When the populace of Japan heard for the very first time their Emperor's voice on live radio broadcasting his government's intention to surrender to the Allies, it was clear that the world was being recast. It was also clear that, by virtue of their military power and economic supremacy, the United States would loom large in this new act of creation. Yet in considering their new role the Americans themselves had to cope with conflicting preferences and at first public attitudes towards their former enemy were hostile and malevolent. In an opinion poll taken in Septmeber 1945 nearly a quarter of those polled stated that the United States should have dropped more atomic bombs before inviting the Japanese to surrender. As to the Emperor himself, one-third of Americans urged his immediate execution while only between three and four per cent advocated his employment to suit Allied interests.1 However, these sentiments did not last, particularly among policy-makers. Continued nationalist insurgency in south-east Asia, the series of successes by communist forces in China and the Soviets' ambitions in Manchuria all combined, along with fading memories, to transform thinking in the United States. Americans perceived that for the Europeans time in Asia was up. Only the United States had the economic ability, and the sense of historic distance conferred on it by its lack of involvement in colonial administration, to restore the fabric of life in the former colonies. The United States would have to discover for itself whether it was more able than the Japanese had been to persuade south-east Asians to attach their fortunes to an outside power. And as a matter of urgency, it would need to develop Japan into a bulwark against Soviet expansion and Asian revolution. The United States began the post-war period with confidence. In Japan and in South Korea, where its authority was virtually unassailable, they adopted a formula from the heart of republican ideology: the governed are mere reflections of their governors; find the best rulers, devise wise and just laws and a liberal, humane order would emerge. Yet within months the victors of the war found that blueprints and practicability were not always synonymous. In South Korea the Americans inherited the deep cleavages left behind by the Japanese; earlier hopes of employing internationalist devices to accommodate diverse interests gave way to the uncom promisingly nationalist occupation policy of providing a counterforce to the left.2 In Japan they discovered that their determination to break up the zaibatsu, the old pre war monopolies, would have to be subordinate to the policy of centralizing the