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Occupied Japan as History and Occupation History as Politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

John W. Dower
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Extract

For Western scholars, occupied Japan remains something of an anomaly: too remote (1945–1952) for most economists and political scientists, still uncomfortably close for historians. Americanists seem intimidated by the exotic hieroglyphics on the other side, while Japan specialists shy away in fear of losing their assumed thoroughbred image should their footnotes betray too much English. Buried under a veritable mountain of grist for research, as these two recent bibliographies attest, there is as yet no single scholarly overview of the subject in English. Such neglect is unfortunate, for the problems and potential insights involved are substantial.

Type
Recent Japan in Historical Revisionism
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1975

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References

1 Two collections, largely ignored by Western scholars, provide a point of entry into the nature of popular consciousness and “social movements” in presurrender Japan. Both consist of reports prepared within the Police Bureau of the Home Ministry (Keihokyōku, Naimushō), and are available in reprint editions. Shakai undō no jōkyo covers the period 19271942,Google Scholar while complementary monthly reports of the Special Higher Police, issued as Totkō geppō, cover 1930 to November 1944. These focus on dissident communist, proletarian, labor, agrarian, “cultural,” nationalistic, religious, and Korean movements, as well as general trends in popular morale.

2 Lattimore, Owen, Solution in Asia (New York, 1945).Google Scholar

3 On the U. S. side, “informal” pressure will entail examination of the role of the American Council on Japan (headed by Harry F. Kern, Eugene Doom an, and James Lee KaufTman); the petroleum cartels; key banks (especially National City Bank of New York, Chase National, and Bank of America); investment firms such as Dillon Read (and the role of William Draper in panic-ular); the Rockefeller interests; agricultural and textile lobbies; etc.

4 See the essays by Morley, James and Reischauer, Edwin in Morley, James, cd., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (Princeton, 1971).Google ScholarMills' essay, “The Professional Ideology of Social Pathologists,” appears in The American Sociological Review, XLIX, 2 (September 1943), pp. 165180.Google Scholar

5 Carr, E. H., What Is History? (London, 1964), p. 23.Google Scholar

6 For a massive (487 pp., triple-column), un-annotatcd, and somewhat unwieldy compilation of Japanese materials on the 1945–1952 period, which contains in the neighborhood of 20,000 entries, see the internal Ministry of Finance publication: Shitsu, Ōkurashō Sengo Zaisei Shi, ed., Sengo Nihon keizai bunken mokuroku: shūsen karakōw a made (March 1973);Google Scholar although oriented toward economic concerns, this contains lengthy sections on other occupation topics, as well as a 25-page section on Western materials. Japanese documents pertaining to the occupation and maintained in the Keizai Kikakuchō (Economic Planning Agency) arc listed in a series of topical internal bibliographic indices under the general title Sengo keizai seisaku shiryō. The Yoshida International Education Foundation is located at Room 502, Tokyo Tatemono Bldg., 3–7 Yaesu, Chōū-ku, Tokyo. For an English-language survey of indexed Japanese press collections, see Ward-Shulman entry 5. A valuable addition to general English bibliographies on this as well as both earlier and later periods is A Selected Bibliography on the Economic Development of Japan, issued in 1970 by the Institute of Developing Economies in Tokyo and including some 1,780 entries.

7 Among works neglected arc Hara Kaoru's monograph on the postwar inflation; Suzuki Takco's two early volumes on the Dodge Line; several of the official histories by business federations such as Keidanren and Keizai Dōyūkai; a variety of bank and industrial histories; postwar management histories such as Sengo keiei shi, edited by Honbu, Nihon Seisansei and published in 1965;Google Scholar Watanabe Tsuneo's small volume on the upper bureaucracy (Daijin); Kurokawa Toshio's Nihon no teichingin kōzō, a critical analysis of repressed labor scales; survey volumes by scholars such as Inoue Kiyoshi and Royama Masamichi; and several publications by former Prime Minister Yoshida. A valuable source published subsequent ro the Japanese bibliography is the massive, single-volume reproduction of newspapers issued by the more radical wing of the labor movement:Rōdō Junpōsha, comp., Fukkoku: Sanbetsu Kaigi-Zen-rōren kikan-shi (1973).Google ScholarFor Japanese survey histories of the petroleum industry which include sections on the occupation period—a timely and important research topic—sec Kaisha, Nihon Sekiyu Kabushiki, ed., Nihon sekiyū shi (1958);Google Scholarlinkai, Tōa Jūgo-nen Shi Hensan, ed., Tōa jūgo-nen shi (1956);Google Scholarand Sekiyu, Iguchi Tōsuke, volume II in Kenkyūkai, Gendai Nihon Sangyō Hattatsu Shi, ed., Gendai Nihon sangyō hattatsu shi (1963);Google Scholar the latter work includes a bibliography of Japanese and English sources. The most recent account of the period, a current best-seller in Japan, is Rinjirō, Sodei, Mac-Arthur no ni-sen nicki (1974).Google Scholar

8 The writings, for example, of Mark Gayn, Robert Textor, Owen Lattimore, Honor Tracy, Helen Mears, John Gunthcr, William Costello, Hes-sell Tiltman, Russell Brines, Harry Emerson Wildes, M. Hankey, Rahabinod Pal, Frank Reel, Hans Baerwald, Lawrence Hewes, T. A. Bisson, W. Mac-mahon Ball, William Sebald, Charles Willoughby, Courtney Whitney, Cordell Hull, James Byrnes, Edward Stcttinius, Jerome Cohen, Robert Fearey, Edwin Martin, Herbert Feis, Max BelofT, Edwin Reischauer, I. F. Stone, Rodger Swearingen and Paul Langer, and James Auer. Some manuscripts not available in English also have been published in Japanese, such as Nihon Smgunbi (1969) by Frank Kowalski, a former U.S. Army colonel in charge of recreating the Japanese military between 1950-1952. It might be noted in passing that Nihon senryō bunken mokuroku contains occasional errors in the transliteration of Western names.

9 Among neglected primary documents, it might be noted that many materials in the Dodge Papers and SCAP–s Economic and Scientific Section (ESS) explicidy place economic policy for Japan in the larger global context—a most important concern for future research. The projected remilitarization of the Japanese economy and its integration with South and Southeast Asia is also frankly summarized in three ESS volumes entitled Japan's In-dustrial Potential, issued in February and October, 1951, and February 1952. A formerly top-secret section of the Edwards Report (WS 1809) is now also available, and occasional insights into initial U.S. planning appear in various Civil Affairs Information Guides issued by the War Department in 1945 (not to be confused with the “Handbooks” cited in WS 235).

Among published but still essentially primary materials, note should be taken of the following: (I) National Security Council documents of December 1949 anD May 1951 dealing specifically with Japan and included in Book 8 of the govern-mEnt edition of the “Pentagon Papers” (Department of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967); (2) the 1951 Senate hearings which followed General MacArthur's dismissal (Committee on Armed Services and Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings, Military Situation in the Far East); (3) successive congressional hearings of 1950-1952, and after, on MSA policies (Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings, Mutual Security Act of [year]); (4) the incidental references to occupation policy and personnel which appear in the Senate inquisitions of 1951–1952 and 1957 concerning “communist” influence on U.S. policy (Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Institute of Pacific Relations [1951–1952] and Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States [1957]); (5) the 1960 Senate hearings on revision of the security treaty, which help illuminate the nature of the original pact (Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings, Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security with Japan).

Several useful primary and secondary sources published in English by the Japanese are also neglected, among them: Mitsubishi Economic Research Institute, ed., Sumitomo, Mitsui-Mitsubishi-: Present Status of the Former Zaibatsu Enterprises (1955);Google Scholar Mitsubishi Economic Research Bureau, comp., Monthly Circular (from around mid-1947); Bank of Japan, comp., Quarterly Review (1948 and 1949; thereafter Monthly Review); Foreign Capital Research Institute, comp., Japanese Industry after the War: Foreign Investment Possibilities (annual from 1950).

The following writings, some of recent date, also deserve note: Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation; My Years in the State Department (1969);Google ScholarKennan, George F., Memoirs, 1950–1963 (1972; especially chapter 3);Google ScholarBurton Sapin, “The Role of the Military in Formulating the Japanese Peace Treaty,” in Turner, Gordon B., ed., A History of Military Affairs since the Eighteenth Century (1956);Google ScholarSchonberger, Howard B., “Zaibatsu Dissolution and the American Restoration of Japan,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, V, 2 (September 1973);Google ScholarSchonberger, Howard B., “The General and the Presidency: Douglas MacArthur and the Election of 1948,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, LVH, 3 (Spring 1974);Google ScholarKosaka, Masataka, One Hundred Million Japanese: Their History since the War (1972);Google ScholarIriye, Akira, The Cold War in Asia: A Historical Introduction (1974);Google ScholarAuer, James E., The Postwar Rearmament of Japanese Maritime Forces, 1945–1971 (1973);Google ScholarHalHday, Jon and McCormack, Gavan, Japanese Imperialism Today (1972).Google Scholar

10 The excellent list of private papers in Ward-Shulman can be supplemented with the Dean Acheson papers, Harry S. Truman Library; Post-Presidential Files of Herbert Hoover, Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa; Richard L-G. Deverall papers, Catholic University, Washington, D.C.; William Veazie Pratt papers, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island; American Federation of Labor papers, State Historical Library, Madison, Wisconsin. I am indebted to Howard Schonberger for information concerning the last four of these collections.

11 SCAP records are classified as part of National Archives Record Group 331, and are in the custody of the General Archives Division (rather than Modern Military Records Division as cited in Ward-Shulman). They comprise 10,100 linear feet, and were never systematically indexed by SCAP, thus posing considerable difficulties of use. The bulk of these documents, which originated in SCAP, are under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Army, and as of June 1973 had been declassified as follows: Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 (160 feet); Civil Affairs Section (900 feet); Civil Communications Section (95 feet); Civil Historical Section (403 feet); Civil Information and Education Section (917 feet); Civil Property Custodian (1,408 feet); Civil Transportation Section (64 feet); Eco-nomic and Scientific Section (2,534 feet); Government Section (294 feet); Legal Section (1,261 feet); Judge Advocate Section (400 feet); Natural Resources Section (529 feet); Public Information Section (11 feet). All sections are under review by the Army, and it is estimated that eventually an average of less than five percent of material in each section will remain classified. Records of the Far Eastern Commission and State-War-Navy Coordinating Commission are in the custody of the Diplomatic Branch of the National Archives and Records Service. The former have been declassified regardless of date, and the latter through 1946. This information was kindly provided by James J. Hastings of the General Archives Division.

12 Pertinent ECAFE reports are found under Committee on Industry and Trade, ECAFE, Economic and Social Council, United Nations; sec in particular the working papers emanating from conferences at Singapore (October 1949), Bangkok (May 1950), Lahore (February 1951), and Rangoon (January 1952). Soviet materials available in English are quite well covered in Ward-Shul-man. Translations from the Chinese include such series as China Digest, Hsinhua News Agency, New China News Agency, and Survey of the Chinese Mainland Press. In addition, future researchers will also wish to examine the occupation from the point of view of other countries, particularly the Philippines, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain.