Six decades after the end of the occupation of mainland Japan, this volume approaches the theme of the occupation’s legacies. Rather than just being a matter of administrative practices and international relations, the consequences of the US occupation of Japan transcended both the seven years of its formal duration and the bilateral relations between the two countries. Rich with fresh analyses on a range of topics, including transnational and comparative views on the occupation, the influence of Japan on the United States as well as the reverse, international perspectives on this “odd couple”, and the memory of the occupation in both countries, this book provides a greater understanding of the transtemporal, transnational and transcultural legacies of one of the crucial events of the 20th century.

With expert contributions from both the US and Japan, this book examines the legacies of the US Occupation on Japanese politics and society, and discusses the long-term impact of the Occupation on contemporary Japan. Focusing on two central themes – democracy and the interplay of US-initiated reforms and Japan's endogenous drive for democratization and social justice – the contributors address key questions: How did the US authorities and the Japanese people define democracy? To what extent did America impose their notions of democracy on Japan? How far did the Japanese pursue impulses toward reform, rooted in their own history and values? Which reforms were readily accepted and internalized, and which were ultimately subverted by the Japanese as impositions from outside? These questions are tackled by exploring the dynamics of the reform process from the three perspectives of innovation, continuity and compromise, specifically determining the effect that this period made to Japanese social, economic, and political understanding. Critically examines previously unexplored issues that influenced postwar Japan such as the effect of labour and healthcare legislation, textbook revision, and minority policy. Illuminating contemporary Japan, its achievements, its potential and its quandaries, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese-US relations, Japanese history and Japanese politics.

Japan's success in charting a new course in the years following World War II stems from the reforming impetus of GHQ/SCAP, Headquarters of the American-led allied occupation that indirectly governed the nation for nearly seven years. This is the story of the reforms of the Occupation period and of the remarkable men and women, Japanese and American, who implemented them. Professor Takemae introduces material on the wartime origins of Occupation policies, the British Commonwealth Force, the Kurils, Okinawa the Korean minority, A-bomb survivors, war crimes, the Constitution Education, and Health and Welfare.

Whilst most facets of the Occupation of Japan have attracted much scholarly debate in recent decades, this is not the case with reforms relating to public health. The few studies of this subject largely follow the celebratory account of US-inspired advances, strongly associated with Crawford Sams, the key figure in the Occupation charged with carrying them out. This book tests the validity of this dominant narrative, interrogating its chief claims, exploring the influences acting on it, and critically examining the reform’s broader significance for the Occupation and its legacies for both Japan and the US. The book argues that rather than presiding over a revolution in public health, the Public Health and Welfare Section, headed by Sams, recommended methods of epidemic disease control and prevention that were already established in Japan and were not the innovations that they were often claimed to be. Where high incidence of such endemic diseases as dysentery and tuberculosis reflected serious socio-economic problems or deficiencies in sanitary infrastructure, little was done in practice to tackle the fundamental problems of poor water quality, the continued use of night soil as fertilizer and pervasive malnutrition. Improvements in these areas followed the trajectory of recovery, growth and rising prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s. This book will be important reading for anyone studying Japanese History, the History of Medicine, Public Health in Asia and Asian Social Policy.

Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the end of the American-led Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-52), The Allied Occupation of Japan is a sweeping history of the revolutionary reforms that transformed Japan and the remarkable men and women, American and Japanese, who implemented them.

No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order. The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions. Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.

This book presents an unforgettably honest account of the effects of World War II and the ensuing American occupation in Japan's Oita prefecture, from the perspective of the Japanese citizens who experienced it. Through harrowing firsthand accounts from more than forty Japanese men and women who lived in the region, we get a strikingly detailed picture of the dreadful experiences of wartime life in Japan. The interviewees are wide-ranging and include students, housewives, nurses, teachers, journalists, soldiers, sailors, Kamikaze pilots, and munitions factory workers. And their collective stories range from early, spirited support for the war on to more reflective later views in the wake of the devastating losses of friends and family members to air raids, and finally into periods of hunger and fear of the American occupiers. Detailed archival materials buttress the personal accounts, and the result is an unprecedented picture of the war as felt in a single region of Japan.