Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

The book’s final chapter discusses Japan’s economic recovery and the Cold War within the context of ending the formal American occupation. Initially, Americans assumed that their occupation would only take about three years. Lasting into 1952, the Japanese were tired of being managed by a foreign power, which “had begun to be regarded as just one more interest group in a crowded Japanese political landscape” (525). Furthermore, as the American rule turned increasingly anti-Left, they began to be associated with right-wing elements, some of which had a direct relationship to militarism and war. The Americans even dropped charges against some arrested for war crimes. Dower calls this phenomenon “de-purging,” while the political Left, in the context of the Cold War, was being purged (525). The Japanese media referred to a course reversal in light of these events, wondering whether a true democracy was even possible.

Cold-War developments, “in which the former Allied powers appeared to be at each other’s and everybody else’s throats,” made peace seem temporary (527). It was these developments that, in part, allowed the Japanese to participate in the some industries that had direct military purposes even after the end of the Korean War (1953). American procurements invigorated most sectors of industry: metals, machine oils, fossil fuels, automobile production, certain raw materials, medicine, building materials, clothing, lumber, and even tobacco. Direct military production for the Americans included light weapons, napalm bombs, and ammunition, “although in theory such manufactures were still proscribed” (541). There were also the so-called special procurements by the Americans that extended to services for Americans fighting wars: “Up to this point, of course, Japanese workers had been told in no uncertain terms that they were never again to employ their skills for such direct military purposes” (541). After the Korean War, Americans continued using “new special procurements” amounting to $1.75 billion between 1954 and 1956.

These were not the only industries on the rise. Japan’s auto industry, for instance, was helped by American business. Toyota’s production increased by 40% at this time. There was also a “consumer boom” of various products—from affordable items like clothing to at-home appliances and luxury cameras. Food consumption reached prewar levels: “This was a new world indeed. ‘Production prostration’ and the ‘bamboo-shoot existence’ seemed to belong to a different era” (543).

City banks such as Sanwa, Mitsubishi, Fuji, Mitsui, Sumimoto, and Daichi, held a significant extent of economic power. Dower calls this phenomenon the “represented reclusterings or reconfigurations of the old zaibatsu” (545)—family run-conglomerates. However, much of the economy stayed outside of these corporations, which meant that the situation was not identical to the past—“presurrender Japan redux” (545). These keiretsu groups—interconnected companies—differed in crucial ways from the family-controlled zaibatsu. For instance, the new structures were horizontal, and hereditary influences were no longer dominant.

Dower concludes that the American occupation was meant to establish a true democracy but ended up forming bureaucratism specifically in the realm of economics: “This occupation-era structure, jerry built on the presurrender state’s own ponderous wartime bureaucracy, was shrewdly perpetuated by the Japanese to protect their new capitalism after 1952” (546).