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 The
Showa Emperor’s surrender speech was broadcast over the radio airwaves
on August 15, 1945, and on August 28, a few days before the formal
surrender ceremonies were conducted aboard the battleship Missouri
on September 2, the first small advance party of what would eventually
become an Allied occupation force reaching up to a quarter million
persons touched down in a C-47 transport plane at an airport outside
Tokyo. These first Allied arrivals were uncertain what sort of
reception they might encounter. ... Many Japanese were relieved that
the war was finally over, but many were also, understandably,
apprehensive. With relatively few exceptions, however, the arriving
Allied forces were treated with respect and even privilege — until
1951, for example, the Japanese government provided occupation
authorities with free servants — whereas the occupation authorities,
for their part, behaved with magnamity toward their defeated foes. ...
In retrospect, the usual verdict is that the postwar Allied occupation
of Japan was an overall great success. (HEA, 311)
Although
it is referred to as an “Allied” occupation, it was overwhelmingly
really an American affair. ... A multinational Far Eastern Commission
was eventually established in Washington, DC, and a four-power Allied
Council for Japan was sent to Tokyo, which included British, Chinese,
and Soviet representatives, but a single, unified, Supreme Commander
for the Allied Powers (SCAP) was appointed to actively supervise the
entire region. The officer assigned this command was the senior
American general Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), who set up his
headquarters in the Daiichi building in Tokyo at the end of August
1945. ...
At the time of Japan’s surrender, American opinion was
seriously divided over the question of how completely Japan would have
to be forcibly reconstructed so that it would never again be a threat
to world peace. Some felt that the old militaristic Japan would have to
be almost entirely obliterated and a great many of the Allies felt that
Japan should quite properly be punished for its wartime aggression. ...
Many felt that the individual most responsible for the war in the
Pacific had been the Japanese emperor himself. The U.S. Senate passed a
resolution in 1945 calling for the emperor also to be tried as a war
criminal. In January 1946, however, General MacArthur cabled
Washington from Tokyo with a forceful assertion of the idea that
putting the emperor on trial for war crimes would be counterproductive,
and would probably even provoke guerilla warfare against the Allied
occupation. A plausible argument could be made that the emperor of
Japan had always been more a symbol of the nation than an active ruler;
that the emperor’s individual responsibility for specific government
policies, including military action, had been limited; and that,
precisely as a symbol of Japan, the prestige of the throne could be
wielded now in the cause of peace and stability just as easily as it
previously had been used for war. In the end, MacArthur’s position
prevailed. Not only was the institution of the emperor preserved, but
the same wartime Showa Emperor (Hirohito) was allowed to remain seated
on the chrysanthemum throne, and the question of his war guilt was
largely forgotten. (HEA, 311-3)
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The Question of Divinity
Emperor Hirohito: New Year’s Day, 1946
We stand by the people and we wish
always to
share with them in their moment of joys and sorrows. The ties
between us and our people have always stood upon mutual trust and
affection. They do not depend upon mere legends and
myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the
Emperor is
divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races and
fated to rule the world. (Japan: A Documentary History, 467)
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Emperor Not Guilty of War Crimes
MacArthur’s Telegram to Chief of Staff Eisenhower
January 25, 1946
Investigation has been conducted here under the
limitation set forth with reference to possible criminal actions
against the Emperor. No specific and tangible evidence has been
uncovered with regard to his exact activities, which might connect him
in varying degree with the political decisions of the Japanese Empire
during the last decade. I have gained the definite impression
from as complete a research as was possible to me that his connection
with affairs of state up to the time of the end of the war was largely
ministerial and automatically responsive to the advice of his
councilors. There are those who believe that even had he positive
ideas it would have been quite possible that any effort on his part to
thwart the current of public opinion controlled and represented by the
dominant military clique would have placed him in actual jeopardy. (Japan: A Documentary History, 467-8)
 Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents,
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in
lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor’s impact on
the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito’s interactions with his
advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the
causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War
in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation’s
increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the
emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as
witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong,
decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover
of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately
the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In
fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the
horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet
entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation.
From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese
leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by
whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness
of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito’s
alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and
shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a
figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation.
Their partnership ensured that the emperor’s image would loom large over
the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in
the modern age and struggled — as it still does — to come to terms
with its past. (Pulitzer Prize) |
Was the Showa Emperor (Hirohito) Guilty?
Did MacArthur Make the Right Decision?
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Not
content with specific new laws of policies, a conviction began to grow
that Japan needed an entirely new constitution to replace the
nineteenth-century Meiji era document. Since official Japanese
proposals for constitutional revision did not go far enough to suit the
occupation authorities (whereas some unofficial Japanese proposals went
too far, threatening, for example, to eliminate the emperor), the
Americans stepped in and wrote the new constitution themselves,
originally in English. ... After a few revisions, this new constitution
was approved by the Japanese Diet in November 1946 and took effect in
May 1947. It is still in effect today.
Although,
to a large
extent, the Japanese emperor had really always only been something of a
figurehead, his once theoretically supreme authority was now officially
reduced in the new constitution to being merely a “symbol of the
State.” Sovereign power was now vested, instead, in “the people.” ...
The most remarkable feature of Japan’s postwar constitution is
undoubtedly Article 9, which asserts that “the Japanese people forever
renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation” and flatly states that
military forces “will never be maintained.” This seems to have
originally been MacArthur’s idea, and is entirely in keeping with the
initial concern of the occupation authorities to prevent Japan from
ever again becoming a threat to world peace. Ironically, however, many
Americans soon began to regret this sweeping degree of Japanese
demilitarization, as Japan quickly turned from being an enemy during
World War II into an important American ally in the Cold War against
communism.
MacArthur
himself helped Japan create a new police reserve, which later became
the Self-Defense Forces. Eventually, Japan came to invest fairly
heavily in self-defense capability. Nevertheless, many Japanese
sincerely felt deep revulsion against the militarism that had led them
to disaster in 1945, and postwar Japan has genuinely long remained an
almost uniquely pacifistic country. Today, however, as many Japanese
are increasingly worried by the dramatic rise of Chinese power, the
current LDP prime minister Abe Shinzo
(1954-; prime minster 2012-), a relatively conservative nationalist,
would like to at least modestly revise the constitutional restrictions
on military activity. This is, perhaps, an indication that the post-WW
II era may finally be coming to an end in Japan. (HEA, 314-6)
Article
9, the renunciation of war clause, provided yet another
challenge. It was not clear if the language permitted Japan the
right of self-defense. In the summer of 1946, a subcommittee
consisting of fourteen persons debated the language of the constitution
article by article. ... The Ashida subcommittee’s “amendment” [i.e. the words “In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph”, which
“made room for rearmament for defensive purposes” and allowed Japan “to
participate in UN peacekeeping operations”] was
approved by the plenary
session of the House of Representatives on August 24, 1946. ... For Many
years, Japanese constitutional scholars and politicians debated whether
the Ashida amendment gave Japan the right to rearm, and whether the
self-defense forces were consistent with the provisions of Article 9. (Japan: A Documentary History, 470)
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Chapter II
Renunciation of War
ARTICLE
9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on
justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a
sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means
of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of
the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other
war potential, will never be maintained. The right of
belligerency [i.e. engaging in war] of the state will not be recognized. (Japan: A Documentary History, 472)
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Was it a good idea to include this clause in the post-war constitution?
&
Do you think that this clause is still important, or should the Japanese constitution be amended?
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Economic Recovery For
many people in Japan, the first winter after the end of World War II
was the hardest. As a result of wartime firebombing, millions of
persons were homeless and obliged to sleep in subway stations or
whatever other improvised shelter they could find. Industrial
production stood at a fraction of its prewar levels, and some five
million Japanese were unemployed. Japan recovered only very slowly from
this devastation. Recovery had scarcely even begun by the end of the
occupation. Real per capita gross national product (GNP)
in Japan did not regain its pre-World War II level until 1953. The
difficulty of Japan’s economic recovery was compounded by the almost
complete lack of industrial raw materials in the home islands. The
outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 — during the fighting of which
United Nations forces used Japan for invaluable forward bases — sparked
a minor boom in the Japanese economy, but it would not be until the end
of the 1950s that the Japanese economy really took off. (HEA, 317)
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The Economic
Miracle
& Subsequent Stagnation
 From
1955 until 1973, ... the average annual growth in Japan’s GNP exceeded
10 percent. In two decades, from 1950 to 1970, Japan’s GNP multiplied
some twenty times. By 1968, Japan had passed West Germany to become the
world’s third largest economy. At the same time, the industrial sector
of Japan’s economy finally became one of the most developed on earth.
In the 1950s, for consumers in America, the label “made in Japan” had
still frequently been perceived as synonymous with “cheap.” But Japan
moved swiftly from its initial base in textiles and other light
industries to more advanced consumer electronics. The transistor, for
example, was invented by the American Bell Laboratories in 1948, and
during the 1950s Japan’s Sony Corporation adapted this new technology
to create a whole new generation of lightweight portable radios. As a
result, Japan soon dominated the world market for transistor radios.
Not content to stop there, Japanese corporations moved on to become
major producers of ever larger and more sophisticated products. The
first Japanese-exported Toyota Toyopet automobiles were unloaded in th
United States in 1957. By 1981, Japan had become the world’s largest
automaker and an authentic global economic superpower. (HEA, 317)
From Zaibatsu...
...to Keiretsu
[By the 1970s, the Japanese economy was dominated by well-established companies such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui — the world’s oldest major company.] The names were old, but they now designated a new kind
of enterprise grouping consisting of affiliated companies (keiretsu)
rather than the family-centered zaibatsu
of the prewar period. Each group included a bank, likely an insurance company, a real estate firm, and a
cluster of companies engaged in every conceivable line of business,
where its main competitor was most frequently a member of a rival
group. The activities of the various member firms of each group
were coordinated in periodic meetings of their presidents in
presidents’ clubs. Interlocking directorships, mutual stock
holdings, and internal financing further held the organizations together,
although more loosely than in the old zaibatsu. ...
The keiretsu grew in size and strength until in the mid-1970s a study by Japan’s Fair
Trade Commission found that the six major groupings, composed of 175
core companies, held 21.9 percent of all the capital in Japan and had a
controlling interest in another 3095 corporations that held 26.1
percent of the nation’s capital. In addition, there were their
substantial investments in other companies that they influenced without
controlling. (A Brief History of Japanese Civilization, 269)
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Japan Incorporated
The Employer/Employee Relationship
In
the very largest firms, employees fell into three categories. At
the
top was management, largely recruited from university graduates. A
man ... would enter the company with others of his age, expecting to be
promoted along with them in accordance with seniority, providing he was
suitably conscientious and his health did not break down. The
least
able would gradually be hived off into less prestigious
appointments.
The most able could hope eventually to reach the very peak, since
family ownership was rare. The price to be paid was hard work,
measured by hours spent in the office, and unremitting loyalty, in
return for which the ‘salaryman’ received what was by Western standards
a small monthly wage but a fairly generous expense account.
In the next lowest category were
the company’s regular ‘permanent’ workers, rather less well educated,
but not marked off by
any obvious status symbols. Pay was good, as was in-job
training. There was a high degree of security of employment, made financially
possible by a flexible bonus system, plus a willingness on the part of
both employer and employee to resort to job changes and re-training,
rather than dismissals, when times were hard. Not infrequently
there
were company housing, company health and pension schemes, and company
holidays. Not many of these benefits extended to the lowest
cohort,
the temporary workers, who were also the people most likely to lose
their jobs in a recession. (The Rise of Modern Japan, 256)
 An employee’s
point of entry into the system, as into the government
bureaucracy, was determined by education,  which gave the majority of
Japanese an interest in ensuring that their children went as far as
possible up the educational ladder and attended the best possible
schools. This was particularly so, because educational attainment
was
measured by the reputation of the school or university, rather than by
the individual’s prowess in it. ... It is not surprising, therefore, that
there was fierce competition to get into those of the highest
reputation; and since this entailed passing entrance examinations, the
result was an annual ‘examination hell’. What is more, the best
schools afforded the best preparation for entry to the best universities, so the struggle extended downwards through the
system. A
survey published in 1988 showed that of a sample of Tokyo children in
their last year of elementary school, three-quarters attended cramming
schools (juku) during the
summer vacation. One in four of these did so every day. (The Rise of Modern Japan, 257-8)
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Japanese companies provided varied
services and
facilities
for their employees, including company dormitories for the
unmarried.
There were company athletic teams and a host of recreational
activities, such as organized outings to mountain retreats. These
were
intended not only to
foster the health and well-being of the employees
but also to strengthen feelings of group solidarity and identification
with the sponsoring firm, which used them to convey an image of
paternalistic solicitude. At Toyota, Japan’s leading automobile
manufacturer, white-collar men received an entire year of training,
including a month in a company camp. Recruitment patterns that centered
on certain universities, encouraging ties among men entering a company
in the same year; an emphasis on longevity in promotions; the practice
of extensive consultation; and a strong preference for decision by
consensus all helped foster management solidarity.
| Japanese
companies, especially the large
modern concerns, mostly retained the loyalty of their employees, who
were made
to feel that what was best for the company was also best for
Japan. This business ideology gained credence from management’s
practice of
plowing earnings back into the firm so that it could continue to grow
and hopefully surpass its rivals. ... [M]anagement was able to get
workers to agree to moderate wage increases and fringe benefits. The
threat of foreign competition was also used effectively, and for years
Japanese companies enjoyed a lower labor bill and more labor peace than
many of their competitors in Europe and America. The quest for economic
growth gave Japan a sense of national purpose even as it promised an
improved standard of living for the people. (A Brief History of Japanese Civilization, 269-70) |
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The government fostered growth by establishing
a political climate favorable to economic expansion, by investing in
infrastructure, by adopting
appropriate fiscal and monetary policies, and by setting production
targets, assigning priorities, and generally orchestrating the
economy. ... Although the Construction Ministry controlled the bulk of
infrastructure spending, the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of
International Trade and
Industry (MITI) coordinated economic growth. The importance of MITI
[reorganized as METI in 2001] reflected the
crucial role of foreign trade in Japan’s economy and the
determination
of the government to oversee the country’s economic and
political relations with other countries. By deploying foreign
exchange allocations, manipulating quotas, and establishing barriers
protecting native capital from foreign competition, the government
channeled the flow of investment funds. It could also extend or deny
tax privileges. It
thus had at its disposal a variety of weapons to bring recalcitrant
firms into line if persuasion, pressures, or both failed. Generally,
it preferred to rely on discussion and to act as much as
possible on the basis of a shared government-business
consensus. ...
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Export
Success!!!
Japanese growth [in the boom years 1960 to 1970]
was export-oriented in ways that had not been envisaged under the
defense agreements with the United States. In particular, export
success no longer depended on industries having lower wage rates than
their competitors, which would have implied making low-priced goods for
underdeveloped areas, but on those whose efficiency was great, honed by
competition in the market at home. (The Rise of Modern Japan, 248)
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In the later 1970s and 1980s, Japan’s emphasis on
high technology led to a decrease in dependence on imported raw
materials. By 1984, Japan had reduced its use of imported raw
material per unit of manufacture to 60 percent less than it had been
twenty years earlier. This change also positioned Japan to
compete with the emerging economies of such neighbors as Korea and
Taiwan. Encouragement was given
[to] electronics, telecommunications, biochemicals, and machine
tools. (A Brief History of Japanese Civilization, 274)
Other Factors in Japan’s Success
The question of how Japan managed to recover from
its complete
economic
collapse at the end of WWII to become one of the most important
economies
in the world has been studied in great detail by many authors. In
his book on Japan’s influential role in the Industrialization of East
Asian, Ezra F. Vogel
provides a significantly different set of factors that contributed to
Japan’s success, which may be summarized as follows:
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(i) U.S. Aid: Due in large part
to
concern about
the spread
of communism in Russia, China, North Korea and Vietnam, America (and to
some extent other members of the Allied Forces) provided technological
and economic experts to train their Japanese counterparts.
(ii) Destruction of the Old Order: With
the pre-War
military
and political factions thoroughly discredited, the new political
leaders
could make policy decisions without considering the interests of the
pre-War
elites.
(iii) Urgency of the Political and Economic
Crisis: As
with
the beginning of the Meiji period, the sense of urgency associated with
rebuilding the economy in order to preserve the national interest
helped
to galvanize support at all levels of society for the self-sacrifices
that
were necessary to restore and indeed surpass the level of development
that
had been attained up to WWII.
(iv) Eager and Plentiful Labor Force: After
the
war, 6 million
soldiers and civilians returned from Japan’s overseas colonies and
“spheres
of interest”; with such a large workforce in need of
employment,
the cost of production was very low, allowing Japan to produce goods
which
could effectively compete on the international market.
(v) Confucian Ethic: A final
factor was
the cultural
force of
Confucian ethics, which supported the principle of sacrificing the
needs
of the individual for the greater needs of the collective. (cf. The Four Little Dragons, 83-112)
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Trading Places
While some Americans looked to the Japanese model
for possible lessons, other Americans simply felt that the playing
field was unfairly skewed against them. Japan, it was alleged, was
practicing predatory neo-mercantilist, or protectionist, trade
policies. Though the United States had for decades provided Japan with
military protection and free access to the American consumer market,
Japan supposedly had not reciprocated by opening its own domestic
market to foreign products. The 1980s became a decade of often highly
emotionally charged trade wars between Japan and its leading allies.
Tensions between Japan and the United States were reflected in book
such as Clyde Prestowitz’s Trading Places: How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead, with its disturbing first chapter title: “The End of the American Century.” (HEA, 321) |
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The Bubble Bursts
The
Japanese had good reason to feel somewhat self-satisfied by the late
1980s. A new era literally began in 1989 with the death of the Showa
Emperor (Hirohito) in January, after a lengthy sixty-three-year reign.
The new emperor’s reign period is called Heisei, which means “achieving
peace.” This new era almost immediately encountered difficulties,
however. The 1985 Plaza Accord had sharply increased the exchange value
of the yen, but for a few years Japanese industry had been able to
successfully compensate for the increased relative cost of its exports
with accelerated investments. This, however, led to inflated asset
values and a bubble economy. The Japanese stock market soared, and real
estate prices reached fantastic levels. By the late 1980s, the land on
which the imperial palace stands in downtown Tokyo was equal in value
to all of California ....
Almost inevitably, these real estate and
stock market bubbles eventually burst. It happened in 1990. Commercial
real estate prices in Japan’s major cities fell by as much as 85
percent, and, as of 1992, the Nikkei stock index was down 60 percent
from its 1989 high. This left Japan with much excess industrial
capacity and enormous bad debts. By the early twenty-first century,
Japanese banks may have held as much as a hundred trillion yen in
problem debt, or nearly 20 percent of GDP. The former exhilarating
rates of economic growth seem unlikely now to ever return. Japan’s
quandary is that it can produce more than its own domestic market can
consume, and with the rise of new rival Asian manufacturing powers
(such as China) and the “hollowing” of Japan’s own manufacturing due to
the transfer of production overseas, export-led growth can no longer
generate the kind of dynamic expansion of the Japanese economy it once
did. (HEA, 322)
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