For five years after the war in the Pacific, J apan was governed
by an Allied administration under the command of
U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. The occupation regime,
which consisted of the Far Eastern Commission in
Washington, D.C., and the four-power Allied Council in
Tokyo, was dominated by the United States, although the
country was technically administered by a new Japanese
government. As commander of the occupation administration,
MacArthur was responsible for demilitarizing
Japanese society, destroying the Japanese war machine,
trying Japanese civilian and military officials charged
with war crimes, and laying the foundations of postwar
Japanese society.
During the war, senior U.S. officials had discussed
whether to insist on the abdication of the emperor as the
symbol of Japanese imperial expansion. During the summer
of 1945, the United States rejected a Japanese request
to guarantee that the position of the emperor would
be retained in any future peace settlement and reiterated
its demand for unconditional surrender. After the war,
however, the United States agreed to the retention of the
emperor after he agreed publicly to renounce his divinity
(see the box on p. 294). Although many historians have
suggested that Emperor Hirohito opposed the war policy
of his senior advisers, some recent studies have contended
that he fully supported it.
Under MacArthur’s firm tutelage, Japanese society was
remodeled along Western lines. The centerpiece of occupation
policy was the promulgation of a new constitution
to replace the Meiji Constitution of 1889. The new charter,
which was drafted by U.S. planners and imposed on
the Japanese despite their objections to some of its provisions,
was designed to transform Japan into a peaceful
and pluralistic society that would no longer be capable
of waging offensive war. The constitution specifically renounced
war as a national policy, and Japan unilaterally
agreed to maintain armed forces only sufficient for selfdefense.
Perhaps most important, the constitution established
a parliamentary form of government based on a
bicameral legislature, an independent judiciary, and a
universal franchise; it also reduced the power of the emperor
and guaranteed human rights.
But more than a written constitution was needed to
demilitarize Japan and place it on a new course. Like the
Meiji leaders in the late nineteenth century, occupation
administrators wished to transform Japanese social institutions
and hoped their policies would be accepted by the
Japanese people as readily as those of the Meiji period had
been. The Meiji reforms, however, had been crafted to
reflect native traditions and had set Japan on a path quite
different from that of the modern West. Some Japanese
observers believed that a fundamental reversal of trends
begun with the Meiji Restoration would be needed before
Japan would be ready to adopt the Western capitalist,
democratic model.
One of the sturdy pillars of Japanese militarism had
been the giant business cartels, known as zaibatsu. Allied
policy was designed to break up the zaibatsu into smaller
units in the belief that corporate concentration, in Japan
as in the United States, not only hindered competition
but was inherently undemocratic and conducive to political
authoritarianism. Occupation planners also intended
to promote the formation of independent labor unions, to
lessen the power of the state over the economy, and to
provide a mouthpiece for downtrodden Japanese workers.
Economic inequality in rural areas was to be reduced by a
comprehensive land reform program that would turn the
land over to the people who farmed it. Finally, the educational
system was to be remodeled along American lines
so that it would turn out independent individuals rather
than automatons subject to manipulation by the state.
The Allied program was an ambitious and even audacious
plan to remake Japanese society and has been justly
praised for its clear-sighted vision and altruistic motives.
Parts of the program, such as the constitution, the land
reform program, and the educational system, succeeded
brilliantly. But as other concerns began to intervene,
changes or compromises were made that were not always
successful. In particular, with the rise of Cold War sentiment
in the United States in the late 1940s, the goal of
decentralizing the Japanese economy gave way to the desire
to make Japan a key partner in the effort to defend
East Asia against international communism. Convinced
of the need to promote economic recovery in Japan, U.S.
policymakers began to show more tolerance for the zaibatsu.
Concerned at growing radicalism within the new
labor movement, where left-wing elements were gaining
strength, U.S. occupation authorities placed less emphasis
on the independence of the labor unions.
Cold War concerns also affected U.S. foreign relations
with Japan. On September 8, 1951, the United States and
other former belligerent nations signed a peace treaty restoring
Japanese independence. In turn, Japan renounced
any claim to such former colonies or territories as Taiwan
(which had been returned to the Republic of China), Korea
(which, after a period of joint Soviet and U.S. occupation,
had become two independent states), and southern
Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands (which had been
ceded to the Soviet Union). The Soviet Union refused
to sign the treaty on the grounds that it had not been permitted
to play an active role in the occupation. On the
same day, the Japanese and Americans signed a defensive
alliance and agreed that the United States could maintain
military bases on the Japanese islands. Japan was now
formally independent, but in a new dependency relationship
with the United States.
World History
