Hostile attitudes had been simmering between the Japanese and the Americans throughout much of the early-Showa period, thanks largely to a number of different events. The growing hostilities between Japan and China, in regions such as Manchuria, did little to allay the fear of Americans of a growing imperialist threat from the island nation, and the attitude of the Americans towards the Japanese became tense as a result. Americans understood the Japanese to be “underhanded and deceitful”, assumptions that fuelled racial tensions in cities such as California (Seidensticker 1990, pp.280). However, attitudes such as these were most probably only felt towards the end of the Sino-Japanese war, as illustrated by newspaper articles from the early 1930’s, where in fact there seemed to be no fundamental animosity towards the Japanese people themselves (Tupper & McReynolds, 1937). It would be fair to say that the animosity towards the Japanese only grew as a result of an increasingly brutal war, and the growing fear of Japanese motives in the Pacific.
Japanese attitudes towards the Americans were also becoming increasingly animus, provoked in large by increasing anti-Japanese sentiment in the US. The abrogation of the Gentleman’s Agreement Act, and the enactment of the Immigration Act of 1924 [also known as the Japanese Exclusion Act] in its place, produced a number of anti-American demonstrations across much of Japan, with thousands angry at the racism of the act and the treatment of their countrymen overseas. The largest demonstration, in Tokyo’s Shiba Park, attracted over ten thousand gatherers (Seidensticker 1990, pp.281), who protested the act which limited the number of immigrants from any one nation to 2% of the number of people from that country that were living in the United States in 1890. Demonstrations such as the Shiba Park demonstration, and others across Japan at the time give an historical insight into the growing Japanese resentment of the disdain shown towards Japanese by their western neighbours.
The reforms of the Occupation of Japan had both benefits and losses to Japanese society, with attitudes divided across the separate reforms that were made. The transformation from autocratic dictatorship to parliamentary democracy is one reform, which can safely be argued, was of significant long-term benefit to Japanese society, and was a turning point in the modernisation of Japan. The constitution of 1946 guaranteed basic freedoms and civil liberties, gave women the right to vote, abolished nobility, and removed the Emperor from the political system, transforming him from the fount of sovereignty to a figurehead constitutional monarch. The majority of the population, who saw these freedoms as long overdue, welcomed such reforms. The constitution also called for the Japan’s demilitarization, which removed the threat of Japanese antagonism to its neighbours. The adoption of this constitution, if anything, brought Japan into line with western ideals and allowed for the establishment of relations with previous opponents in the west.
The American occupiers understood the necessity for a revised educational system in post-war Japan as a method of disseminating the policies and ideals that SCAP wished to ingrain within Japanese society. Therefore, in order to build an educational system able to achieve the political goals of the Allies, the ‘elitist’ Meiji education system would need to be completely overhauled. In place of the Meiji system, where whilst education was compulsory, only a small proportion of students progressed past primary school levels, SCAP introduced a revised educational system based primarily on the United States education system. The focus was a system with a single entry point and multiple exit points, for students to gain employment or continue on to university education. Further, SCAP removed the highly centralised nature of the education system, with increased governance given to the individual school themselves. As Pasin (1992) argues, the reforms gave University access to a far broader population than could ever have been imagined before Occupation. Japanese attitudes towards the changes show that whilst there were complaints with the abruptness of the change to a nine-year compulsory education system, which perhaps could have been established slower over a longer time period (Otake 1953 pp. 26), however generally education reform was seen as a positive outcome for Japan, and one which propelled the nation in line with Western nations.
The agricultural land reforms implemented between 1947 and 1949 were a successful milestone in the Occupation period, and a vital precursor to Japan’s rise as an economic superpower. Land reforms entailed the purchase of land from the powerful landlords, with the land being redistributed to the peasant farmers who worked them. Landowners were allowed to own a maximum of 1 Cho (2.45 acres) with surplus holdings mandatorily resold to the government. The benefits of the reforms were two fold. First, the removal of power from the landlords, and a return of valuable land to the peasants, had remarkable significance. The land reform brought a more even distribution of assets and wealth, equalizing the income distribution in rural societies (Kawagoe 1999 pp.2), with the winners being the large peasant population. Former tenant farmers who were now land owners, were given incentive to work land with the view of increasing personal wealth, rather than the wealth of their landlords, resulting in a level of morale and freedom that had not been enjoyed before. If anything, the land reform programs succeeded in least to bringing the peasantry of Japan into the mainstream citizenship. Buoyed by this newfound freedom, farmers also became the supporting stronghold of the conservative government with their support vital to SCAP in the maintenance of power beyond the mid-1950’s (Smith 1995 pp. 52).
The second important benefit of the land reform was the economic significance of the redistribution. Land reform in Japan essentially reduced the poverty rate through the equalization of the distribution of income. In pre-war Japan, over 50 per cent of a farmed area was worked by tenant farmers, a quarter of which rented 100 per cent of their land with the rest owning miniscule plots of land to which that was often subdivided and leased to other families (Dore 1958, pp. 183). In this sense the reforms were a monumental success, by redistributing land away from the powerful landlords and towards the tenant farmers, the poverty line was effectively lifted. Whilst the immediate effect on the Japanese economy was minor (Smith 1995, pp. 52), the inclusive policies directed towards land ownership effectively formed a self-sustaining industry, operated under free market conditions and competitive in its own right.
Whilst there were successes with the Occupation, namely the political, social and economic reforms as discussed previously, what of the losses that were sustained as a result of the Allied Occupation? There is no doubting that, to a certain extent, there was a loss of Japanese nationalism and pride that so characterised the Japanese peoples preceding the war, at least during the years directly following surrender. Articles extracted from Tokyo Magazine show an abstract of thoughts from influential academics and social figures as to what they believe the Japanese lost [and gained] from the Allied Occupation. On the one hand, there seems is an overriding feeling of a loss of honour and spirit. As Shinsuke Asao recollects, “the lack of training in appreciation of the spirit of honor, respectability, order…” (Otake 1953, pp. 31). Other articles mention the loss of female chastity and the dishonour of ‘pan-pan’s’ (pp. 29). Another discusses the loss of self-reliance and trust on the part of the Japanese, and the development of an inferiority complex (pp. 28). However other articles discuss losses to Japanese society as trivial in comparison to the gains that the Occupation brought to society. One even goes to say as in reality, the Japanese actually lost nothing [although I would refute this to some degree].
In fact, it would appear that rather than a loss of nationalism, the economic development of Japan opened the door for a new “economic nationalism” (Kahn 1970, pp. 75), focused on the establishment of economic and industrial goals in an effort to catch up and compete with the West (Pyle 1996, pp. 242). Whilst the physical structures for economic independence – industrial structures sustained through wartime growth, agricultural skills developed across hundreds of years of experience, and skilled labour returning in the form of ex-military and displaced nationals – were established pre-war, the brilliance of Japan’s economic miracle lies in the resilience and openness of the Japanese themselves. Rather than be burdened by the humility of surrender and defeat, the Japanese welcomed the lessons drawn from the defeat, and through Occupation, utilised the Allied help in establishing economic policy which would see Japan sustain exponential growth for decades to come (Dower 1993, pp. 156). Emerging out of the ashes of defeat was a newfound Japanese national purpose, rooted in the economic principles of the West, and Japanese spirit that allowed Japan to recover from defeat so well.
The Occupation of Japan was a major turning point in the history of the island nation. It represented a transformation from an autocratic, mythical country, to Asian and world superpower. The miracle in this is the speed that the Japanese carried out this transformation. Within a period of twenty to thirty years, the Japanese achieved what most western nations took three times as long to achieve. Japanese attitudes towards the reforms are the major determining factor in the ease in which Japan adopted and conformed to the changes. Japan indeed lost many elements of their ancient empire, such as the mythical role of the Emperor, however much of what they lost was essentially trivial, with the gains of reform far outweighing the costs. Particularly, the remodelling of the political system, educational reforms, and the economic changes, all did much to bring post-war Japan into line with the rest of the modern world. To this end, we can see that the Occupation of Japan, for its sweeping and radical reforms, was a vast success. For Japan, the United States, and the world as a whole.
List of References
Dore, R P 1958, 'The Japanese land reform in retrospect’, Far Eastern Survey, vol. 27, no. 12, pp. 183-188.
Dower, J W 1993, Japan in War and Peace, New Press, New York.
Kawagoe, T 1999, Agricultural Land Reform in Postwar Japan: Experiences and Issues, World Bank, accessed 12 September 2008, <www.worldbank.org/html/dec/Publications/Workpapers/wps2000series/wps2111/wps2111.pdf>.
Kahn, H 1970, The Emerging Japanese Super-state, Lowe & Brydon, London.
Otake, M & Haring, D G 1953, ‘Japan looks back on the Occupation’, Far Eastern Survey, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 26-32.
Passin, H 1992, 'The Occupation – some reflections', in C Gluck & S R Graubard (eds), Showa: The Japan of Hirohito, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, pp. 107-131.
Pyle, K B 1996, The Making of Modern Japan, D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington.
Seidensticker, E 1992, 'How they looked at us', in C Gluck & S R Graubard (eds), Showa: The Japan of Hirohito, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, pp. 279-299.
Smith, D B 1995, Japan Since 1945: The Rise of an Economic Superpower, Macmillan Press, London.
Tupper, E & McReynolds, G 1937, Japan in American Public Opinion, Macmillan, New York.