a rosy postwar scenario, now and then

[Taro Toporific]

The occupation of Japan--evoked frequently by US policy-makers ...
Sunday May 11, 2003, The Free Lance-Star Fredericksburg, Va.
...The occupation lasted more than 61/2 years, almost twice as long as the Pacific war itself. And today, a half-century later, U.S. forces are still there--overwhelmingly and abrasively in Okinawa, and less blatantly throughout the rest of the Japanese archipelago.
If the occupation of Japan offers any lesson for the present situation in Iraq, it is probably this spectacle of interminable entanglement....
...the occupation of Japan--evoked so frequently these days by American policy-makers and pundits desperate for a rosy postwar scenario--offers little that might be taken as a model for what to expect in Iraq.

[cstaylor]

Under Gen. MacArthur, the Americans introduced a sweeping agenda of reforms. The centerpiece of these was a new constitution that established popular sovereignty, relegated the emperor to the status of "symbol," and guaranteed a truly progressive range of civil rights including gender equality. The fact that the Japanese had seriously experimented with the forms and ideals of civil society before the militarists assumed power in the 1930s made people all the more receptive to such "democratization." Iraq has no comparable historical engagement with democracy.

If he's talking about the Meiji Constitution (loosely based on the pre WW-I German constitution), that's a laugh. I wish these so-called editorialists would go and actually READ the history instead of print hearsay like:

Until the Cold War intervened, trust-busting and diversification of corporate shareholding was another occupation priority. Even the conservative MacArthur joined in, arguing that the concentration of wealth in the hands of the zaibatsu oligopolies was both feudalistic and a form of "socialism in private hands." Economic democratization was also promoted by creating a tax structure that bore more heavily on the rich.

If he knew anything about MacArthur's personal views on social equality, he would have known that the man was anything but conservative. This is the man who did not demonize the communist Huks of the Phillipines, but identified with their struggle. Instead of turning the guns on the communists in Japan (like the Japan secret police did after the Peace Preservation law was passed), he met many of their legitimate grievances because it was the right thing to do. Even though the U.S. had only given women the right to vote 20 years previous, MacArthur pushed heavily for equal rights for women in Japan. Wasn't this the Yoshida that, when asked to pen a new constitution for Japan, came back with a lamely reworded Meiji constitution, and under threat of removal by MacArthur and the urging of Showa Tenno, reluctantly accepted to elevate some of the rights of women?

Sorry, but I don't hold many of these Japanese politicians in high regard. They're damn lucky that their foolish attempt to gain Soviet oil and support failed, and that the war ended before troops could force their way into Hokkaido and Honshu.