Effect of Japanese WWII Defeat & Allied Occupation

After World War II, Japan was vanquished, and what had been an imperialist economy was transformed into a capitalist system. The fact of that transformation was dominated by an internal shift from a defeated military empire into a superior force in international economics. Japanese politics stabilized as well, transforming from an imperialist police state to a government engaged in economic development and the conscious practice of stability. As was an occupied country after World War II, Japan was in theory subject to the whim of the occupying power. But in real terms, Japan appears to have developed economically in part because the American occupation was specifically and programmatically intended to help Japan rebuild. The rebuilding effort was well suited to the highly organized Japanese society, and Boyle (1993) points out that Allied efforts to rebuild Japan's economy were focused by Cold War rivalry and the need of the U.S. for an Asian ally after the Korean War and after mainland China's communist revolution. It can be argued, in retrospect, that this need made Japan's transformation into an international economic superpower decisive. As Boyle notes, the view of Japan as a vital ally against Asian communism "was

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occupation control, but in bringing the economy under mandated control, the Dodge line facilitated Japan's ability to take advantage of economic opportunities. Opportunities that emerged during the Korean War were institutionalized so that Japan could accumulate capital at a critical point in its postwar economic development. All of this facilitated development of industrial policy that was controlled by an elite, whether bureaucratic, industrial, or political. Dower implies that the tradition of cultural superiority in Japan figured into the imperialism of the early years of the century, as well as into postwar economic development: "In proclaiming their own purity, the Japanese cast others as inferior because those others did not, and could not, share in the grace of the divine land. Non-Japanese were, buy the very logic of the ideology, impure, foul, polluted" (Dower, 1993, p. 274). Dower notes that by the time Japan was defeated, much of the fire had gone out of such an ideology. As a whole the nation was disgusted with the regimented society, and the shame of defeat was supplanted by an acquiescence in peace and the residue of an ordered society: "Proper-place thinking facilitated acceptance of a subordinate status vis-a-vis
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Approximate Word count = 1608
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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