The late Earle Ernst was the author of that seminal work, "The Kabuki Theater," first published in 1956 and still in print, and the editor of the 1959 "Three Japanese Plays." While a member of the Allied Occupation of Japan, from 1945 to 1947, he was in charge of the Civil Information and Education section responsible for Japanese theater. Here he worked through the mazes of postwar censorship restrictions to return to the traditional stage, particularly kabuki, its freedom. Upon returning to the United States, this interest continued and he is credited with reviving Japanese theater studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa and insisting that the Kennedy Theater there be constructed with a full kabuki stage, something that remains a rarity. In later years, he wrote a remarkable novel, "Finding Monju," which is now, partially and posthumously, published.
"Finding Monju" is a fictionalized account of a U.S. Army officer's life in occupied Tokyo during the years when Ernst was there. It offers one of the best descriptions of what the occupation was like, a time where one "breathed the ache of destruction," yet was expected to somehow "beautify it, to get [the Japanese] off the parallel track of their evil behavior and onto the loveliness of ours."
Yet, at the same time "we were commanded not to fraternize, not to go to their movies or theaters, and not to become friends. We even had to use a different car on the elevated trains, marked Allied Car. Every interesting place was off-limits. Nowhere to meet in the whole, sad, wasted city."