Occupation <\/p>\n
From 1945 to 1952 Japan was under Allied military occupation, headed by the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers<\/a> (SCAP), a position held by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur<\/a> until 1951. Although nominally directed by a multinational Far Eastern Commission in Washington, D.C.<\/a>, and an Allied Council in Tokyo\u2014which included the United States<\/a>, the Soviet Union<\/a>, China<\/a>, and the Commonwealth countries\u2014the occupation was almost entirely an American affair. While MacArthur developed a large General Headquarters in Tokyo<\/a> to carry out occupation policy, supported by local \u201cmilitary government\u201d teams, Japan, unlike Germany<\/a>, was not governed directly by foreign troops. Instead, SCAP relied on the Japanese government and its organs, particularly the bureaucracy<\/a>, to carry out its directives.<\/p>\n The occupation, like the Taika Reform of the 7th century and the Meiji Restoration<\/a> 80 years earlier, represented a period of rapid social and institutional change that was based on the borrowing and incorporation of foreign models. General principles for the proposed governance of Japan had been spelled out in the Potsdam Declaration<\/a> and elucidated in U.S. government policy statements drawn up and forwarded to MacArthur in August 1945. The essence of these policies was simple and straightforward: the demilitarization<\/a> of Japan, so that it would not again become a danger to peace; democratization, meaning that, while no particular form of government would be forced upon the Japanese, efforts would be made to develop a political system<\/a> under which individual rights would be guaranteed and protected; and the establishment of an economy that could adequately support a peaceful and democratic Japan.<\/p>\n MacArthur himself shared the vision of a demilitarized and democratic Japan and was well suited to the task at hand. An administrator of considerable skill, he possessed elements of leadership and charisma<\/a> that appealed to the defeated Japanese. Brooking neither domestic nor foreign interference, MacArthur enthusiastically set about creating a new Japan. He encouraged an environment<\/a> in which new forces could and did rise, and, where his reforms corresponded to trends already established in Japanese society, they played a vital role in Japan\u2019s recovery as a free and independent nation.<\/p>\n In the early months of the occupation, SCAP acted swiftly to remove the principal supports of the militarist state. The armed forces were demobilized and millions of Japanese troops and civilians abroad repatriated. The empire was disbanded. State Shint\u014d<\/a> was disestablished, and nationalist organizations were abolished and their members removed from important posts. Japan\u2019s armament industries were dismantled. The Home Ministry with its prewar powers over the police and local government was abolished; the police force was decentralized and its extensive power revoked. The Education Ministry\u2019s sweeping powers over education were curtailed, and compulsory courses on ethics<\/a> (sh\u016bshin) were eliminated. All individuals prominent in wartime organizations and politics, including commissioned officers of the armed services and all high executives of the principal industrial firms, were removed from their positions. An international tribunal was established to conduct war crimes trials, and seven men, including the wartime prime minister<\/a> T\u014dj\u014d, were convicted and hanged; another 16 were sentenced to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n Political reform <\/p>\n The most important reform carried out by the occupation was the establishment of a new constitution. In 1945 SCAP made it clear to Japanese government leaders that revision of the Meiji<\/a> constitution should receive their highest priority. When Japanese efforts to write a new document proved inadequate, MacArthur\u2019s government section prepared its own draft and presented it to the Japanese government as a basis for further deliberations. Endorsed<\/a> by the emperor, this document was placed before the first postwar Diet in April 1946. It was formally promulgated<\/a> on November 3 and went into effect on May 3, 1947.<\/p>\n The emphasis in the new constitution was clearly on the people rather than the throne. Sovereignty<\/a> now lay with the people. A 31-article bill of rights followed, with Article 9 renouncing forever \u201cwar as a sovereign<\/a> right of the nation\u201d and pledging that \u201cland, sea and air forces\u201d would \u201cnever be maintained.\u201d The emperor<\/a>, no longer \u201csacred\u201d or \u201cinviolable,\u201d was now described as the \u201csymbol of the state and of the unity of the people.\u201d The constitution called for a bicameral Diet<\/a>, with the greatest power concentrated in the House of Representatives, members of which would now be elected by both men and women. The old peerage was dissolved, and the House of Peers was replaced by a House of Councillors. The Privy Council<\/a> was abolished. The prime minister was to be chosen by the Diet from its members, and an independent judiciary was established with the right of judicial review<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite its hasty preparation and foreign inspiration, the new constitution gained wide public support. Although the ruling conservatives<\/a> desired to revise it after Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952, and an official commission favored changes in the constitution in 1964, no political group in postwar Japan has been able to secure the two-thirds majority needed to make revisions. While parts of the structure established by the document have been modified through administrative actions\u2014including a reversal of the principle of decentralization in areas such as the police, the school system, and some spheres of local administration\u2014and while Article 9 has been compromised by the decision to form a National Police Reserve that in 1954 became the Self-Defense Forces<\/a>, the basic principles of the constitution have enjoyed support among all factions<\/a> in Japanese politics. Executive leadership proved to be the chief asset of the new institutions, and, with the abolition of the competing forces that had hampered the premiers of the 1930s, Japan\u2019s postwar prime ministers have found themselves firmly in charge of the administration and (with limited rearmament) the armed forces as well. Thus, responsible leadership gradually replaced the ambiguous<\/a> claims of imperial rule of earlier days.<\/p>\n Economic and social changes <\/p>\n The occupation\u2019s political democratization was reinforced by economic and social changes. SCAP was aware that political democracy<\/a> in Japan required not only a weakening of the value structure of the hierarchic \u201cfamily state,\u201d which restricted the individual, but also a liberation of the Japanese people from the economic forces that reinforced such a state. With nearly half of Japan\u2019s farmers subsisting as tenants, Americans saw little hope for democracy<\/a> in Japan without significant changes in the ownership of land. Occupation authorities therefore set out to establish a program of land reform<\/a> that was designed to convert tenants into owner-farmers. Through legislation a plan was devised whereby landlords, many of whom lived in the cities, were forced to divest<\/a> themselves of a high proportion of their holdings to the government. This land was then sold to tenants on favorable terms. Given the fact that prices were set at wartime and postwar pre-inflation rates, landlords were essentially expropriated. Still, the reforms were implemented<\/a> with great efficiency<\/a> and in the end proved highly successful. Supported by favorable tax and price arrangements, the majority of Japan\u2019s new owner-farmers gained control of their land, which on average consisted of about 2.5 acres (1 hectare) per farm. Benefited by agricultural subsidies and government-maintained high agricultural prices, the Japanese countryside experienced increased prosperity. Rural voters became not only the mainstay of the conservative<\/a> Liberal-Democratic Party<\/a> (LDP) after its formation in 1955 (fulfilling the original American intent), but as one of Japan\u2019s most powerful lobbies they often successfully resisted agricultural trade liberalization. In a reversal of the Taish\u014d<\/a> dilemma that sprang from low domestic consumption<\/a>, land reform and agricultural price supports contributed significantly to Japan\u2019s emergence as a consumer economy in the 1950s and \u201960s.<\/p>\n Initial Allied plans had contemplated exacting heavy reparations<\/a> from Japan, but the unsettled state of other Asian countries that were to have been recipients brought reconsideration. Except for Japanese assets overseas and a small number of war plants, reparations were largely limited to those worked out between Japan and its Asian victims after the Treaty of Peace with Japan was signed in 1951.<\/p>\n The dissolution of Japan\u2019s great financial houses (zaibatsu<\/a>) also was an early occupation priority, but it gave way under Cold War pressures. Although the zaibatsu originally were seen as the chief potential war makers, the need for an economically viable<\/a> Japan changed this perspective to viewing them as essential for economic recovery. Thus, of 1,200 concerns marked for investigation and possible dissolution, fewer than 30 were broken up by SCAP, though the major units of the zaibatsu empires\u2014holding companies\u2014were dissolved and their securities made available for public purchase. New legislation sought to enforce fair trading<\/a> and to guard against a return to monopolies. The war itself, new postwar tax policies, and the purges that removed many top executives further undercut the largest firms. By 1950 extensive changes, although far short of those initially proposed, had taken place in the industrial world. The large banks, however, were not broken up and proved to be the centers for a measure of reconsolidation in the years after the occupation ended.<\/p>\n Strengthening the influence of labor<\/a> in Japan also was seen as important for the advancement of democracy. A new Ministry of Labor was established in 1947. Laws on trade unions and labor relations modeled on New Deal<\/a> legislation in the United States were passed, and a strong union movement was initially encouraged. Leaders of this movement included a number of socialists and communists who had been released from prison by the occupation. But a proposed general strike<\/a> in 1947 and the Cold War<\/a>-induced shift toward rapid economic reconstruction, anti-inflationary policies, and a control of radicalism quickly resulted in a purge of left-wing labor leaders and an effort to bring labor under government control. In 1948 SCAP ordered the government to take steps to deprive government workers\u2014including those in communications unions\u2014of the right to strike. At the same time a new labor organization, the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (S\u014dhy\u014d<\/a>), was sponsored<\/a> as a counterweight and gradual replacement for the Congress of Industrial Labor Unions of Japan (Sambetsu Kaigi), which had become dominated by the left. In the late 1950s S\u014dhy\u014d, too, had become increasingly antigovernment and anti-American, its Marxist and socialist orientation finding a political voice in the Japan Socialist Party<\/a> (JSP), of which it became the leading supporter.<\/p>\n Postwar social legislation also provided relief from earlier restrictions. The civil code, which had supported the power of the male family head in the past, was rewritten to allow for equality between the sexes and joint inheritance rights. Women were given the right to vote<\/a> and to sit in the Diet.<\/p>\n Occupation authorities, convinced that democracy and equality were best inculcated through education, revised the Japanese educational system. A Fundamental Law of Education was passed in 1947, which guaranteed academic freedom<\/a>, extended the length of compulsory education from six to nine years, and provided for coeducation. Americans were convinced that Japanese education had been too concerned with rote memorization and indoctrination and that what Japan needed was a curriculum that encouraged initiative<\/a> and self-reliance. The prewar system of special channels that led to vocational training, higher technical schools, or universities was seen as essentially elitist, and the occupation therefore supported the standardization of grade levels so that completion of any level would allow entrance to the next. The American 6-3-3-4 structure of elementary, lower secondary, higher secondary, and undergraduate higher education<\/a> was adopted. Entrance to high schools and universities came to depend on passing highly competitive examinations, which many Japanese young people still call \u201cexamination hell.\u201d Other efforts to democratize education were made. To complement Japan\u2019s prewar elite institutions, such as Tokyo Imperial University<\/a> (now the University of Tokyo), the Americans sought to encourage the establishment of prefectural universities and junior colleges. By the 1960s college and university graduates numbered nearly four times their prewar counterparts, and there were some 565 universities and junior colleges.<\/p>\n Political trends <\/p>\n Politics under the occupation and new constitution experienced considerable flux, as many of Japan\u2019s prewar leaders found themselves purged from public office and the two prewar parties, the Seiy\u016bkai and Minseit\u014d<\/a>, restructured themselves as the Liberal and Progressive parties, respectively (the latter eventually becoming the Japan Democratic Party). On the left wing, the socialists and communists also reorganized their respective parties. Initial postwar elections included many political splinter groups. Faced with a lack of consensus<\/a>, cabinets tended to be unstable and short-lived. This was true of the first Yoshida Shigeru<\/a> cabinet (1946\u201347), which implemented most of the early SCAP reforms only to be replaced by an equally transitory cabinet headed by the Socialist Katayama Tetsu (1947\u201348). A similar fate confronted Ashida Hitoshi, who became prime minister for five months in 1948. Yoshida\u2019s return to power in the fall of 1948 resulted in a more stable situation and ushered in the Yoshida era, which lasted until 1954. During those years, Japan capitalized on the economic benefits of close cooperation with the United States during the Korean War<\/a> (1950\u201353), which laid the groundwork for national reconstruction and for the essential postwar U.S.-Japan relationship. In 1951 Yoshida achieved what he regarded as his greatest accomplishment\u2014the restoration of national sovereignty\u2014by taking Japan to the San Francisco peace conference<\/a>. There, with the American negotiator John Foster Dulles<\/a> and representatives of 47 nations, he hammered out the final details of the Treaty of Peace with Japan<\/a>. The treaty was formally signed on September 8, 1951, and the occupation of Japan<\/a> ended on April 28, 1952.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Occupation From 1945 to 1952 Japan was under Allied military occupation, headed by the Supreme Commander for Allied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[185,184,191,189,183,182,8,188,190],"class_list":{"0":"post-16834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-britannica","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-economy-of-japan","12":"tag-encyclopeadia","13":"tag-encyclopedia","14":"tag-japan","15":"tag-japans-economy","16":"tag-japanese-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}