Chapter Twelve: Survey of Postwar Japan
The Years of Postwar Recovery: 1946-1969
(Photographs of the immediate postwar situation: #Emphasis on U.S. military personnel#; #Posters from occupied Japan#)
Japan had been at war since 1937 (or 1931, depending on your definition). When the fighting ended in August 1945, the country was economically and psychologically exhausted. Most parts of most major cities were in ruins from years of bombing, and Japan's industrial capacity was but a small fraction of its peak prewar level. Many urban residents had been forced to flee to the countryside for safety, and these people began moving back to the cities--or what was left of them. And a much greater human logistical problem loomed. Japan's far-flung empire collapsed with millions of military and civilian personnel stranded overseas in places like Korea, China, and parts of Southeast Asia. Among these people were large numbers of settlers, who, since the 1930s, had been encouraged to set up residence in Manchuria, Taiwan, and other parts of the empire. All of these millions had to be shipped back to a war-torn land that could ill afford to absorb them. This repatriation process took years to complete.
In the home islands, the social fabric generally held together, but only barely. Crime increased, and a vast black market soon sprung up to supply the things (at a much higher price, of course) that regular, controlled channels could not. For most Japanese surviving from day-to-day was the main goal, and just getting something to eat was a struggle. Compared with the 1930s, per capita calorie consumptions levels in the late 1940s were much lower. The majority of the population was hungry, though mass starvation was averted in part because of food shipments from the United States. Shelter was also in short supply, and most families lived in severely cramped conditions. Some went homeless for years sleeping wherever they could in the ruins of the cities. Jobs, too, especially good ones, were a rare commodity. There was no magic formula or program to bring about economic and social recovery. It was a slow, painful, gradual process.
In terms of overall governance, General Douglas MacArthur was the highest authority. Strictly speaking, he answered to a council consisting of representatives from all of the countries allied on the fight against Japan, but in fact the occupation was run by the United States alone. Under MacArthur was a military and civilian staff of American personnel (with a small number of British and Australians) who oversaw various aspects of the occupation and recovery of Japan. These foreigners, however, were relatively few in number, and they conducted their operations mainly in English. The actual day-to-day governing of Japan, therefore, was done by the same organs of government that existed before and during the war. In other words, MacArther governed Japan through Japanese proxies.
The most important such proxy was the emperor. Japan's surrender was unconditional, and there was grave concern among Japanese government leaders that the American occupiers would want to abolish the imperial institution. There was good reason for such concern. Japan's emperor had been savagely vilified in allied propaganda for years, and Japan's people were often portrayed as slavishly "worshipping" a "god-like" emperor (thus conjuring up various images of blasphemy, idolatry, and fetishism among western consumers of such portrayals). But this same wartime imagery also tended to build up an aura of mystery around Hitohito, making him larger than life in many American eyes. And there was, and is, a strong yearning among many Americans for monarchy (e.g., obsession with British monarchy or, in more recent decades, with the Kennedy family). MacArthur seemed personally to be drawn to the aura of Japanese royalty, and, in any case, he had a more practical rationale for keeping the emperor on the throne: doing so would make the task of occupying Japan easier and less costly for the United States. The emperor, in other words, could be used like a puppet, as is suggested by this *famous photograph* of MacArthur towering over a stiff and awkward emperor at their first formal meeting. But, to continue the puppet metaphor, the manipulation went both ways, and the emperor and his advisors soon began to portray themselves as peace-loving victims of militarism. MacArthur vigorously endorsed this view of Japan's emperor as a peace-loving, passive monarch caught up in the grip of evil militarists and made sure that Hirohito would face no prosecution for his role in the war. As you might imagine, the actual situating was much more complex. For an excellent analysis of these and related matters, see the relevant chapters in John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (which, in my view, offers a more balanced analysis than does Herbert Bix's book on Hirohito). Study this *photo gallery* about Hirohito.
In terms of cold economic statistics, Japan recovered to prewar levels of productivity and general living standards around 1956. The U.S. Occupation ended in April 1952. Psychologically, the "postwar" era never completely ended. When Emperor Hirohito died in 1988, many commentators hastened to declare the "postwar" era as definitively over, but war-related issues, especially questions concerning war interpretation and memory continue to occupy a significant place in Japanese public discourse even in the twenty-first century.
During its first few years, the U.S. occupation of Japan encouraged a significant degree of political freedom. Political prisoners, for example, were released from custody, and labor unions were permitted to flourish. Marxism and socialism, which had been vigorously suppressed, reasserted themselves as political forces. Those identified as "militarists" were purged form public life (although nearly all returned after the occupation ended), and undemocratic messages in school textbooks were censored. Indeed, censorship was a major occupation activity, as MacArthur's experts attempted to "democratize" Japan from the top down. To what extent they may have sensed the irony in this venture at the time is hard to say. After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, however, the occupation took what is often called a "reverse course." It clamped down on certain forms of political dissent (it was back to prison for some for some of the previously-released political prisoners) and on militant labor unionism. By the time the occupation ended two years later, Japan's government was more democratic than it had been before the war, but it was essentially conservative and authoritarian. And it was run by many of the same people who had been active during the war years. Assessing the legacy of the U.S. occupation is a complex task, and the best single source is John Dower's book mentioned above.
In the economic realm, despite widespread tensions between labor and management, Japan's economy grew vigorously from about 1950 onward. The Korean War initiated this process, pushing Japan's industry into high gear to supply goods for export. Economic growth proceeded at a rapid pace throughout most of the 1950s and 60s. In these years, it became common for Japanese men to put in long hours on the job, giving rise to a stereotypical image of Japan as a nation of fanatical workers--an image that lasted into the 1990s. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics was also a major boost to Japan's roaring economy. Indeed, this event is often cited as a milestone marking the true point of recovery form the wartime trauma.
With respect to its foreign relations, Japan allied itself closely with the United States. As soon as the occupation officially ended, a U.S.-Japan security treaty came into force, within which Japan relies mainly on the United States for defense. Under U.S. pressure to re-arm during the 1950s, Japan created a "Self Defense Force." The main reason for this euphemistic name is that Japan's constitution (written by MacArthur's staff) renounces war and forbids the maintenance of military forces. Confused? In other words, MacArthur, dismayed at the slow pace and lack of zeal for constitutional revision on the part of Japanese officials, directed his staff to write a new constitution. With only minimal tweaking, it was this constitution that Japan formally adopted in 1947, and it has yet to be amended even once (#text of the constitution#). Article Nine of this constitution states:
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 means of settling international disputes. 2) 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 of the state will not be recognized.
This article would seem to preclude military forces, but, following the rise of Mao's China in 1949 and the Korean War in 1950, the United States sought to make Japan into a major Cold War ally. Part of this process was repeated official U.S. urging that Japan re-arm in a substantial way. Citing Article Nine, Japan demurred, realizing that it could use U.S. power for its defense and would thus be free to devote all its resources to economic growth. Japan's government did, however, create a modest military force, claiming that the constitution did not prohibit self defense. In recent decades, this force has grown in size and sophistication. Japan is still formally allied with the United States and hosts several major U.S. military bases. Since the 1980s, however, it has increasingly pursued foreign policy independent of Washington. (#Japan Self Defense Agency#)
As Japan moved into the 1970s, the furious pace of economic growth slowed. Indeed, several "oil shocks" in the early 1970s caused considerable unease, as many commentators and ordinary people began to wonder about the long-term viability of Japan's economy. Although the sharp rise in oil prices of the early 1970s did temporarily put the brakes on Japan's economic growth, by the middle of the decade, the economy was back on a steady upward course. Growth in these years was not as dramatic as in the previous decade, but it was still substantial. Under guidance by quasi-governmental agencies, Japanese industries tended to move into high technology areas in which intellectual capital could be applied to add value to the manufacturing process. It was in the 1970s that Japan became the world leader in consumer electronics and also expanded its share of the worldwide automobile market. The 1970s was a time of relative economic stagnation in the United States, Japan's main trading partner. One result of these factors was an increasing degree of trade friction as the 1970s drew to a close.
Another development of the 1970s, difficult to quantify in precise terms, was a general increase in confidence. There was a surge of popular books in which various authors sought to explain the remarkable success of Japan's economy in cultural terms. Some of these books, such as Tsunoda Tadanobu's The Japanese Brian (Nihonjin no nō 日本人の脳, originally published in 1978), became best sellers. As this literature on (allegedly) distinctive Japanese cultural characteristics accumulated, it gradually became recognized as a formal genre, with the name "nihonjinron 日本人論," meaning roughly "theories of Japanese distinctiveness." By the end of the 1970s, a booming market for such literature had developed. Most nihonjinron authors were Japanese, but there was no shortage of foreigners ready to proffer a variety of theories. Especially popular, as you might guess, were books extolling Japan's excellence. Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One: Lessons for America, which came out in 1979, is one example. But nihonjinron books did not always laud Japan in the obvious manner of Japan as Number One. Instead, what they all had in common was: 1) a base assumption "the Japanese" were radically and fundamentally different from any other group of people; and 2) a relatively simple theory explaining the origins of this difference. Nihonjinron was (and is--see, for example, this recent revival of Tsunoda's dubious claim of a #distinctive Japanese brain#) an exercise in cultural nationalism, and it flourished in large part because of Orientalism. In other words foreigners looking at Japan badly wanted to see that which was strange, exotic, and different, and scholars were just as susceptible to such Orientalist desires as anyone else. (You might want to read #this critical essay# on nihonjinron by Gregory Shepherd.) Much of the nihonjinron literature follows a classically racist pattern of thinking in which it is assumed that distinctive cultural traits must originate or reside in some sort of distinctive physiological makeup. Although there is much less interest in Japanese distinctiveness now that its economy appears to be subject to the same ups and downs as that of any other country, nihonjinron-influenced thinking is still common whenever Japan is discussed.
During the 1980s, Japan's economy seemed invincible, and "Japan bashing" of one sort or another became quite fashionable. Auto workers in Detroit, for example dramatically smashed an old Toyota car with baseball bats and other objects. American officials began to whine that Japanese worked too hard and that doing so constituted an unfair trade practice. Americans everywhere began to talk about Japan's economic "invasion" of America, especially after Japanese companies began buying up famous properties in the United States. The view from Japan looking at the United States tended to be that of a country past its prime, whose people had grown lazy and arrogant. Jokes and cartoons abounded in Japan whose punch lines depended on images of shoddy American workmanship or laziness. For example, two billboard painters are shown taking a nap on the scaffold, the billboard only half finished. But enough of it is finished that one can see the main message: "Buy American!" A prominent member of Japan's parliament publicly described American workers as lazy and illiterate, and a prime minister made remarks to the effect that the average intelligence level in Japan exceeded that of the United States owing to and influx undesirable immigrants. All the while Japan's stock market soared and Japanese businesses rushed to invest their new-found wealth in real estate and other ventures.
Looking back on this time, we can now see clearly that it was a classic bubble (which is the common term in Japan as well). The bubble burst around 1990, and the country is still struggling to recover.
The Recession Years: 1990-Present (2002)
Around the mid 1990s the reality began to sink in that Japan was no longer the economic superpower it had been (or had seemed to be) during the 1970s and 80s. It was still the world's second largest economy and thus a major force in the world, but its stock market had crashed, several major corporations had gone into bankruptcy or were facing such a prospect, multiple scandals rocked the political and economic realms, and companies were desperate to unload all that foreign real estate they had been buying up during the booming 80s. The job market had become increasingly tight as well, resulting in a generally heightened sense of anxiety about job security throughout society. Indeed, Japan's situation in the early and mid 90s much resembles that of the post-boom United States of 2002.
The causes of this lengthy period of economic recession are numerous, and we need not try to enumerate them here. Clearly, however, what many people liked to call "Japan, Inc." in the 80s had stopped working, or at least it has stopped working well. The basic structure of Japan's economy had changed little between the late 1940s and the early 1990s. "Japan, Inc." was basically the postwar semi-capitalist, semi-centrally-controlled economy that had emerged from the U.S. occupation. Some of the characteristics of this system were de facto cartels consisting of major leaders in each industry, a terribly inefficient domestic distribution system, and a high degree of corporate indebtedness to banks. As time went on and the reality that something was wrong began to sink in, a rhetoric of fundamental reform began to be heard from the mouths of leaders of government and industry. Thus far, however, serious change has been slow to come, and many experts predict that the situation will have to get worse before it gets better.
But I do not mean to leave too negative an impression at the end. Today's Japan is a world leader in many technological and cultural areas, and most of its people enjoy a high standard of living. It will almost certainly pull out of its current economic difficulties and remain a major force in the world to come. (Indeed, as of 2006, it appears that Japan's economy making steady gains.)
