Andrew Ness

John Roth

HIST315

11.19.20

Japan’s American Interlude: From Domination to Subordination

In the 7 years between 1945 and 1952 sometimes referred to as “Americanization” or

“Japan’s American Interlude”, the political and economic landscapes of Japanese society

experienced tectonic change. During these years, Japanese culture and society was deeply

confused. For the Japanese, surrender in World War II wasn’t simply a national defeat, it was a

spiritual one. The Japanese had lost a “holy war”, and understandably struggled with deep and

widespread feelings of shame, despair, and disillusionment. These feelings were pervasive, but

ordinary Japanese also had good reason for hope: not only were Japanese free from their

repressive wartime government, but their American occupiers brought with them an exciting

vision of liberal democracy. Many Japanese were indeed receptive to their occupiers’ messaging,

although Americans’ failure to recognize the agency of individual Japanese and assumption that

they were walking into a largely homogeneous society made them unprepared for dissenting

Japanese. Finally, the ostensibly benevolent MacArthur failed to enact many of the reforms he

promised the Japanese, and what reforms he did enact were often reversed by MacArthur

himself, or by reactionary interests in Washington. While MacArthur certainly left Japan in better

shape than he found it, he ultimately failed to deliver on his agenda of democratization and

demilitarization, often acting in ways that directly contradicted his stated goals.
 Ness 2

Context

The Japanese “Yamato spirit” that loomed so large in the heat of World War II suddenly

and shockingly crumbled the moment Japan surrendered, or at least that is how it appeared to

onlookers. In reality, while the Japanese militarist government did an excellent job of presenting

their nation as an ideologically and societally unified people, this was never truly the case. Given

the strength of Japanese national mythmaking before surrender, it is especially important to

closely examine the realities of Japanese governance, militarism, and culture during World War

II in order to fully grasp Japan’s postwar collapse and restructuring.

Although the official line of the Japanese government in the period before and during the

Second World War was that Japan was a nation of “100 million hearts beating as one”, this

vision was never realized.1 In fact, internal tensions were a constant threat to Japanese unity, and

wartime realities put Japan in danger from all directions: “outside, above, and below.”2 Despite

its reputation to Americans as exotic, Japan was not uniquely isolated from the rest of the world;

given the abysmal conditions of most Japanese, communist ideology in particular threatened the

wartime militarist government from outside, above, and below. Soviet spies were active in World

War II Japan, and they collaborated with various subversive Japanese authorities. Considering

the collective loss of morale experienced by Japanese citizens towards the end of the war, it

seemed to many—communist and militarist alike—that Japan was on the brink of revolution.

Widespread discontent in World War II Japan can be partially understood by looking at

the differences in messaging and motive between Nazi Germany and militarist Japan. While

Hitler and the Nazi party were fighting a war of retribution towards the goal of claiming what

was unjustly taken from them, Japan was fighting a war of imperial conquest. Hitler mobilized

1
John W. Dower, Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays (New York, NY: New Press, 1998), 30.
2
Dower, Japan in War and Peace, 103.
 Ness 3

the German masses with a convenient scapegoat and the promise of a better future; in Japan,

however, no such promises existed. Germany did not make feeble attempts at justification and

moralization in the same way that Japan did, and ideas like Social Darwinism and the

Ubermensch justified the Third Reich’s actions. Japanese leaders said things like, “The Imperial

Army’s spirit lies in exalting the Imperial Way and spreading the National Virtue.” Their German

counterparts, on the other hand, said, “What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest

me in the slightest . . . Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests

me only in so far as we need them as slaves to our Kultur.”3 While the open nihilism and Social

Darwinism of Nazi Germany held up in the face of wartime sacrifices and atrocities, the spiritual

and moral rhetoric of Japan failed to do so. Given the collapse of morale and weariness of

Japanese during World War II, Japan was uniquely ready for an occupying force to change their

country for the better.

The state of the Japanese psyche by the end of the war set the stage for political and

economic conflicts that would follow in occupation. Yamato ideology’s failure to translate into

imperial and military success drove an influential cadre of Japanese intellectuals, scientists, and

academics to entertain Marxist and communist ideologies. The war years saw a healthy injection

of Marxist thought into the Japanese intellectual scene, and intellectuals en masse embraced “the

seductive argument that the losing war clearly demonstrated the correctness of Marxist analysis

by exposing the cupidity of the capitalist and ruling classes in Japan.”4

Americans entered this Japanese cultural landscape with lofty goals and spoke of policies

in Japan that would have seemed radical back home. John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat:

Japan in the Wake of World War II, describes an American “agenda inspired by heavy doses of

3
Maruyama Masao, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, 90-95 (London: Oxford University Press,
1963) quoted in Ivan Morris, ed., Problems in Asian Civilizations (Boston, MA: Heath, 1963), 44.
4
Dower, Japan in War and Peace, 146.
 Ness 4

liberal New Deal attitudes, labor reformism, and Bill of Rights idealism of a sort that was in the

process of being repudiated (or ignored) in the United States.”5 MacArthur certainly wasn’t

expecting to be challenged from the left upon arrival.

MacArthur and his team did not enter Japan expecting to encounter communists and

popular leftist attitudes in part because they relied so heavily on “Asia experts” and American

experts of Japanese psychology when forming policy for Japan, and this information was often

overly simplistic and misleading. In occupying and democratizing Japan, the United States was

forced to perform an about-face in regards to its wartime beliefs about Japan and its inhabitants.

For example, Americans who trained at the Civil Affairs Staging Area in preparation for the

occupation of Japan were given literature that read, “Under the heat of wartime emotions the

Japanese were commonly seen as treacherous, brutal, sadistic, and fanatical ‘monkey-men’ . . . it

should be emphasized that it is a mistake to think that all Japanese are predominantly the

monkey-man variety.”6 In other carefully crafted media like Our Job in Japan, an instructional

film for occupying GIs, the United States portrayed an optimistic view of what was possible in

the country, but all the while maintained a view of Japanese “as people trained to play

follow-the-leader.”7 As Dower explains, Our Job in Japan and other films like it were “tapping

into a conservative view that carried great implications for the development of democracy.”8

The United States had an optimistic view of what was possible in Japan, but their racist

messaging and general understanding of Japanese as hive-minded and conformist created false

expectations for American occupiers. Ultimately, American “Asia experts” and MacArthur failed

5
John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (London, UK: Penguin, 2000), 26.
6
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 214.
7
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 217.
8
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 217.
 Ness 5

to accurately perceive cultural, economic, and political developments in postwar Japan, laying

the groundwork for a difficult and contentious seven years of occupation.

The Not-So-Old Guard

When General Douglas MacArthur and his cadre of American occupiers arrived in Japan

on August 30, 1945, a full 15 days after surrender, they had only a faint idea of what they were

walking into. MacArthur himself held the title of Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers

(SCAP), and his administration was known as the General Headquarters (GHQ). Unlike many

former American imperial efforts, GHQ found in Japan the bones of a democratic society, a

fairly advanced economy, a complex governmental system made up of a vast network of

bureaucrats and departments, and a revered emperor. After the catastrophic damage that Japan

had done in World War II, SCAP’s main objective was to demilitarize and democratize the

wayward nation.9

Because of the cultural and linguistic barriers between American occupiers and their new

subjects, the only practical option for GHQ was “to govern ‘indirectly’ through existing organs

of government.” While the maintenance of the wartime Japanese bureaucracy was deemed

necessary for governance, it also enforced a massive undemocratic carryover of wartime

bureaucrats that had been loyal to the militarist government.10

Along with MacArthur’s indirect governance through existing bureaucracy, he also chose

to leave the emperor unscathed when prosecuting war criminals. MacArthur saw Hirohito as the

key to a unified and democratic Japan; just as Hirohito’s divine endorsement enabled Japanese

atrocities in World War II, Hirohito’s endorsement paired with American footwork would enable

9
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 30.
10
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 27.
 Ness 6

a new democratc Japan. MacArthur may not have been wrong about Hirohito’s influence, but he

certainly overlooked some very important ramifications of Hirohito’s protection. As John Dower

poses the quandary: “if the nation’s supreme secular and spiritual authority bore no responsibility

for recent events, why should his ordinary subjects be expected to engage in self-reflection?”11

Additionally, the decision to exonerate Hirohito reinforced the nationalist “Yamato” identity that

led to Japanese imperialism in the first place. Even when GHQ held supreme power over Japan,

the emperor remained “the supreme icon of genetic separateness and blood nationalism, the

embodiment of an imagined timeless essence that set the Japanese apart from—and superior

to—other peoples and cultures.”12 For his decision not to prosecute Hirohito, MacArthur earned

the praise of Yoshida Shigeru, a conservative Japanese prime minister who served twice under

American occupation. Yoshida’s praise, however, can be seen more accurately as a moral

indictment, as he was among the most resistant Japanese politicians to democracy.13 The

maintenance of the emperor and the bureaucracy represented a huge portion of militarist control

and government that simply carried over into “democratic” Japan.

SCAP’s intentions, good or bad, had very little impact on the important decisions it made

regarding the existing Japanese bureaucracy and emperor before the occupation began.

Ultimately, MacArthur and his advisors had no good options when it came to organizing the

occupation. In maintaining the bureaucracy and emperor, they embarked on a democratic

revolution based on undemocratic institutions, but if they did away with the emperor and

bureaucracy, they would have risked catastrophic organizational and logistical failure.

11
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 278.
12
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 278-279.
13
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 279.
 Ness 7

Purges in All Directions

SCAP intended at the beginning of the occupation to purge militarists from positions of

influence in Japan, and early occupation policy documents make this goal abundantly clear. As

stated in SCAPIN 550 (SCAP Index Number 550, a directive from SCAP), individuals who fall

into one of the seven “Removal and Exclusion” categories were to be purged. These categories

were:

A. War Criminals.
B. Career military and naval personnel; special police and officials of the war ministries.
C. Influential members of ultra-nationalistic, terroristic or secret patriotic societies.
D. Persons influential in the activities of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei
Yokusan Kai), the Imperial Rule Assistance Political Society (Yokusan Seiii Kai), and the
Political Association of Great Japan (Dai Nippon Seiji Kai).
E. Officers of financial and development organizations involved in Japanese expansion.
F. Governors of occupied territories.
G. Additional militarists and ultra-nationalists.14

The first round of purges were sweeping and broad, capturing not only a range of elected and

unelected government ministers, but also their families and relatives. While initial purges made

an impact, they were simultaneously weakened by the influence of Yoshida Shigeru. Yoshida

never prevented the purging of militarist allies, but he did opportunistically use the purge to

disadvantage his own political rivals.15 No doubt this played some part in Yoshida’s ability to

hold the prime ministership of Japan for the majority of the occupation, a peculiarly long time.

Among the rivals that Yoshida was eager to disadvantage were a growing number of

Communist politicians that were increasingly making headway in Japanese political and social

spheres. When MacArthur arrived in Japan, he immediately freed Japanese political prisoners,

including Communists, who had been imprisoned for opposing the war.16 Communists were

14
Quigley, Harold S. "The Great Purge in Japan." Pacific Affairs 20, no. 3 (1947): 300-301.
15
Quigley, “The Great Purge in Japan,” 307.
16
Kumano, Ruriko. “Anticommunism and Academic Freedom: Walter C. Eells and the ‘Red Purge’ in Occupied
Japan.” History of Education Quarterly 50, no. 4 (2010): 513–37.
 Ness 8

among the few who were vindicated by Japan’s loss, and because of this they became instant

celebrities.17 As the only people to oppose the war in any substantial way, Marxists in Japan were

able to garner a sizable following after surrender.

The communist fervor in Japan could most clearly be seen through popular

demonstrations. Until the militarists banned the holiday in 1936, May Day had been widely

celebrated in Japan since 1920. On May 1, 1946, the first May Day since the departure of the

militarists, Japanese gladly resumed their annual tradition. To the great alarm of SCAP, however,

May Day 1946 didn’t really end after May 1. Instead, ordinary Japanese people around the nation

built on the energy of May Day and continued organizing with increasing fervor after May 1. On

May 19, “Food May Day” took place as a protest against the occupation’s food rationing policies

that left many hungry. Also in May, Japanese students organized a “Student May Day” event.

While a handful of Communists were elected to the Diet, “the Communist Party’s greatest

influence lay not in parliamentary politics but in organizing labor and mobilizing mass protest.”18

(ed 256). Leftist organizers quickly bolstered union numbers (from 380,000 union members in

1945 to 6.7 million in 1948), and were able to organize thousands of strikes, work stoppages, and

dozens of incidents of production control, a practice where workers ousted management and ran

factories on their own accord.19 This labor action and protest directly arose from poor conditions

under American occupiers, and represented a shocking level of democratic participation in a

nation that was perceived by GHQ as conformist.

For GHQ, at least, an invigorated Japanese left was extremely undesirable. Japanese

occupation coincided with the red scare in the United States, and SCAP followed the example of

its compatriots at home. After years of labor union and worker purges that effectively decimated

17
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 255.
18
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 256.
19
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 258.
 Ness 9

the communist movement in Japan, MacArthur finally barred all members of the Central

Committee of the Japanese Communist Party from public service on June 6, 1950.20 With this

move, MacArthur singled out 24 high-profile communists and instructed the conservative prime

minister Yoshida, who was likely more than happy to carry out this particular order, to

immediately bar the Communist operatives from government service.21 Additionally, after a close

call with a general strike, MacArthur finally rescinded the right of Japanese workers to strike in

1948, effectively removing one of Japanese leftists’ most effective tools.22

Adding insult to injury, SCAP followed its red purge with a “depurge” which resulted in

the reinstitution of formerly purged politicians and bureaucrats. In 1949, the United States

cemented Japan’s role as an integral part of the anti-communist world when, in NSC 49, the Joint

Chiefs of Staff “endorsed the creation of a Japanese military and indicated that eventually this

military could be expected to play a significant role in the event of a global war between the

United States and Soviet Union.”23 Between the “depurge” and the effective renunciation of

demilitarization towards the end of anticommunism, the United States violated their stated

occupation goals and denied political agency to tens of thousands of communist Japanese in

order to prevent Japanese communism from taking hold.

The Economic Reverse Course

GHQ’s “reverse course” in Japan during 1947 not only affected Japanese politics with the

red purge and “depurge”, but it extended into Japan’s economy as well. Although SCAP entered

20
John W. Dower and Hirata Tetsuo, “Japan's Red Purge: Lessons from a Saga of Suppression of Free Speech and
Thought,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2007, https://apjjf.org/-John-W.-Dower/2462/article.html.
21
“Modern Japan in Archives,” Modern Japan in Archives (National Diet Library, June 6, 1950),
https://www.ndl.go.jp/modern/e/cha5/description12.html.
22
Dower, Embracing Defeat, 271.
23
Dower, Japan in War and Peace, 180.
 Ness 10

the nation with plans to radically change Japan’s economy towards a system that would

encourage a fairer distribution of wealth, it never ended up doing so in a meaningful way.

Upon arrival, the United States observed that Japan’s economy was uniquely

monopolistic; just 56 people divided among ten families, known as Zaibatsu families (or simply

Zaibatsu), controlled “75 percent of Japan's financial, industrial, and commercial activities.”24

While opinion was split among American authorities, official instructions from President Truman

and the Joint Chiefs of Staff encouraged SCAP to establish a “wide distribution of income and

ownership of the means of production and trade” through policy.25 MacArthur’s instructions

explicitly called for the dissolution of the large Japanese monopolies which exhibited control

over the majority of the economy and kept countless Japanese impoverished.

After months of inaction concerning the dissolution of Zaibatsu companies, MacArthur

found himself the target of criticism not only from Japanese, but also from Americans and other

onlookers on the world stage. MacArthur’s decision in October 1945 was baffling: SCAP

solicited the Zaibatsu holding companies themselves for dissolution plans, and finally picked the

plan proposed by Yasuda. It goes without saying that the proposed Yasuda plan was wholly

inadequate and contained numerous loopholes, but MacArthur’s acceptance of the Yasuda plan

was not the end of the story. In November of 1945, Washington sent a group of antitrust experts

headed by economist Corwin Edwards to examine the economic situation in Japan. Edwards,

possessing the antitrust chops that MacArthur lacked, immediately realized the inadequacy of the

Yasuda plan and drafted his own. Edwards’ plan, known as FEC-230, called for an economic

system in which “individuals and small business groups lay the foundations for a Japanese

middle class and a system of competitive capitalism.” Edwards also emphasized the necessity for

24
Howard B. Schonberger, “Zaibatsu Dissolution and the American Restoration of Japan,” Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars 5, no. 2 (1973): pp. 16-31, 16.
25
Schonberger, “Zaibatsu Dissolution,” 16.
 Ness 11

preference of purchase to be given to “such persons as small or medium entrepreneurs and

investors, and to such groups as agricultural cooperatives and trade unions.”26

Edwards’ liberal plan for Zaibatsu dissolution encountered immediate pushback from

American conservatives who valued a strong Japan over a free and equal one, again letting Cold

War objectives get in the way of their stated goals. While many of MacArthur’s advisors

fervently opposed FEC-230, MacArthur actually went to bat for the proposal; MacArthur saw

that the Zaibatsu had been a boon to the militarist government, and he also believed that

implementation of a redistributive capitalist agenda would curb the influence of the Japanese left.

In 1947, as SCAP advanced its FEC-230 reforms, the Japanese economy began to spiral and

Japan started to experience serious inflation.27 The resulting dismal economic conditions of

inflation and apparent path to collapse that the Japanese economy was on alarmed the

conservative critics of FEC-230, and they brought their own man into Japan to propose a far less

liberal solution.

Concerned American investors, frightened of losing their Zaibatsu partners, sent attorney

James Lee Kauffman to Japan for his take on the situation. His report critiqued the labor-friendly

and anti-monopoly reforms that were under way, and represented the position not only of

American business, but also of American politicians concerned about a conflict with Russia.

When Kauffman’s report made its way to Washington, the response was immediate. Washington

valued a strong Japanese economy over an economy to serve the Japanese people, and they

intervened in a significant way for the first time in the occupation. When all was said and done,

the number of corporations that were to be dissolved in the dissolution campaign went from over

300 down to just nine.28

26
Schonberger, “Zaibatsu Dissolution,” 17.
27
Schonberger, “Zaibatsu Dissolution,” 20.
28
Schonberger, “Zaibatsu Dissolution,” 24-27.
 Ness 12

MacArthur had already taken regressive steps before the Washington and the American

business community stepped in to make sure he didn’t go through with his dissolution plan, but

the failure of FEC-230 and the influence that the conflict granted to forces outside of the

occupation marked the point of no return for the long-forgotten ideals of progressive policy in

Japan.

Conclusion

MacArthur entered Japan with the explicit goals of demilitarization and democratization,

but his agenda was never fully realized due to his own ideological biases and the burgeoning

American Cold War interests of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. MacArthur was blinded by his

own American ideology, and his ideas of what “democracy” and “freedom” in Japan looked like

were not necessarily shared by the Japanese people. Although MacArthur was consumed by

hubris and ideological tunnel-vision, he managed to maintain some semblance of integrity in his

economic ideals (although his willingness to so quickly accept the Yasuda plan suggests that he

might not have been altogether invested in economic reform). The same cannot be said of the

American powers in Washington that ultimately ended up influencing the occupation in Japan

and allowed the Zaibatsu to largely maintain their economic standing. Washington directly

violated the stated goals of the occupation at best out of cynical pragmatism, and at worst out of

a complete disregard for the freedoms and liberties of Japanese people. The United States’ efforts

to bolster the Pax Americana at the beginning of the Cold War came at the expense of the radical

democratic revolution they had initially envisioned for Japan. This sacrifice was not only a

disappointment for any democracy-seeking Japanese, but it also exhibited a failure of the United
 Ness 13

States to hold the powers that were responsible for World War II and militarist Japan accountable

for their crimes against humanity.

Bibliography

“Douglas MacArthur's Letter to Prime Minister.” Modern Japan in Archives. National Diet
Library, June 6, 1950. General Headquarters.
https://www.ndl.go.jp/modern/e/cha5/description12.html.

Dower, John W. Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays. New York, NY: New Press, 1998.

Dower, John W., and Hirata Tetsuo. “Japan's Red Purge: Lessons from a Saga of Suppression of
Free Speech and Thought.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2007.
https://apjjf.org/-John-W.-Dower/2462/article.html.

Kumano, Ruriko. “Anticommunism and Academic Freedom: Walter C. Eells and the ‘Red
Purge’ in Occupied Japan.” History of Education Quarterly 50, no. 4 (2010): 513–37.

Morris, Ivan, ed. Problems in Asian Civilizations. Boston, MA: Heath, 1963.

Quigley, Harold S. "The Great Purge in Japan." Pacific Affairs 20, no. 3 (1947): 299-308.
Accessed November 19, 2020. doi:10.2307/2752164.

Schonberger, Howard B. “Zaibatsu Dissolution and the American Restoration of Japan.” Bulletin
of Concerned Asian Scholars 5, no. 2 (1973): 16–31.

Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. London, UK: Penguin,
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