The Postwar Occupation Of Japan

Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the end of the American-led Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-52), The Allied Occupation of Japan is a sweeping history of the revolutionary reforms that transformed Japan and the remarkable men and women, American and Japanese, who implemented them.

*Includes pictures *Explains the formation of a new constitution, as well as the democratization and demilitarization processes *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents The American occupation of Japan holds a singular and problematic place in the histories both of Japan and of American foreign policy. For the Japanese, the occupation marked the transition from war to peace, from authoritarianism to democracy, and from privation to plenty, making it a passage from one of the darkest chapters in Japanese history to one of the brightest. Nevertheless, the significance of that passage was fraught with ambiguities; after all, Japan did not win its new democracy through revolution from below in the form of a popular indigenous movement pressing for increased rights and a more open, inclusive politics. Instead, Japanese democracy came as a revolution from above, a system imposed wholesale and virtually without consultation by an occupying army whose Supreme Allied Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, wielded power as absolute and unchecked as any emperor. Many critics at the time and since have worried that the political system established by the occupation was thus somehow hollow, a thin veneer of participatory democracy resting uncomfortably atop a deeply conservative and hierarchical culture, symbolized above all by the continuing presence of an emperor. Others have argued that the contradictions of a radical democratic revolution from above are real but irrelevant. Presented for the first time with open space for genuine political speech and action, ordinary Japanese seized the opportunity to exercise agency over the course of their own lives, pulling Japan in directions that neither the old Japanese political elite nor the new American occupation authorities had foreseen. On the American side, the significance of the occupation is no less contentious. On the one hand, after three and a half years of some of the most bitter and bloody combat the world had ever seen, the occupation authorities might well have set out to avenge themselves upon the Japanese people for Pearl Harbor and all that had followed by instituting a harsh and punitive peace, much the way the Soviet Union did in the regions of Germany it came to occupy. That the Americans instead exerted themselves to reconstruct Japan as a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous ally is often proffered as an example of Americans' fundamental sense of justice, redemption, and fair play. At the same time, the particular course the occupation took cannot be understood outside the context of the developing global Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. With Communist hegemony in the Russian Far East, in Manchuria, in northern Korea, and (after 1949) even in China, American policymakers felt the urgent need for a stable, reliable ally in northeast Asia. Thus, in the American occupation of Japan, the interests of enlightened humanitarianism and cold-blooded realpolitik were, for the most part, conveniently aligned. Indeed, it is important to consider the long shadow that the occupation of Japan has cast over the conduct of American foreign policy in the decades since World War II. On the surface, the goals of the occupation authorities may have seemed positively herculean: the transformation of a warlike, authoritarian, and economically devastated enemy into a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous ally. To the careful historian, the fact that the occupation authorities succeeded so dramatically in achieving these objectives must suggest that, for all the unquestionable drama and heroics of the period, their task was not so Quixotic as it may have appeared, and that Japanese society was, in important ways, already primed for the radical reforms the occupiers set in motion. The Postwar Occupation of Japan looks at the history from the surrender to end World War II to the independence of the modern Japanese nation.

Japan's success in charting a new course in the years following World War II stems from the reforming impetus of GHQ/SCAP, Headquarters of the American-led allied occupation that indirectly governed the nation for nearly seven years. This is the story of the reforms of the Occupation period and of the remarkable men and women, Japanese and American, who implemented them. Professor Takemae introduces material on the wartime origins of Occupation policies, the British Commonwealth Force, the Kurils, Okinawa the Korean minority, A-bomb survivors, war crimes, the Constitution Education, and Health and Welfare.

The Allied occupation of Japan is remembered as the "good occupation." An American-led coalition successfully turned a militaristic enemy into a stable and democratic ally. Of course, the story was more complicated, but the occupation did forge one of the most enduring relationships in the postwar world. Recent events, from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to protests over American bases in Japan to increasingly aggressive territorial disputes between Asian nations over islands in the Pacific, have brought attention back to the subject of the occupation of Japan.In Architects of Occupation, Dayna L. Barnes exposes the wartime origins of occupation policy and broader plans for postwar Japan. She considers the role of presidents, bureaucrats, think tanks, the media, and Congress in policymaking. Members of these elite groups came together in an informal policy network that shaped planning. Rather than relying solely on government reports and records to understand policymaking, Barnes also uses letters, memoirs, diaries, and manuscripts written by policymakers to trace the rise and spread of ideas across the policy network. The book contributes a new facet to the substantial literature on the occupation, serves as a case study in foreign policy analysis, and tells a surprising new story about World War II.

In this novel and intriguing book, Michael Schaller traces the origins of the Cold War in Asia to the postwar occupation of Japan by U.S. troops. Determined to secure Japan as a bulwark against both Soviet expansion and Asian revolution, the U.S. instituted ambitious social and economic reforms under the direction of the flamboyant Occupation Commander, General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was later denounced by the Truman Administration as a "bunko artist" who had wrecked Japan's economy and opened it to Communist influence, and power was shifted to Japan's old elite. Cut off from its former trading partners, which were now all Communist-controlled, Japan, with U.S. backing, turned its attention to the rich but unstable Southeast Asian states. The stage was thus set for U.S. intervention in China, Korea, and Vietnam.

Following its defeat in World War II, Japan was placed under the control of SCAP GHQ headed by General Douglas MacArthur. Initially, the Occupation promoted policies of demilitarization and democratization. A new Japanese constitution which pursued pacifism was established. However, as the Cold War intensified, policies switched in the direction of economic recovery, and it was contended that Japan should take the anti-Communist pro-America path. In 1951, at the height of the Korean War, the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty were concluded as a fixed set. Winner of the 2015 Yomiuri Yoshino Sakuzo Prize for academic writing on politics, economics, and history, this book provides a wide view of the seven years of the Occupation of Japan which led to the 'postwar system' that has continued into the twenty-first century. --