).

- Mendoza, Andrea (2015). Bourdaghs, Michael; Long, Hoyt; Jackson, Reginald (eds.). "Pan Pan Girls and Transvestite Patriarchies: Performing and Recovering Masculinity in Post-1945 Literature and Film". *Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies*. **15**: 181–191. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.26812/pajls.v15i.1395](https://doi.org/10.26812%2Fpajls.v15i.1395). [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [1531-5533](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1531-5533).

- Sakamoto, Rumo (2010). "Pan-pan Girls: Humiliating Liberation in Postwar Japanese Literature". *Portal*. **7** (2). Sydney. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.5130/portal.v7i2.1515](https://doi.org/10.5130%2Fportal.v7i2.1515). [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [1449-2490](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1449-2490).

- Tanaka, Masakazu (2004). "戦後日本の米兵と日本人売春婦 : もうひとつのグローバリゼーション" [American Soldiers and Japanese Prostitutes in Post–War Japan: Another Form of Globalization]. *Globalization, Localization, and Japanese Studies in the Asia-Pacific Region* (in Japanese). Vol. 2. [International Research Center for Japanese Studies](/source/International_Research_Center_for_Japanese_Studies). pp. 27–35. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.15055/00001302](https://doi.org/10.15055%2F00001302).

- [Tanaka, Yuki](/source/Yuki_Tanaka_(historian)) (2002). Selden, Mark (ed.). *Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual slavery and prostitution during World War II and the US occupation*. Asia's Transformations. London: Routledge. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [0-203-30275-3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-203-30275-3).

#### Web

- [Buruma, Ian](/source/Ian_Buruma) (19 November 2007). ["*Drunken Angel*: The Spoils of War"](https://web.archive.org/web/20250215075925/https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/620-drunken-angel-the-spoils-of-war). [Criterion Collection](/source/Criterion_Collection). Archived from [the original](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/620-drunken-angel-the-spoils-of-war) on 15 February 2025. Retrieved 16 August 2025.

### Further reading

- Takeuchi, Michiko (2010). "*PAN-PAN GIRLS* PERFORMING AND RESISTING NEOCOLONIALISM(S) IN THE PACIFIC THEATER: U.S. Military Prostitution in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952". In Hohn, Maria; Moon, Seungsook (eds.). *Over There: Living with the U.S. Military Empire from World War Two to the Present*. [Duke University Press](/source/Duke_University_Press). pp. 78–108. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1515/9780822393283-007](https://doi.org/10.1515%2F9780822393283-007). [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [9780822393283](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780822393283).

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Panpan girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpan_girls) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpan_girls?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.