H199 Reinventing Japan Viewing Notes

This episode is Program Five in the ten-part video documentary series on "The Pacific Century." Written and produced by Alex Gibney and co-produced by Alan Poul. Sponsored by the Pacific Basin Institute in association with KCTS/Seattle, 1992. Run time is 60 minutes.

PART ONE: The First 12.5 minutes

Opening shots: Newsreel footage of U.S. Naval vessels of the 3rd Fleet plowing the sea on their way to Japan. "American Warships are on their way to Tokyo!" Japan has surrendered, Gen. Douglas MacArthur is in charge. Very dramatic.

Cut to B-29s flying over Japan revealing the yaki-nohara condition, or the "burnt out plains," a reference to the land and the fields that have been reduced to rubble or ashes.

These images reveal how extensive the destruction of Japan's cities was. The word in the voice over narrative is "Nothing but total Devastation." "As far as you could see on all sides, there was nothing left. It was really a horrible, horrible sight." Against a shot of a soldier planting an American Flag amidst the rubble, the narrator intones, "The question was, where you began?"

Of course, the query is about where we should begin rebuilding Japan after so much devastation. But also, the point seems to be "Where do we begin our analysis and our understanding of what brought Japan to this point which resulted in such utter devastation?"

More cuts to the burnt out cities and the rubble, and trucks filled with GIs rolling through the streets as an American Jazz Band (Johnny Mercer) plays and Bing Crosby croons,

"You've got to Accentuate the Positive,

Elim-eye-nate the Negative,

Latch on the Affirmative, and

Don't Mess with Mr. In-Between!"

The perfect expression good old fashioned American optimism!

There is also a strong implication that the story of Contemporary Japan begins with the American Occupation, a very America-centric approach. But the legacy of what MacArthur wrought remains a hotly-debated topic. 

His proclaimed Mission was to dismantle the system that sent Japan on its "Road to War" and to create another Japan, a New Japan based on an American Vision of Democracy.

As Milton Esman, a member of the Government Section of SCAP, put it:

We had won the war. We had no doubt the most dynamic economy in the world, we had a society where human rights and freedom of expression and the opportunity for political participation were unparalled. We had a great deal of self-confidence. We felt that we had a repository of knowledge and experience with democratic government that could be useful to other societies as well.

And, by the way, so did many Japanese.

So the young Occupationers were brimming with confidence in what they were trying to accomplish. Film director Imamura Shohei recalls how as a child he hung out with GIs and was suprised at how big they were. Many people wondered what kind of trouble there might be when the Americans arrived.....But there wasn't any.

"I think most Japanese felt like they were being liberated," he says.

So, all there was to do was get to it:

Demobilize, Demilitarize and Democratize.

Remold and Remake Japan. Recast them in our Mold.

We're going to Create a New Democracy!

The film cuts to an excerpt from theU.S. documentary, "Our Job in Japan." It's a peek inside the head of a Japanese person. "The Japanese Brain is just like ours," it intones. Physically no different from brains anywhere in the world. "Actually, all made of the same stuff as ours. These brains, like our brains can do good things...or Bad things [Image of a Japanese Officer about to behead a POW], all depending on the kind of Ideas that are put inside."

"We're here to make it clear to the Japanese that the Time has now come to make sense! Modern, civilized sense. That is Our Job in Japan."

It sounds so simple. The Japanese were uncivilized and barbaric during the war; now it's time to fix them, to straighten them out.

One might assume that Education was among the things in Japan that had to be fixed. Perhaps with good reason. The prewar education system was notorious for inculcating its pupils with absolute loyalty and obedience to the August Japanese Sovereign, the Emperor.

So, the emphasis was on Subjects' Obligations to the State, and their Emperor, not their rights and responsibilities as Citizens.

Cut to General MacArthur's aircraft landing at Atsugi Airbase, and the General steping out onto the stairway and pausing for dramatic effect. Casually dressed in his khakis, unarmed, but supremely confident. He will come to be seen as the New Emperor or the latest Shogun of Japan, and he was a perfect fit for the situation. Tall, imposing, but also aloof and mysterious. He understood that appearences matter and he played the "annointed" role of the "Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers" (SCAP) in Japan--and he loved every minute of it.

Faubion Bowers:

"The Japanese seemed to adore MacArthur as he wrapped himself in more clouds of mystery than the emperor himself."

Cut to Imamura Shohei again, as he says, laughing:

"MacArthur was a force of nature. Like the river that flows and the wind that blows. It felt like a New Emperor had arrived!"

And he was charged with remaking the image of the old Emperor.

Many wanted to try Hirohito as a War Criminal but MacArthur warned against this.

"Blood will flow in the streets! We're not going to touch that man!"

MacArthur understood that the Emperor had a special power over the Japanese.

"If he was a God to them, then he could work Miracles for the Occupation."

Good Point!

Faubion Bowers, his personal assistant, describes the day the emperor came to meet MacArthur at SCAP HQ and the iconic photograph that was taken. MacArthur strode toward Hirohito and extended his hand to shake! We are shown the three photographs taken that day. The first was suppressed because MacArthur blinked, the second was suppressed because the Emperor was caught with his mouth open and starting to walk away. The final shot is the one that has become the official photograph. Very symbolic of the new relationship between the US and Japan.

Cut to the recording of Emperor Hirohito, the "Jeweled Voice," speaking to his subjects over the radio at the War's End, accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. Next, he renounced his Divinity, and then spoke again trying to calm fears of famine and starvation among his people.

The reactions are interesting.

First, a man on the street in a fedora speaks candidly and without polite or special deferential language about his "former god." He was disappointed.

"We thought he was going to tell us something new, something important. We had hoped to hear something more."

It is hard to imagine this kind of frank expression of dismay with the Soverign occurring at any time during the prewar years!

Then a woman in kimono speaks. Her language is much more polite but she too is disappointed.

"He tells us to share what we have, but we don't have anything left to share. So his Annoucement means we must sit here and die of hunger. That made me sad."

Again, a frank and blunt--but understated assessment!

Six million soldiers were being repatriated, coming home to a country that could not accommodagte them! In the cities, many Japanese still lived in rubble. In the countryside bad harvests left people near starvation. 13 million were unemployed. Death by starvation was not uncommon.

Notice the condescending and mocking tone of a reporter for Movietone News as he describes a "Jap Jazz Band" performing on a rooftop garden. But as Esman points out, the Japanese are a very pragmatic people and their system had failed them. Therefore, they are open to creating a new system--Democracy--that can help them regain status and respect in the world again. Build a New Japan!

Also striking is the early idealism and naiveté of the American mission:  we fought, we won, and now we were going to impose democracy (the word was on everyone's lips; GIs were frequenetly asked on the streets, what is democracy?).  They saw their task as a matter of "rooting out" fascism and "putting in" democracy.  But did they really understand who was who and what the different historical actors' political or ideological stances were? How much did Occupation authorities really understand about Japan?

Miscellaneous notes:

Among the US interviewees so far are Milton Esman, Richard Poole, and, soon to come, Colonel Charles Kades. Kades was a liberal New Dealer in what was perhaps the most powerful SCAP section, the Government Section, which was run by General Whitney, a conservative Republican and close friend of MacArthur.

Japanese interviewees include the film director Imamura Shohei, the labor leader and Union head Takaragi Fumihiko. Coming up soon will be Nakasone Yasuhiro (then a young bureaucrat but later the nationalist Prime Minister from 1982-1987), and Miyazawa Kiichi, who was Prime Minister at the time of his interview.

PART TWO

Chuck Kades, after a clip in which a woman at a large conference or rally is criticizing the prewar regime for costing so many lives in its reckless pursuit of overseas territorial possessions saying

"This was the sin of the government of the Emperor."

What a scathing criticism! Kades comments on how

"We were liberating the Japanese people from the subjugation that they had undoubtedly been subjected to--prewar Japan was a Police State. And the people were glad to be liberated from that type of existence."

SCAP sought to root out all vestiges of wartime Japan: (From the Our Job in Japan documentary):

"There will be no more Japanese wartime factories. No more Japanese war planes. There will be no more Japanese Warlords."

SCAP identified and tried Japanese War Criminals--the most notorious and unreprentant was Hideki Tojo, Sentenced to Death by Hanging.

THE PURGE

Japanese businessmen considered to be partners with the military were removed from their positions of power. This was the Purge: the removal from power of 200,000 military leaders, businessmen and politicians. (Including, btw, one Kishi Nobusuke who will eventually have charges against him dismissed and re-enter politics and become Prime Minister during the 1960 protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty[Anpo]).

The documentary makes much of MacArthur's god-like stature and his deliberate insularity ("He only met some 60 Japanese, none below the rank of a Supreme Court justice").

Zaibatsu--or Industrial Conglomerates--run by a handful of wealthy families were also targeted. In China, Korea and Southeast Asia, Zaibatsu had partnered with the military to exploit labor and extract natural resources. Familiar Names like Mitsubishi and Nissan. The Occupation wanted to transform Japan from a nation of Big Businesses to Small ones.

They would bust-up the zaibatsu and release their natural enemies from prisons: the Communists, one of the few groups who had consistently opposed Japanese militarism. Once released from prisons, they renewed their attack on Military Government and Big Business.

Nakasone: We did not understand what MacArthur was trying to do! Japanese Conservatives were appalled. Turn Japan Red? Why would they do this?

At SCAP HQ in the Daichi Building a few hundred American men and women set about Reinventing Japan. Few had any knowledge of the country they were trying to change.

Kades: My knowledge was zero.

Faubion Bowers (who had studied Japan and did know the language):

"MacArthur was remarkably ignorant about Japan. He only ever met about 60 Japanese, none of them lower in rank than a supreme court justice."

He did not get out of his office or private compound very much. Never hobnobbed with ordinary Japanese folks.

In the first postwar election to be held, Bowers was excited because Katayama Sen, a Christian and a Socialist was elected. The first time for either in Japan. ut all MacArthur had to say was "Does he speak English?"

Young Reformers may have been ignorant of Japan but they shared a faith in the principles of FDR's New Deal: The use the power of government to promote social equality.

The Occupation was as Arrogant as it was Idealistic: one country trying to Remake the Other in its Image.

The most powerful SCAP section was the Government Section, which was run by General Whitney, a conservative Republican and close friend of MacArthur. But underneath him were many eager New Dealers intent on their idealistic reform program.

Charles Kades: I was a thoroughgoing new Dealer--and there were some to the Left of me!

Milton Esman who believes Kades' abilties and charm enabled him to concvince Gen. Whitney to go along with some sweeping reforms of which he was probably skeptical on a personal level.

MacArthur orderd the Japanese Government to rewrite it's prewar Constitution (1889). Months went by and only insignificant changes had been made. When he didn't like the results, he turned the job over to Gen. Whitney and the Government Section.

Beate Sirota Gordon: "MacArthur called us in and said you are now a constitutional assembly."

Richard Poole: We were to be operating in top secret. Once completed, this draft, composed in English, would be translated into Japanese and presented to the Japanese government who would, in turn, present it to the National Diet, the legislative assembly, as a Japanese Draft. They had 6 days to complete their draft. Whaaat?

Of the 24 drafters, none had any background or expertise in Constitutional Law.

Esman: Maybe I was chosen because I had a freshly minted Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton. Col. Kades also might have wanted a fellow Cornell graduate on the job!

Beate Sirota had grown up in Japan and seen the police state in operation first hand so she was assigned to the Civil Liberties section of the document. She set out immediately to university librries to collect some prototypes, copies of other nation's constitutions.

Richard Poole was to work on the role of emperor. A daunting task. They settled on the language

Emperor as the Symbol of the State and the Unity of the Japanese People

Memories of the War haunted the Constituion. Article 9 called upon Japan to put down its Arms and Renounce War Forever. Poole was skeptical that this might be too much to expect but Kades told him this requirement came directly from "The General" (i.e., MacArthur)! Need he say any more?

MacArthur was concerned about his place in history. Wouldn't it be remarkable if he, a military man, could be the one to convince a country like Japan to lay down its arms?

Esman: It worked out well for Japanese because while we spend 6+% of our GNP on defense and Military expenditures, the Japanese kept it down to under 1%, especially during the period of High Speed Econnomic Growth in the 1960s-1970s which rendered Japan the 2nd or 3rd largest economy in the world.

The Article on Women's Rights was written by Beate Sirota. She inluded many very specific rights like freedom to marry according to her own choice, divorce if necessary, prenatal care, maternity leave, etc. These rights appear in many other constitutions in the world but not the US'. The Steering Committee--made up of men--felt it went too far, that it was too specific. She argued her case, even cried. Ultimately, they incorporated her main rights for women.

Women's rights? Changing the role of the emperor? These radical changes never even occurred to Japan's conservative leaders.

The reaction of the Japanese to the Draft was one of complete astonishment. They were dumbfounded! Gen. Whitney passed out four copies and the Japanese leaders were left to read and consider the document while the authors waited in the garden, in the "atomic sunshine" outside as a B-29 flew over the PM's residence. Point made.

The Conservatives hated the draft but what could they do? Elections were coming up and most citizens approved of the major features of the proposed constitution. If the Government continued to resist, SCAP threatened to put the Draft out there directly in front of the Japanese people.

So, the draft was proposed the Diet as a Japanese Draft but few people were fooled.

Nakasone: "MacArthur's Occupation came in and imposed a constitution on Japan. But we didn't do it ourselves. True Freedom, True Democacracy must come from within. I agree with many of the ideas, but the process was wrong. We should've done it outselves."

Summer of 1946, the Draft was debated in the National Assembly. All 39 newly elected female delegates-- Japanese women had just voted in an election for the first time--supported it. [Remember this when we read in Changing Lives about how Yoshitake Teruko was insistent that her mother go to the polls and cast her ballot in this first of a lifetime opportunity!]

The Emperor's support was also galvanized so that on Nov. 3, 1946, he could officially proclaim the adoption of the New Constitution! It has never been amended despite it's foreign origins.

Esman: "The Democratic Ideas were not something we brought to Japan. The democratic ideas were there and many paid very heavily for espousing them. The Writers, the Teachers, Artists, the Labor Unions, Women--these constituted a tacit coalition among these groups to resist any basic change in that constitution that would have the effect of recentralizing government, or remilitarizing the society, or limiting in any way the freedom of expression." (For an overview of some of these Democratic Ideas click on the link.)

Freedom of Expression led to a new Explosion of Japanese Popular Culture, including Film.

A short section on Kurosawa Akira filming "No Regrets for our Youth" is shown. On location for the first time since the war, Kurosawa experienced a new sense of freedom of creative expression. It was about the Joys of Youth--seishun. [青春]. Just shooting a scene of young men and women having a picnic, enjoying life and nature--these were subjects forbidden during the war. That was typical of how the Japanese army thought. Shooting fields of Beautiful flowers blooming in a field, romance, young people just playing. I was thrilled to be able to shoot scenes like this, says Kurosawa. This sort of thing had no place in the world where "noble sacrifice" was the only human behavior that mattered.

Clips from the film follow...as the narrator explains that "this was a groundbreaking film about the struggles of a modern woman in prewar Japan."

Kurosawa: "At the time, the status of Japanese women was very low. I thought I would do a story in which women have their own ideas and self-awareness." [We might say, she was expressing her own Subjectivity or Historical Agency.]

In one sense, No Regrets is the story of the heroine's spiritual oydyssey from city to the hard life of the countryside. But also, she was moving from a naive, bourgeois indifference to political activism towards an understanding the value of commitment to a cause larger than oneself. But it was clearly a story about an Individual, not the needs of the Nation, and that was what was powerful in Postwar Japan.

"Look Back without regrets. A life with no regrets."

A nice segue here to people farming, working the land, so we can talk about:

Land Reform

In 1946, half of the population lived off of the land. Many were tenant farmers. Bitterly poor. Tilling the soil for a handful of rich landlords. The Occupation ordered its most enduring change: LAND REFORM. MacArthur forced the Japanese government to buy more than 30 million parcels of land and sell it cheaply to the farmers who were actually working the land. As Chairman Nosaka of the Japan Communist Party admitted to MacArthur, Land Reform robbed the Party of many potential adherents, i.e, the discontented poor, the exploited tenant farmers, but who now owned their own land so were, in effect, capitalists! A new class of conservatives was created instead, who were instrumental to postwar Japan's ruling Conservative coalition (The Liberal Democratic Party LDP) consisting of Farmers and Business owners.

Labor Reform

4.5 million workers joined unions in the first few months of the Occupation. Workers were ready for radical action. Railworkers seized control of the trains and let people ride for free.

MAY DAY May 1, 1946, Biggest Demonstration in Japan's history

Over 2 million workers took to the streets to demand wage increases and worker's "production controls" over the factories. By fall, over 100 strikes at Newspapers, car manufacturers, and movie studios. Movement Peaked in Winter of 1947. Called for a General Strike Feb. 1. Aimed to seize power and topple PM Yoshida. The crowds looked like a Sea of Red Flags. All the Unions were on board. But was this going too far? Communists and Unions gainng too much control?

At 2:30 PM MacArthur Bans the General Strike. Many workers felt betrayed. The Occupation had enourgaged them to organize and exercise their rights, but then, NO. It was a sign of more reversals to come. We see a shot of one of the Socialist leaders reduced to tears, unable to speak before the microphones.

Cut to Mao Zedong's victory in China. By 1947, events OUTSIDE Japan were starting to change Occupation Policy. Mao's Red Army was routing troops of America's ally Jiang Kai-shek. Stalinism was appearing in Eastern Europe with New Communist Regimes spreading. Cannot afford to weaken Japan any further.

George Kennan wrote the blueprint for "containing" the Soviet Union and communism. He looked at the reforms in Japan and believed they were paving the way for a communist takeover. Japan has to be the Bulwark for the American Defense system against this threat. So, stop the Reforms and get down to the business of rebuilding Japan.

To change the course of the Occupation, George Kennan flew to Japan followed shortly by the Under Secretary of the Army, William Draper. A foremer Investment Banker, Draper was known as "The Wall Street General." Stop punishing Big Business in Japan and start building up the economy.

Kades notes how he spoke with both Draper and Dodge and neither had a vision for Japan other than as an economic bulwark against communism. No idealism at all. They didn't seem to care about Democracy or promoting democratic values.

SCAP had made an effort to dismantle the old industrial structure, featuring the zaibatsu, and creating a nation of Small Business owners. But that meant taking from the rich and giving to the poor and that upset American conservatives. In effect, the first two years of the Occupation brought political democracy but not economic prosperity. This perversely, they feared, was making Japan fertile soil for Communism. Even the initiative to dismantle the zaibatsu was curtailed and all that was really accomplished was to prevent powerful, wealthy families from holding controlling interest in the conglomerates. Banks and Stockholders might do so, but who among Japanese could afford to buy stocks? Only the most well-to-do....

Meanwhile, Republicans win both houses of Congress in the Fall of 1946 and there is real pushback on the idealistic democratic reform program in Japan. Land Reform, breaking up of Zaibatsu, the Purges were having a negative effect; it was too radical, it was moving in the direction of Socialism. Even MacArthur is singled out for criticism. The occupation was in the hands of mindless leftwingers who were making Japan vulnerable to a communist takeover. Would chaos and anaarchy soon follow?

So, there were now divisions among the Occupation policy makers: stay the course on Occupation reforms or follow hardline anti-communists who wanted to build up the country even if it meant backing a return to conservatism? Japanese conservatives were very aware of this split at SCAP HQ and did their best to take advantage in order to sabotage the democratic reforms being suggested by the Goverment Section and start to rely on the older ways of doing things. How about ending the Purge, put the prewar politicians and bureaucrats back in power, and let them rebuild Japan's economy?

Nakasone recalls how they feared SCAP's radical Reforms might turn Japan Red or at least make it more of a Socialist country and they were very concerned.

END PART TWO at CM 43:00 minute mark roughly.

PART THREE: THE REVERSE COURSE

Japanese politicians understood the divisions in SCAP HQ and exploited it. Earlier reforms start to be undermined. The "Reverse Course" or U-turn began with George Kennan, who is portrayed on the campus of Princeton University.

Then Draper (the "Wall Street General") was sent to Japan to plan a rebuilding of the Japanese economy, to make Japan "the workshop of Asia." He helped persuade MacArthur to fatefully shift Occupation policy from political democracy and individual freedoms to economic growth. Rebuild the Japanese economy under the leadership of the Old Big Business Leaders, the Elite Bureaucrats. and the Politicians--many of whom had served in the prewar government and had been Purged in the early phase of the Occupation. This is what came to be called THE REVERSE COURSE, moving away from what Yoshida called "the excesses of democracy."

In 1949 came a new purge, the "Red Purge." At first, Leftists had been released from orison and encouraged to organize Unions. An interviewee, labor historian  Sumiya Mikio, likened the labor movement to a Japanese crane (tanchôzuru), with a white body and red head; the purge cut off the red head, the communist leadership. Union Leadership may have been Red, or Radical, but most ordinary Japanese workers were moderates. So, by re-arresting Union leaders, the labor movement lost its radical direction.

Kades: it was a pity emphasis was shifted because at that time there was no real internal menace from the Japan Communist Party whatsoever.

In 1948, the US officially adopted a new plan: build up Japanese industry and economy, turn it into the workshop for Asia as a way to contain communism. Japanese politics turned, too. Conservatives swept into power. Still in power today.

RED PURGE

1949 began a new purge: to get rid of labor supporters and reinstate Japanese business leaders formerly purged from government and business positions. Japanese managers also took advantage and created second, enterprise unions more supportive of management goals and directives. When the Union at the Toho Film Studios tried to take over and run the place, Police entered by force to break it...Backed up by American Tanks and Airplanes just sitting outside the premises. With the unions now in check, the US sent a new envoy to Japan.

February 1, 1949 Detroit Banker Joseph Dodge arrived with total authority to fix the economy.  Simple solution: Balance the Budget. His enforced recessionary measures were harsh (two million workers were let go (and union leaders were the first to go!) as the government halted its subsidies of business and thousands of companies went bankrupt. PM Yoshida and promised prosperity but the "Dodge Line was making a mockery of his plans. In reality, though, Japan's economy was saved by the outbreak of the Korean War in June of 1950.  North Korea, backed by Russia, attacked South Korea, backed by the US.

To Yoshida (who had been elected prime minister in 1948), it was "a gift from the gods," and for four years it pumped billions of dollars of U.S. procurement sales into the economy.  The US bought its trucks and supplies from Japan! Major infusion of cash!

Director Imamura Shohei: "The Korean War brought great prosperity to Japan but it also allowed the Japanese to forget about what they had done to Asian neighbors. It was tghe beginning of a new ethic in Japan: if it makes money. it's good!" And as he goes on to say in Japanese, Hansei [反省] wa iranai - Or there was no need for "self-reflection" or a close examination of the implications of what Japan was doing.

In other words, there was a profound psychological effect in allowing the Japanese to forget or sweep under the carpet their own aggressive incursions into Korea and the rest of Asia.

1950-54 US spent nearly $3 billion on military supplies and goods. The "Procurement Boom." Jump started the economy and Saved the regime of PM Yoshida Shigeru's career. 1951 he flies to San Francisco to make a deal. He wanted Japan's independence back! Americans wanted Japan to rearm and side with the US in the cold war. Yoshida Interviewed by Frank Gibney who noted: "We didn't realize that Mr. Yoshida and his Finance Minister Mr. Ikeda were already planning the course for a new, independent, economically innovstive and powerful Japan." Yoshida was the lone statesman unafraid to stand up to the US and to allow Japan to become what it could be!

The Peace Treaty was Signed 9 Years, 9 months and 1 day after Pearl Harbor. US gets to keep its bases in Japan. But many Japanese were worried that the US will lead Japan into another war.

Sumiya Mikio: There was a feeling of betrayal. In the beginning of the occupation there were lots of lofty ideals about Peace and Democracy but in the early 1950s it became all about Japan being a solid ally and forward base for American foreign policy with its anti-Communist stance in the Cold War.

Film News clip: Japan as "Outpost of democracy in the Eastern World.

The documentary ends with an interview with Clyde Prestowitz, who was well-known in the late 1970s and 1980s as a hard-line negotiator with the U.S. Trade Representative's Office and is now an influential Washington insider and think-tank president.  He has been dubbed a "Japan Basher" and we can see why in his remarks below.

"We wanted to change Japan ijto something like ourselves." His position—a common one—is that nothing much changed.  Japan remained Japan, resolutely on its own course, and as a result, by the 1980s, we were fighting them once again, this time in an economic world war:

  In the Occupation [to paraphrase Clyde Prestowitz], America was the mentor and Japan the protégé; Mentors always want their protege's to be like them. For a long time, the Japanese seemed to be eager pupils, absorbing our lessons.  We were grateful and flattered, but we were duped.  What the Teacher did not notice was that the Student had its own economc program in mind.

So, the pupil had its own very different economic plans.  We thought Japan was recovering to be a modest producer of toys and cocktail napkins for its Asian neighbors; instead, they quickly became our manufacturing rivals in steel mills and automobiles, and Electronics. The Japanese government Protected and Nurtured those budding interests and new versions of the old zaibatsu called keirertsu emerged generating a coordinated and integrated approach with which it was very difficult for the US to compete. It's the old "Japan, Inc." menace!

And they did it not via Occupation reforms but by going back to prewar structures--central control and the newest incarnation of the old industrial zaibatsu conglomerates. So, here is clearly the source of bitterness for Prestowitz: Japan should have remained a loyal and compliant student, grateful and beholden to its mentor, and not go off the rails and do its own thing and become an economic powerhouse.

MacArthur had come to Japan with a Vision of changing history: he wanted to Remake Japan. His mission was to dismantle the old militaristic Japan and forge a new one. By the time he left, many Democratic reforms had taken root but the economic system wqss still uniquely Japanese and it had begun to grow in unanticipated ways.

Japan had changed so much by 1952...but also, so little. Therefore, each country could maintan their favorite myths about the other. The narrator explains,

"We thought they were just like us; they thought we would protect their right to be different."

Gibney: Japan thought of Uncle Sam as a rich uncle who would be pleased to see its nephew doing well. But to the US that meant selling small consumer products to other Asian nations, not outperforming its former mentor in things like Steel and Auto manufacturing, electronics, shipbuilding, optical products, radios, stereo equipment, and TVs.

Gibney: Japan was developing an economic pattern of their own that was going to make history.

Some Additional Meta Commentary:

In a way, this is a curious conclusion, because the message of the documentary itself seems rather different.  It stresses two features of Japan in the late 1940s and early 1950s that undermine any simple distinction between an American Occupation of reform duped and undermined by a Japanese reactionary backlash. It wasn't that smple.

First, Occupation policy and reforms were divided against themselves.  The earliest initiatives pushed thorough going democratization: purging and punishing members of the old leadership, destroying the zaibatsu, and encouraging labor unions, land reform, and extensive civil rights.  But changing American politics and fear of a growing worldwide Communist threat threw everything into a "Reverse Course." 

The massive general strike called for May 1, 1947 was banned by General MacArthur hours before it was to have begun, a "Red Purge" was countenanced against the recently-freed Japanese Communist leaders. We see in the documentary how socialist and union leaders felt betrayed and were reduced to tears.

Then, the Detroit banker Joseph Dodge was dispatched in 1949 to fix the Japanese economy by difficult deflationary policies at great hardship to the working population. Meanwhile, the Japanese government was urged to rearm as an outpost of stability and strength against Red China in the Far East.  There were, thus, two American Occupations.

The other theme of the documentary is the divided nature of the Japanese themselves.  The local political, economic, and social scene featured a raucous clash of Communist activists, Socialists, democrats, and unrepentant nationalists.  Many Japanese enthusiastically embraced and embellished the more progressive American dictates and were devastated when the forces of political conservatism (led by Prime Minister Yoshida) and economic nationalism (the restored corporate leaders) took advantage of the American Reverse Course to capture control.  The Japan that emerged restored and revived by the end of the 1950s was thus a product of interests and struggles that cross-cut both the Occupation and the Japanese.

This documentary introduces the decade that was the time of youth and young adulthood for Japan's present older seniors and the childhood for those Japanese now in late middle age and entering their sixties. The new institutions of "contemporary Japan" that we will explore in the rest of this course began to take shape in this decade as an amalgam of preexisting patterns and controversies with those patterns and controversies introduced during this first, turbulent, and formative postwar decade.

Finally, the documentary is misleading on one important point and illuminating on another.  It opens with beginning of Occupation, implying that Japan was being "re-invented" from the ground up.  With footage of the urban rubble, the arriving US forces, MacArthur and the Emperor, it suggests a total break with the past.  However, most other scholarship now suggests otherwise--that there were significant continuities with the past, and significant residues of wartime Japan and even before.

At the same time, the documentary illustrates as well the constant conflicts that marked the course of the Occupation and the shifting lines of contention.  It was not simply that "Americans" imposed a new order on the "Japanese."  The Americans were divided against themselves, too--progressive "New Dealers" vs more Conservative Republicans--as were the Japanese, and sometimes the same people changed agendas and ambitions as the period developed.  The results were mixed and many consequences were contradictory and unintended.

The Americans pushed jazz, baseball, and Hollywood movies (deliberately featuring kissing), but these were already popular with the Japanese. The filmmaker Kurosawa Akira is interviewed several times and there are scenes of filming and footage from his 1946 film "No Regrets for Our Youth" on one woman's jouney to independence and self-awareness.

A long section of documentary tracks the 1946 drafting of a new Constitution by SCAP. Incredibly, the task was entrusted to a group of just 24 youngsters with no such experience, and MacArthur required them to produce a draft in only six days.

Much attention is given to Beate Sirota, the only woman on the team and the only one with prior experience living in Japan; She tried to include a very detailed list of women's rights; meeting resistance, she nonetheless did manage to have a number of them retained in the final document. 

Yoshida and his fellow conservatives were "dumbfounded" by the document, but it was pushed through the Diet over their resistance, and Yoshida was forced to accept it.  [The emperor's promulgation struck a parallel chord with the Meiji emperor's promulgation of the first constitution fifty years earlier.]

Kades asks why an obviously foreign document has never been amended. Because, he believes, there was a lot of domestic sentiment for democracy and history of struggle for rights. As Nakasone's comments imply, though, many have challenged and sought to revise some of its key provisions, especially concerning re-armament. We will be seeing how much the ideals of the early Occupation period meant to the young women discussed in Changing Lives. They took the commitment to democracy--to an open, participatory system of government--seriously and to the value of Peace and preventing Japan from rearming. But by the late stages of the Occupation, the US was pressuring Japan to do just that: to rearm and become a more active partner with the US in Asia--not something other Asian countries were particularly wild about!!

The section on the Land Reform notes that Japan Communist Party leader Nosaka complained to MacArthur that the Reform undermined socialism in creating bourgeois small holders. Indeed, its class thrust was the opposite from the Occupation's other early policy of fostering labor unions and raising worker consciousness.

The remarkable May Day, 1946 labor demonstrations led to a plan for a total General Strike in late January 1947 as threat to Yoshida. When MacArthur ordered a halt to the strike, there was massive feeling of betrayal, and it set in motion a backlash. At the same time, events in China (Mao's routing of Chang Kai-shek) and Stalin's moves in Eastern Europe (creating an Iron Curtain) were causing fundamental rethinking by the US about Japan. All of a sudden, it is not as much in the Americans' interest to keep Japan free and peaceful as it was to create a staunch (and armed?) ally in the Cold War fight against Communism. Priorities had shifted!

The documentary concludes with San Francisco Peace Treaty and Yoshida's successful efforts to parry John Foster Dulles's demands for rearmament.  As pointed out earlier by Esman, avoiding rearmament worked well for the Japanese for while we were spending 6-6.5% of our GNP on defense, Japan only spent well under 1% on theirs! While much of our R&D was devoted to secret military technology, Japanese engineers were free to work on more efficient ways to build Hondas and Toyotas!