statesmen, who had ‘advised’ the emperor and
who behind the scenes had once exercised much
real authority. MacArthur observed oriental cour-
tesies and, except in pursuit of those accused of
war crimes, was benign. An extraordinary rela-
tionship developed between him, the occupying
forces and the Japanese people. MacArthur issued
no orders against fraternisation such as proved so
ineffective in Germany: the Japanese people were
not to be treated as enemies or outcasts. It was
not pleasant for them to be under foreign occu-
pation but in the first few months there were
advantages too. The occupying forces brought in
food to save the Japanese people from starvation
and helped to rebuild the infrastructure of the
Japanese economy.
The wholesale introduction of Western, espe-
cially American, models and their imposition on
Japan, as if Japan were a blank sheet in 1945, did
not always work. For example, MacArthur con-
demned the big business corporations like Mitsui
and Mitsubishi – the zaibatsuwhich had domin-
ated Japanese industry and which had been closely
bound up with the ruling political oligarchies
before 1945 – as bearing, with the military, the
responsibility for the wars Japan had launched. He
set out to break them up. Yet they were to recover
dramatically after the occupation had come to an
end in a new, more efficient form of cooperation
of ‘business groupings’, the keiretsu. The close
relationship between government and business in
planning industrial development and economic
policies was revived. The keiretsubecame the
pace-setters in the astonishing rise of Japanese
industry in the 1950s and 1960s.
The land reforms instituted by MacArthur
expropriated the large landowners and favoured
the small tenant farmers. But holdings were
insubstantial and relatively unproductive; with the
industrial boom of the 1950s labour moved to
the towns, so agricultural productivity had to be
raised. This required mechanisation and invest-
ment; cooperatives were thus developed which
pooled resources, attracted finance and took
advantage of the economies of scale, although
many small farmers had to supplement their
income with other work. Politically and socially,
the land reforms made an important impact in
depriving absentee landlords and aristocrats of
their wealth and with it their potential for special
influence, while raising the living standards of the
farmers, who formed a declining proportion of
Japan’s population.
For the conservative elite in government and
business, 1947 proved a turning point. MacArthur
and his headquarters staff during that year re-
versed their earlier democratic encouragement of
industrial relations when a general strike was
called by the unions in February 1947. Though in
its aftermath a socialist coalition government was
elected (May 1947 to October 1948) it could not
cope with Japan’s economic problems, the mass
unemployment and hyperinflation. An entirely
new wind too was blowing from Washington, that
of containing communism. This reordering of
Washington’s priorities in Europe and Asia bene-
fited Japan, which was to be allowed to revive so
that communism would lose its attractions. With
the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, these
attitudes were reinforced. In Japan, communists
and left-wing sympathisers were suppressed. Once
the conservative parties had come together
into the Liberal Democratic Party in the mid-
1950s, the political growth of the left was halted
for more than three decades, during which the
conservatives and business elites dominated Japan.
Japan became America’s principal ally in eastern
Asia and a global economic giant. At the same
time a uniquely Japanese way of government
survived defeat and occupation. It was a Japan
nevertheless, that had been transformed by the
experiences of the Pacific War, by defeat and by
close contact with the US.
MacArthur found it best to assert the author-
ity of his headquarters indirectly through a
Japanese government. A remarkable Japanese
statesman, Shigeru Yoshida, served during most
of the occupation years and after (1946 to 1947
and 1948 to 1954) as Japan’s prime minister. A
subtle pro-Western diplomat, Yoshida created
good personal relations with MacArthur but was
determined at the same time to maintain what he
saw as sound conservative Japanese government,
free from any new military adventurism. The
Japanese people were in desperate straits at the
end of the war, relying on American food to save
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