Supreme Commander For The Allied Powers Research Articles

Outside GHQ: the union democratization movement in occupied Japan 1947–1948

The Japanese people played a much more important role in shaping events during the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952) than is often recognized. This article examines the movement for democratization of the labor unions in order to demonstrate the extent to which the Japanese shaped their own destiny. Domestic politics is often overlooked due to an emphasis on the start of the Cold War in this period. Indeed, US policy is usually given the predominant role in narratives of the period and is blamed for the decline of mass movements such as the labor movement but an examination of the evidence for Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) involvement in the period reveals that the Occupation authorities, especially those in the General Headquarters (GHQ) of SCAP, played a much smaller role than has been alleged.

The “China Lobby” in Tokyo: The Struggle of China’s Mission in Japan for General Douglas MacArthur’s Military Assistance in the Chinese Civil War, 1946-1949

Abstract The Chinese Mission in Japan, which existed from 1946 until Japan regained its sovereignty as a result of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1952, represented the Republic of China in working with the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in reconstructing postwar Japan. The original objective of the Chinese Mission was to serve as the government’s agency to carry out the repatriation of Japanese troops and civilians from China in coordination with the Allies, secure war reparations from Japan, and try war criminals. However, as President Harry S. Truman terminated US aid to China in 1947 and Guomindang (GMD) military fortunes in the Chinese Civil War declined under the command of Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Mission was given an additional assignment: to lobby General Douglas MacArthur to secure military assistance from SCAP. This essay discusses the interaction between the Chinese Mission and General MacArthur during the Chinese Civil War from 1946 to 1949 and examines the way in which the Chinese Mission persuaded him to play a role in the Civil War. This study argues that although it was in opposition to Washington, MacArthur’s determination to assist Chiang Kai-shek was in great part due to the strenuous lobbying of the Chinese Mission in Tokyo. Although MacArthur’s intervention could not reverse the final outcome of the Chinese Civil War, his anti-Communist outlook was formed and played a significant role during the Korean War a year later.

At the Crossroads of Equality versus Protection: American Occupationnaire Women and Socialist Feminism in US Occupied Japan, 1945–1952

At the Crossroads of Equality versus ProtectionAmerican Occupationnaire Women and Socialist Feminism in US Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 Michiko Takeuchi (bio) On October 11, 1945, a document issued by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) declared the “liberation of Japanese women” to be one aspect of the democratization policies the American occupation would institute in Japan. The policy document proclaimed “the emancipation of the women through their enfranchisement—that, being members of the body politic, they may bring to Japan a new concept of government directly subservient to the well being of the home.”1 This statement about the “well being of the home” suggests SCAP actually undertook to implement American Cold War family ideology under the guise of women’s liberation. This ideology embodied SCAP’s ideal as represented by the middle-class (white) heterosexual nuclear family with rigid gender roles of a male breadwinner and a female homemaker.2 Far from seeing these official statements and efforts as liberating Japanese women, scholars have pointed out the ways American Cold War domesticity complemented Japan’s own modern domesticity ideology of the “good wife and wise mother.”3 Scholars also reject any notion of the male-dominated US military as a force behind women’s liberation in occupied Japan. Such initiatives came from women, particularly highly educated upper-and middle-class American and Japanese women, who together created the occupation’s policies for Japanese women (except suffrage) by forming a de facto women’s policy alliance.4 Members of the alliance were not static or harmonious, but they worked together to formulate “women’s liberation” policies according to their definition, which differed from that of SCAP. However, even when scholars have viewed this collaborative effort as important, they have not considered the complex dynamic that underlay the effort. Internal and external initiatives were at play in the shaping of gender ideology in which tensions and negotiations among American and Japanese women came to the fore. Exploring this complex dynamic reveals that the policy alliance did not just challenge SCAP’s Cold War domesticity ideology but also engaged in the [End Page 114] longstanding “women’s war”; that is, the debates about “equality versus protection.”5 The alliance’s debates about “equality versus protection” show that the alliance’s idea of “women’s liberation” was not invented in the so-called “workshop of democracy” in occupied Japan. Rather, it was built upon American and Japanese women’s decades of activism and their ideological coalition across the Pacific, which predated the occupation. American women occupation members, or “occupationnaires,” played crucial roles in rebuilding this ideological coalition in the postwar period as they pursued women’s liberation in occupied Japan (1945–52). At the heart of these initiatives was an alliance of women for whom the fundamental idea of “women’s liberation” was also highly contested, because it was related to American women’s long-term debates about “equality versus protection,” especially in the area of women’s labor. In fact, in October 1946 Lieutenant Ethel Weed (1906–75), a women’s information officer who played a leading role in the policy alliance, wrote to the historian Mary Beard (1876–1958) in the United States that “the question of equality vs. special privilege and protection has of course come up here [U.S.-occupied Japan] again and again.”6 Arising in the 1920s, the question of equality versus protection was the crux of what became known as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) debate in the United States or what the historian Nancy Cott has called “the dilemma of twentieth-century feminism”—which goes beyond discussion of the proposed constitutional amendment.7 The ERA, stressing the sameness and equality of the sexes, was first introduced in Congress in 1923 by members of the National Women’s Party (NWP), who were middle-class feminists. However, the ERA was fiercely opposed by women labor activists and leftists (later called Old Lefts), such as Mary Anderson (1872–1964), a member of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) and the first director of the Women’s Bureau, on the grounds that the ERA would nullify special legislative protection for women.8 Weed’s letter...

Erasure of Voice in Postwar Japan: Derrida, Caruth, Ōe

Erasure of Voice in Postwar JapanDerrida, Caruth, Ōe Michiko Shimokobe (bio) Introduction The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941 (Japan time) marked the entry of the Empire of Japan into World War II. On August 14, 1945, Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration and surrendered to the Allied powers. How has Japan as a nation historicized the events of the war, the most important issue for the nation? The answer depends on which part of the entire course of the war you focus on: the outbreak of the war, the five years of being forced to endure ongoing warfare, or the conclusion to the war and the postwar period. In an exchange of letters with Einstein ("Why War?"), Freud says, "There is no question of getting rid entirely of human aggressive impulses" (1933, 358). In Freud: A Life for Our Time, Peter Gay comments on Freud's reaction to the reality of World War II: "the war had degenerated into a conflict more bloody than any of its predecessors and had produced that 'virtually inconceivable phenomenon,' an outburst of hate and contempt for the enemy" (2006, 355). The phrase "virtually inconceivable phenomenon" expresses a violent and immediate hatred for the enemy; it is the most disagreeable form of what Freud refers to as "humanity aggressive impulses." In his essay on war, Freud focuses primarily on human nature, coming up against "the great changes that have already taken place or are beginning to" (1915, 61). To research the causes of war and how war is executed is definitely a [End Page 73] fascinating theme for psychoanalysis. However, in this article, I will analyze the psychological mechanisms of individuals and nations at the termination of the war and its aftermath. How did World War II end from Japan's perspective, and how did Japan, a defeated nation, make the transition to postwar society? "Why War?" mentions "an instinctual inclination" (Freud 1933, 350) within men that is satisfied by killing an enemy. With regard to Einstein's anxiety, Freud explains men's susceptibility to murderous hatred as follows: You express astonishment at the fact that it is so easy to make men enthusiastic about a war and add your suspicions that there is something at work in them—an instinct for hatred and destruction—which goes halfway to meet the efforts of the warmongers. (355) If this is the case, it is important to examine how, once the war is over, the citizens of a defeated nation manage to deal with the "instinct for hatred and destruction" that spurred aggressive actions by the nation and individuals before and during the war. There are two obstacles to constructing history after a defeat. First, it is difficult to put a stop to the powerful psychological energy retained in the collective that was supported during the war, by the aggression in the human mind. Second, complex psychological work is required to acknowledge the enemy as a real person because the nation has been exposed to distorted images and the exaggerated falsehoods of propaganda to emphasize patriotism. Seen in this light, Japan had fought for a great cause in World War II, but the following problems arose as the war drew to an end. How did Japan process the aggression at the time of the unconditional surrender? How were the images of the Americans, the former enemy, transformed in the minds of the Japanese? The process of Japan's surrender at the end of World War II began on August 14, 1945, when the Japanese government notified the Allied powers that it would accept the Potsdam Declaration. On August 15, Japan's unconditional surrender was announced by Emperor Hirohito on the radio.1 On August 30, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), arrived in Tokyo tasked with rebuilding the devastated nation. Following the surrender, President Truman approved the US [End Page 74] Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan on September 6.2 For the next six years until the end of the occupation in 1951, the military government was conducted solely by the United States. The occupation ended with the conclusion of the Treaty of San Francisco on September 8, 1951...

Tackling the Pharmaceutical Frontier: Regulation of Cannabinoid-Based Medicines in Postwar Japan.

Background: The valley of death, which refers to the gap due to the lack of support for the translation of basic research to related clinical studies, exists in the field of translational cannabinoid research in Japan owing to regulations. Article 4 of the Cannabis Control Act (CCA) of 1948 prohibits the use of Cannabis-based medicines.Objectives: This study aimed to explore the history of the establishment of regulations on the medical use of Cannabis-based medicines and discuss the current status of cannabinoid research and its regulation in Japan.Methods: We conducted a literature review of nationally archived official documents from the end of World War II in 1945 to 1948, which is the year the CCA was established. The documents were examined, specifically focusing on the sequence of events.Results: We found three memoranda related to the establishment of the CCA. The establishment of law on controlling narcotics was instructed by the general headquarters (GHQ)/Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) during the period of occupation after World War II. However, the Japanese Government decided to regulate Cannabis separately from other narcotics. Item (ii) of article 4 in the CCA, which prohibits medical application of Cannabis, was included to protect farmers growing Cannabis for the hemp content.Conclusion: Current Japanese regulations prohibiting clinical research in phytocannabinoids were instituted during the postwar era of World War II. Scientific discoveries have advanced cannabinoid research and have led positive reforms of the regulation of Cannabis in other countries. Therefore, there is ample motivation and opportunity for Japanese stakeholders to revise article 4 of the CCA for the benefit of patients.

Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan. HiroshiKitamura. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.

Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan. Hiroshi Kitamura. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.This is an engaging study of the cultural occupation of postwar Japan in the years 1945-1952. This pivotal period marked a remarkable transition for a nation imbued with a sense of cultural purity into a market cracked open for Hollywoodization. Hiroshi Kitamura argues that the U.S. military and motion picture producers formed a mutually beneficial partnership during the occupation and, with the necessary participation of the Japanese themselves, reformed postwar Japan with a heavy dose of American-styled bunka (culture). In a theoretical sense, he adds a growing body of scholarship on the cultural dimensions of twentieth-century American foreign policy. While many of those histories have focused attention on Europe, Kitamura builds on the work of John Dower, Naoko Shibusawa, and others who have examined the political, diplomatic, and cultural relations between the United States and postwar Japan.Americans, of course, had entered the Japanese cultural market before the Second World War, but militarists in Tokyo in the 1930s and 1940s soon insisted on motion pictures that reinforced its imperial ambitions in the Pacific and depictions that idealized its military actions in East Asia. Protectionist policies further limited American influence. After the war, Allied occupation fell under the auspices of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), which joined diplomats, policymakers, and motion picture studio executives in a corporatist partnership reeducate and bring enlightenment the defeated Japanese. Working with the Central Motion Picture Exchange (CMPE), SCAP coordinated Hollywood distribution in Japan with an eye for promoting liberal that complemented political reforms- in Kitamura's words, to replace the perceived militaristic tendencies with peace-oriented, democratic values (33). The first shipment included wholesome fare: Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Going My Way (1944), Our Town (1940), and Tall in the Saddle (1944). In an effort secure the industry's place in the occupation project, distributors marketed these and other films as bunka American officials and Japanese audiences alike, whether their products truly reached the status of high culture or not.Kitamura does an admirable job showing the complexities of cultural reeducation plans during the occupation. Clearheaded SCAP officials avoided playing favorites by undertaking actions that occasionally relieved many Japanese and confounded some Americans. At the same time that SCAP used its authority open the market for Hollywood, for example, it also liberated the domestic Japanese motion picture industry from years of imperial control. …

Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society (review)

Reviewed by: Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society Aaron P. Forsberg (bio) Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society. Edited by Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita. Routledge, London, 2007. xiv, 245 pages. $170.00. This stimulating collection of essays by eight scholars from the United States and Japan merits attention as an innovative study of the U.S. occupation of Japan (1945–52). It also brings historical perspective to recent debates in Japan on contentious issues such as crime, education, and nationalism. Bearing in mind the rich literature on the political, social, and economic effects of the U.S. occupation, editors Mark Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita have compiled a groundbreaking collection that adds to our understanding of Japan since 1945 in two ways. Expanding the scope of scholarly inquiry, the richly documented essays in Democracy in Occupied Japan study critical, but previously unexplored, issues that influenced postwar Japan, including health insurance, textbook revision, policing, and policy regarding resident aliens. By examining these issues from the perspectives of innovation, continuity, and compromise, the authors also arrive at a deeper understanding of how the U.S. occupation influenced the tone and direction of Japan's postwar history. As the editors explain, the book's chapters "examine the contribution the period made to Japanese social, economic, and political understanding; the extent to which this contribution benefited from pre-war and wartime Japanese institutions; and the factors that prevented officials from fully realizing the goals established at the occupation's outset" (p. 2). Taking this long view enables the authors to advance beyond the interpretive approaches to understanding the occupation evident in the historical literature to date, as the editors explain clearly in the introduction. With the benefit of time, the contributors can reconcile early perspectives, which emphasized the magnitude of the changes introduced to Japan, and subsequent revisionist accounts. Like Edwin O. Reischauer, Herbert Passin, Theodore Cohen, and other early observers who highlighted the dramatic changes in the direction of pluralism and democracy, most of the authors featured in this volume concur that the U.S. occupation made a big difference in Japan's development. At the same time, they acknowledge the limits of change where the evidence warrants, and they recognize the influence of international crises, most notably the escalation of the cold war, on the experiment [End Page 189] in democratizing Japan, as explored elsewhere by John W. Dower, Howard B. Schonberger, and others. What stands out in these essays, written from a perspective over five decades on, is the authors' keen appreciation of the place of continuity in the Japanese experience. Building on the burgeoning literature regarding Japan's prewar and wartime experience, this volume underscores how the postwar innovations in Japanese politics and society "required the foundation that pre-occupation Japan provided for their success" (p. 7). From the well-known retention of the Showa emperor and government officials to labor protection standards, plans for land reform, and education policy initiatives, the authors present considerable evidence in support of the view, most forcefully argued by Noguchi Yukio and Yoshida Yutaka, that there was far greater continuity across the 1945 divide than usually assumed. Yet the changes after 1945 were undeniable, and the authors demonstrate convincingly how the institutional arrangements that took shape in Japan after the war became the channel through which the course of events in succeeding decades would flow, in some instances down to the present day. In the chapter entitled "Feeding the Japanese," Steven J. Fuchs skillfully integrates discussion of food policy and land reform to demonstrate that the U.S. commitment to Japanese economic revival was also consistent throughout the occupation. Fuchs shows how a pro-active Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) attempted to increase Japanese rice production, improve distribution, and import agricultural commodities to resolve Japan's immense economic problems. The rice crop in 1945 was the worst in 30 years, and SCAP saw in the dire food shortage at the war's end the cause of disruptive migration, absenteeism, and general lethargy, among other problems crippling the economy. Plans to redistribute approximately 4.5 million acres of...

The Unitarian Service Committee Medical Mission

The Unitarian Service Committee Medical Mission

Japanese Democratization and the Little House Books: The Relation between General Head Quarters and The Long Winter in Japan after World War II

Japanese Democratization and the Little House Books:The Relation between General Head Quarters and The Long Winter in Japan after World War II Noriko Suzuki (bio) In 1949, one of the Little House books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) was introduced in Japan, then under American occupation after World War II. All publishing materials were strictly examined, censored, and revised by General Head Quarters (GHQ), with General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). The Long Winter (1943), the sixth volume of the Little House series, was the first to be granted permission for translation and publication. Upon publication in 1949, the book gained widespread popularity among Japanese readers as GHQ actively encouraged the book's publication and distribution to libraries, including public, school, and new libraries that GHQ established in major cities throughout Japan. Two other books of the Little House series, The Little House in the Big Woods and The Little House on the Prairie, followed The Long Winter in 1950, but they did not achieve as much popularity as The Long Winter did. This little-known episode raises a number of questions. Why did GHQ encourage Japanese schoolchildren to read The Long Winter? Although it was the sixth in the series, why was The Long Winter the first to be translated and published in postwar Japan? Moreover, the cardinal questions that this article pursues are: How did The Long Winter help create the image of the American West in the minds of Japanese readers? How did Japanese people come to accept the book—a memoir of the American frontier? And how did the story of an American woman's frontier life affect the process of Japanese democratization under American occupation after World War II?1 GHQ's major aim of its social reform of Japan was "the removal of all militarism and ultranationalism" and establishment of "a democratic Japan" based on American democratic principles (GHQ, Education 136). To achieve this aim, GHQ issued a wide range of policy directives to the Japanese Imperial Government. Although demobilizing the Japanese Army and the Imperial Navy was the initial purpose of the Allied Powers' occupation, their occupation policy [End Page 65] significantly shifted focus to the social reform of Japan when demilitarization was completed so as to convert Japan into a democratic nation. As a matter of fact, both GHQ and the U.S. government considered the social reform to be a crucial underpinning of reshaping Japan. General MacArthur clearly stated that his occupation policy of Japan was designed "to build a future for the people of Japan based upon considerations of realism and justice" and "to infuse into the hearts and minds of the Japanese people principles of liberty and right heretofore unknown to them;" "[W]ith those very principles . . . we [Americans] become architects of a new Japan" (Whan 165). As MacArthur saw it, social reform in Japan had to entail "reshaping of national and individual character" because such "structural and spiritual changes" were "essential to form the strong foundation of popular support upon which a democratic state must rest."2 To implement social reform effectively, GHQ actively used media as an educational apparatus. In fact, as historian Takeshi Tanigawa remarks, GHQ tried to make the best of any kind of media source—books, textbooks, periodicals, films, radios, and school libraries—to educate Japanese people and accelerate educational reform (58). GHQ's Civil Information and Education Section (CIE),3 for instance, distributed free projectors and films made by the U.S. State Department to local halls, libraries, and schools in 1948. Through this program, 1,084 projectors were distributed, and over 400 educational films were watched by Japanese civilians of all ages (Nakamura). The distributed CIE films were virtually all about the democratic (that is, American) nation that Japan was going to become (Tanigawa 186).4 Besides films, GHQ also took advantage of radio broadcasting in Japan. In the 1940s radio was the major medium for the Japanese people, though the Japanese broadcasting system was severely damaged during the war. It was on the radio that Japanese people first heard the emperor's official announcement of Japan's defeat and surrender. GHQ...

The Adaptation of Western Management Ideologies: The Revised Capitalism of Keizai Doyukai in Postwar Japan

Abstract: Keizai Doyukai (The Japan Committee for Economic Development) proposed a unique management ideology known as “revised capitalism” immediately after World War II. Doyukai was a totally new business association established by young managers in 1946, and this was in sharp contrast with Keidanren, which evolved from its prewar predecessor. The concept of revised capitalism consisted in the equilibrium of management, labor, and capital on an equal power basis, and had a solid theoretical foundation. Although it was an important milestone in the history of management ideology, it has been misinterpreted to date. In particular, it is commonly believed that Banjo Otsuka, one of Doyukai's inaugurators, imitated the ideas of Western management thought in Burnham's The Managerial Revolution and Berle and Means's The Modern Corporation and Private Property in formulating revised capitalism. This comparative analysis reveals otherwise. I hold that Otsuka enhanced the role of labor and blended the prewar management thought of Japan with the ideologies of Burnham and of Berle and Means. The role of labor was critical because the initial occupation policy of SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) encouraged the labor movement. It also explains why revised capitalism disappeared so rapidly once SCAP changed its policy and started to suppress labor unions in 1948. In broader terms, this analysis has two theoretical implications: that political context can strongly influence the rise and decline of a management ideology; and that a management ideology can retain certain traditional elements even under radical political changes.

Censorship of the atomic bomb casualty reports in occupied Japan. A complete ban vs temporary delay

For the last 50 years, widely believed misunderstandings have existed concerning allegations of US suppression of the atomic bomb casualty reports in Occupied Japan.^1,2This article clarifies these misunderstandings, discussing both the US and Japan sides of history. The research is based on declassified records from several sections of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), which were verified with Japanese records. <h3>Atomic Bomb Injury</h3> On August 9,1945, at 11:02 AM, Shigeyasu Aritomi, a medical student of Nagasaki Medical College, experienced the atomic bomb. Despite fatigue and dizziness, Shigeyasu dug himself out of the crushed hospital ward and walked home.³Seven days later, Shigeyasu died of radiation sickness, then called "the symptoms of the first period of atomic bomb injury": extreme fatigue, nausea and vomiting, fever, hematuria, mucous bloody stools, hemoptysis, and gingival bleeding, caused by severe damage to the internal organs and blood cells. Some survived

Censorship of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Reports in Occupied Japan

For the last 50 years, widely believed misunderstandings have existed concerning allegations of US suppression of the atomic bomb casualty reports in Occupied Japan. 1,2 This article clarifies these misunderstandings, discussing both the US and Japan sides of history. The research is based on declassified records from several sections of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), which were verified with Japanese records. Atomic Bomb Injury On August 9,1945, at 11:02 AM, Shigeyasu Aritomi, a medical student of Nagasaki Medical College, experienced the atomic bomb. Despite fatigue and dizziness, Shigeyasu dug himself out of the crushed hospital ward and walked home. 3 Seven days later, Shigeyasu died of radiation sickness, then called "the symptoms of the first period of atomic bomb injury": extreme fatigue, nausea and vomiting, fever, hematuria, mucous bloody stools, hemoptysis, and gingival bleeding, caused by severe damage to the internal organs and blood cells. Some survived

The US Medical Occupation of Japan and History of the Japanese-Language Edition of JAMA

Beginning with the Allied Occupation in August 1945, US General Douglas MacArthur came to possess greater authority than Hirohito, Emperor of Japan. Similarly, in the field of medicine, Crawford F. Sams (Figure 1), Colonel of the Medical Corps of the US Army, had greater power than the Minister of Welfare of the Japanese government. Born in East St Louis, Ill, in 1902, Sams was the son of a lawyer who died when Sams was an adolescent. He attended Washington University Medical School in St Louis, Mo, and graduated fourth in his class while working at night for the St Louis office of the Great Northern Railroad.1During the Second World War, Sams served in North Africa, Europe, and Washington. Prior to the end of the Pacific War, MacArthur recruited Sams to assume the post of Chief, Public Health and Welfare Section (PHW), Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP)

History Textbook Reform in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945-52

The history textbook reform in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–52, was one of the major education policies designed to demilitarize and democratize pre-collegiate Japanese education. Since 1952, however, both history textbooks and the textbook system that certifies them have been extremely controversial. In the post-Occupation period Japan's Asian neighbors have criticized Japanese history textbooks for covering up Japanese wartime aggression in Asia. And in Japan textbook writers and teachers have repeatedly challenged the textbook certification system as unconstitutional. Ironically, the leading protestor was the very historian who had contributed to writing the first reformed history textbook under the guidance of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). Although the purpose of this article is to highlight and analyze the issues involved in the textbook reform, it also proposes to show how education policies became embedded in larger political and ideological concerns, how Japanese society resolved its textbook conflict, and how academic issues and educators were used and abused in the process of public school textbook writing.

From Charlottesville to Tokyo: Military Government Training and Democratic Reforms in Occupied Japan

THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT and civil affairs training program for American Army and Navy officers in 1944 and 1945 had a significant but little known impact on the Allied occupation of Japan. It was the sine qua non of the rapid-fire non-military reforms General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), carried out during the first six months of the eighty-month occupation, which began in September 1945. Except for the availability of a few officers trained in military government at the beginning of the occupation, SCAP would, of necessity, have delayed making most of the reforms of Japanese institutions until the arrival of civilian experts from the United States. By that time policymaking responsibility for the occupation would have passed from the American State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee to the multinational Far Eastern Commission, in which the United States, Soviet Russia, the United Kingdom, and China each exercised veto power. Had the Far Eastern Commission made policy for the initial economic, political, and social reforms, the history of the occupation would have been very different. It is in order, therefore, to reexamine the military government training pro-

The Local Public Personnel System in Japan

ONE MAJOR AMERICAN objective during the occupation of Japan was to democratize its political system. Governmental decentralization, as embodied in such postwar constitutional principles as autonomy (chih6 jichi), was a key aspect of the democratization program. The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), however, did not attempt to introduce the American type of federal system. The SCAP planners correctly assumed that such an effort would be neither appropriate nor successful in a small, homogeneous country long used to central rule. Prior to 1945, the prefectures (todofuken), the main local administrative divisions of Japan, were nothing more than distribution centers of the central authority.' The prefectural administration was headed by a governor (chiji) appointed by the powerful Home Ministry (Naimush6), and was composed of officials who were members of the national public service system.2 One of the major steps SCAP took to implement governmental decentralization was to break up the highly centralized bureaucracy of prewar days and to divide its functions between national and autonomous local administrative agencies. The Home Ministry, pillar of the prewar bureaucracy, was replaced by a temporary Office of Domestic Affairs, and most of its functions were transferred to the radically restructured local

Completing Japan's Political Reorientation, 1947-1952: Crucial Phase of the Allied Occupation

THE desire of the Japanese tof forget the Allied occupation, which lasted from September I945 to April I952, is matched only by our lack of interest in it. But this curious state of affairs does not alter the fact that the occupation was perhaps the most remarkable peacetime diplomatic experiment we have ever conducted, or that it drastically affected the entire fabric of Japanese society and life.1 Nor does it mean that the full story of that historic confrontation between West and East has already been told. On the contrary, many aspects of the occupation have been glossed over, but none more conspicuously than progress toward democracy during the five years following the effective date of the American-inspired Constitution in May I947. Most students of the subject persist in the belief that during the first two years or so of the occupation the peaceful and responsible government contemplated by the authors of the Potsdam Declaration was established.2 It is the purpose of this study to correct that erroneous impression by rendering more intelligible the salient features of the final five years of Japan's American Interlude. The reader should bear in mind that although General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) from the beginning of the occupation until his dismissal in April I95I, executed occupation policy in masterful fashion, he did not make it. Policy goals, political and otherwise, were fixed in Washington by the high-level StateWar-Navy Coordinating Committee, known as SWNCC. That body's fundamental policy for occupied Japan was outlined in five papers: the Potsdam

The Aftermath of Educational Reform

LIKE many aspects of Japan's life, her educational system after 1952 bore the heavy imprint of more than six years of reform, guidance, and direction, if not control, by SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers). During the period from the end of World War II to the conclusion of the Peace Treaty in 1952, Japanese education passed through revolutionary changes in its principles, system, quality, method, and administration. Most of these have remained as the foundation of the educational system in 1956. It is necessary, therefore, first to examine in what way and sequence and how these reforms took place. The Japanese educational world was cleaned up as a result of the SCAP directive, Administration of the Educational System of Japan, issued on October 22, 1945.1 This policy directive sought to ban the spread of militarist and ultranationalist thought, end all forms of military drills and athletics, and in their place teach and translate into practice the ideas of fundamental human rights, freedom of thought, worship, and assembly, the dignity of the individual, parliamentarism, and world peace. The same policy directive required the investigation of all personnel connected with education and the

Labor Patterns and Trends

TO a large extent, Japan's modern economic development was based upon human exploitation and suppression of worker protest. Occupation policy therefore called for deliberate efforts to strengthen the economic status and political effectiveness of the wage earner. SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) enormously encouraged autonomous trade unionism as the chief means for expanding labor's share of national income and securing a voice for the worker equal to management's in setting terms and conditions of employment. Also, the reforms required raising of minimum labor standards in industrial undertakings and broadened the scope and coverage of social security and other protective labor laws. In certain ways, results have been spectacular. Labor unions, when allowed to exist before the war, embraced little more than 400,000 members at their peak (1936). They were virtually nonexistent at the time of the surrender, but within four years membership mushroomed to almost 7 million. Today, Japan boasts the largest organized labor movement among the nonCommunist nations of Asia and the

The Administration of Occupied Japan

IN the administration of occupied Japan there are several conditions which might well be appreciated at the outset. One is the pre-eminent position of General Douglas MacArthur and the dual authority which he enjoys. As Commander in Chief of the United States Forces in the Far East Command, he is an officer in the service of the American Government; but at the same time he is the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), an international agent. To whom and under what conditions is Douglas MacArthur held responsible? Who delineates where his powers end under one authority and begin under the other? These are moot questions which complicate higher direction and continuity of a unified policy. The occupation administration for Japan, at its inception, was expected to last about three years. It is reasonably certain that General MacArthur initially planned his operations on that basis. This should be remem-