Japan

by Edwin Reischauer

  This does not change the fact that the seven years of American occupation and tutelage from 1945 to 1952 clearly constituted a postwar period in every sense of the term. It was also a unique experience not just for Japan but in world history. Never before had one advanced nation attempted to correct from within the presumed imperfections of another advanced nation. And never before had the military occupation of one world power by another been so satisfactory to the victors and tolerable to the vanquished. There was, of course, much to complain about on both sides, but the occupation proved to be an unprecedented international success for the United States and a far less unpleasant experience than the Japanese had anticipated. In fact, in retrospect it came to be seen as a crucial time of rebirth for Japan, comparable only to the Meiji Restoration.

  The Japanese and Americans share the credit for this extraordinary outcome. The Americans, far from proving the vengeful, cruel conquerors the Japanese had expected, were basically friendly and benevolent, throwing themselves with enthusiasm into the task of reforming Japan. Fear of the American conquerors soon turned into hope that they would lead Japan to a better day. The Japanese, for their part, turned out to be not at all the fanatical fighters the Americans had come to know on the battlefield, proving instead to be a docile, disciplined, cooperative people at home. When the emperor and his top leaders surrendered, the American army of occupation became the unchallenged locus of authority, and the Japanese people and government, including the army and navy, obeyed it without question.

  Perhaps American conquerors were easier to accept than any others because of the long influence of American teachers and missionaries in Japan and the great admiration of many Japanese for the United States, despite all the wartime propaganda and because of, rather than despite, the overwhelming victory of the American forces. There could be no doubt that the Japanese leaders had forced the nation into a disastrous blind alley. Many Japanese felt that since the militarism and authoritarianism of the past had led to catastrophe, then the democracy the Americans extolled, or else the socialism or communism of other Western lands, all of which their recent leaders had condemned, must be right. The pendulum swung abruptly back toward enthusiastic acceptance of Western influences and away from traditional Japanese values. The terms “nationalism” and “patriotism” became virtually taboo.

  The complete failure of the military’s foreign policy and the terrible suffering of the war years made most Japanese turn away in revulsion from military leadership and any form of militarism. They longed for lasting peace and rapidly shifted their self-image; they no longer saw themselves as a warrior race but became the most passionate of pacifists. The people were horrified to learn that, far from being welcomed as the deliverers of Asia from Western oppression, they were bitterly hated throughout China, Korea, and the Philippines and thoroughly disliked in other Asian lands. Japanese soldiers, who had left home as heroes, were spat upon by resentful city crowds as they returned dispirited from overseas. Most Japanese, feeling that they had been duped by their leaders, were free of any personal sense of guilt and eager for change.

  Even hard-headed leaders, though resentful of American domination and doubtful of some American reforms, realized that open resistance was useless and that only through cooperation could they hope to influence the policies of the occupation and help bring it to an early end. They could also see that the military’s solution to Japan’s great economic problem stood entirely discredited. In the postwar world Japan, with its narrow geographic and economic base, could not hope to be a military competitor with the new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Clearly, Japan could not conquer and hold its own economic empire. If the destitute, overcrowded country was ever to reestablish a viable economy, it would have to be through trade in an internationally open and peaceful world. Even former military expansionists rapidly turned into sincere internationalists. The result of all these changes in attitude was a remarkable degree of cooperation with the Americans and considerable respect and even goodwill between victor and vanquished.

  The physical, social, and spiritual disruption brought by the war and by defeat had cleared the ground for a new beginning. Japan lay wide open to new influences, and the Americans, with supreme self-confidence, rushed in to fill the vacuum. They brought a massive flood of new attitudes and institutions, comparable only to the Western impact in the mid-nineteenth century, but this time much more sudden and pervasive.

  UPI

  Emperor Hirohito calling on General MacArthur at the American Embassy Residence in October 1945.

  General MacArthur had been designated Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, or SCAP for short. Pronounced “scap,” this term was soon applied to the occupation as a whole. MacArthur was a good choice from the point of view of domestic American politics. As the viceroy of a Democratic administration and the hero of the Republican opposition, he enjoyed the confidence of both sides and thus prevented occupation policies from being embroiled in American politics, as happened with China policy. He was also a good choice from the Japanese point of view. He was undoubtedly a forceful and able leader, and his messianic pose and turn of phrase gave inspiration to the Japanese at a time when they desperately needed it.

  The occupation MacArthur headed, though termed Allied, was entirely American, with the exception of some Australian soldiers and an occasional non-American in the headquarters staff. The Soviet Union refused to put troops under MacArthur’s command, and Chiang Kai-shek was too busy trying to win back North China from the Communists to participate. Subsequently, through an agreement announced at Moscow on December 27, 1945, two international bodies were set up to supervise the occupation. The Far Eastern Commission in Washington, made up of the eleven (later thirteen) countries that had fought in the war against Japan, was to determine major policies. The Allied Council for Japan in Tokyo, made up of the four major powers, the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and China, was to advise MacArthur in the field. Neither institution was to prove meaningful. The Allied Council became simply a forum for angry debate between the Soviet and American representatives before their embarrassed colleagues from China and the British Commonwealth. Since the United States had the right to a veto in the deliberations of the Far Eastern Commission and the right to take steps unilaterally in Japan pending the Commission’s decisions, that body could in effect do nothing more than approve American policies, which MacArthur in any case was already carrying out.

  The Americans, realizing the impossibility of directly administering a nation as complex and as culturally and linguistically alien as Japan, decided to rule through the Japanese government. They inundated the nation with American and Australian troops for a short time to demonstrate the futility of opposition, but concentrated on developing a large occupation bureaucracy in Tokyo to supervise the Japanese government, with relatively small teams maintained in the prefectures to check on the results. The occupation bureaucracy, entirely military in composition at first, gradually became civilian in large part, but retained a basically military structure until the end.

  Perhaps the chief reason for the lasting success of the occupation’s reforms was that the American government had given careful thought to postwar Japan while the war was still in progress. In striking contrast to its failure to prepare for postwar problems and responsibilities in Korea and the rest of East Asia, the United States trained large numbers of military men in the Japanese language and the problems of controlling Japan, while a small group of experts at the Department of State, in cooperation with other branches of the government, gave careful thought to what reforms should be attempted in postwar Japan. Because of this preparation, the United States was ready at the end of the war for the hasty drafting of the Potsdam Proclamation and the much more extensive United States Initial Post Surrender Policy for Japan. This was an extraordinarily broadminded and far-seeing document, which served as the basic guide for the crucial early st
ages of the occupation. The American policy was stern but constructive. It was based on the realization that a program of revenge and retribution would breed lasting hatred and unrest and that only through enlightened reform was Japan likely to change from a disturber to a supporter of world peace. The wisest of the American decisions was that, instead of attempting to transplant American democratic institutions to Japan, reforms were to be based on the past democratic achievements of the Japanese, particularly their partial development of a British type of parliamentary government during the period of “Taisho democracy.”

  The first few months of the occupation were essentially a period of organization and of ground-clearing for the reforms the Americans intended to carry out. The first objective was negative—demilitarizing Japan. The surrender had, of course, brought a speedy end to Japanese control not only over their recent conquests but over Korea and Taiwan as well, and a start was made on repatriating all Japanese from overseas. Over 6 million soldiers and civilians were gathered up and dumped back in Japan by the end of 1947, leaving only a few hundred thousand still in Soviet prison camps in Siberia. The army and navy ministries were converted into the First and Second Demobilization Ministries, which oversaw the speedy demobilization of the military forces and then went out of existence themselves. All munitions industries were closed down, and the occupation embarked on an ambitious program of making available, as reparations to the countries Japan had despoiled, all of Japan’s industrial capacity in excess of its bare living needs. But this proved to be unrealistic. The victors could not agree on the division of the spoils; worn-out Japanese industrial equipment was not worth transporting to other countries, to whose economic needs and capacities it was not necessarily adapted; and it was soon discovered that Japan had no excess industrial capacity, but itself faced a grim fight for economic survival.

  On the political side, organizations deemed ultranationalistic or militaristic were disbanded; repressive laws were annulled; Communists and other political prisoners were freed; and the special tie between the Shinto religion and the state was dissolved. As a result of this last measure, many of the great historic shrines, thrown back on their own inadequate economic resources, fell into serious financial difficulties. Large numbers of military men accused of atrocities were brought to trial as war criminals and speedily handled on the spot, either in Japan or abroad, and twenty-five former government leaders were tried by an international tribunal in Tokyo for crimes against peace, in the same manner as the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg. There had been, however, no clear-cut leadership group or plot in Japan. By the time the judgments were finally handed down late in 1948 and seven men hanged, including Tojo and one civilian, the former prime minister Hirota (Konoe had “escaped” by committing suicide), the attitude of the Japanese public toward these discredited old men had turned from anger to pity.

  A more significant move was the so-called purge. All those felt to be in any way responsible for Japanese conquests abroad were banned from government service and from any position of substantial influence in society. All former military officers and military police were placed in this category, together with most of those who had occupied high positions in overseas regimes or the top posts in the civil government at home, all politicians who had accepted sponsorship by Konoe’s Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and some leading businessmen. Purge proceedings were extended to teachers and, combined with the desperate economic plight of this group, resulted in many resignations from schools. Roughly 200,000 persons were involved in the purge, and many others were driven out of office or positions of influence by its threat. The purge can be criticized because it was based on categories, not on individual actions, and thus undermined the democratic concept of individual rights. Still, it did sweep away much of the old leadership, at least temporarily, and made room for new, even if not necessarily better, men.

  More important than these negative actions were the occupation’s constructive moves toward creating a more democratic political system, on the reasonable assumption that a democratic Japan was more likely to support peace than an autocratic country. The political reforms centered around the writing of a new constitution. When the Japanese government came up in February 1946 with what MacArthur felt to be unsatisfactory proposals for constitutional reform, he had his own staff quickly draft an entirely new document, originally in English. After only slight modifications by the Japanese cabinet, this was presented to the Diet as the emperor’s amendment to the 1889 constitution, was passed by this body with only slight alterations, and went into effect on May 3, 1947.

  The new constitution made two basic changes in Japan’s political structure. One brought the theory of the emperor’s position into line with reality by transferring his “sovereignty” to the Japanese people and by making it absolutely clear that he was merely “the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people” and had no political powers whatsoever. On January 1, 1946, the emperor himself had prepared the way by announcing to his people that he was in no sense “divine”—which, of course, he had never been considered to be as “divinity” is understood in the West. The treatment of the emperor was the most controversial aspect of the occupation reforms, especially abroad, where many people wished to see him tried and punished as a war criminal. To have done so, however, would have been quite unjust in view of his actual lack of power and his personal antiwar attitudes. It also might have produced, sooner or later, a dangerous reaction in Japan. This was the chief reason why MacArthur and the American army refused to countenance such action. Instead, during this period of massive change the imperial institution was deflated through the constitution—and subsequently in Japanese minds—to a status comparable to the constitutional monarchy of England. This approach to the problem proved to be a safe and lasting solution.

  The other major change in the constitution was its unequivocal establishment of the British parliamentary system. The constitution made explicit the supremacy of the House of Representatives, which remained in form essentially the same as it had been in the twenties, and it abolished all competing centers of political power, such as the military, the privy council, and the House of Peers. The high court officials and the bureaucracy were made clearly subordinate to the prime minister, who was elected by the House of Representatives from among the members of the Diet. The House of Peers was replaced by a purely elective House of Councillors, half of which was chosen every three years for a six-year term, two-fifths by the country as a whole and the other three-fifths by prefecture-wide constituencies. The powers of the upper house were subordinate to those of the House of Representatives. On the choice of the prime minister, the budget, and the ratification of treaties, the decision of the lower house prevailed, and on other matters a two-thirds vote of the lower house could override the upper. Amendments to the constitution, however, required a two-thirds vote in both houses.

  The new constitution devoted no less than thirty-one articles to “fundamental human rights,” which were described as “eternal and inviolate.” All people were to be “respected as individuals,” labor was specifically given the right to “organize and act and bargain collectively,” and all discrimination by sex, age, or in any other way was banned. Thus women were guaranteed the vote and were specifically given equal rights in marriage.

  Another significant feature of the constitution was the creation of a Supreme Court to supervise an independent judiciary and exercise powers of judicial review on the constitutionality of legislation, in the American manner. Judicial review of legislation, however, was an unfamiliar concept to the Japanese and in a sense was inconsistent with the British system of parliamentary supremacy. In a sort of compromise between the two systems, the Supreme Court has been rather chary in passing judgment on actions by the Diet, but has vigilantly ensured that administrative rulings do not impinge on the human rights guaranteed by the constitution.

  The most interesting provision of the constitution was th
e “Renunciation of War,” as its second chapter (Article 9) is entitled. This was well fitted to both the American aim to disarm Japan permanently and the Japanese revulsion against militarism that had swept the land. The country “forever” renounced war and the maintenance of “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential.”

  The occupation buttressed its constitutional changes with a flood of supporting legislation and lesser reforms. One area of such reform was local government, which seemed important to the Americans, accustomed as they were to the various autonomies of a widely spread out nation. They broke up the infamous home ministry, which had controlled both local government and the police, and its rump organization was demoted to the Autonomy Agency, though later it was again raised to the status of a ministry. Prefectural and municipal assemblies were already elected and mayors were selected by the municipal assemblies, but now all chief local authorities, including prefectural governors, were made elected officials by the constitution. Control over the police and education was transferred from the central government to the prefectures and municipalities, and local governments were given greatly increased powers of taxation and legislation. On the whole, however, this atomization of authority did not work well in a country as geographically small, densely populated, and homogeneous as Japan. From the start local governments exercised less authority than expected, and control over the police and education later gravitated in large part back into the hands of the central government. Only long after the occupation was over, when problems of local pollution and overcrowding became serious, did local governments develop some of the importance the occupation authorities had envisioned for them.