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A provocative set of interpretative essays by eminent scholars, this volume will appeal to anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century Japan and the dilemmas facing Japan in the world today.

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Postwar Japan as History

University of California Press

Ever since Japan's seclusion was ruptured by the Western nations in 1853, domestic and international politics have been interwoven for the Japanese. Slogans used to mobilize succeeding generations convey this interconnection. Thus, the forces that eventually overthrew the feudal regime in 1868 rallied around the cry "Revere the Emperor and Expel the Barbarians." The Meiji government (1868-1912) socialized citizens for Westernization, industrialization, and empire building under the slogan "Rich Country, Strong Military." Militant expansionists of the 1930s and early 1940s, equally concerned with renovation at home and autarky abroad, paired creation of a domestic "New Structure" with establishment of a "New Order" overseas. They saw the solution to domestic ills in the creation of a broader imperium in Asia, which they glossed with the rhetoric of "Coexistence and Coprosperity."

Although Japan ostensibly pursued a low posture diplomatically after Word War II, the intimate relationship between international and domestic politics remained central. Again, catchphrases capture this. Immediately after the war, exhausted Japanese were ralliedand frequently inspiredby an idealistic agenda of "Demilitarization and Democratization." From the outset these ideals were recognized to be inseparable: destruction of the militarized state was essential to democratize Japan, and only the creation of a genuinely democratic nation could prevent the danger of future Japanese militarism. Once formal demilitarization had been accomplished, the enduring goal became to create and maintain "Peace and Democracy." Even exhortations such as the popular postsurrender slogan "Construction of a Nation of Culture" (Bunka Kokka no Kensetsu ) were understood to be synonymous with the paired ideals of peace and democracy. For example, when Prime Minister Katayama Tetsu addressed the first Diet session held under the new postwar constitution in 1947, he concluded with an appeal

to advance toward "the construction of a democratic nation of peace, a nation of culture" (minshuteki na heiwa kokka, bunka kokka no kensetsu ).1

These key termsdemocracy, peace , and culture were subject to reinterpretation in the years that followed, and culture , by and large, was uncoupled from the other two. Throughout the postwar period, however, a large portion of political policy and contention continued to be contained, like a crackling electric current, within the polemical poles of peace and democracy . These are not rhetorical ideals peculiar to Japan, but they assumed a particular vitality there. Peace became the magnetic pole for both legitimization and criticism of external policy; democracy served the same function for highly contested domestic issues. And postwar controversies over military and international policy almost invariably became entangled with internal struggles concerning power, participation, national priorities, and competing visions of fairness, well-being, and social justice.

Where the actual structures of postwar power are concerned, two additional and uniquely Japanese phrases command attention. One is the "San Francisco System," which refers to the international posture Japan assumed formally when it signed a peace treaty with forty-eight nations in San Francisco in September 1951 and simultaneously aligned itself with the cold-war policy of the United States through the bilateral Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. To the end of the Showa period, which effectively symbolized the end of the "postwar" era for Japan, the country continued to operate within the strategic parameters of the San Francisco System, although its global role and influence changed conspicuously after it emerged as an economic power in the 1970s. The second phrase, coined to designate the nature of domestic power relations, is the "1955 System." Here the reference is to a concatenation of political and socioeconomic developments in 1955, including the establishment of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which governed Japan uninterruptedly over the ensuing decades. More generally, "1955 System" signifies a domestic political structure characterized by an internally competitive but nonetheless hegemonic conservative establishment and a marginalized but sometimes influential liberal and Marxist opposition.

Like all fashionable political phrases, "San Francisco System" and "1955 System" obscure as much as they reveal. Both Japan's incorporation into U.S. cold-war policy and the triumph of the conservative \ were evident from the late 1940s, when U.S. policy toward occupied Japan underwent a so-called reverse course, in which emphasis was shifted from demilitarization and democratization to economic reconstruction, rearmament, and integration into the U.S. anticommunist containment policy. The real genesis of both systems is thus much earlier than a literal reading of the popular labels would suggest. Moreover, the domestic as well as international milieu in which the Japanese operated changed

Hirano Kenichiro, "Sengo Nihon gaiko ni okeru 'bunka,' "in Watanabe Akio, ed., Sengo Nihon no taigai seisaku (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1985), 343-45.

constantly during the postwar period, and dramatically so after the early 1970s. From this perspective, it is argued, both "San Francisco System" and "1955 System" have an anachronistic ring when applied to the years after the mid-1970s or so. And, indeed, they do.2

Still, the two phrases remain highly suggestive for anyone who wishes to recreate postwar Japan as history. They reflect a worldview, looking both outward and inward, that was defined and described (and criticized) by the Japanese themselves. And, like all popular phrases that survive for more than a passing moment, they capturecertainly for Japanese analystsa wealth of complicated and even contradictory associations. They are code words for the peculiar capitalist context, overseas and at home, in which postwar Japan developed. They are closely associated with the impressive international and domestic prosperity Japan attained between the 1950s and 1980s. At the same time, they evoke the internal schism and tension and even violence that accompanied Japan's attainment of wealth and power. For Japanese, "San Francisco System" and "1955 System" vividly symbolize the intense political conflicts over issues of peace and democracy that characterized Japan's emergence as a rich consumer society and powerful capitalist state.

Essentially, these conflicts pitted liberal and left-wing critics against the dominant conservative elites. At the peak of their influence in the 1950s and 1960s, these critics constituted an effective minority, capable of capturing popular imagination and influencing the national agenda. By the mid-1970s, though, the Left appeared spent as an intellectually compelling political force. Partly, the opposi-

I have discussed the "reverse course" in some detail in Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878-1954 (Cambridge: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1979), 305-68, and in "Occupied Japan and the Cold War in Asia," in Michael J. Lacey, ed., The Truman Presidency (Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Cambridge University Press, 1989), 366-409. For a criticism of the reverse-course argument by a former American participant in the occupation, see Justin Williams,...