Signed in the midst of the Korean War, the San Francisco Peace Treaty gave Japan a truncated peace and limited latitude to deal with the Communist world. Despite their professed commitment to an open international order, US officials restricted Japan’s engagement with its Communist neighbors and channeled its relations to that part of the world where Americans exercised decisive military, political, economic, and ideological influence. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, Japan’s postwar conservative leaders maneuvered within these structural constraints. There were occasional challenges and minor revolts, but in this period Japan did not break free of the dual "protective" umbrella ofUS nuclear superiority and dollar hegemony. The Bretton Woods system delivered to Japan capitalist plenty and consumer affluence, as Washington promised it would, and Japan quickly evolved from a militaristic empire to a modulated democracy with increasing political pluralism. But, because Japan failed to hold itself accountable to the victims of its wartime aggression in Asia and because the United States placed an overriding priority on Japan’s economic recovery and the entrenchment of conservative rulers, Japan’s full reconciliation with Asia remained a distant dream. In reaching out to the newly independent and non-aligned nations of Asia in the mid-1950s, Japan had an opportunity, however tenuous, to bring together the two parts of the continent rent asunder by the 1950 Sino-Soviet Alliance and the 1951 US-Japan Security Treaty. In the end, however, Tokyo elected to stay in its alliance of convenience with a powerful United States and chose the path to economic prosperity.
World History
