pre-war feudal structure of Japanese society, to
deprive the military-aristocratic and business elite
that had run Japan before 1945 of all power, to
ban notions of future military conquests from
Japanese minds and to democratise Japan by
order from above.
General MacArthur’s supreme command,
which ended with his dismissal in 1951, has
remained in many respects a controversial period
of Japanese history. Was his impact as great as
he assumed or did the Japanese continue to
control their own development more than is
supposed? Would many changes have occurred
just the same without the autocratic MacArthur?
Was Americanisation just skin-deep, a matter of
outward form, while the essence of the Japanese
spirit remained intact? Such questions stimulate
thought, but the reality is not so polarised. Of
course, Japanese institutions and Japanese atti-
tudes persisted, but defeat by the West had made
an enormous impact.
Japan was the first nation to experience the
horrors of atomic devastation, and the long-term
suffering of the victims who were not killed out-
right served as a constant reminder that war could
now destroy a whole people and deform babies
born years after their parents’ exposure to radia-
tion. Article 9 of the Japanese constitution of
1946, largely written by MacArthur and his staff,
is unique in its declaration that: ‘the Japanese
people forever renounce war as a sovereign right
of the nation.... Land, sea and air forces, as
well as other war potential, will never be main-
tained.’ It later proved an embarrassment to
the Americans, who wanted Japan to be in a posi-
tion to defend itself against China. So quickly
do world perspectives change. But was it just
MacArthur and his constitution-making that
turned the Japanese away from military adven-
ture? Clearly the Japanese experience had demon-
strated the futility of war and went on to nurture
a strong peace movement.
Many reforms introduced by the Americans
during the occupation years fitted in with earlier
Japanese traditions and were in practice adapted
by the Japanese to suit their needs. Thus the asso-
ciations which they were encouraged to form in
rural and urban communities for social, political
or cultural purposes were nothing new; the same
was true of agricultural and fishing coopera-
tives. In the 1930s many such organisations had
existed; they were not democratic but they were
controlled and tightly supervised by the govern-
ment, for which they were a useful means of com-
munication. The occupation also introduced new
legal freedoms to limit direction by the central
government and to provide a basis for democracy.
But they did not, as it turned out, inhibit ‘guid-
ance’ from the national government – which was
generally followed. The Japanese people were
accustomed to act in a group and to look to
authority for leadership. Nor did the American
encouragement that they form trade unions to
check the powers of industrialists lead to the
results experienced in the US. Japanese trade
unions tended to be rather different. They were
organised on the basis of each enterprise, that is
all the permanent employees in one company
would form a union to negotiate with manage-
ment, rather than workers of particular trades
organising themselves nationally. The family and
the company became the dominant groupings of
post-war Japan. Decentralisation of education,
equal political rights for women and social welfare
were among other notable innovations of the
occupation dictated to the Japanese people from
above. A constitution designed to make the
elected parliamentary assembly sovereign, and
reducing the emperor to symbolic status, pro-
vided the political framework of post-1945 Japan.
Until the Cold War in 1947 began to cast
shadows, free political activity was permitted.
From Japan’s prisons communists and socialists
emerged and they set out to radicalise the trade
unions and politics. MacArthur, anything but a
socialist, regarded such freedom as necessary. He
was determined to teach the Japanese the
meaning of democracy.
The single most remarkable difference between
the occupation of Japan and that of Germany was
the continuity of institutions that was maintained
in Japan. While making it clear that he was the
ultimate authority, MacArthur ruled indirectly
through a Japanese government and Diet. He
remained an austere and aloof figure, very much
in the tradition of the Japanese genro, the elder