Untitled

C O L D WA R D E M O C R A C Y
CO L D WA R D E M OC R A C Y
The United States and Japan
JENNIFER M. MILLER
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2019
Copyright © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First printing
Cover art: AP Photo / Mike Yamaguchi

Cover design: Marcus Ferolito
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Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress

ISBN: 978-0-674-97634-4 (alk. paper)
CONTENTS
Acronyms vii
Introduction 1
1. Democracy as a State of Mind 26
2. Militarizing Democracy 71
3. The San Francisco Peace Treaty 114
4. Bloody Sunagawa 155
5. A Breaking Point 191
6. Producing Democracy 227
Conclusion 273
Abbreviations 285
Notes 287
Acknowledgments 347
Index 351
ACRONYMS
APO Asian Productivity Organization

CINCFE Commander in Chief Far East
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FEC Far Eastern Commission
GHQ / SCAP General Headquarters / Supreme Commander Allied Powers
HUAC House Un-American Activities Committee
ICA International Cooperation Administration
JCP Japanese Communist Party
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff
JPC Japan Productivity Center
KD Keizai doyukai (Economic Friends Association)
MAAG Mutual Assistance Advisory Group
MDAA Mutual Defense Assistance Act
MITI Japan’s Ministry of Trade and Industry
MSP Mutual Security Program
NPR National Police Reserve
NSC National Security Council
SIB Special Investigation Bureau
SWNCC State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee
UMT Universal Military Training
USOM United States Operations Mission
C O L D WA R D E M O C R A C Y
Introduction
T he cold war was not a shining moment for democracy. Though both
sides in this global clash claimed to stand for true freedom and equality,
their mobilization efforts often led to suppression, discrimination, and
violence. This was not only true for communist regimes, with their ruthless
crackdowns and purges, but also for states in the American-led anticom-
munist camp. While American leaders and their allies claimed to lead the
“free world” against the Soviet-led “slave world,” their global campaign
fueled the persecution of political activists, a series of coups against
popularly elected leaders, the rise of autocratic dictatorships, the construc-
tion of a massive military base empire, and expansive militarization at
home and abroad. Within the United States, the core of the anticommunist
camp, a series of postwar campaigns designed to stamp out so-called
subversive ideas and peoples embodied these shrinking democratic hori-
zons. Even countries that preserved democratic systems at home, such as
Great Britain and France, simultaneously utilized anticommunism as a
rationale for strengthening their hold on empire and waging sustained
and violent warfare.
At the same time, the aftermath of World War II and the rise of the Cold
War sparked intense interest in democracy. In Germany and Japan, the United
States carried out unprecedented occupations premised on democratizing
former enemies. Only a world of democracies, claimed many American
leaders and thinkers, could create the peaceful and stable international system
2 Cold War Democracy
necessary to prevent the disastrous turmoil that had marked the 1930s and
1940s. The fight against communism deepened this conviction, as U.S.
policymakers further insisted that a robust ideological commitment to de-
mocracy could protect people from the communist menace. In their desire
to combat communism’s claim to real democratic equality—many com-
munist states called themselves “democratic republics”—American leaders
expanded democratic representation at home. Anxious to prove to both
domestic and international audiences that American democracy offered
opportunity and egalitarianism, they supported the expansion of civil rights,
most famously in the form of voting rights for African Americans. A similar
goal guided overseas cultural, educational, and economic outreach. Both
the U.S. government and private foundations such as the Ford and Rocke-
feller Foundations sponsored numerous efforts designed to promote
democratic norms and values abroad, pouring energy and resources into
prodemocratic education, propaganda, exchange programs, development
efforts, and civil society groups in Europe, Asia, and Africa.1
The early Cold War therefore presents a critical paradox: how does one
explain the rise of antidemocratic oppression at a moment when people
around the world and across the political spectrum proclaimed that democ-
racy was the only true path, the only road to fulfilling the political, economic,
and spiritual needs of humanity? The key to answering this question is to
look closely at the specific threats, goals, and meanings that people assigned
to the concept and practice of democracy. For many American leaders
and politicians, the 1940s and 1950s inaugurated new understandings of
both the weaknesses and strengths of democratic politics. In particular, the
experience of depression and war fostered a belief that subversive ideas
and ideologies posed a fundamental threat to democracy. Such ideas led
the people astray through misinformation, propaganda, and demagogic
promises of false glory—promises that came from fascists, militarists, and
communists alike. Democratic societies were especially vulnerable to this
fate, precisely because such ideas could be expressed and disseminated
through free speech, a free press, and open elections. Democracy’s survival
therefore depended not simply on the presence of formal rights (like freedom
of speech), institutions (such as representative congresses or parliaments),
practices (such as elections), or even political or economic equality. For these
rights and practices to endure, democracy required a psychologically strong
citizenry that was capable of remaining vigilant about protecting demo-
cratic values while distinguishing between healthy and harmful ideas.
Building such a citizenry required trained and watchful elites. Since the
masses were vulnerable to deception and lies, it was incumbent on educa-
tors, politicians, and economic and military leaders to instill a commitment
Introduction 3
to the correct ideas and values. A “real” democracy therefore needed to

prioritize the social, political, economic, and mental stability necessary
to a robust and ongoing mobilization against dangerous and subversive
“antidemocratic” ideologies. This was true even if such stability came at
the expense of other rights and freedoms.
In the aftermath of World War II, the expansion of communist power
across the globe intensified and deepened fears that democracy was in peril.
Many U.S. policymakers believed that the communist poison spread through
propaganda and misinformation, calling on people to give themselves en-
tirely to the state in mind, body, and soul. As such, a commitment to com-
munism was not simply a political stance, but an act of psychological
perversion wherein the individual surrendered their “natural” desire for
freedom in a quest for “refuge from anxieties, bafflement, and insecurity.”
As a 1950 National Security Council document proclaimed, communism
necessitated “an act of willing submission, a degradation willed by the indi-
vidual upon himself under the compulsion of a perverted faith.” Commu-
nism therefore required a complete eschewal of the individualism necessary
to democracy. The total nature of this threat led many American leaders to
assume that any “truly” democratic state would naturally seek to join the
global crusade against communism. As a result, American diplomats often
had little patience for democracy as it was practiced and defined by other
states and people. In their minds, alternative visions of democracy and Cold
War politics, especially neutralism, neglected to foster the social stability
and psychological resilience necessary for democratic freedom. These states,
groups, and ideas were dangerous because they did not understand the true
threat of communism or their own vulnerability to this threat. Proponents
of this worldview thus claimed that the rigidity and harshness of their demo-
cratic vision was necessary to sustain democracy itself. This dialectic pro-
cess, whereby obsession with democratic qualities fueled an almost
antidemocratic democracy, was integral to what this book calls “Cold War
democracy.”2
This conception of democracy wielded tremendous force in the United
States’ approach to Japan in the postwar era. After years of devastating
war, mass death, and unimaginable atomic destruction, the United States
embarked on a self-assigned mission to remake the Japanese state and
people. The goal of this project, Americans routinely claimed, was to in-
troduce Japan to the wonders of democracy in the service of peace, sta-
bility, and security in Asia and across the globe; only democracy could
protect Japan—and the world—from a toxic resurgence of wartime mili-
tarism or the infection of subversive communism. This quest for Japan’s
transformation facilitated a seven-year military occupation that sought to
remake Japanese political values, educational practices, military capabili-

ties, and ways of thinking. It persisted after 1951, when the United States
formed a political and security alliance with Japan, designating it as a
key bulwark against global communism. American interest in Japanese de-
mocracy therefore extended far beyond the end of the U.S. occupation. It
continued to fundamentally shape U.S. policymakers’ understandings of
security, leadership, and economic growth in Japan and their responses to
Japanese resistance and protest.
The alliance that emerged from this ideological undertaking has proven
exceptionally resilient and continues to stand at the core of both American
and Japanese security policy into the twenty-first century. Yet like the
broader American relationship with democracy in the Cold War, these efforts
in Japan embodied contradictory impulses. On the one hand, American
actions rested on a deeply antidemocratic paternalism. The occupation
was tarred with the irony of “teaching” the Japanese the ways of democ-
racy while the country was under military occupation. Americans firmly
believed that only they truly understood democracy, conceiving of both
the occupation and subsequent alliance as a natural outgrowth of this
democratic superiority. American claims to represent democracy were also
undermined by the narrowness of their vision. American policymakers of-
fered a remarkably limited definition of democracy that placed certain
ideas—pacifism, neutrality, and more radical visions of political and eco-
nomic equality—firmly outside the “democratic” sphere. Such ideas, American
policymakers routinely claimed, would serve as a foothold for subversive
and communist thinking, allowing these dangerous ideologies to destroy
democracy from within. Indeed, by 1947, the U.S. occupation had turned
away from its early emphasis on political rights and economic reform and
toward political stability, economic recovery, internal security, and anticom-
munist vigilance. Such goals deeply shaped the alliance that emerged in the
early 1950s and U.S. policymakers consistently criticized Japanese resis-
tance to their vision—especially popular protests—as the work of a naïve
and antidemocratic minority that sought to turn democracy against itself.
On the other hand, American policymakers took their vision of democ-
racy seriously and believed that the future of Japan—and Asia—rested on
the ability of both the Japanese government and people to absorb American-
defined democratic ideas and practices. While U.S. policymakers supported
authoritarian leaders in neighboring states such as Korea, Taiwan, and
Vietnam, they did not seek to elevate dictators in Japan. During the occu-
pation, for example, they insisted on establishing democratic institutions
and practices—especially elections—on the local and national levels, be-
lieving that these would unleash the individual conscience and foster a
Introduction 5
“democratic mindset.” After the occupation, they continued to fund programs

that they believed would lead to civic and democratic engagement, espe-
cially through universities, exchange programs, and labor outreach. They
hoped that such programs, and the enlightened elites that they would pro-
duce, would deepen public understandings of democracy, facilitate voluntary
and internalized resistance to communism, and mobilize the Japanese public
behind the Japanese government and the U.S.–Japanese relationship; three
goals they believed were synonymous with each other. By endowing this
alliance with the reality, language, and appearance of democratic legiti-
macy, American policymakers sought to utilize this vision of Japanese
democracy in the service of Cold War security. Some went so far as to see
Japan as the model of a democratic future for other potential allies. If their
experiment in Japan succeeded, many Americans hoped that it could func-
tion as a prototype for the rest of Asia and perhaps all nonwhite countries,
offering proof of the United States’ benevolence and democratic bona fides
in the global struggle against communism.
Yet U.S. policymakers were far from alone in shaping the contours of
democracy in Japan. In the aftermath of fifteen years of aggressive war and
defeat, a broad range of Japanese—government policymakers and defense
officials, peace activists, labor and student leaders, and members of the
public—articulated their own understandings of Japan’s past and their
visions for its future. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, these actors and
groups actively debated the contours of democracy in Japan, a process that
both deepened the U.S.–Japanese alliance and fundamentally challenged it.
For many American policymakers and Japanese leaders, the rise of the Cold
War facilitated a shared obsession with communist deviance, which could
only be combatted through a commitment to political stability and the
development of a “healthy” national spirit that would channel the masses
into following state authority. Articulated most forcefully by conservative
leaders, some of whom had been members of the militarist wartime regime,
this common terrain fostered ideological convergence around a limited vision
of anticommunist democracy. In particular, both American and Japanese
leaders came to see moral and psychological strength—what contemporaries
called the democratic “spirit”—as a core value in a democratic Japan.
These ideas about democracy, with their emphasis on “spirit” over rights
or practice, offered a new language of reconciliation between former ene-
mies. A shared vision of Cold War politics thus served as the backbone of
this alliance.
Other Japanese, especially on the Left, developed very different ideas
about the nature of democratic values and practices. These activists and
thinkers were vehemently convinced that the militarist Japanese state had
sacrificed its people in a violent and misguided quest for wartime glory.
Building on this narrative, they argued that the public’s role in a democratic
society was not to mobilize behind stability and state power. Instead, the
people needed to mentally separate themselves from the demands of the
state and vigilantly hold its leaders accountable to popular desires for
peace and democratic representation. These Japanese therefore argued that
the U.S.–Japanese security alliance did not protect democracy. On the con-
trary, by placing Japan in the path of nuclear danger, supporting leaders
once arrested as potential war criminals, exposing the Japanese people to
the violence of American military bases, and resurrecting wartime milita-
rism, this international relationship undermined the possibility of a peaceful
and democratic future. Moreover, it perverted democratic accountability
between the government and its people by making Japanese leaders ac-
countable to American interests and American conceptions of Cold War
security. Democracy, therefore, meant very different things to different
people, within and between America and Japan. Throughout the 1950s, these
contrasting visions of democracy stood at the heart of the U.S.–Japanese
alliance. They simultaneously fostered new cooperation and extensive
protests.
This book examines the evolution of democratic thinking and ideology
during the Cold War, especially the concept of democratic values and poli-
tics that emerged from the experiences of World War II and the international
mobilization against communism. It traces how a wide array of state ac-
tors, from U.S. diplomats to Japanese conservative politicians, conceived
of democracy as a project that depended on psychological stability and
“spirit” as much as institutions and practices. This vision of democracy fun-
damentally shaped the creation and evolution of the alliance between the
United States and Japan from the 1940s until the 1960s and created new
opportunities for both regimes. For U.S. policymakers, it served as the foun-
dational principle of the U.S. occupation of Japan and a crucial rhetorical
and ideological platform for the expansion of American political, economic,
and military power after World War II. It fostered postwar reconciliation
under the hierarchical logic that the United States would now tutor a de-
feated Japan in the ways of its superior economic and political system. This
emphasis on democracy also offered a path to domestic and international
rehabilitation for the Japanese government, after fifteen years of aggressive
war. Japan now claimed to be a nation of peace and democracy, humbled
by its devastating defeat and born anew on the frontlines of the “free world.”
Just as important, the rigid nature of Cold War democracy meant that it
excluded and collided with other ideological visions. When the Japanese
Left called for a pacifist and economically egalitarian democratic order, its
Introduction 7
activists and leaders articulated their own vision of democracy, one pre-
mised on rigorous government accountability to the people. Yet American
leaders and Japanese conservatives increasingly saw a subversive antidemo-
cratic menace that had to be tamed, lest it irrevocably infect the public
mind. As this book claims, this popular resistance, in particular protests
against U.S. military bases, U.S.–Japan security arrangements, U.S. atomic
testing, and U.S. economic assistance policies, stemmed in part from alter-
native visions of democracy in the Cold War world. It fostered a process of
mutual constitution between the domestic Japanese context and transpa-
cific alliance relations wherein these two realms constantly intersected with
and shaped each other. Antibase and antialliance protests also prompted
American policymakers to shift their policies—for example, decreasing the
United States’ military presence in mainland Japan—and to focus the U.S.–
Japanese relationship on the shared priority of economic growth. They
shifted policies in a quest to manufacture Japanese consent, democratic
legitimacy, and popular mobilization behind the U.S.–Japanese alliance,
which they hoped would also engineer the “spirit” and “consciousness” nec-
essary to stable, anticommunist, democratic politics.
Japanese resistance therefore shaped American ideas about the founda-
tions of democratic politics and democratic psychologies in Japan and be-
yond. The reverse was also true: the pressures of American power deeply
informed how Japanese on all sides conceived of their relationship to their
newly created democratic state. For both Americans and Japanese, then, de-
mocracy was never solely a national enterprise. Rather, both peoples and
leaders conceived of it as an ongoing project of national and international
interactions that encompassed peoples and governments on both sides of
the Pacific. By examining a series of policies and protests that sought to
delineate the meanings and boundaries of democracy, this book narrates
the genesis, clash, and convergence of these democratic visions. It charts
Cold War democracy’s transformative force as well as the limits of its mo-
bilizing potential.
Cold War Democracy and the U.S.–Japanese Alliance

In telling the dramatic story of this transpacific alliance, this book makes
three key claims about the role of democracy in the U.S.–Japanese relation-
ship and, more broadly, the early Cold War. First, it argues that democratic
ideas and visions played a constitutive role in facilitating and shaping this
alliance. Over the years, scholars have uncovered the political, military, and
economic forces that solidified the U.S.–Japanese relationship. They have
shown how this alliance stemmed from growing Cold War security con-
cerns, especially the desire to strengthen Japan as an anticommunist bul-
wark and incorporate Japan and Okinawa into the United States’ global
empire of military bases; and they have highlighted how the American goal
of building a globally integrated liberal-capitalist economy made Japan, a
regional economic powerhouse, into an invaluable ally. While both security
and economic rationales were crucial to the construction of this alliance,
this book argues that this relationship also arose from a larger American
ideological project that elevated “democracy” as the rationale for this alli-
ance’s existence. In doing so, this book resurrects and analyzes the specific
and historically contingent concepts of democracy that emerged in the
1940s and 1950s and traces their role in shaping policy.3
Significantly, democracy has never been a stable or static concept. The
impact of the Great Depression and the massive mobilizations of World
War II and the early Cold War reshaped both popular and governmental
understandings of democratic politics. As the world emerged from the devas-
tation of the 1940s, fears spread across the industrialized world—in the
United States, Western Europe, and Japan—that democracy was uniquely
vulnerable, not only to external aggression but also to internal collapse.
After all, both Germany and Japan had been structurally democratic be-
fore the war, yet the presence of constitutions and representative bodies
failed to prevent the rise of violent fascism and aggressive militarism. In
this telling, the 1930s had turned tragic as propaganda, militarist dema-
goguery, and promises of false glory seized hold of the people. The shock-
ingly swift expansion of communist power after the war, in both Europe
and Asia, dramatically intensified these anxieties. Between 1945 and 1949,
communists stormed fragile republics and established violent dictatorships
from Czechoslovakia to Hungary to China, making the specter of world
revolution a fearsome reality. Perhaps even more alarming for observers,
communist parties also surged in major capitalist countries, such as France.
Against the violence, poverty, and uncertainty of the postwar world,
democracies seemed susceptible to determined and well-organized commu-
nist shock troops.
While scholars have spent a great deal of time analyzing the rise of these
anticommunist anxieties, less noted is that this political atmosphere also
fostered new understandings of democracy. Indeed, policymakers and
scholars increasingly claimed that democracy depended not simply on the
existence of democratic institutions and individual rights and liberties.
Rather, as the Cold War progressed, they argued that the mentalities and
mindsets of the people were the foundation of political regimes. “Abnormal”
or “unhealthy” psychologies produced totalitarian dictatorships, while
Introduction 9
“healthy” mindsets would allow democracy to flourish. Few works better

exemplified this thinking than The Authoritarian Personality, published in
1950 to great fanfare. A collaboration between German left-leaning émi-
grés, most notably Theodor Adorno, and American political scientists at
the University of California, Berkeley, the book sought to explain why
individuals would accept antidemocratic ideologies. Based on extensive in-
terviews of American college students, it concluded that psychological in-
clinations, rather than economic, social, or political conditions, fueled
support for authoritarianism. As the authors put it, “the political, economic,
and social convictions of an individual often form a broad and coherent
pattern, as if bound together by a ‘mentality’ or ‘spirit.’ ” While Adorno in-
sinuated that some antidemocratic thought patterns were the product of
capitalism, this part of the book was often ignored. Rather, the study
alarmed many readers because of its other major claim: the seeds of democ-
racy’s demise could be found in all modern societies. The book’s interviewees,
after all, were not German Nazis or Japanese militarists, but educated
Americans who grew up in an ostensibly stable democratic environment.
Even in Northern California, the authors believed, “there was no difficulty
in finding subjects” who were susceptible to “anti-democratic propaganda”
and “would readily accept fascism.”4
According to those who subscribed to this line of thinking, including
leading American policymakers and intellectuals, the survival of democracy
required a broad and unwavering faith in democratic norms and practices.
No institutions or laws could guarantee democracy’s future; it necessitated
a deep ideological commitment, a democratic “spirit” that could only come
from psychological strength, popular morale, and mental mobilization. This
conviction intensified with the dawning of the Cold War, when democracy’s
main foe shifted from fascism to communism, “a fanatic faith, antithetical
to our own.” Across the United States, Europe, and Japan, leaders echoed
historian and literary critic Lewis Mumford, who warned: “One cannot
counter the religious faith” of antidemocratic regimes, “unless one pos-
sesses a faith equally strong, equally capable of fostering devotion, loyalty,
and commanding sacrifice.” The belief that communism operated by
spreading lies and propaganda fostered fears that it was perfectly posi-
tioned to target democracy’s greatest vulnerabilities. It could utilize demo-
cratic rights and processes, like free speech and electoral politics, to infect
the minds of the people and transform them into willing agents of democ-
racy’s destruction. Politicians and intellectuals envisioned society in a state
of relentless spiritual mobilization, in which citizens would constantly commit
to and work for the principles of republican governance in concert with the
state. Diplomats like George Kennan thus proclaimed that psychological
spirit was the key to victory over communism. As he noted in his famous
“Long Telegram” in 1946, “Much depends on [the] health and vigor of
our own society . . . Every courageous and incisive measure to solve in-
ternal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline,
morale, and community spirit of our own people is a diplomatic victory
over Moscow.”5
To be sure, this vision of democracy was fundamentally limited. As po-
litical scientist Jan-Werner Müller notes, the dominant democratic ideolo-
gies of the Cold War emphasized consensus, stability, and unity. Rather than
listening to the people or challenging long-standing injustices, the role of
the state was to disseminate the confidence and morale necessary to mobi-
lize the people against its enemies. This was the spirit in which Harvard
historian Arthur Schlesinger issued his famous 1948 call for a “vital center”:
“Neither fascism nor communism can win so long as there remains a demo-
cratic middle way . . . The problem of United States policy is to make sure
that the Center does hold.” There was little room for dissent and disagreement
in this ideological universe, or patience for those who challenged persistent
hierarchies, whether they were economic, gendered, sexual, or racial. As
Schlesinger proclaimed, the state could survive only if its citizens “support[ed]
it against all blandishments and all threats.” For Schlesinger and others,
democratic values flowed from the top. It was the people, not ruling elites,
who were prone to the “unhealthy” attitudes that could threaten democratic
governance. Political leaders repeatedly reminded citizens that vigilance
was a democratic virtue. As historian Daniel Rodgers notes, “Of all the
dangers against which presidents spoke in 1945, none called out stronger
rhetorical effort than the weakening of public resolve.”6
This rigid equation of democracy with psychological normalcy and the
acceptance of established order helped to fuel the early Cold War’s obses-
sive acts of domestic suppression. The fierce desire to instill “right” spirit
in the people spawned a tide of loyalty oaths, employee investigations, and
political purges, all of which were premised on the need to protect the public
by curbing the subversive and infectious activities of antidemocratic forces.
These attacks, of course, were not new to the Cold War, and were built upon
earlier legal and political regimes that sought to ward off subversive ide-
ologies. Within the United States, they also drew on long-established
social, racial, and gender hierarchies, targeting marginalized groups such
as gays, immigrants, and African Americans; American understandings of
psychological “weakness” were heavily racialized and gendered. But more
than any time before, these campaigns became integral to the language and
definition of democracy. During the 1940s and 1950s, attempts to suppress
“antidemocratic” voices were always accompanied by visible and vocal
Introduction 11
proclamations that democratic politics required a psychological—even

spiritual—commitment to national unity and stability. The conviction that
communists operated not only through open aggression but also through
subversion, conspiracy, and propaganda led leaders to constantly fear that
the largest threat to democracy lay within their own citizenry. Democracy
required constant mobilization, as well as harsh limits on political freedoms
to prevent antidemocrats from turning the rights and freedoms of demo-
cratic politics against democracy itself.7
This emphasis on “spirit” and psychological mobilization as the core of
democratic survival was not simply a form of anticommunism. Just as
important was its role as a forceful rebuke against alternative democratic
visions, especially those that emphasized the protection of popular rights
and equitable economic distribution. It was not an accident that labor
unions, women, people of color, leftist political activists, and left-leaning
intellectuals were targets of anticommunist purges. For politicians, thinkers,
and lawyers who associated democracy with order and stability, radical
reform that empowered the masses, or substantial distributive policies,
threatened the very foundations of democratic politics and led to chaos and
dictatorship. This anxious outlook ultimately led many to believe that sup-
pressing political rights, including open speech, was a necessary price to
pay in the broader global war against democracy’s enemies. Talk of an
amorphous and ill-defined “spirit” was therefore used to fend off other,
more egalitarian visions of democratic order.
Moreover, this Cold War vision of democracy celebrated elite leadership
over and even against popular activism. If the people were weak and fun-
damentally susceptible to simplistic, emotional appeals, it was the task of
elites to defend freedom. An avalanche of scholarly studies emphasized con-
sensus and unity as the heart of democracy; elites needed to epitomize and
model the responsibility, restraint, and maturity that democracy required.
Journalist and sociologist Daniel Bell, for example, argued that the genius
of the American two-party system was that it compelled certain standards
of behavior, including an adherence to pragmatism and “a common real-
ization that ‘democratic politics’ meant ‘bargaining between legitimate
groups and the search for consensus.’ ” This bargaining would take place
not among the masses, but among elites and leaders of different sociopo-
litical groups. In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, published in 1942
but widely discussed in subsequent decades, economist and political scien-
tist Joseph Schumpeter argued for the importance of experts, asserting that
“modern society was too complex for people to understand.” Perhaps the
most prominent articulation of this leadership-driven vision of democracy
was the theory of pluralism as advanced by scholars like political scientist
Robert Dahl. Pluralism held that democratic politics depended on power-

sharing among different elite groups, including political parties, interest
groups, the military, and other organizations. By participating in this pro-
cess of engagement and negotiation, leaders and elites would develop a
mindset of unity and mobilize around the effective exercise of state power
and governance.8
Crucially, these ideas about democracy did not shape the United States
alone. Rather, they also emerged from American thinking about the expe-
riences of foreign states, including Japan, and served as core guidelines for
American visions of Japan’s democratization. Even before the war officially
ended, Americans proclaimed that Japanese militarism had achieved its
strength by manipulating and mobilizing a flawed and simplistic Japanese
“mind.” This understanding combined contemporary understandings of
democratic failure with a racialized assessment of Japanese “follow-the-
leaderism” and emotionalism. Only a rigorous education in democracy,
many believed, could destroy the roots of Japanese aggression; the policies
of the early occupation thus not only sought to establish democratic rights,
institutions, and practices, but also sought to foster logical, independent
psychologies and a democratic “spirit.” As Cold War tensions engulfed the
world, this definition of democracy would also facilitate the occupation’s
turn against communism. Only a rational and stable Japanese democracy,
argued American policymakers, could resist communist subversion that
attempted to play on the emotions of the people. For this purpose, Ameri-
cans continued to invest in educational exchange, outreach to Japanese
labor unions, military training, and cultural programming in Japan long
after the end of the occupation. Into the 1960s, U.S. policymakers believed
such mobilization would not only ensure Japan’s commitment to anticom-
munism but also its commitment to Cold War democracy—commitments
that U.S. policymakers often equated with each other.
This vision of democracy—premised on “spirit” and psychological
mobilization—did not facilitate changes only in U.S. policy. In an ironic turn
of events, it also provided Japanese conservatives, including members of
the wartime regime, with language that offered common ground with Amer-
ican policymakers. Conservatism was a dominant force in Japan’s postwar
political landscape. Aside from the short reign of Socialist Katayama Tetsu
(1947–1948), all of Japan’s postwar prime ministers came from conserva-
tive parties. Though American policymakers once feared that conservatives
would be an obstacle to Japan’s democratization, as time progressed, Amer-
ican policy—and visions of democracy—came to rely heavily on conservative
support and cooperation. Prime Ministers Yoshida Shigeru (1946–1947;
1948–1954), Ashida Hitoshi (1948), Hatoyama Ichirō (1954–1957), Kishi
Introduction 13
Nobusuke (1957–1960), and Ikeda Hayato (1960–1964) sought to build a

democracy that would mobilize the people behind the action and agency
of the state, foster consensus, and rebuild Japan as a strong and anticom-
munist Asian power. Like American diplomats, many Japanese conserva-
tives also believed that democracy required strong leadership and spiritual
vigor, found in institutions such as the imperial monarchy and even the
re-created Japanese military. Such efforts built on prewar, wartime, and
postwar Japanese government attempts to manage and mobilize the Japanese
public behind state goals, though Americans were largely unaware of this
historical continuity.9
For Japanese conservatives who subscribed to these ideas, a successful
democracy often necessitated the repression of left-wing activism, especially
that of communists. Like American Cold War domestic persecutions and
U.S. efforts to mobilize the Japanese public, this was not new. Rather, it
drew on Japan’s long history of anticommunism, which stretched back into
the interwar decades. In 1925, for example, the Japanese parliament passed
the notorious Peace Preservation Law, which targeted communists and es-
tablished the Special Higher Police (colloquially known as the Thought
Police) to protect the Japanese “national essence from foreign ideologies,”
especially anarchism and communism. This conception of communism as
not only a political and economic challenge but also an ideological, mental,
and moral threat to the thought of the people and health of the nation
continued into the postwar and Cold War years. It resonated with U.S.
policymakers, who came to view those former enemies as the key to se-
curing Japan’s anticommunist mobilization and as necessary partners in
forming this international alliance.10
To be sure, Japanese leaders such as Hatoyama and Kishi did not have
reputations as committed democrats. Both were members of the authori-
tarian wartime regime—Kishi had signed the declaration of war against the
United States in December 1941—and both had been purged during the
early months of the occupation. As many at the time noticed, postwar con-
servative language about mobilizing the popular will was eerily reminiscent
of wartime propaganda, and Kishi’s attempts to expand police powers, for
example, galvanized many Japanese against the seeming resurrection of
the wartime state. Yet the desire of Kishi and others to rally and mobilize
the Japanese people behind state power within a representative yet ideologi-
cally restrictive political system closely overlapped with the language and
actions of other democratic states in the United States and Western Europe.
Against vibrant popular protests, they were able to rebuild conservative
power and political legitimacy in the aftermath of a deadly and devas-
tating war. Conservatives quickly recognized that in the landscape of
postwar Japan, their ideologies had to be recalibrated around democratic

visions. Whether they liked it or not, they had to speak the language of
democracy, and they seized the opportunity offered by increasingly rigid
American thinking during the occupation and beyond.
Cold War democracy, with all its assumptions and harsh limits, there-
fore became a vital connective tissue between the United States and Japan.
It facilitated reconciliation between U.S. policymakers and conservative
Japanese leaders, not only in combatting communism but also in serving
as guardians and cultivators of the “spirit” necessary to secure democratic
order and security in postwar Japan. As the following chapters show, these
shared beliefs in the importance of mental stability, leadership, and political
order also helped support policies that would have been unimaginable to
most Americans during World War II. For example, despite a rigorous ef-
fort to thoroughly demilitarize Japan after the war, only five years later the
occupation authorities decided to rebuild Japanese military power in the
form of a new defense force known as the National Police Reserve (NPR).
Americans even staffed this force with former members of the imperial mil-
itary, in part because they perversely believed that these officers’ wartime
experiences would provide the capabilities and the “spirit” necessary to in-
vigorate and safeguard a democratic Japan. The postoccupation U.S.–
Japanese alliance was far more than a relationship of convenience, a project
of economic revival, or a manifestation of American desires to station U.S.
forces in Japan. It was also a process of ideological convergence around
specific political outlooks, a conjunction crucial to explaining how these
two states could build a close and enduring alliance after a toxic and vio-
lent war marked by intense hatred on both sides.11
It was in part because of these ideological affinities that Cold War de-
mocracy acquired remarkably similar characteristics on both sides of the
Pacific. In fact, some of the most iconic policies of Cold War domestic sup-
pression evolved in parallel in the United States and Japan, often through
direct borrowing, creating a transpacific national security state. In a process
that mirrored efforts taking place in the United States, for example, Amer-
ican occupation authorities and the Japanese government worked together
to suppress labor activism, purge communists from the public and private
spheres, and craft antisubversive legislation that mirrored the United States’
1950 Subversive Activities Control Act (also known as the McCarran In-
ternal Security Act). The decision to create the NPR similarly reflected
changing American ideas about the importance of military power in demo-
cratic societies. In the postwar American debate over Universal Military
Training (UMT), U.S. policymakers, including President Harry Truman and
military leaders, celebrated the military as a site for inculcating republican
Introduction 15
values and spiritual vigor. Both American and Japanese officials talked about
the NPR in similar terms, hoping it would foster physical and psychological
security in Japan. The abiding American interest in Japanese intellectuals
and higher education—through exchange programs, American-led seminars,
and funding from major American foundations—mirrored programs taking
place in U.S. universities, based on a desire to foster “responsible” intellec-
tuals who supported, rather than challenged, the interests of the state.
To be clear, to say that democracy was central to the development of this
relationship is not to assign benevolence to U.S. policymakers or Japanese
leaders. This book does not claim that democracy was always a supreme
consideration or even central goal of U.S. policymakers in the use of mili-
tary or economic power. Nor does it argue that the primary goal of Amer-
ican foreign policy is democratization. Rather, the chapters below trace the
development and consequences of the U.S.–Japanese relationship as a pro-
cess of overlapping and clashing democratic visions. In this regard, this book
draws inspiration from scholars who have examined how ideologies allegedly
proclaiming universal equality, such as republicanism and liberalism, also
facilitated political domination in the form of imperialism and colonialism.
In the same spirit, the story of this alliance helps explain the consequences
of utilizing “democracy” in the service of power politics, Cold War mobili-
zation, and militarization. When American and Japanese leaders curtailed
speech rights to prevent communist subversion, stationed U.S. military
forces in Japanese towns, or rammed treaties through the Japanese Diet in
the absence of the opposition, many observers decried them as virulently
antidemocratic. Yet American and Japanese officials consistently under-
stood and justified these policies by citing the need to protect and mobilize
democracy against external aggression and internal subversion. It is crucial
to recognize that this was not mere rhetoric, but reflected their understanding
of the main threats to democracy and a desire to maintain democratic
legitimacy, however flimsy.12
Similarly, American and Japanese leaders proved unwilling to recognize
or listen to alternative visions of democratic politics. When Japanese activists
decried this alliance and American Cold War policy as militarist, imperi-
alist, and autocratic, American and Japanese conservative leaders dismissed
them as childish, psychologically perverse, or as stooges of antidemocratic
infiltration. Attributing democratic concerns to historical actors does not
automatically entail a value judgment or a moral celebration. Rather, it is
an effort to fully comprehend and grasp the ideological forces and visions
that drove their actions.
The Cold War therefore witnessed the rise of a new model of democ-
racy. Born of war and profound anxieties over communism, and fueled by
interactions between the United States and Japan, the belief in democracy’s
dependence on psychological mindsets and spiritual health became a
powerful political force. On both sides of the Pacific, these dynamics fun-
damentally shrank the horizon of what counted as democratically legiti-
mate. But only by tracing contemporary understandings of democracy, in
all their strangeness, can we grasp why many framed their policies as the
necessary guardians of the democratic state.
The Other Cold War Democracy: Activism and Protest

The story of democracy’s role in the U.S.–Japanese alliance is important
not only for what it says about U.S. policymakers and Japanese conserva-
tives. This book’s second claim is that examining the central role that con-
ceptions of democracy have played in this international relationship reveals
the impact of Japanese public activism on the political, security, and eco-
nomic policies pursued by American and Japanese leaders. Indeed, despite
their talk of cooperation premised on the “shared values” of democratic
politics, American and Japanese leaders quickly learned that calling for
democratic consensus was not the same as achieving it. Immediately
after the end of the war, a broad array of Japanese sought to articulate a
very different outcome of peace and neutrality for a democratic Japan, and
mobilized to express it through strikes, publications, and protests. To the
disappointment and alarm of American and Japanese leaders, these activ-
ists sought to claim the mantle of democratic authenticity through a pledge
to honestly and accurately represent the Japanese people by holding the
government accountable to the public. This Japanese opposition was not
simply an expression of resistance or anti-American sentiment, but an al-
ternative vision of democratic politics in an era of ideological division and
constant regional violence. Focusing on Japanese activism also reveals some
surprising conceptual similarities between the protestors and their oppo-
nents, particularly an emphasis on vigilance and psychological strength as
core democratic values.13
This alternative democratic vision stemmed in large part from the expe-
riences and interpretation of the Pacific War. In the eyes of many Japanese,
the militarist and authoritarian wartime state not only perpetuated aggression
and violence overseas but also betrayed and sacrificed its own people by
embarking on a war that ended in the nuclear annihilation of its subjects.
During the war, the Japanese government had repeatedly exhorted the
Japanese people to adopt the goals of the state as their own; under the
slogan messhi hōkō (obliterate the self, serve public authority), it sought a
Introduction 17
deep internalization of the war effort and objectives of the imperial state.
Drawing from these wartime experiences, traumatized Japanese argued that
democracy required a critical public, one that did not blindly follow its
leaders. It was the responsibility of the people to maintain an autonomous
self, mental vigilance, and an instinctual resistance to state authority and
the predations of state power. This definition of postwar democracy as the
inverse of the wartime state fostered an emphasis on “distance between so-
ciety and the state [as a] key criterion for Japanese democracy.”14
Assuring that individuals and civil society remained independent of the
state required efforts that extended far beyond electoral politics. In their
desire to pursue processes of democratization through the creation of an
autonomous democratic public, labor unions, students, intellectuals, and
other organized groups engaged in a constant stream of political activities,
such as strikes, marches, the publication of articles and pamphlets, and dem-
onstrations and protests. This ideological agenda led to a diverse and
cacophonous public sphere in the years following the war, filled with
various citizen and interest groups, a shifting network of political parties,
and vibrant public advocacy. Whether they protested the formation of
Japanese defense forces, the 1951 international treaty that ended the oc-
cupation, the ongoing presence of U.S. bases and forces, or the updated
U.S.–Japanese security treaty signed in 1960, these activists sought to hold
the Japanese government accountable to the scrutiny, criticism, and power
of the public. Indeed, the belief that democratic politics was defined by
critical detachment from the state allowed these activists to conceive them-
selves as representing the authentic and peaceful interests of the people,
even when they did not gain majorities in national elections. To them, it
was this resistance that embodied the democratic “spirit.”
Equally important, this conception of democracy had a crucial interna-
tional dimension. If foreign wars gave rise to militarism at home, then a
truly democratic Japan necessitated peace and pacifism, which could only
come from neutrality in the global Cold War. This emphasis on critical
public activism collided with the shared U.S.–Japanese vision of a limited
and restrictive state-driven democracy, and its connection to a strong U.S.–
Japanese alliance. Against the official language that described the bond
between the United States and Japan as democratic and peaceful, many
intellectuals, students, activists, and leftists argued that the power structures
and policies that emerged from this relationship—such as Japanese rearma-
ment, U.S. military bases in Japan, the U.S.–Japanese security treaties, and
the political return of alleged war criminals—violated peace and democracy.
Such outcomes threatened to resurrect the wartime state, destroy Japanese
democracy from within, and subject Japan to nuclear destruction. Preventing
the return of militarism and war was not just an issue of political legiti-
macy, but also a matter of existential survival. Many Japanese therefore
criticized not only the United States but also the conservative Japanese
government for placing the interests of this transpacific alliance above the
needs of the Japanese people and perverting a necessary relationship of
democratic accountability. To them, it seemed obvious that the survival of
democracy at home was deeply intertwined with Japan’s role in interna-
tional politics.
For American and Japanese leaders, this vibrant opposition was more
than a source of frustration; it became a core component in their calcula-
tions. Japanese antibase protests led U.S. policymakers to end planned base
expansions, alter their security plans, and reduce U.S. forces in Japan.
Similarly, the desire of Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke to negotiate a new
security treaty in the late 1950s—and have it passed by the Diet, which
became a scene of massive popular protests—stemmed from the shared
American–Japanese goal of embedding the U.S.–Japanese alliance in popular
mobilization and legitimacy. Throughout the 1950s, American policymakers
fretted constantly over the deleterious impact of popular opposition; in the
aftermath of massive protests in 1960, the new ambassador, Harvard Uni-
versity scholar Edwin O. Reischauer, embarked on a “cultural offensive”
designed to win the hearts of intellectuals and the public. The elevation of
economic growth and development as a primary American–Japanese tie,
especially in the early 1960s, reflected the United States’ desire to find new
sources of popular mobilization and agreement in this alliance. Japanese
opposition and public articulations of democracy thus sparked constant
anxieties over reclaiming the mantle of “democracy” in the service of in-
ternational politics and Cold War security. It also led to concessions and
outcomes—especially the reduction of American troops in Japan and the
renegotiation of the U.S.–Japan security treaty—that were unimaginable at
the end of the occupation in 1952.
Cold War Democracy and the Japanese Model

For all its complexities and conflicts, the story of democracy and the U.S.–
Japanese alliance was never isolated from its broader geostrategic context.
The third key claim of this book is that tracing the evolution of this alliance
makes clear how U.S. policymakers and Japanese leaders increasingly be-
lieved that Japan served as a vital model for the rest of Asia. Due to Japan’s
unique position among Asian countries as a former empire and a heavily
industrialized state, scholars have often framed American thinking about
Introduction 19
Japan and the rest of Asia as substantially different. This is especially true
in historians’ explorations of economic development programs. While
American policymakers did not think of Japan as “underdeveloped,” their
visions of Japan’s future and Asia’s future were often deeply connected. This
was also the case for many Japanese, especially in the political and busi-
ness worlds, whose plans for their country were fundamentally tied to their
visions for the rest of the continent.15
U.S. policymakers never thought of Japan as an exceptional or isolated
case, but as a core component of a larger strategy in the Asia-Pacific re-
gion. A democratic Japan, they believed, served as visible evidence of the
opportunities available for nonwhite states under American leadership in
the so-called free world. As diplomat and future secretary of state John
Foster Dulles wrote in 1950:
We can, if we will, help Japan to be an exhibit in Asia of what a free society

can develop in spiritual and intellectual richness and material well-being . . .
Just as our position in Western Germany and West Berlin gives us an oppor-
tunity to demonstrate advantages of a free society that will attract the captive
peoples in Central and Eastern Europe now under Communist domination,
so our position in Japan can be used to exert a similar attraction.
Americans therefore sought to seize key moments, such as the signing of

the international peace treaty that ended the occupation, to mobilize other
Asian states behind American leadership by celebrating their treatment of
Japan. This conception of Japan as a model, of course, was blatantly self-
serving; it aimed at enhancing American hegemony by solidifying Japanese
cooperation with U.S. security goals, especially Japanese rearmament and
the hosting of U.S. military bases. What is more, it relied on an orientalist
conflation of Asian cultures and societies. Japan’s active and participatory
mobilization, some Americans believed, would inspire Asian states—from
India and the Philippines to Indonesia and Vietnam—to recognize Amer-
ican benevolence and thus enhance the United States’ regional power. Yet
exactly because of these self-interested and Western-centric convictions, it
is crucial to understand Japanese democracy’s centrality to American
thinking. It was precisely because of Japan’s postwar democratic transfor-
mation that it could lead Asia to this supposedly universal future.16
Japan’s unprecedented economic growth, especially in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, only increased this emphasis on disseminating the Japanese
“model” as a vital example for Asia. Japan, the logic went, was productive
and prosperous; it could show all Asians the benefits of a free enterprise
economy. In fact, for many Americans, who often understood Asian cul-
tures as fundamentally similar, Japan was a testing ground for universal
promises of capitalism. If one Asian country could establish a prosperous,

market-based, and efficient economy, it proved that this economic system
could flourish everywhere. As the State Department asserted in 1960, “Japan
plays [a] unique role in Asia. Under system of private enterprise it has be-
come one of four great industrial complexes of the world and its rate of
economic growth is one of the highest in the world . . . Japan provides other
Asian countries with example of rapid economic growth under free system
which is in clear contrast to harsh methods Chinese Communists imposed
on people to achieve quick economic development.”17
Such efforts rested on a willful ignorance of both the United States’ and
Japan’s imperial pasts, an omission made all the more glaring by the postwar
onset of decolonization in Asia. To states such as China, Korea, Vietnam, the
Philippines, and Indonesia, which had suffered the brunt of Japan’s prewar
imperialism and Japanese aggression during World War II, this celebration
of Japan’s transformation seemed tone-deaf at best. In some cases, it
prompted deep fears about the return of Japanese regional dominance and
Japanese militarism. But U.S. policymakers consistently hoped that Japan’s
active participation in the U.S.–Japanese alliance would offer a showcase of
possibilities across the globe. As new states emerged in Asia and elsewhere,
the United States was anxious to prove its anti-imperial benevolence to se-
cure their anticommunist allegiance. Japan was an important counterpoint
to communist success in China, and violence and division in Korea and
Vietnam. The desire to cloak the U.S.–Japanese alliance in democratic legiti-
macy thus had important regional and even global dimensions, endowing
this relationship with even greater value in the eyes of U.S. policymakers. In
the ideological clash of the Cold War, Japan served a key symbolic role.
Despite the difficulty of selling this message to Asians, the American con-
ception of Japan as a model was not without consequences, especially for
American visions of development. A recent wave of scholarship has ex-
plored how American development efforts fundamentally shaped the Cold
War in Asia. Beginning in the 1930s, and continuing after World War II,
Americans sought to “uplift,” transform, and modernize nonwhite, rural,
and “backward” societies, through large-scale infrastructure projects and
small-scale community development. Japan’s unique path in Asia as colo-
nizer, rather than colonized, combined with its prewar urban and indus-
trial expansion, have led many scholars to overlook the country’s role in
shaping American socioeconomic visions. In this line of thinking, since it
was not the target of developmental aid through programs like Point Four,
the U.S. Agency for International Development, or the Rockefeller and Ford
Foundations, Japan was an exception to American policies in the Asia-
Pacific region.18
Introduction 21
While it is true that Japan followed a different historical trajectory, U.S.

policymakers believed there were important lessons in its alleged exception-
alism. Much as their firm belief in American exceptionalism did not prevent
U.S. policymakers from seeking to export American ideas and models,
Japan too played a vital role in their conversations about the possibilities
of social, political, and economic transformation across Asia. In particular,
the country’s dramatic economic “take off” in the late 1950s and early
1960s contributed to a broader belief that democratic norms and values
stemmed not from consensus politics, but from economic growth. Japan
gave credence to the belief that Cold War mobilization would be best
achieved through growth, affluence, and technological innovation and that
all societies could follow a universal path to modernity. Despite the singular
elements of Japan’s historical trajectory, then, American conceptions of
Japan were fundamental to broader U.S. visions and efforts in the Asia-
Pacific region. These two exceptional states, American policymakers be-
lieved, could lead the rest of Asia to a capitalist future.
This link between American designs for Japan and the rest of Asia was
also important because it exported the American fixation with psychology
and spirit from the political to the economic realm. In the 1950s, the United
States embarked on a technical assistance program in Japan that sought to
boost Japanese productivity. This program not only helped forge a growing
governmental and popular consensus around the social and political ben-
efits of economic growth, but also became a foundation of American ef-
forts to encourage Japan to expand its foreign aid and technical assistance
activities in the early 1960s. This allegedly apolitical emphasis on produc-
tivity and growth did not eschew earlier thinking about democracy but in-
stead channeled it into new forms. Productivity programming, both in
Japan and Asia, consistently argued that growth and prosperity stemmed
not simply from new techniques, access to resources, or updated technolo-
gies; equally important was “productivity consciousness,” a state of mind
that fostered the cooperative pursuit of growth as a national goal. This ob-
session with fostering the attitudes necessary for growth directly reflected
earlier thinking about democracy, but it increasingly singled out prosperity
as the source of the social, political, and psychological stability required
for democratic politics. In the early 1960s, both the United States govern-
ment and private groups such as the Ford Foundation funded Japanese ef-
forts to export this “productivity consciousness” as not only a new source
of Asian unity but also the foundation of efforts to rebuild Japan’s legiti-
macy as regional leader.
Like earlier thinking about democracy, this emphasis on attitudes as
the key to economic growth proved remarkably malleable and entailed
questionable assumptions. In seeking to bolster Japanese developmental

assistance, U.S. policymakers helped resurrect visions of technological
superiority that had once justified Japanese imperialism, now under the aegis
of technocratic expertise and development assistance. As with the creation
of the NPR, it relied on Japanese policymakers, bureaucrats, and compa-
nies that played a central role in the imperial and wartime state. What is
more, in a continuation of earlier ideas about democracy, this focus on
“spirit” and consciousness offered a developmental model that elevated
mental transformation over structural revolution. The “delayed” develop-
ment of Asian states, many argued, was not due to years of imperial domi-
nation or resource extraction but was the result of traditional beliefs and
psychologies incompatible with modernity. Just as Japan had overcome its
feudal and antimodern mindsets under American tutelage, now it could
tutor the rest of Asia in the ways of productive capitalist development. The
Japanese model ultimately reinforced contemporary beliefs, shared by pol-
icymakers and social scientists, that development and modernization was
a process of social, cultural, and even psychological transformation. It re-
quired neither the United States nor Japan to come to terms with their his-
tory of imperial warfare while legitimizing both states’ claims to regional
leadership through the language of development. The changing ways in
which Americans talked about and understood Japan thus provide an
important window into contemporary definitions of democracy and their
multifaceted and unexpected influence on Cold War foreign policy.19
In order to trace the rise, implementation, and transformation of

Cold War visions of democracy in the U.S.–Japanese alliance, the following
chapters trace the development of elite democratic ideology, Japanese re-
sistance to these visions, and the consequences of this resistance for both
American and Japanese government policy. The first chapter examines
American wartime planning and the U.S. occupation of Japan to analyze
the visions and ideologies of democracy developed in war and its aftermath.
It argues that U.S. policymakers’ understanding of prewar Japan cemented
a belief that democracy depended on proper attitudes and mentalities; as
one occupation policymaker asserted, democracy was “a state of mind.” The
belief that democracy depended on the mental state of the people was not
limited to the early occupation years. Equally important, it facilitated the
occupation’s forceful turn against communism—often called the “reverse
course”—in the name of protecting the public mind from infection by sub-
versive ideas. This process led to growing ideological convergence between
American policymakers and Japanese conservative leaders over the shared
Introduction 23
goal of not only preventing communist infiltration but also building Cold
War democracy.
The second chapter examines the United States’ attempt to rebuild
Japan’s military in the final years of the U.S. occupation. In contrast to schol-
arship that frames the creation of the NPR—which continues to exist in
the twenty-first century as the Self-Defense Forces—as an example of U.S.
policymakers’ turn away from democracy in Japan, this chapter examines
American plans to utilize Japanese military forces as a surprising source of
new leaders who were imbued with the confidence, national spirit, and
mental strength necessary for democratic survival. It explores the NPR as
a product of these rigid and limited democratic visions to uncover how Cold
War democracy entailed a rethinking of the military and its role in society.
The third chapter explores the goals, limits, and ironies of the peace treaty
that ended the U.S. occupation of Japan. Signed by more than forty-five
countries in September 1951, both Americans and Japanese elevated this
treaty as the site of democratic mobilization at home and abroad, arguing
that a reborn Japan, committed to the “free world,” would safeguard peace
and democracy at home and throughout Asia. Within Japan, U.S. officials
sought to use the treaty to mobilize the Japanese government and public
behind a new U.S.–Japanese alliance and encourage Japanese vigilance
against communism at home and overseas. For an international audience,
U.S. policymakers celebrated the treaty as an example of the opportunities
available for nonwhite nations under American hegemony; they declared
that Japan was a democratic model to which the rest of Asia could aspire.
Yet as disheartened policymakers quickly discovered, this message was rap-
idly subverted. Opponents across Asia—from India to China and even in
Japan—lambasted the peace treaty (and the security treaty that accompa-
nied it) as undermining a peaceful and democratic future in Japan. Debates
over the peace treaty were thus a harbinger of clashes to come.
The fourth and fifth chapters examine popular resistance to the United
States’ Cold War policies and the U.S.–Japanese alliance as a window into
leftist and grassroots visions of Japanese democracy. These chapters also
trace U.S. policymakers’ responses to Japanese protests, particularly their
belief that such activism resulted from a failure of Japanese democracy. The
fourth chapter considers a series of Japanese protests against the expan-
sion of a U.S. military base that received national attention. Protestors ar-
gued not only against the presence of U.S. military forces but also that the
U.S.–Japanese alliance interfered in the natural relationship between a
democratic government and the people. The chapter then shows how
American anxieties about popular resistance and a lack of democratic
legitimacy shaped security policy, leading to a substantial reduction of

military forces in Japan. The fifth chapter examines the apex of democratic
clashes and their consequences through the large-scale 1960 protests
against the renewal of the U.S.–Japanese security treaty. Both the Japanese
government and U.S. policymakers hoped that this treaty would strengthen
the U.S.–Japanese alliance by fostering a new level of public support. How-
ever, Japanese activists and citizens mobilized against the treaty as a betrayal
of postwar democracy and the resurrection of wartime authoritarianism.
Coalescing into the largest popular protests in Japanese history, they ex-
ploded into violent clashes and caused a political crisis, leading to the fall
of Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke and raising profound questions about
the future of this alliance. Indeed, U.S. policymakers argued that such pro-
tests demonstrated that the Japanese people had not fully internalized the
responsibilities of democracy and thus redoubled their outreach efforts
to intellectuals and students in their quest to create “healthy” and rational
democratic elites.
The sixth and final chapter analyzes a shared American and Japanese em-
phasis on economic growth and prosperity as a new source of political
stability, psychological health, and democratic legitimacy. It traces how
Americans and Japanese used American technical assistance programming,
under the banner of boosting productivity, to articulate a new vision of
democracy. This ideology centered on the seemingly apolitical pursuit of
national economic growth, but nevertheless preserved earlier obsessions
with “spirit” and psychology as the source of democratic mobilization.
While this ideology emerged before the 1960 security treaty protests, it ac-
crued even more significance and momentum in the aftermath of these
protests as the facilitator of the “right” mindsets within the Japanese. This
productivity program also became an important foundation for joint
American–Japanese efforts in the field of international development in East,
Southeast, and South Asia. Through training programs for people from
Taiwan, India, and elsewhere, and the creation of an Asia-wide productivity
organization, Americans and Japanese officials worked to elevate Japan as
a regional leader and model, teaching others based on its newfound pros-
perity, technological superiority, and industrial efficiency. This effort to
turn the U.S.–Japanese relationship outward, toward a shared project of
Asian growth under Japanese guidance, fostered new sites of cooperation
between the United States and Japan. By the early 1960s, leadership, psy-
chological strength, and spiritual resolve and economic prosperity and
technological modernization had emerged as the pillars of Cold War de-
mocracy politics on both sides of the Pacific.
Introduction 25
The postwar U.S.–Japanese relationship was the product of complex

forces, including changing visions of democracy, American Cold War secu-
rity policy, Japanese clashes over past and future, and geostrategic revolu-
tions that engulfed Cold War Asia. U.S. policymakers developed a specific
vision of democracy that they sought to implement in postwar Japan—one
that received increasing support from Japanese political, military, and busi-
ness elites. Japanese intellectuals, labor unionists, and activists offered very
different visions of democratic politics, and mobilized to realize them
through resistance and protests. While American policymakers and Japanese
leaders never accepted these alternative ideas, they could not ignore this
ongoing activism. It led elites on both sides of the Pacific to alter their po-
litical and security policies and to elevate economic growth as the core of
democratic politics and U.S.–Japanese power at home and abroad. The
high stakes that diverse participants invested in the U.S.–Japanese alliance—
generals, activists, intellectuals, and diplomats from the United States, Japan,
Europe, and Asia—reflected the shared belief that the political, diplomatic,
and economic norms that emerged in Japan would have tremendous
consequences far beyond its shores. Japan, they all believed, was a crucial
battleground in shaping the future, where the world would witness the
formation, implementation, and consequences of Cold War democracy.
• 1 •
Democracy as a State of Mind
O n September 1, 1945, as the Japanese government prepared to for-

mally surrender aboard the USS Missouri, U.S. secretary of state James
Byrnes released a statement that charted the momentous postwar task
ahead. The goal of the coming occupation, he claimed, was not simply to
transform Japan’s government or military. It was to change the dreams and
desires of the Japanese people. “So now we come to the second phase of
our war against Japan—what might be called the spiritual disarmament of
the people of that Nation—to make them want peace instead of wanting
war. This is in some respects a more difficult task than that of effecting
physical disarmament. Attitudes of mind cannot be changed at the points
of bayonets or merely by the issuance of edicts.” Despite the enormity of
this undertaking, Byrnes claimed that the Japanese already possessed the
core of spiritual freedom. Rather than imposing foreign ideas and values,
he claimed, the United States would facilitate Japan’s “spiritual liberation”
by “remov[ing]” all the obstacles that had “closed the door to truth and
have stifled the free development of democracy in Japan” and “made the
people accept the militaristic philosophy of their warlords.” Byrnes implied
that the United States’ superior history and understanding of democracy—the
highest form of government—would allow it to transform a foreign people.
It would enable a “spiritual liberation,” an unleashing of the soul and its
allegedly natural desire for peace and democracy.1
Democracy as a State of Mind 27
It is easy to dismiss Byrnes’ conception of democratization as mental, psy-

chological, and spiritual transformation as empty rhetoric. Yet this was the
powerful paradigm shared by countless American wartime leaders, plan-
ners, and the postwar occupation authorities, who repeatedly proclaimed
that democracy was fundamentally dependent on specific attitudes, psychol-
ogies, and mentalities. To reform Japan after fifteen years of war, they ar-
gued, democratic institutions were not enough. To replace the militarist past
with a democratic and peaceful future, the Japanese people would also have
to develop a democratic conscience premised on rationality, individualism,
and a strong sense of civic responsibility. For Byrnes and others, this mindset
would encourage the Japanese to mobilize against antidemocratic threats—
both people and ideas—while leading them “to want peace.” This belief
that democracy depended on the mental state of the people fundamentally
undergirded American wartime planning for the occupation. It also deeply
informed the implementation of American occupation policies after the war.
As George Atcheson, political adviser to the U.S. occupation, put it in a
1947 letter to President Harry Truman, democracy was a “state of mind”
and would have to “take firm hold of the minds of the Japanese people”
for the occupation to succeed.2
Byrnes’ talk of “spiritual liberation” also exemplified a foundational
tension that dominated American thinking about wartime and postwar
Japan, which vacillated between fearing the dangerous Japanese mind and
believing it could reach a healthy and “mature” democratic psychology. On
the one hand, during World War II, policymakers, intellectuals, and com-
mentators repeatedly asserted that Japanese psychology explained Japan’s
violent expansion overseas. Perhaps most famous (or infamous) was Geof-
frey Gorer’s claim that Japanese aggression stemmed from an obsession
with cleanliness developed through “drastic toilet training,” which fostered
weak morals and hid a deeply seated “strong desire to be aggressive.” To
secure a peaceful future, Americans would have to remake the Japanese
psyche, restructuring everything from family relations to social norms. Only
then could it be freed from the iron grip of militarist ideologies and decep-
tive wartime propaganda. On the other hand, despite these orientalist and
racialized assumptions about Japanese culture and politics, wartime plan-
ners and occupation policymakers presumed that the Japanese people were
potentially capable of becoming a “normal” nation. If guided correctly by
Americans, the Japanese could build new mentalities that would bolster
“healthy” and “rational” thought patterns, which in turn would support
democratic politics. Wartime planners and U.S. occupation officials oscil-
lated between lamenting Japan’s problematic spirit and celebrating its ability
to overcome a history of militarism and move toward a universal demo-

cratic future. The wide-ranging policies they implemented in Japan, from
purging military personnel to constitutional revision and economic reform,
were fundamentally shaped by this ideological paradox.3
This conception of democracy and democratization as a psychological
process is crucial not only to understanding wartime planning and early
U.S. occupation policies but also to explaining the bewildering transforma-
tions of the early Cold War. Historians have often divided the occupation
of Japan into two phases: a limited period when the occupation authorities
were genuinely, if imperially, interested in Japan’s democratization, and the
1947 shift known as the “reverse course,” when occupation authorities
turned their attention to economic stability and anticommunist mobiliza-
tion to lay the foundations for a future alliance between the United States
and Japan. In this later period, U.S. officials cooperated with the conserva-
tive Japanese government to pursue anticommunist purges within public
and private institutions, quash labor activism, and emphasize economic re-
trenchment and stability rather than redistribution. For many Japanese—
especially leftists, students, and laborers—these shifts were dramatic and
led to profound disappointment over the squandered promise of Japan’s
democratic transformation. Yet in the minds of the occupation authorities,
these policy shifts were not simply a compromise of democracy for the sake
of geostrategic calculations; rather, they were part of an ongoing effort to
stabilize and secure what they perceived as the democratic mind and “spirit”
against a deviant and aggressive communist enemy. Alongside a desire to
economically stabilize Japan, key intellectual, ideological, and legal continu-
ities facilitated the “reverse course.” Many of its policies, such as anticom-
munist purges, relied heavily on ideas, regulations, and policies developed
during the war and the early years of the occupation. This continuity also
stemmed from an ongoing conception of democracy as a process of mental
vigilance against misleading propaganda and ideas advanced by deceptive
antidemocrats. Essentially, the rigid way that the occupation authorities
defined democracy in wartime and early postwar contexts provided a useful
set of legal practices, rhetorical strategies, and intellectual frameworks to
identify and mobilize against communism as the new threat to the Japanese
mind. This blend of psychology and politics was the connective tissue that
bound together seemingly very different policies.
What is more, the belief that both democracy and anticommunism were
a “state of mind” was not limited to American conceptualizations of Japan.
It evolved in an international context, drawing on and shaping Americans’
understanding of their own political culture. During World War II and the
early Cold War, the widespread belief emerged among Americans that both
democracy and its challengers—especially totalitarianism and, more spe-

cifically, communism—rose and fell on mindsets and mentalities. Studies
of national character and morale during World War II, for example, pro-
claimed that a country’s future was fundamentally shaped by mental and
psychological strength. As Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport declared,
“Morale is a condition of physical and emotional wellbeing residing in the
individual citizen . . . National problems . . . are nothing but personal prob-
lems shared by all citizens.” After the war, the continued belief in a profound
connection between individual psyches and the fate of nations connected
seemingly isolated Cold War policies and ideas across the Pacific. As the
United States conducted hearings in the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), drastically increased the size of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) to pursue communists, and investigated federal em-
ployees for loyalty, the occupation authorities and the Japanese government
cooperated to endow the postwar Japanese state with startlingly similar
anticommunist mechanisms. These included a proposed HUAC in Japan’s
parliament, an FBI-like bureau in the Japanese attorney general’s office,
the purge of communists from government positions and private industry,
and new legislation designed to control so-called subversive activities.
Japan, then, was not a peculiar exception, but shaped by broader American
assumptions about politics and psychology that altered political life in
both states. In the process, endowing the Japanese people with anticom-
munist “spirit” became an important site of U.S.–Japanese cooperation
that would shape this alliance for years to come.4
This chapter therefore argues that a specific conceptualization of democ-
racy, one that defined democratization as a process of mental and psycho-
logical transformation, served as a crucial link connecting wartime planning
with the two phases of the U.S. occupation of Japan. To do so, it pro-
ceeds in three sections. The first examines wartime planning to trace how
American officials, academics, and commentators argued that Japan had
turned to militarism because the militarist leadership strangled and
misled the public mind; democratizing Japan thus necessitated unleashing
the mind through new practices, rights, and values, particularly freedom
of thought. The second part examines a select group of policies in the early
years of the occupation—elections and constitutional reform, political
purges, educational reform, and economic reform—to analyze how each
of these policies prioritized the creation of a democratic conscience free
from misleading and infectious militarist ideologies. The final section ex-
amines the occupation’s turn against communism, tracing how anticommu-
nist policies stemmed, in part, from a belief that communism now posed
the greatest threat to a democratic Japanese mind. In doing so, it juxtaposes
anticommunist policies in Japan with those developed in the United States

to argue that policymakers spanning the Pacific believed that the strength
of democratic societies across the globe rested on the mental and emotional
vigilance of everyday citizens. The occupation of Japan therefore demon-
strates how the experiences of World War II and the rise of the Cold War
transformed understandings of democracy itself.
Wartime Thinking about Democracy and Militarism in Japan

Though the United States took the lead in fighting the transpacific war
against Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made few statements about
Japan’s postwar fate during the conflict itself. He only charted the broad
contours of his thinking, maintaining that Japan’s aggressive pursuit of war
and empire went well beyond military adventurism or a quest for imperial
power. It also stemmed from ideologies and psychologies that sought
conquest and total dominance. As he stated to the press following the Ca-
sablanca conference in January 1943, victory “does not mean the destruc-
tion of the population of Germany, Italy or Japan, but it does mean the
destruction of the philosophies of those countries which are based on con-
quest and subjugation of other people.” Roosevelt was therefore clear that
Japan’s defeat would involve more than disarmament. Reconstruction
would entail a fundamental remaking of the nation’s cultural, political, and
social patterns—the “philosophies”—that had facilitated war. People who
were truly “free,” liberated from the grip of destructive ideologies, would
then naturally chose peace and representative politics; as Roosevelt later
stated, “the Japanese war-lord form of government” was “abridgement of
freedom” which “no nation in all the world that is free to make a choice is
going to set itself up under.” Roosevelt was unsure how psychological
change of such magnitude could take place, and did not provide a clear
blueprint for its attainment. Yet he clearly believed that remaking Japanese
mentalities and patterns of thought was key to the future.5
Roosevelt’s scant commentary meant that detailed thinking and planning
about the postwar occupation and Japan’s transformation was left to others.
During the war, scholars, journalists, and commentators produced volumes
of literature seeking to explain the ideologies and mechanisms of the war-
time state and Japan’s prospects for the future. Meanwhile, the formal task
of postwar planning began in the State Department, which formed sev-
eral planning committees in 1942. Perhaps the most prolific was the Inter-
Divisional Area Committee on the Far East (IDAFE), which met 234 times
between fall 1942 and fall 1945. IDAFE was a mix of diplomats and
scholars; its collective membership represented the small community of ex-

pertise about Japan. Members included Joseph Ballantine, a former consul
to Mukden, China, who led the meetings; Hugh Borton, a professor of
Japanese history from Columbia University and a pioneer of Japanese studies
in the United States; Eugene Dooman, former counselor to the U.S. Em-
bassy in Tokyo; and George Blakeslee, a professor of history and interna-
tional relations at Clark University. Alongside contemporary publications
and wartime research, IDAFE members relied on their own experiences with
East Asia diplomacy and personal ties to the region. Dooman and Ballan-
tine had grown up in Osaka as the children of missionaries; Borton con-
ducted research at Tokyo Imperial University in the 1930s. Throughout the
war, these planning committees served as the crucial space for American
thinking and debates about Japan, articulating and shaping official under-
standing of the country’s path to war. Geared as they were toward Japan’s
reconstruction, discussions held by IDAFE and its successor committees also
reflected American policymakers’ dominant beliefs about the values and
structures necessary for establishing a peaceful and democratic future in
Japan.6
If there was one assumption shared by the majority of wartime planners,
it was the belief that the military stood at the root of Japanese domestic
and foreign ills. In fact, even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, consensus
was emerging among American observers that the military had become a
cancerous institution that overtook the Japanese state and instilled milita-
rist ideology in the people. In 1937, University of Chicago sociologist
Harold Lasswell published his famous examination of the “garrison state,”
a new political regime where “the specialist on violence is at the helm, and
organized economic and social life is systematically subordinated to the
fighting forces.” Japan, claimed Lasswell, was the ultimate “ideal type” of
this kind of regime, exemplified by its militarist spirit at home and its ag-
gressive expansion of the war in China. Throughout the Pacific War, a va-
riety of observers repeated variants of this claim that the Japanese state had
been fundamentally taken over by the military. Writing in 1942, former
New York Times Tokyo chief Hugh Byas asserted, “Japan has become a
‘national defense state’ in which all the energies of the nation are harnessed
to war, and everything above bare subsistence is devoted to aggression.” In
1943’s Japan’s Military Masters, Hillis Lory, a former member of the fac-
ulty at Hokkaido Imperial University in Sapporo, lamented what he believed
to be the military’s total dominance. The military, he warned, “holds unri-
valled power within the government, ruthlessly cutting the pattern of
Japan’s foreign and domestic policies to meet its own specifications . . . For
Japan as for no other country, to know her Army is to know her nation.”
Emulating such sentiments, wartime planners believed that dismantling

Japan’s military elite was key to its future. As Hugh Borton stated in 1943,
Japan’s political structure must be altered so that “military oligarchs cannot
again gain the ascendency.”7
Dislodging this militarist ideology, however, required understanding why
the military had risen to power in the first place. How had the military be-
come the core of the Japanese state? Many observers traced this develop-
ment to Japan’s “incomplete” modernization, a process that had begun
with the 1868 Meiji Restoration, which replaced the Tokugawa Shogunate
with a constitutional monarchy and limited parliamentary democracy. As
Byas asserted: “The most important political fact about Japan today is
that it has not finished the revolution that began in 1868.” Some observers,
such as Borton, highlighted constitutional, structural, and institutional
problems, especially the Japanese cabinet and military’s constitutional in-
dependence from parliamentary oversight (both were directly loyal to the
emperor). This arrangement, explained Borton, allowed the military to
exert increasing dominance in the 1930s, paving the way for “the totali-
tarian type of government.” Nor did the people act as a check on the ac-
tions of the government. Despite the presence of a parliament (the Diet)
and the passage of a 1925 general election law that extended voting rights
to all males over the age of 25, the growing centralization of the Japanese
government had made “extremely difficult the emergence of a political
consciousness or a realization by the people of the true function and pur-
pose of both national and local government.”8
Others took a broader socioeconomic view, explaining that an outwardly
modern Japan maintained premodern and feudal hierarchies. During the
nineteenth century, went the logic, the Japanese middle class and merchants
feared Western invasion and made a compromise with feudal warlords that
limited the scope of Meiji-era transformation and preserved premodern so-
cial, economic, and cultural hierarchies. This argument was most rigor-
ously developed by E. H. Norman, a Canadian diplomat who had earned
a PhD in Japanese History at Harvard University and served with the
Canadian legation in Tokyo prior to Pearl Harbor. In his 1940 book, Japan’s
Emergence as a Modern State, Norman asserted that the incomplete and
top-down nature of the Meiji revolution “enabled the former feudal leaders
and the feudal outlook to exercise far greater influence than in other modern
societies.” For Norman and others, the political compromises of the nine-
teenth century curbed the people’s democratic aspirations and prepared the
ground for the military’s dominance in the 1930s. “The destruction of
Tokugawa feudalism from above,” he wrote, “made possible the curbing
of any insurrectionary attempts by the people . . . to extend the anti-feudal
movement by actions from below . . . the new Government set itself firmly
against any demand for further reform on the part of the lower orders as
it did against attempts to restore the old regime.”9
The survival of feudalism into the twentieth century, however, went be-
yond social or political structures. American planners and contemporary
observers were equally concerned with its ideological and psychological
legacies. According to Norman, feudalism contained a readily deployed set
of hierarchical ideas and traditions calling for loyalty, especially to family
and clan, which the Japanese state used to mobilize the masses. Under the
wartime state, “the old feudal sense of clannishness has been modified to
embrace the whole nation so that it has served at moments of great na-
tional crisis to force a spirit of national unity which all the tawdry theater
of a Mussolini or a Hitler cannot so effectively evoke.” In this telling, the
outward trappings of Japanese modernity—railroads, industrial factories,
universities, even a parliament—had done little to expunge “the ideal of
feudal loyalty, the patriarchal system, the attitude toward women, the ex-
altation of the martial virtues, these have acquired in Japan all the garish
luster of a tropical sunset.” Feudalism became the catchall phrase to describe
these premodern legacies, and many believed it provided the emotional
blueprint for the people’s love of military authority. As Lory proclaimed
in 1943, “Seven centuries in which a nation paid homage to the military
overlordship of a hereditary class of warriors have left a heritage to the
people of an extraordinarily strong emotional tie to the military.”10
American officials therefore sought to map out feudalism’s ideological
and psychological foundations. Many zeroed in on the Japanese family, crit-
icizing it as a hierarchical structure premised on total devotion to the
father. As a wartime intelligence report on social relations in Japan asserted,
“All the previous forms of social control merge in the family which is the
basic unit of Japanese society. The Japanese family is a closely knit social
group exercising strong control over its constituent members . . . The
strength of the familial control is reinforced by public opinion as to one’s
proper behavior as a son, a father, a wife or a daughter.” The family system
not only emphasized loyalty, obedience, and control. According to the U.S.
Army’s Civil Affairs Handbook, written as background for occupation
troops, it also fundamentally undermined any sense of individualism in
Japan. “As individuals, the Japanese have little opportunity for self-
expression . . . They exist as units of a family, as objects of the state, as
parts of a group to which they are always subordinated.” Therefore, “their
entire social fabric is woven around the Confucian proposition that younger
sons should obey older sons, that sons should unquestionably obey fathers,
and fathers their fathers; and that in exactly the same way all men should
unquestioningly obey those above them.” Byas was even blunter, claiming
that long-standing Japanese social practices and family traditions reinforced
the control and centralization of the state. “Japanese politics and govern-
ment must be seen as part of Japanese psychology. The Japanese concep-
tion of government has grown from the family system . . . Japan is not a
nation of individuals but of families. The Japanese mind is saturated with
the family system.”11
Feudalism not only perpetuated a legacy of family obedience but also
Japan’s “irrational” obsession with shame and honor. The most prominent
example of this belief was anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s 1946 The Chry-
santhemum and the Sword, which stemmed from her Office of War
Information–sponsored study of Japanese prisoners of war. Though Bene-
dict had never studied Japanese or traveled to Japan, she claimed to ex-
amine Japanese assumptions about “the conduct of life” to understand
“what makes Japan a nation of Japanese.” Benedict identified shame as a
key driver of Japanese life; because Japanese constantly measured their be-
havior against others, they lost any sense of individual moral rightness. “The
primacy of shame in Japanese life means . . . that any man watches the judg-
ment of the public upon his deeds. He need only fantasy what their verdict
will be, but he orients himself toward the verdict of others.” In this telling,
feudal submission to society’s demands fostered the psychological conditions
for autocracy. Unable to develop a “mature” and autonomous self, the
Japanese people sought constant confirmation from each other and from
authority. In such explanations, the Japanese “garrison state” and the psy-
chology of its people reinforced each other: the wartime state had secured
its power through controlling the minds of the people; while Japanese cul-
ture, values, and “mindsets” had fundamentally facilitated their attachment
to the state.12
As Benedict’s analysis made clear, Americans believed that this psycho-
logical perversity lent itself to international aggression. Because of their ex-
cessive psychological repression, the Japanese people were inclined to
“mood swings,” which Benedict claimed to be a reason for their violent as-
sault across Asia. Lacking a firm moral compass, she claimed, Japanese
“are most vulnerable when they attempt to export their virtues into for-
eign lands where their own formal signposts of good behavior do not
hold.” The U.S. Army agreed with this assessment, and trained its officers
accordingly. “Nowhere else on the earth,” explained a military handbook, “is
there a people with a record of such long-term, imposed restraints, dating
back to the early feudal time.” The Japanese were “a hot-blooded, emo-
tional people who have been regimented from cradle to grave, by their
government, by strict and hide-bound traditions, by parents, teachers,
bosses, police, and superior officers in the army. The very strictness and
severity of their life,” argued the handbook, “produces a frustration that
may explode in violent action.” Indeed, wartime planners such as Borton
argued that such psychological tendencies were so deeply ingrained that
only the shock of defeat could lead the military leadership to suffer “loss
of face.” Defeat was necessary to discredit these ideals in a Japanese
cultural tradition that emphasized honor, loyalty, and shame, and thus
change the “attitude” of the Japanese government and people. This claim
that defeat would destroy old mental frameworks and hierarchies, and
open a golden opportunity for a psychological revolution, became a key
rationalization that endowed the forthcoming occupation with vast political
possibilities.13
This tight link that postwar planners, the U.S. military, and outside com-
mentators drew between psychology and state action fostered agreement
that eradicating Japanese militarism and its feudal foundations was not
simply a question of building new democratic practices and institutions.
It would also require the cultivation of new mindsets and mentalities, pro-
cesses that were mutually dependent on each other. Wartime planners
agreed, for example, that Japan’s future government would need to firmly
subject military power to the cabinet and the Diet and grant elected offi-
cials control over the budget, the right to vote on treaties, and the ability
to initiate amendments to the constitution. Similarly, they believed that the
creation of municipal and regional elected assemblies would increase local
autonomy and reduce the power of the central government. But as Borton
explained in a May 1944 document, such changes would only be mean-
ingful if they included “increased civil rights and emphasis upon the status
of the individual.” The main goal of these new institutions was not merely
to diffuse power, but also to facilitate the “the awakening of the electorate
to a consciousness of their rights and responsibilities so as to make elections
expressive of the will of the people rather than exercises in manipulation
by bureaucratic and militaristic elements of the population.” Introducing
a new conception of individual rights to the Japanese people—especially
freedom of thought, the press, assembly, and voting—would begin the process
of “reconstructing” the Japanese psyche in a more individualist bent. “Many
ideas and daily actions of the westerner are unknown to the Japanese,”
stated the Army handbook, “and hence many ‘individual rights’ which we
maintain for ourselves never occur to him.”14
In fact, the more planners thought about militarism and autocracy in psy-
chological terms, the more they began to believe that democratization
would require destroying the Japanese military altogether. While early war-
time policy statements, such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration, only called for
the dismantling of the Japanese empire and said nothing of the armed forces,
by 1944, American planners claimed that only totally disbanding the Japanese
military and stripping it of all political, cultural, and psychological influence
would “cure” Japan. This meant that wartime planners not only drafted
plans for the abolition of conscription, the prohibition of military training,
and the purging of military leaders from public life, but also that they rec-
ommended the “elimination of ultra-nationalist influences” beyond the
military, such as the nationalistic Imperial Rule Assistance Association,
a political structure that led a network of neighborhood associations
(tonari-gumi) and served to mobilize the population behind Japan’s war
effort. Uprooting the military “mindset” would require a multileveled as-
sault that extended far beyond politics and institutions. To break “na-
tionalist ideology,” planners even called for an end to films and dramas
that glorified the military.15
By the time the war was drawing to an end and planning moved to higher
ranks, conceiving of demilitarization, reconstruction, and democratization
in psychological terms was common. In July 1945, for example, Under-
Secretary of the Navy Artemus Gates submitted a report to the State-War-
Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC), which had become the center
of occupation planning in 1944. For Japan to “cease to be a menace to in-
ternational security,” he maintained, the coming occupation would have to
first bring about “changes in certain ideologies and ways of thinking of the
individual Japanese . . . which have in the past motivated the Japanese
people as a whole in the pursuit of chauvinistic and militaristic policies.”
Parroting the works of Norman and others, Gates decried “the persistence
of feudal concepts, including class stratification, the glorification of the mil-
itary, and a habit of subservience to authority” that led to autocracy and
war. This twisted mentality precluded Japanese self-government or democ-
racy, since the Japanese lacked individualism and a rigorous sense of citizen
responsibility. “On the national level, it will be the purpose of this program
to develop the political responsibility of the individual citizen, and thereby
ensure the reorganization of the Japanese political system . . . The entire
program of Japanese reeducation is intended, in part, to supply to the
Japanese themselves the ideas and incentives essential to the spontaneous
development of a political reorganization stemming from the people as
whole.”16
There was, of course, a deep irony in arguing that a rigorous reeduca-
tion in American democratic traditions and practices would lead to the
“spontaneous” development of democracy. Wartime planners, after all, were
quite clear that the American occupation would forcefully curtail basic
democratic freedoms, such as freedom of speech and the press, and would
prohibit the expression of any opinion it deemed dangerous or antidemo-

cratic. Even religious practice had to be closely monitored. The religion of
Shinto, stated a 1944 document, had become “a nationalistic Emperor-
worshipping cult” that fed “the present fanatically patriotic, aggressive
Japan,” and its practice had to be dramatically changed. But very few ques-
tioned that American military occupation and the imposition of demo-
cratic institutions were more conducive to psychological independence, the
natural human desire for freedom, and the “true” democratic spirit. Gates
and others largely presumed that American military dominance and willing
Japanese participation could go hand in hand, because they firmly believed
that the occupation could liberate the universal desires of the Japanese
people, which would find their natural expression in the exercise of demo-
cratic freedoms.17
For all these high hopes of “liberating” the Japanese, wartime planners
also paradoxically believed that they could utilize established Japanese psy-
chologies to redirect Japan’s alleged fetishization of loyalty and commit-
ment to hierarchy into support for democracy. During the war, policymakers
and wartime observers repeatedly excoriated the Japanese for their lack of
independence and tendency to follow the leader. Former U.S. ambassador
to Japan Joseph Grew asserted in a December 1943 speech in Chicago that
“many of the rank and file of the Japanese people were simply like sheep,
helplessly following where they were led.” This fanatic obedience, however,
also opened new opportunities for transformation. As Grew put it, their
sheep-like habits could make the Japanese “malleable under the impact of
new circumstances and new conditions.” Borton expressed similar ideas in
an October 1943 memorandum, claiming that the occupation authorities
might have to rely on the very qualities, practices, and structures that Amer-
ican planners bemoaned. “The political history of Japan in modern times,”
he explained, “has been one in which changes and reforms in government
have originated from above and have then been presented to the people . . .
Thus before the populace will become politically articulate or will even be
conscious of what is desirable for it, reforms may have to be instigated by
the new authorities which would then educate the people in their advan-
tages.” Borton did not dwell on the irony of using Japanese hierarchies and
authoritarianism to destroy the same hierarchies and authoritarianism. In-
stead, he emphasized that new Japanese mental attitudes would flow from
American-supervised freedoms, elections, and education.18
These mental gymnastics were most apparent in wartime discussions
about the future of the Japanese emperor. However wartime planners under-
stood the rise of Japan’s militarism, they all believed that the emperor
stood at the center of militarist ideology. As an April 1943 document drafted
by Cabot Coville claimed, “The problem of the overthrow of the militarists

in Japan and the problem of changing the military-mindedness of the
country” was tied “to the Japanese emperorship and its future,” because
“through emperor-worship Japanese are filled with belief in their uniqueness
and with determination to impose their institutions and rule upon alien
peoples.” In this regard, it made sense to abolish the emperorship and explic-
itly remove even symbolic status from the imperial family. Yet Coville ar-
gued that the emperor should remain to allow the obedient and emotional
Japanese to stomach American reforms. Unmoved by the glaring contradic-
tion, he declared: “The Japanese are peculiarly and sentimentally responsive to
generosity and indications of respect. There is no approach so completely
calculated to carry Japanese approval as good treatment of the emperor.”
Policymakers such as Secretary of War Henry Stimson even suggested that
the United States publicly declare that the emperor could keep his throne,
hoping this would accelerate Japan’s surrender, even if that meant re-
treating from the demand of unconditional surrender. While President Harry
Truman declined to adopt this idea, he did not rule out keeping the emperor
after surrender, and left the matter to be decided later.19
These tensions were apparent in the Potsdam Declaration, the most
important wartime statement on Japan’s future. Written as U.S. planes were
bombing Japanese cities into ash, the declaration was signed on July 26,
1945, by U.S. president Truman, British prime minister Winston Churchill,
and Chinese chairman Jiang Jieshi (the Soviet Union maintained neutrality
in the Asian theater until the following month). The Potsdam Declaration
laid out surrender terms for Japan while articulating a specific narrative of
Japan’s past and its future. Blaming the war on “self-willed militaristic ad-
visers,” who had “deceived and misled the people of Japan,” the statement
promised that the country’s leadership would be punished. Japan would
then be aggressively democratized, and its people would be granted new
rights and freedoms, which would unleash the individual conscience and
spirit in order to “[strengthen] democratic tendencies among the Japanese
people.” Crucially, alongside freedom of religion, the only rights specified
by Potsdam were freedom of thought and speech, a revealing assertion
about the centrality of mental mobilization to Japanese authoritarianism.
Democracy, in this vital document, entailed first and foremost the right to
worship, speak freely, and think openly and independently, to separate the
mind from the exigencies of the state. More broadly, Potsdam reinforced
the narrative that militarism had derived unique power from deceptive ideas
and its ironclad hold over the Japanese mind, while declaring that this mind
could be reformed through the granting of new freedoms as the founda-
tion of institutional and psychological democracy.20
While Potsdam was an international statement, translating its lofty ideals

into practice remained a largely American endeavor. Americans firmly
rebuffed Soviet calls for a joint international arrangement (along the lines
accepted in Germany), and essentially maintained full control over all occu-
pation policies. By the time Japan surrendered in August 1945, following
the Soviet invasion of Japan’s empire in China and Korea and two Amer-
ican atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Americans were gearing
toward an unprecedented effort to democratize the Japanese state and mind.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) 1380 / 15, a fall 1945 directive that occupa-
tion officers referred to as “their Bible,” adopted wartime planning as its
blueprint and envisioned the occupation as a political and psychological
endeavor, to disseminate “democratic ideals and principles.” On August 30,
1945, the first American plane landed at Atsugi airfield, which had been
the training site for Japanese kamikaze only weeks before. Descending from
on high, the United States sought to replace militarism with a new set of
values, psychologies, and mentalities in the Japanese people.21
Democracy during the Early Occupation

No one symbolized the scope and tensions of American ambitions in Japan
more than General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Al-
lied Powers (SCAP), who led the occupation until his removal by Truman
in April 1951. A tall and imposing figure with a long history of colonial
military service in the Philippines, MacArthur exemplified both American
suspicions of the “Oriental mind” and the simultaneous confidence in the
American ability to “uplift” Japan by remaking institutions, norms, and
mentalities. He established his general headquarters (GHQ) at the Dai-Ichi
building in Tokyo, directly opposite the imperial palace, and immediately
set on the “elimination of feudal and totalitarian practices which tend to
prevent government by the people.” Under the guidance of MacArthur and
General Robert Eichelberger, who supervised the Eighth U.S. Army troops
scattered across Japan, occupation authorities (GHQ / SCAP) drew from
wartime planning in their assigned task of implanting the practices and con-
sciousness of democracy.22
The occupation was diverse and wide-ranging, addressing myriad aspects
of Japanese politics, economics, and society from law to corporate consoli-
dation to health and sanitation. But one consistency in these efforts was
the desire to remake not just Japanese political, cultural, legal, and economic
practices, but the values and mentalities that fostered and supported these
practices. These efforts were especially apparent in four key areas: (1) the
wide-scale purge of those deemed “undemocratic”; (2) the formation of new

democratic institutions and norms through elections and constitutional
reform; (3) the remaking of the Japanese educational system; and (4) the
reform of economic relations, especially land ownership and labor organ-
ization. Based on the ideas and understandings developed during the war,
these were key spheres that wartime planners and GHQ / SCAP officials
identified as the building blocks of the effort to destroy the feudal mind
and foster a new democratic “spirit.”
Implementing these new practices and politics in Japan was not simply
an American project. For logistical and financial reasons, the United States
decided that GHQ / SCAP would administer the occupation through ex-
isting Japanese leaders and institutions. Unlike in Germany, the occupa-
tion authorities did not disband the Japanese Diet or eliminate the existing
government bureaucracy. In October 1945, MacArthur appointed prewar
Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijūrō as prime minister; until the first postwar
elections in April 1946, Shidehara operated alongside a Diet that had been
elected during the war. The indirect structure of occupation rule upheld U.S.
policymakers’ repeated yet ironic claim that true change could only come
through the actions of the Japanese. While MacArthur issued edicts ordering
changes, the Japanese government and civil service crafted the necessary
legislation and policies, and had significant influence on the implementa-
tion of occupation reforms. The occupation bureaucracy relied heavily on
key agencies and ministries from prewar and wartime Japan, especially the
Home Ministry, which had possessed wide-ranging power over elections,
public health, public works, and internal security, including suppressing po-
litical dissent through the Special Higher Police, colloquially known as the
“Thought Police.” This arrangement meant that even under American mil-
itary occupation, many Japanese were intimately involved in shaping the
policies that were meant to transform their mentalities and psyches, a pro-
cess often marked with tension.
The initial steps of the occupation closely followed wartime planning.
The first step of Japan’s “democratization” was the dismantling of the
Japanese military. This began with the titanic task of demobilizing and
moving millions of Japanese troops, stripping them of their positions
and weapons, and ending military pensions. Over the following months
and years, the Allies and Japanese authorities demobilized 2,576,000
troops stationed across Japan, as well as almost 5,000,000 who surren-
dered throughout the Japanese empire in China, Korea, Southeast Asia,
and other Pacific islands. GHQ / SCAP also followed wartime planning by
aggressively banning any military associations or symbols and prohibiting
flags and military paraphernalia, even in private memorial ceremonies.
This emphasis on holding the military responsible for the war extended
into the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the lengthy postwar
trial held in Tokyo between May 1946 and November 1948. Commonly
known as the Tokyo Trial, this tribunal tried twenty-eight Japanese wartime
and political leaders, charging them with the planning and execution of an
aggressive war and for atrocities committed against military and civilian
prisoners of war. In contrast to the Nuremberg trials, which largely focused
on the civilian leaders of the Nazi regime, the majority of the accused at
Tokyo were military leaders. To American thinking, they were the core of
the “irrational” Japanese quest for empire and war.23
The most potent tool for destroying the military “mind,” however, was
purging leading members of the militarist wartime state from public office.
In the fall of 1945, members of GHQ / SCAP’s Government Section drafted
a series of purge guidelines targeting wartime military officers, along with
the leaders of wartime political parties, organizations, and societies. These
included all officers at the level of second lieutenant and higher that had
served since the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, when Japan expanded
its invasion from Manchuria to all of China. On January 4, 1946, Mac-
Arthur officially announced these guidelines with two orders to the Japanese
government. These edicts banned from public office war criminals, mem-
bers of the wartime cabinet and high ranking civil officials, “influential
members” of wartime political associations, “career military and naval per-
sonnel,” and leaders of the financial and development companies involved
in Japanese expansion. Moreover, in an effort to eradicate militarist ideas,
these purge regulations also disbanded and prohibited the formation of any
“secret, militaristic, ultranationalistic and anti-democratic societies and
organizations,” including associations that opposed “free cultural or intel-
lectual exchange between Japan and foreign countries,” or sought the “per-
petuation of militarist or martial spirit in Japan.” This emphasis on access
to “free” information and curtailing ultranationalist beliefs and the mili-
tary “spirit” reveals the occupation’s constant emphasis on curbing the
spread of ideas and beliefs deemed antidemocratic, lest the Japanese mind
remain infected with the scourge of militarism. While these definitions were
slightly less sweeping than those sought by some occupation officials, who
wanted to purge every person involved in wartime politics, they still had
far-reaching consequences. Within a few years, the Japanese government,
under the supervision of the occupation authorities, had screened 717,415
individuals and dismissed 201,815 from public positions.24
This purge was but one step in implementing wartime planning. Occu-
pation authorities conceived of the purge as a key component of building
a “free” and democratic Japan by curtailing the speech of powerful actors
and the dissemination of harmful beliefs and ideologies, but this process of
removing antidemocratic people, groups, and ideas had to be complemented
by the development of new institutions, practices, and ways of thinking.
As one of the first orders of the occupation, MacArthur issued a series of
directives enumerating popular rights and freedoms in postwar Japan,
which culminated in a wide-ranging directive on civil liberties on October 4,
1945. These orders emphasized freedom of speech and the press, reflecting
the importance that occupation authorities placed on information and open
discussion. The civil liberties directive also privileged freeing the mind, ab-
rogating a series of Japanese laws that “maintain[ed] restrictions on
freedom of thought, of religion, of assembly and of speech,” along with re-
leasing political prisoners and disbanding the Thought Police (though the
Home Ministry still remained intact). This directive further called for equal
treatment under the law, preventing the government from operating “in
favor or against any person by reason of race, nationality, creed or political
opinion.” Of course, these directives had key exceptions; for example,
freedom of speech did not include “false or destructive criticism of the
Allied powers” or “rumors.” Preventing “misinformation” was key to
ensuring that freedom did not become a path to authoritarianism or milita-
rist demagoguery. By practicing these new civil freedoms in an ideologically
restricted environment, asserted these directives, the Japanese would shed
their primitive adherence to feudal psychologies and coercive ideologies.25
In particular, occupation authorities identified voting and elections as key
to encouraging the Japanese to practice and internalize these new civil
rights. Going to the polls, hoped many Americans, would foster the mental
pathways conducive to democracy and facilitate Japanese loyalty to demo-
cratic structures and institutions. The occupation authorities privileged
voting as the expression of the individual conscience; elections would
therefore encourage the Japanese to see themselves as autonomous citizens
responsible for fostering healthy democratic governance. In the coming
years, GHQ / SCAP would press for elections on the national, regional, and
local levels. As Guy Swope, chief of the National Government Division, re-
ported after an April 1947 trip to the city of Sendai, “Holding elections . . .
where the citizens feel that their right to vote by their own choice is un-
hampered by interference of public officials where there is complete freedom
of expression afforded parties and candidates will in time result in a far
more intelligent approach by the public at large.”26
Americans were so eager to begin this process that despite fears of en-
trenched Japanese backwardness, they scheduled the first national Diet elec-
tions for January 1946, a mere four months after the surrender. As Swope
noted, these elections were of special importance because “the next Diet
Two American officers observe Japanese citizens voting in the first postwar general
election on April 16, 1946. Bettman / Getty Images.
will be somewhat in the nature of a Constitutional Convention,” tasked

with drafting Japan’s new governing principles. For this reason, he stated,
“there is a proper interest that strong, sincere, democratic and honorable
Japanese should offer themselves as candidates.” Swope did not explain
how one determined which candidates were “democratic” and which were
not, nor how to assess the qualities of honor and sincerity. Yet his stress on
the nature of the candidates and the power of the electoral process reveals
the emphasis that the occupation authorities placed on the practice of voting
as a concrete manifestation of newfound Japanese “freedoms” and the im-
portance of free expression and thought as a core value of democratic poli-
tics in postwar Japan.27
Like the purges, these first postwar elections—which MacArthur post-
poned until April 1946 in part to ensure that “insincere” and nondemocratic
Japanese would be rendered unable to participate by the ongoing purge—
exemplified the tensions at the heart of American thinking. On the one hand,
these elections were certainly successful in facilitating the entry of new can-
didates into Japanese politics. No less than 95 percent of the candidates
were running for the first time, under the banners of 363 different parties.
Even after Japanese politics consolidated into larger blocs, they still showed
remarkable diversity. Significant political parties ranged from the reconsti-
tuted Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which called for radical economic
distribution and the abolition of the monarchy, to the slightly more cen-
trist but ideologically heterogeneous Socialist Party, to the more right-wing
Liberal and Progressive Parties, which competed over Japan’s nationalist
and conservative voters in support of “traditional values.” Yet disappointed
U.S. officials noted that the elections did not unleash a spiritual revolution.
While leading wartime politicians could not participate, the conservative
parties earned more than twice as many seats in the Diet’s lower house than
the Socialist Party and formed a coalition government.28
Moreover, the specter of the purge hung heavily over the election and its
aftermath because the Japanese government and the compliance branch of
SCAP’s intelligence section screened all victorious candidates. The most
shocking of these purges was the removal of Liberal Party leader and in-
coming prime minister Hatoyama Ichirō right before he was to take office,
ostensibly for his actions as minister of education in the early 1930s. In a
May 1946 meeting with P. K. Roest, chief of the Political Parties Branch,
Socialist Party chief Katayama Tetsu complained about the “unsettling effect
of purging political leaders belatedly after they have already been approved
by the Government as Diet Candidates.” Despite their proclaimed desire to
allow a broad array of political views in the elections, Americans made
sure to keep close track of the election and its aftermath, monitoring new
political parties and “organizations of doubtful character” and instructing
the Home Ministry to obtain biographical information on leading mem-
bers of such groups. By the time the election took place, thirty-six parties
had been dissolved for failing to comply. This confusion, combined with
ongoing purges, undermined the occupation officials’ plan to use the 1946
elections as a source of new political consciousness.29
The tensions of simultaneously “liberating” and controlling the Japanese
mind found equally potent expression in the process of constitutional revi-
sion. During the war, planners repeatedly pointed to the structural deficiencies
of Japan’s Meiji constitution as a source of lingering feudalism, especially
the independence it granted to the cabinet and the military from elected
officials’ oversight. Unlike the United States, or the United Kingdom, which
was also a parliamentary monarchy, they claimed that Japan had not devel-
oped a tradition of accountability or responsibility to the people; instead,
its constitution was designed to contain and suppress the people. “The present
Japanese Constitution,” explained the SWNCC in November 1945, “was
drawn up with the dual purpose of, on the one hand, stilling popular
clamor for representative institutions, and on the other, of fortifying and
perpetuating the centralized and autocratic governmental structure.” The
postwar constitution needed to “ensure the development of a truly represen-
tative government responsible to the people” based on “wide representative
suffrage.” In particular, it needed to explicitly guarantee rights for Japanese
and foreigners alike that would “create a healthy condition for the devel-
opment of democratic ideas” by fostering a firm constitutional foundation
for popular, rather than imperial, sovereignty.30
The Japanese government, however, was less enthusiastic about these
expansive American visions and sought to forestall American-led constitu-
tional revision by developing its own draft in late 1945 and early 1946.
Both Prime Minister Shidehara and Cabinet Minister (without portfolio)
Matsumoto Jōji, who chaired the initial Japanese subcommittee drafting
the new constitution, saw no need to substantially revise the Meiji consti-
tution and believed the emperor should remain the nation’s supreme leader.
Frustrated by what he considered Japanese inability to grasp the depth of
the required democratic transformation, MacArthur then decided that the
new constitution would instead be written and imposed by occupation of-
ficials. In a week of extensive work, a group of approximately twenty
scholars and military officials drafted a new Japanese constitution, which
explicitly proclaimed “the people” as the source of sovereignty and rele-
gated the emperor to “a symbol of the State and the Unity of the people.”
It instituted the elected Diet as the most powerful state organ (with the
power to appoint the cabinet), and enunciated a series of rights now re-
served for the people. As with the Potsdam Declaration, this list of rights
emphasized thought and expression and included “freedom of thought and
conscience”; freedom of religion; and freedom of assembly, speech, and
press.31
Building upon the principles of wartime planning, the American draft en-
visioned democracy as not merely institutional or rights-based but as a
universal mental and spiritual struggle, requiring constant vigilance against
antidemocratic forces. Article 10 of the American draft asserted: “The fun-
damental human rights by this Constitution guaranteed to the people of
Japan result from the age-old struggle of man to be free. They have sur-
vived the exacting test for durability in the crucible of time and experience,
and are conferred upon this and future generations in sacred trust, to be
held for all time inviolate.” Article 11 went even further by stating that this
struggle would continue permanently into the future. Japanese rights, it
stated, depended on “the eternal vigilance of the people and involve an ob-
ligation on the part of the people to prevent their abuse and to employ
them always for the common good.” While it was the enduring and natural
desire of the Japanese people to be “free,” it was also the responsibility of
the people to continuously maintain the consciousness necessary to that
quest for freedom. Democracy was never safe or stable; it always needed
protection in the form of constant mental mobilization.32
In response to the American draft, members of the Japanese government
claimed that the “spirit of the people” found its clearest manifestation in
imperial authority, rather than the expression of political rights or partici-
pation in representative politics. During Diet discussions over the new
constitution, Minister without Portfolio Kanamori Tokujirō frustrated U.S.
officials by declaring that Japan’s “national structure is eternally unchange-
able,” because sovereignty “rests with the people, including the Emperor. It
does not rest with the individual opinion of each citizen but with the unity
of the people as a whole, based on a spiritual link with the emperor.” In
proclaiming that “freedom” stemmed not from individual rights and ex-
pression but the spiritual unity of the Japanese body politic, Kanamori was
not alone. Indeed, the occupation authorities lamented that Kanamori was the
leader of an active Japanese campaign to change the meaning of the con-
stitution and salvage “the feudal and totalitarian institutions and political
practices of pre-surrender Japan.” The final Japanese version of the consti-
tution did alter the meaning of key words, such as sovereignty, through
word choice and translation; constitutional revision showed that even with
the occupation authorities taking an aggressive approach to democratization,
they lacked full control over final outcomes.33
The third major sphere of the American campaign to remake the Japanese
mind was education. Both wartime planners and occupation officials firmly
believed that education—the material covered and teaching methods
used—was key to the success and vibrancy of a democratic society. A mind
trained in rigorous thinking and exposed to diverse ideas, so the logic went,
would naturally foster peaceful and pluralist politics. “Education,” stated
the SWNCC in a September 1946 planning document, “should be looked
upon as preparation for life in a democratic nation, and as training for the
social and political responsibilities which freedom entails.” Educational re-
form would also equip the Japanese to resist propaganda and infectious
ideologies by enabling the people to separate their minds from the demands
of the state. Americans declared that prewar Japanese education sought “to
inculcate a spirit of self-sacrificing willingness to serve the State as an end
in and of itself.” In contrast, a democratic Japanese education system would
place emphasis on “the dignity and worth of the individual, on independent
thought and initiative, and on a scientific attitude in learning . . . Methods

of instruction and examination should be so revised as they minimize
the importance of and dependence upon rote memory work.” Successful
education reform, Americans argued, would not simply change the con-
tent of Japanese schoolwork; it would generate new mental pathways,
remaking the Japanese way of thinking to produce the individual and
autonomous mentalities necessary to erase the historical patterns and mental
inclinations that facilitated state-driven “self-sacrifice.” With 40,000 schools,
400,000 teachers, and almost 18 million students in the fall of 1945, educa-
tional reform had the power to reach millions of impressionable Japanese
youth.34
To implement these lofty goals, MacArthur issued a series of orders that
called for the “removal of militarist elements” from Japanese schools in the
fall of 1945. These included revisions in course content, such as the removal
of state Shinto and courses in morals, Japanese history, and geography, and
the replacement of unacceptable textbooks. In an act reminiscent of prewar
censorship of subversive ideas, teachers cut or inked out militaristic content
in textbooks, which often made them impossible to understand. Japanese
officials like Education Minister Maeda Tamon sought to preempt exten-
sive education reform by abolishing military training and reviewing text-
books prior to MacArthur’s orders. But Maeda wanted to continue
moral education, including the 1890 imperial rescript on education that
called on students to “offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus
guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with
heaven and earth.” His limited reforms were therefore quickly superseded
by GHQ / SCAP’s more extensive measures, and occupation authorities or-
dered him to decentralize the education ministry, rewrite textbooks, and in
a series of later directives, drastically reform classroom content. During the
next several years, a series of new education laws followed blueprints for
reforms developed by both Americans and progressive Japanese scholars.
They expanded compulsory education, delegated curriculum control to
local school boards, revised textbooks, and declared that “democracy, the
dignity of the person, and world peace” were the primary goals and virtues
of education.35
Through these efforts, educational reform sought to replace the ideolog-
ical agenda of militarization with the values, attitudes, and mental scaf-
folding deemed necessary to democracy. This was especially clear in the
actions of the occupational division responsible for Civil Information and
Education (CIE). Headed by Brigadier General Kermit Dyke and next by
Lieutenant Colonel Donald Nugent, who had a PhD in Asian history from
Stanford University, CIE held the broad responsibility of creating “a positive
Japanese public knowledge of and belief in democracy in all walks to

life—political, economic, and cultural.” Under Nugent’s supervision, occu-
pation authorities oversaw the rewriting of textbooks and curriculum to
emphasize democratic values. As the 1948 Japanese Ministry of Education
high school textbook Primer of Democracy proclaimed, “It is wrong to con-
sider democracy merely a form of government. Democracy is more deeply
rooted. Where? It is rooted in the minds and hearts of individuals. It is es-
sentially a spiritual thing. It is a disposition and a willingness to deal with
all human beings as individuals having worth and dignity of their own—
this is the fundamental spirit of democracy.” CIE sought to foster this spirit
not just through the curriculum but also student activities, introducing the
use of homerooms and student councils to foster responsibility, good be-
havior, and democratic self-government.36
As with the occupation’s approach to purges and elections, this “opening”
of the Japanese mind and spirit through educational reform came with ex-
tensive restrictions and censorship on thought and expression; only the
“right” ideas, images, and history were deemed valid by occupation authori-
ties. Like political leaders and elected officials, Japanese schoolteachers
were investigated, and 24 percent were either purged or chose to resign.
CIE also sought to reach the Japanese public through libraries and cultural
centers designed to expose the Japanese to American books, magazines, and
ideas. Yet members of CIE carefully censored and regulated Japanese dis-
cussions and depictions of both the occupation and its own wartime past;
the censorship bureau monitored public discussion and cultural projects
such as films, banning many depictions of the military and its wartime be-
havior and broader cultural representations of militarism, such as samurai
stories and even images of Mount Fuji. Criticism of the occupation was also
censored. Too much freedom of thought and expression was just as dan-
gerous as too little.37
Finally, occupation officials emphasized mental democratization through
economic reform. In keeping with wartime thinking, occupation authori-
ties believed that prewar economic practices had perpetuated feudal prac-
tices and mentalities, facilitating the Japanese embrace of militarism. As
Norman and other scholars claimed, Japan’s “incomplete” modernization
created an economy that was technologically and industrially advanced but
concentrated enormous economic power in the hands of a few, forcing many
Japanese into economic dependence and feudal loyalty. This was especially
true in rural areas, where scholars and policymakers alike believed that im-
poverishment and a high level of farm tenancy provided an important
foundation for the rise of militarism in Japan. As Japan specialist and dip-
lomat Robert Fearey wrote in 1945, “the unsatisfactory state of Japanese
agriculture has been like a cancer in the economic and political life of the
country. The large farming class has remained a perpetually discontented
element in the population and a principal support of the military program
in which it has seen virtually the only hope of a solution of its economic
ills.” If peace and democracy were to be established, Japan’s economy would
have to be radically reformed.38
This was not an easy task in a country devastated by war and pro-
longed American bombing, where the population suffered from large-scale
starvation. “Give us rice” rallies were widespread, culminating on May 19,
1946, when over 250,000 gathered in front of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo
demanding access to the food stocks of the palace kitchens. The issue of
hunger endured well beyond the early months of the occupation. In the
April 1947 elections for the governor of Tokyo, over 10,000 ballots were
invalid because voters wrote “give us rice,” rather than the name of a can-
didate. Such distress only further highlighted the perceived relationship
between economic circumstances and democracy; diplomat and scholar
George Blakeslee echoed widespread notions when he remarked upon his
visit to Japan that “a sane democracy cannot rest on an empty stomach.”39
This perceived connection between economic circumstances, popular
mentalities, and political beliefs led occupation authorities to embark on
one of their most significant and globally influential programs: rural land
reform. Following the recommendation of Fearey, who had arrived in Japan
to work in the occupation’s political office, GHQ / SCAP ordered the
Japanese government to aggressively redistribute land among Japan’s poorest
farmers. In December 1945, MacArthur issued a directive ordering the re-
duction of land crowding, tenancy, debt, and interest rates. This project was
especially appealing to MacArthur, who had supported such measures in
the past, advocating a similar program to pacify the Huk rebellion in the
Philippines. Within a short time, this program had a transformative im-
pact. Implemented through myriad laws, ordinances, and regulations, it
transferred a third of the arable land in Japan from landlords to tenants.
Approximately 57 percent of rural families became landowners.40
Land reform had a clear political goal, geared to breaking the power of
large estates and fostering a new “political consciousness of the peasant,”
by “regulat[ing] the relationships between land and people.” The confisca-
tion and selling of land was implemented through commissions on the
village, prefectural, and national levels that were composed of landlords,
owners, and tenants, who made up 50 percent of the commissions to en-
sure the representation of their interests. These committees decided what
land would be sold, who it would be sold to, and set the price. MacArthur
saw the program as a core component of democratization, directly equating
political stability and a moderate, antiextremist democratic consciousness

with private property, in the form of land ownership. Land reform, he pro-
claimed, was “one of the most important milestones . . . in the creation of
an economically stable and politically democratic society . . . By it, there will
be here established the basic policy that those who till the land shall reap
the profit from their toil. There can be no firmer foundation for a sound
and moderate democracy and no firmer bulwark against the pressure of
any extreme philosophy.” The “Japanese farmers,” he mused, “will find in
it their long-awaited Bill of Rights.”41
Occupation officials also turned their attention to Japanese labor and en-
couraged labor unionism as another source of democratic mentalities in
Japan. As one labor official noted, “We have been accused of promoting
economic trade unionism, but the purposes were political . . . we wanted
to see the Japanese unions not only as economic organizations but as a po-
litical force on the side of democracy.” Many political prisoners released
through the October 4 civil liberties directive were labor leaders, and a De-
cember 1945 law gave unions rights to organize, bargain collectively, and
strike, along with establishing labor relations boards on an American model.
In the early years of the occupation, the Japanese labor movement was
vibrant and active, and union membership surged, reaching nearly five mil-
lion people in December 1946. As a result of these new organizing rights,
labor disputes became a common part of Japan’s postwar political and social
scene, as workers demanded higher pay, better conditions, and control
over production. As one scholar put it, occupation reforms had “catalyz[ed]
a set of practical, egalitarian expectations throughout society—aspects of
a ‘democratic imaginary’—that encouraged a variety of antagonisms and
conflicts.” Expansive labor activism demonstrated how GHQ / SCAP had
little control over the development of diverse interpretations of “democ-
racy”; in particular, visions that emphasized economic equality, fair wages,
and postcapitalist forms of economic organization. Indeed, MacArthur’s
cancellation of a major labor strike in February 1947 was the first impor-
tant sign of an impending shift in occupation policy.42
Taken together, the purge, elections and a new constitution, educational
reform, and economic overhauls sought to make wartime planning a reality.
Within a strikingly short period of time, the project of remaking both the
Japanese state and Japanese mind was well under way. In a statement
released on May 3, 1950, to celebrate the third anniversary of the promul-
gation of Japan’s new constitution, MacArthur cautiously cheered the
psychological success necessary to Japanese political progress. The Japanese
people, he stated, now possessed “an increasingly healthy awareness and
acceptance of that individual political responsibility which exists where
sovereignty rests with the people.” Sounding a theme that was becoming in-
creasingly common for American policymakers, MacArthur also asserted
that the success of democracy in Japan demonstrated broad possibilities
across the region. “For men will come to see in Japan’s bill of rights and
resulting social progress the antidote to many of Asia’s basic ills.” In Mac-
Arthur’s soaring words, “if Japan proceeds firmly and wisely upon the course
now set, its way may well become the Asian way, leading to the ultimate goal
of all men—individual liberty and personal dignity—and history may finally
point to the Japanese Constitution as the Magna Charta of Free Asia.”43
Democracy and the Communist Threat

Despite MacArthur’s confident claims, by the late 1940s, American opti-
mism was laced with fear. As Cold War tensions rose, many began to argue
that the “democratic mind” was menaced by the overwhelming threat of
global communism. In conceptualizing this danger at home and abroad,
American scholars, diplomats, and politicians continued to draw on wartime
thinking to conceive of democracy as a mental and spiritual project, which
could only be sustained through constant vigilance and psychological
strength. Communism, they argued, was an existential threat to the demo-
cratic order not just because of its political claims or its threat to private
property, but also because it sought to invade the mind through lies, pro-
paganda, and “deviant” ideas and desires; by corrupting the public mind, it
would eliminate the foundations of democracy and civilization itself. Senior
strategists therefore conceived of the Cold War as a psychological struggle
for democracy. Diplomats such as Paul Nitze, chair of the State Depart-
ment’s Policy Planning Staff, described the Cold War not just in geostra-
tegic terms, but also as a clash between “normal” and “sick” emotional
orders, which by nature could not coexist. It was in part due to this con-
ception of global politics that so many Americans were possessed by an all-
consuming panic about communism, undertaking a multilayered effort to
establish loyalty programs and new national security organizations. In their
mind, these were the shields of the democratic “spirit.”44
This crucial ideological continuity between World War II and the Cold
War helps explain not only anticommunist mobilization within the United
States but also major shifts in U.S. occupation policies in Japan. After
blaming Japanese psychology for the rise of militarism, U.S. occupation of-
ficials and policymakers became increasingly panicked about commu-
nism’s potential impact on the Japanese mind. Like feudal warlords before
them, Americans worried, communists would exploit alleged Japanese
immaturity, emotionalism, misguided loyalty, and lack of individualism.

They would undermine democratization through simplistic promises of
false glory. It was in part due to this anxiety that U.S. officials embarked
on the “reverse course.” Like American political elites within the United
States, occupation officials increasingly pursued an anticommunist cru-
sade, which included a new focus on economic retrenchment, a crackdown
on labor activism, and an extensive purge of alleged communists from the
public sphere in the name of protecting democratic institutions and values.
Indeed, occupation officials used their psychological and spirit-based con-
ception of democracy to argue that other democratic visions, especially
activists’ calls for economic redistribution, were antidemocratic. For many
Japanese, these measures dramatically changed the tenor and goals of the
U.S. occupation and tragically forestalled the creation of democracy based
on political and economic equality. Yet they also enabled a growing rap-
prochement between U.S. officials and Japanese conservatives, whom
American officials increasingly saw as partners in their overarching project
of creating a “healthy” and “mature” democratic spirit in Japan. On both
sides of the Pacific, then, the turn against communism evolved in similar
terms, as a continuation of transnational efforts to bolster democracy’s
ideological and psychological capacities.
Democracy and Communism in the United States

American fears of internal communist subversion were not new to the
aftermath of World War II. Anticommunist deportations, for example, began
after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. In 1938, well before the dawn of
the Cold War, Congress created the Dies Committee, later known as the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which unleashed its
powers of investigation against alleged communist infiltration into the Amer-
ican government, among other targets. Yet a series of domestic and foreign
events from 1947 onward propelled these anticommunist fears to new
heights. The resumption of widespread domestic labor activism after the
war, high profile charges of communist espionage, and a series of Soviet-
backed communist takeovers around the globe scared many Americans into
believing that communists were plotting world domination through a com-
bination of internal subversion and foreign aggression. In his famous 1947
speech known as the Truman Doctrine, President Truman described the
growing conflict as a global choice between “alternative ways of life.” “One
way of life,” he explained, “is based upon the will of the majority, and is
distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections,
guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom
from political oppression.” In contrast, “The second way of life is based upon
the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror
and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the sup-
pression of personal freedoms.” As the phrasing “way of life” indicated,
the conflict was over much more than political and economic structures.
It was an existential struggle, one that required massive mobilization.45
While a range of geopolitical, economic, and ideological considerations
fueled this growing fear, it is striking how much key policymakers drew on
wartime thinking to conceive their anticommunist crusade as a psycholog-
ical and spiritual struggle for democracy. The most powerful example is
the famous National Security Council (NSC) statement written in the winter
of 1950 after the Soviet Union had successfully tested an atomic bomb the
previous fall. Known as NSC 68, it is perhaps the most important U.S. doc-
ument outlining Cold War logic, strategy, and ideology. Written under the
guidance of Nitze, NSC 68 is best known for its call for a massive Amer-
ican military buildup to confront communist strength; it reflected Nitze’s
belief that the United States should seek to build a “permanent military ad-
vantage” by increasing defense spending and developing flexible military
capabilities that could respond to aggression across the globe. Yet the doc-
ument reached far beyond military strategy to depict the Cold War as an
epic spiritual clash between “the idea of freedom under a government of
laws, and the idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the Kremlin.” It
was a struggle in which there could be no compromise, because the mere
“existence and persistence of the idea of freedom is a permanent and con-
tinuous threat to the foundation of the slave society.” In the telling of the
NSC, communism’s aspiration to dominate all of humanity meant that con-
cepts such as “confidence” and “vitality” were just as crucial as military
might. To resist communist clutches, each and every society had to find
new spiritual and psychological energies.46
Indeed, NSC 68 emphasized the psychological nature of this global con-
flict. According to Nitze, who had an interest in contemporary psychology
and psychoanalysis, democracy required much more than individual legal
rights or the existence of elective institutions. At the heart of a “healthy”
democratic system were individuals of enormous “self-discipline and self-
restraint,” who recognized the need to always be vigilant in protecting their
own rights. Democracy was a constant struggle against destructive ideas,
and thus required “responsibility,” by which Nitze meant the willingness
and ability to maintain individual vigilance for the strength of the collec-
tive. “From this idea of freedom with responsibility,” he mused, “derives
the marvelous diversity, the deep tolerance, the lawfulness of free society . . .
It constitutes the integrity and vitality of a free and democratic system.”
Communism, on the other hand, was so dangerous because it was an as-

sault on democratic psychological maturity. Communists required their fol-
lowers to “surrender [their] individuality” and “put themselves under the
compulsion of a perverted faith.” In the communist world, “the system be-
comes God,” decimating the people’s ability to act as autonomous indi-
viduals or develop a sense of self-worth and responsibility. Communism was
much more than a political or economic project; it sought to consume body,
mind, and soul; strip citizens of their “self-restraint”; and diminish them
into automatons that willingly participated in their own enslavement.47
This depiction of democracy and its enemies in psychological terms
clearly drew on the wartime ideological arsenal, and had a remarkable, if
unintended, overlap with the wartime understanding of the Japanese state as
the manifestation of mental perversions. Yet despite the decisive wartime
victory against the “sick” mentalities of right-wing authoritarianism, Nitze
and others were deeply anxious that in the new conflict, communism had
an enormous advantage. NSC 68 openly warned that the psychological
demands of democracy were much harder than those propagated by com-
munism. “The democratic way is harder than the authoritarian way,”
lamented the authors, “because, in seeking to protect and fulfill the individual,
it demands of him understanding, judgment and positive participation in
the increasingly complex and exacting problems of the modern world.”
Communists, in this telling, nurtured people’s infantile emotions, and
discharged them from the difficult task of rational thought; they offered an-
swers to the millions who “seek or find in authoritarianism a refuge from
anxieties, bafflement, and insecurity.” Accepting these easy answers, allowing
free speech and tolerance to “lapse into excess” and “indulgence of con-
spiracy” was a prime vulnerability of free society.48
What is more, communism had an advantage over democracy because it
could benefit from “free” structures and institutions. According to Nitze,
communists aimed to exploit democracy’s basic rights, especially free speech,
to poison the public mind with antidemocratic propaganda. This was their
most insidious and potentially effective plan. In order to win the global con-
flict, communists did not need military triumph or electoral success, but
only “infiltration” into the fabric of “labor unions, civic enterprises, schools,
churches, and all media for influencing opinion,” from which they could
spread their lies and subjugate everyone’s psyche. For this reason, along-
side the drastic expansion of military power, NSC 68 called for large-scale
moral and psychological mobilization—a buildup of “confidence”—to pre-
pare citizens to resist the communist temptation. For Nitze and others,
such efforts required total commitment, even if they came at the expense
of other goals, such as fostering political or economic equality. NSC 68 in
fact noted that its call for a massive increase in defense spending required
the “reduction of Federal expenditures for purposes other than defense
and foreign assistance, if necessary by the deferment of certain desirable
programs.”49
This conflation of political, geopolitical, and psychological terminologies
to describe democracy and its enemies circulated widely in the late 1940s
and early 1950s. In their desire to forge what Andrea Friedman aptly calls
“psychological citizenship,” in which democratic survival depended on
emotional “stability,” diplomats, leaders, and thinkers all discussed anti-
communism as a mental and psychological project. Nitze’s predecessor in
the State Department’s planning staff, George Kennan, had spoken in sim-
ilar terms. In his famous 1946 “Long Telegram” from Moscow, he warned
that “World communism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on
diseased tissue,” and that the United States would have to be “courageous”
and seek “to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community
spirit of our own people.” Truman, too, claimed that totalitarianism rose
and fell from the hopes and desires of the people, and that confidence in
the future was the key to its defeat. “The seeds of totalitarian regimes are
nurtured by misery and want,” he said in 1947. “They reach their full
growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep
that hope alive.”50
It was in part due to these convictions that Americans began to aggres-
sively engage in a vast domestic and international campaign to uproot com-
munism. Like the effort to eradicate “feudalism” in Japan, this meant
restricting the horizons of democracy and curbing rights against dangerous
and antidemocratic enemies. Under the vocal pressure of Republican offi-
cials, in March 1947, President Truman instituted an expansive loyalty pro-
gram in various government departments. Under its directives, employees
could be fired if “reasonable grounds for belief in disloyalty” could be es-
tablished. Drawing from prewar legislation, this new program took an ex-
pansive definition of disloyalty, emphasizing not just action but also speech
and belief. It included not only espionage and treason but also advocacy of
“revolution or force or violence to alter the constitutional form of govern-
ment of the United States.” As everybody recognized, this definition was
aimed at communists and at times socialists; anyone who suggested rad-
ical political reform was by definition potentially treasonous. Moreover, the
blurring of the lines between politics and psychology meant that loyalty
investigations quickly expanded their purview and often targeted people
deemed intellectually deviant or psychologically subversive due to their race,
gender, or sexual orientation. The purge of gay employees from the State
Department and other government agencies, later dubbed the “Lavender
Scare,” was only one example of the consequences of a psychological defi-

nition of “loyalty.”51
While communism’s political force in the United States was glaringly
small, the belief that communists sought to control the masses’ psyche
helped fuel an increasingly manic quest to uproot it. In September 1950,
Congress went a step further by targeting not only individuals but also
organizations. It passed the Subversive Activities Control Law (known as
the McCarran Act), which required that communist organizations register
with the attorney general; established a Subversive Activities Control Board
to investigate alleged communists, subversives, and those who sought to
overthrow the U.S. government (people found guilty of such acts could lose
their citizenship for five years); and tightened immigration control in the
form of alien exclusion and deportation laws. This obsession with loyalty
and subversion spread through public and private institutions and organ-
izations. All employees and professors at the University of California, for
example, famously had to take a loyalty oath saying that they were not
members of the Communist Party. It was against this backdrop that both
GHQ / SCAP and American policymakers began to take a hard look at the
potential for communist success in Japan.
Democracy and Communism in Japan

Similar dynamics began to unfold in Japan in the late 1940s. As the U.S.
Congress passed loyalty programs and investigated federal employees and
government officials, Americans and Japanese across the Pacific increasingly
identified communists as an existential threat to Japan’s new democratic
“spirit,” one that had to be vigilantly suppressed. Occupation authorities
therefore turned the tools once developed to combat militarism, such as the
suppression of antidemocratic speech, economic reform, and political
purges, against the threat of communism. This “reverse course” resulted in
dramatic changes to occupation policies, especially in ending key reforms
of Japan’s economy. It also fostered an unanticipated but lasting alliance
with Japanese conservatives. Yet many Americans conceived of these shifting
policies as a continuation of wartime plans to influence the Japanese mind
toward a universal and democratic future. As before, the mission was to
foster vigilance, only against a new enemy. This psychological definition of
democracy thus helped facilitate what scholars have viewed as radically dif-
ferent policies. After fostering the occupation’s initial commitment to
democratization, it also fueled its crusade against communist forces.
A key foundation for this shift was the growth of the Cold War in Eu-
rope and Asia. Potential Soviet aggression toward Japan, combined with
the founding of communist North Korea and the growing military success
of the Chinese communists, raised fears that Japan would stand alone, an
isolated democratic island in a communist northeast Asia. Indeed, these
fears crossed into panic in June 1950, when North Korea invaded the South.
Coming on the heels of the successful Soviet atomic test and the victory of
the Chinese Communist Party, it seemed that the communists were making
a bold play to dominate all of Asia. Truman quickly committed American
troops to ostensibly save northeast Asia from a future of communist
“slavery.” The Korean War had a significant influence on American Cold
War policy; Truman formally accepted NSC 68, with its depiction of a
zero-sum global struggle for geopolitical, ideological, and psychological
control, and embarked on an intensive military buildup. The war in Korea
further cemented Japan’s importance to U.S. security policy. The first
combat troops departed directly from occupation duty in Japan, and Japan
served as the main site for staging, hospitalization, and rest and recreation
(R&R) throughout the war. With China now communist, and North
Korean forces advancing down the Korean peninsula, preventing Japan
from joining the communist ranks acquired even greater significance.
Yet the shift in occupation policies did not just stem from international
events. Equally important were events within Japan, especially the visibility
of the Japanese labor movement and the Japanese Communist Party. Formed
in the 1920s, the JCP called for the elimination of Japan’s feudal legacies,
especially the emperor. This quickly became a source of concern for the
Japanese government, which passed the 1925 Peace Preservation Law
allowing the arrest and imprisonment of communists. The JCP’s swift reemer-
gence in the aftermath of defeat served as a point of concern for conserva-
tive politicians, occupation officials, and policymakers in Washington, even
as it was legalized by the occupation authorities. Writing to Truman in
January 1946, SCAP political adviser George Atcheson linked the appeal
of communism to wartime destruction and the difficult process of trans-
formation. “Japan is groping for a new ideology to replace the shattered
one which was so carefully and deliberately constructed during the years
of military-feudal control. The old has been discredited and the new is
attractive. Liberalism is vague and difficult to define. Communism is positive
and concrete.”52
In 1945 and 1946, the re-formed JCP publicly proclaimed its loyalty to
democratic institutions and peaceful reforms. The 1946 party platform
stated, for example, that the “Japan Communist Party has as its present
goal the completion of our country’s bourgeois-democratic revolution,
which is progressing at present by peaceful and democratic methods.” Yet by
1947, party leaders, including Chairman Nosaka Sanzō, were emphasizing
the importance of mass action outside representative political institutions

like the Diet. As one U.S. official warily reported after meeting Nosaka,
communists now claimed that it was crucial to “use extra-parliamentary
mass pressure . . . as a necessary auxiliary weapon ‘because the Diet is still
weak.’” JCP activists were especially visible in the postwar labor movement.
Together, the JCP and Japanese unions organized increasingly large demon-
strations such as Food May Day, rallies, and “shop-floor” sit-ins, demanding
increased pay, the nationalization of key industries, and other economic
reforms.53
For anxious American observers, this growing militancy increasingly
seemed like a dangerous challenge to their quest to facilitate a democratic
psyche in Japan. Concerned less with Soviet aggression, American anticom-
munist anxiety in Japan largely revolved around the scenario of internal
subversion. Writing in December 1949, for example, the State Department
argued that the “denial of Japan to the USSR constitutes a problem of com-
batting, not overt attack and invasion, but concealed aggression. The
threat to Japan in these circumstances comes from agitation, subversion,
and coup d’etat. The threat is that of a conspiracy inspired by the Kremlin,
but conducted by Japanese. It is essentially a conspiracy from within.” This
belief that communists utilized misinformation, propaganda, and subver-
sion to sow discord was shared by Americans and Japanese. As one Japanese
official declared in September 1950, “the [Communist] Party planned to
lay a foundation of taking up the reins of government by increasing social
unrest and confusion” throughout the people.54
Americans therefore discussed communism as an inherently similar threat
to Japanese militarism, one that relied on propaganda to infect and con-
trol the minds of the people and benefited from the alleged Japanese
susceptibility to “collectivist” ideologies. Max Bishop, a member of the
GHQ / SCAP’s Office of the Political Advisor, whose anticommunism had
crystallized well before the Cold War, warned the State Department in 1946
that the Communist Party was hell-bent on forming a “single-class, single-
party dictatorship” in which “no democratic, minority or contrary opinion
of any sort would be tolerated.” Like the militarist ideology before it, he
maintained, communism could be especially appealing to the “Jap psy-
chology” and its “proclivity to swing from the moderate to the extreme.”
He called on occupation officials to cooperate more closely with Japanese
conservatives on what he claimed was shared ground of steady, moderate,
and constructive democratic transformation. After all, it was farcical “to
expect the Japs overnight to develop an informed, intelligent and discerning
electorate.”55
While such opinions were more marginal in the early years of the occupa-
tion, after 1947 U.S. officials became increasingly convinced that communists
had become an antidemocratic threat just as potent as the militarists. Like
the wartime army, communists could utilize the Japanese psyche for their
own advantage, destroy democracy, and remake the Pacific geopolitical
order. By the end of 1949, these beliefs reached the highest echelons of
American power. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, in a letter to the British
ambassador, lamented that communists enjoyed “psychological advan-
tages” over the Americans in Japan, “since the Japanese are communal
people long accustomed to passive acceptance of leadership and subordi-
nation of individual interests to the state’s.” A February 1950 report by the
Japanese Special Investigation Bureau (an organ analogous to the U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigation) shared such thinking, explaining intellec-
tuals’ support for communism by stating that “the old political structures of
Japan contained much of despotic elements and that most of these intellec-
tuals tended toward revolutionary activities because they came by origin
from semi-feudalistic farm villages reduced to penury. They welcomed the
destructive thought denying the existing social order immediately after
they came into contact with communism.”56
These worries about Japan’s unique cultural, historical, and psycholog-
ical vulnerability to communism coexisted with more universal conceptions
of the communist threat. Much of the American analysis resembled discus-
sions of the communist challenge to democracy everywhere, including the
United States. Perhaps the best example was MacArthur’s May 1950 state-
ment on the third anniversary of Japan’s constitution, in which he cele-
brated Japan’s democratic progress and warned of the encroaching commu-
nist threat. Speaking in terms remarkably identical to NSC 68 (a top-secret
document discussed by the NSC only a month earlier, and which he was
unlikely to have read), MacArthur explained that Japan’s challenges were
not unique. Like Nitze’s laments about the United States, MacArthur as-
serted that Japanese democracy was under serious threat from a “small
minority which through the pervasive use of liberty and privilege seeks to
encompass freedom’s destruction.” Like Nitze, he asserted that communists
sought to seize the confusion of the postwar world to turn democracy on
itself; they acted through “the abuse of those personal liberties conferred
in the bill of rights . . . to establish a democratic basis favorable to the ul-
timate subjugation of Japan to the political control of others.”
MacArthur then recalled wartime statements such as the Potsdam Dec-
laration, which had depicted militarists as a minority suppressing the “true”
democratic spirit of the Japanese people, to warn that communists posed
an even more significant danger. Compared to the communists, the mili-

tarists were an “even smaller minority,” yet were able to “[coerce] the
Japanese people into war.” The triumph of communism was therefore
imminent if the majority remained passive and complacent. Like Nitze,
MacArthur asserted that communists were waging an unrelenting attack
on individual freedom, which aggressively utilized misinformation and
confusion to control the people’s psyche. “Any thought,” he warned darkly,
“that Japanese Communism” was anything but a plot of oppression and
war “was thoroughly disabused by . . . its embarkation on the spread of
false, malicious, and inflammatory propaganda intended to mislead and
coerce the public mind.”57
Occupation officials and American policymakers therefore rhetorically
framed anticommunist mobilization as the direct continuation of the
occupation’s primary project: eradicating the feudalist, militarized, and psy-
chologically perverse wartime state and replacing it with a democratic and
“healthy” Japan. It followed that this would require similar policies to the
ones used to eradicate militarists: redrawing the limits of “acceptable” po-
litical behaviors; economic reforms; and purges in the civil service, private
industry, and the educational system, ultimately targeting the JCP itself.
These policies were made possible not only by the legal structures and reg-
ulations of the early occupation, but were also facilitated by the American
conception of democracy that had fundamentally shaped the first years of
the occupation. If primary criteria for democracy were “spirit,” freedom
of thought, and the proper state of mind, then the content and structure of
policies could be sacrificed to increase Japan’s ability to ward off “antidemo-
cratic” forces, a label that was broadly applied to discount alternative po-
litical, ideological, and economic visions.
It is not surprising, then, that labor was the first target of the occupation
authorities and the Japanese government’s shared quest to root out Japanese
communism. In early 1947, both pro- and anticommunist labor unions
began planning a nationwide general strike for February 1. Right before
the strike was to take place, MacArthur intervened to announce that he
would not allow it to go forward. In a statement issued on January 31,
1947, which previewed his May 1950 statement, MacArthur described
the strikers and labor as a “small minority” that like the militarists, “might
well plunge the great masses into a disaster not unlike that produced in the
immediate past by the minority which led Japan into the destruction of the
war.” While MacArthur’s statement did not mention communism by name,
it implied that radical social actions were infecting and deceiving the public
and thus went beyond the boundaries of democracy in postwar Japan, just
as the deceptive militarists had been actively purged from Japanese politics.
Indeed, the tragic irony was not lost on labor leaders. Ii Yashiro, a leading
coordinator of the strike, later critiqued SCAP for “deceiving people with
democracy only at the tip of their tongues.” In Ii’s telling, it was Mac-
Arthur and GHQ / SCAP who were, in the words of the Potsdam Declaration,
misleading the Japanese people. Confusion and deception were antidemo-
cratic, but for Ii and his allies, it was the American authorities that were
doing the deceiving.58
More broadly, the occupation authorities began to shift their view of the
relationship between democratization and economic policies. If leftist rad-
icalism, and not just lingering feudalism, posed a threat to democracy, many
began to wonder whether earlier efforts to embolden labor had backfired,
fostering disquiet and disruption more conducive to communist expansion
rather than democratic “health.” GHQ / SCAP therefore followed the gen-
eral strike’s cancellation with an effort to strip state employees of the right
to bargain and strike collectively. In 1947, the Japanese government had
passed a National Public Service Law designed to reform and “defeudalize”
Japan’s civil service. A group of GHQ / SCAP officials, however, pressured
the Japanese government to use this law to eliminate the rights of collec-
tive bargaining and the strike. As Government Section official Carlos
Marcum claimed, prohibiting state workers from organizing was “consis-
tent with democratic practices as to promote maximum efficiency in per-
formance of public duties.” Democracy required state employees to remain
neutral in political matters, above selfish economic considerations. If they
engaged in disruption and became another organized pressure group,
they could undermine the entire democratic system, because elected rep-
resentatives would be loyal to unions and thus no longer free to “act in
accordance with the dictates of their conscience.” This association be-
tween freedom of conscience and democratic efficiency allowed occupa-
tion officials to simultaneously call for freedom of thought while denying
government workers political expression. In a July 1948 letter to the Japa-
nese government, MacArthur parroted Marcum’s logic by claiming that
state workers had a responsibility to foster public unity, which was more
important than their individual rights. Denying state workers the right to
strike was therefore in keeping “with democratic constructs.” Under U.S.
pressure, the Japanese cabinet approved the revised law in July 1948. After
four months of heated debates, the Diet passed it.59
Indeed, just like the policies that preceded it, the occupation’s turn against
the Japanese Left drew much of its potency from the cooperation of local
Japanese forces. Yet now, Americans relied on—and in turn helped
empower—decisively right-wing and conservative parties, which quickly
recognized a growing convergence with American visions. Long before this
shift in policy, leading Japanese conservatives had targeted communists and

organized labor as a threat to national unity and stability. As early as 1946,
the Liberal and Progressive Parties advocated for restrictions on labor
organizing and suggested a bill that would allow the government to arrest
and fine those guilty of “unreasonable disturbances” and “rowdyism.”
As U.S. officials became more hostile to the Japanese Left, such visions
became central to conservative governance. In 1948, the governing Socialist-
Democratic coalition under Prime Minister Ashida Hitoshi collapsed, and
after conservative victories in parliamentary elections, was replaced by a
Liberal Party–led cabinet under Yoshida Shigeru. Governing until 1954,
Yoshida shared and helped implement the growing American focus on sup-
pressing communists and organized labor. His tenure would help secure a
new hegemony of “right of center political interests, big business, and a civil
service dominated by conservative bureaucrats.”60
This cooperation between occupation authorities and Japanese conser-
vatives did not just stem from events in Japan, but also changes in U.S. oc-
cupation policy. The crackdown on labor activism was paralleled by a new
focus on economic recovery and stability, which would replace previous
efforts to empower workers through labor organization. Suggestions to
change American policy, to be sure, had circulated even earlier. In May 1946,
for example, former president Herbert Hoover toured the devastated
country on a food relief mission and warned that without a swift increase
in “productivity” and prosperity in Japan, the United States would face the
“disintegration of Western Civilization everywhere.” More than anyone,
however, it was State Department Policy Planning Staff chair George
Kennan who brought such notions to the forefront of U.S. policy. In 1947,
Kennan visited Japan for a long tour. Even before his return to the United
States, he began arguing that the occupation had to shift from distribu-
tionist policies such as land reform, labor organization, and decarteliza-
tion toward an emphasis on recovery and stability. According to Kennan,
this shift would not only allow Japan to contribute more broadly to the
recovery of East Asia but also was necessary to prevent Japan from be-
coming a “power vacuum” ripe for Soviet incursion. Kennan’s thinking
firmly linked Japan’s economic potential to regional stability and American
security; he looked at Japan as a future ally, rather than a defeated enemy
to be transformed. These ideas were increasingly shared among members
of the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By March 1947,
multiple diplomatic documents placed Japan at the center of Asia’s postwar
recovery and growth as its “sole industrial power.”61
Yet in recommending this policy shift, Kennan did not just focus on eco-
nomic security and geostrategic calculations. He also elevated health,
unity, confidence, and vigor as key to resisting communist incursion and

fostering stability. Such vigilance would be achieved not by empowering
workers economically, but by encouraging economic “self-reliance” among
all classes and groups. In a March 1948 telegram to Under Secretary of State
Robert Lovett, Kennan explained that land reform and other policies were
perhaps a necessary part of earlier “democratic reform,” but irrelevant for
occupation’s next phase. “Our main problem today,” he explained, “is to
get [the Japanese] to accept the responsibilities implicit in democratic in-
stitutions and to strike out on their own in a really democratic way.” For
Kennan, if democratic conditions in Japan were still not ideal, it was up to
Japanese society “to find within itself the impulse and inspiration to cor-
rect the remaining deficiencies. For us [the United States] to continue to
press matters of this sort will not contribute to that spirit of self-reliance
which will be essential if the Japanese are to meet the unprecedented strains
of the coming period.” Like the United States, Japan required strength and
confidence in its ability to take on the responsibilities of democracy. For
Kennan, this community spirit would not come simply from occupation
reforms—in fact, he repeatedly expressed fear that reforms were “tearing
apart the closely woven fabric of Japanese society” and “giv[ing] the Rus-
sians any opportunities to infiltrate their insidious influence into the
country.” The “closely woven fabric” of Japanese society had once been an
explanation for militarism; now Kennan asserted that unity and tradition
could be a vital source of Japanese resistance to communism.62
Like wartime planners and GHQ / SCAP officials, Kennan claimed that
only the proper institutions and practices could foster the necessary “im-
pulse and inspiration.” In a meeting with MacArthur, he argued that it
was the job of the occupation to ensure that the communists did not have
institutional and political advantages in Japan. Against MacArthur’s sug-
gestion that the Allied powers consider imposing permanent demilitariza-
tion on Japan, Kennan argued that such plans “would be psychologically
unsound.” “At present,” he said, “it looks to me as though Japanese society
were decidedly vulnerable to such [communist] attacks . . . There are no
automatic and foolproof cures for this type of weakness.” In Kennan’s mind,
the reforms he sought would not only bring stability through economic
growth and recovery, but also would compensate for the “weaknesses” of
Japanese democracy by fostering confidence, vigor, and responsibility—
especially by building a more robust Japanese economy. Productivity,
economic stability, and growth were meant, in part, to enhance the psycho-
logical ability of the Japanese to combat communism at home.63
Following Kennan’s recommendations, which were embraced with few
modifications by the NSC, U.S. authorities and the Japanese government
largely abandoned their earlier programs of economic decentralization and

moved to strengthen Japan’s economy. In December 1948, Truman signed
a nine-point stabilization directive that imposed severe austerity measures
in the name of economic stabilization. Having served as a financial adviser
to the occupation of Germany, Detroit banker Joseph M. Dodge arrived in
Japan in February 1949 to oversee this program, which emphasized bal-
ancing Japan’s budget, reducing inflation, and pegging Japan’s currency
against the U.S. dollar to encourage exports. The Japanese government im-
plemented these policies under the guidance of Finance Minister Ikeda
Hayato, who was appointed by Prime Minister Yoshida to carry out the
reforms. With its emphasis on “free market reforms,” such as ending gov-
ernment subsidies and U.S. aid, curbing credit, and drastically reducing
public spending, Dodge’s program favored large businesses and family-
owned conglomerates. The same hierarchies and organizations that were
once deemed dangerously “feudal” were now restabilized and elevated as
sources of democratic vigilance.64
If Dodge and Ikeda’s program aimed to foster growth and tame labor’s
discontent through prosperity, its short-term consequence was an economic
downturn; Ikeda fired 285,000 government workers, and balancing the
Japanese budget more broadly put a million people out of work. This mas-
sive unemployment not only caused declines in production but also exten-
sive social and political unrest. Smaller businesses went bankrupt, partially
due to the end of government subsidies to industries, while labor unions
waged demonstrations and strikes to protest layoffs and wage cuts. A
revised labor law, passed in the summer of 1949, furthered labor’s ire by
increasing the national and regional governments’ ability to end labor dis-
putes, and prohibiting the payment of wages during strikes, pushing back
on gains that labor had made immediately after the war. In fact, the summer
and fall of 1949 were marked by extensive activism. The JCP called for a
“September Revolution” against the Yoshida government, workers occu-
pied the police station and city hall in the town of Taira, and railway workers
held work stoppages, protests, and even took over train operations. The
atmosphere became conspiratorial and even sinister; the body of the presi-
dent of Japanese National Railways was mysteriously discovered next to a
Tokyo rail line in July (many ultimately believed it was a suicide); an
unmanned train car killed people after plunging into a crowd at Mitaka sta-
tion in Tokyo later that month; and in August, the sabotage of a train in
Fukushima Prefecture resulted in the deaths of the driver and crew mem-
bers. Communist railway unionists were arrested and tried for the latter
two events but only one was convicted. These events fostered growing dread
that communists were actively and effectively operating to sabotage and

destroy Japan.65
In response, Americans officials worked with Japanese conservatives to
redraw the boundaries of Japan’s political life by suppressing communist
political activity. Focusing his ire on the thirty-one communist members of
the Diet, in February 1949, Prime Minister Yoshida announced his inten-
tion to form a Diet committee modeled on HUAC. Alongside investigations
of illegal property transactions, tax evasion, and interference with food-
stuffs, this committee would examine “other acts which have serious evil
influences on the reconstruction of Japan.” However, the proposal floun-
dered on the strong opposition of Socialist and Communist Party Diet
members, who saw the language of “evil influences” as a plan to under-
mine “democratic movements carried on in the interest of the masses” that
would investigate “un-Japanese activities,” a clear reference to HUAC. The
Japanese government did, however, succeed in establishing another anti-
communist organ, the Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) within the Japanese
Attorney General’s Office. Headed by Yoshikawa Mitsusada, a former high-
ranking officer in the Thought Police, SIB regularly tracked and reported
on the activities, meetings, and rallies of the JCP, peace groups, Korean resi-
dents of Japan, and other alleged suspects. SIB’s activities were further
empowered by the passage of Cabinet Order 64 in April 1949, which
updated the 1946 purge ordinance to allow the government to dissolve
subversive and antidemocratic groups; it was SIB’s job to find and track
such groups.66
The political culmination of this shift was the beginning of the so-called
Red Purge, in which U.S. authorities; Japanese officials; and Japanese com-
panies, schools, universities, and newspapers purged alleged communists.
In 1949, the U.S. commander at Yokosuka Naval Base invoked occupation
rules originally designed against militarists to force labor leaders to sign
loyalty oaths and disavow communism. Since some were affiliated with San-
betsu labor union, which included communists, they were dismissed. Japan’s
Labor Ministry embraced such measures and developed its own guidelines
for purges. Anyone deemed by officials as “inveterate active trouble makers,
taking leadership roles in activities, inciting others, or being original plan-
ners or incitation, thus causing real injury to the safety and peace of the
enterprise,” could be fired. At GHQ / SCAP’s urging, this purge also ex-
tended into Japan’s civil service, often under the guise of “public-sector
retrenchment,” leading to the firing of approximately 1,200 public officials.
These policies did not go unnoticed by Japanese or international observers.
In an October 1949 meeting of the Far Eastern Commission, an international
board that formally oversaw the occupation, the Soviet delegate complained
that occupation policy was actively violating the Potsdam Declaration
by “depriving Jap[anese] workers of their elementary political rights” and
using “mass discharges” to remove active labor leaders.67
Over the course of 1950 and 1951, GHQ / SCAP and the Japanese
government worked together to weaken the JCP in other ways, turning the
antimilitarist regulations of the early occupation, especially those that for-
bade criticism of the occupation authorities, squarely against the Commu-
nist Party. On June 6 and 7, 1950, MacArthur sent Yoshida several letters
that instructed him to purge the central committee of the JCP and editorial
leaders of the JCP newspaper Akahata. MacArthur proclaimed that the
JCP’s “coercive methods bear striking parallel to those by which the milita-
ristic leaders of the past deceived and misled the Japanese people, and their
aims, if achieved, would surely lead Japan to an even worse disaster.”
Allowing the JCP leaders to continue their work risked “ultimate suppres-
sion of Japan’s democratic institutions . . . and the destruction of the Japanese
race.” In response to this order, nine of the party’s twenty-four central
committee members went underground, while several fled to China. On
After GHQ / SCAP ordered publication to be suspended, Japanese police surround

the offices of the Communist Party newspaper Akahata on June 28, 1950. AP Photo.
June 26, immediately after the start of the Korean War, the Japanese Gov-
ernment suspended the publication of Akahata indefinitely for critical
coverage. It then purged members of the party who publicly criticized this
decision. On the orders of the occupation authorities, acting through SIB,
Japan’s major newspapers and its national broadcasting corporation (NHK)
also conducted their own purges in July 1950.68
Just like during the early years of the occupation (and not unlike the situ-
ation in the United States), the process of purging deviant actors in the
defense of “democracy” was especially prominent in the educational sphere.
With the same zeal that sought to eradicate militarist remnants in schools
and universities, American and Japanese authorities now targeted alleged
communists in education because they would deny “freedom of thought.”
Key members of the occupation authorities, especially Donald Nugent in
CIE, had long sought to root communism out of education. As early as
1946, for example, Nugent had requested information about educators with
communist affiliations, or who had engaged in procommunist activities.
By 1948, local Military Government Teams, composed of members of
the Eighth Army who oversaw the implementation of occupation policies,
had become active in suppressing the activities of Nikkyōso, the Japanese
Teacher’s Union founded in 1947, which was active in both Socialist Party
and Communist Party politics. Reiterating the growing theme of commu-
nism as an infective virus, a Military Government Team officer stationed in
Tokyo proclaimed that communism “thrives like a disease festering in
filth.” He too used the memories of the past war to highlight the dangers of
communism, asserting that “we see no difference between” communists
and “the former Nazi and Japanese militarists.”69
Utilizing the same legal mechanisms used earlier to fire militarist educa-
tors, officials moved to dismiss communists. The Japanese Education Min-
istry, working with instructions from CIE, discharged approximately 1,300
teachers deemed procommunist. This purge extended into higher education,
with CIE actively calling for the removal of leftist and communist profes-
sors. Walter C. Eells, professor of education at Stanford University, declared
in a July 1949 speech at the inauguration of Niigita University that it was
not a violation of academic freedom to dismiss communists from teaching
positions. Though freedom of thought was “basic to the whole spirit of
American education,” he proclaimed, “Communist Party members are not
free to think. They have surrendered that freedom when they joined the
party. Therefore they cannot be allowed to be university professors in a
democracy.” Like those who insisted on a loyalty oath at the University of
California, Eells saw communism as beyond the pale of democratic toler-
ance, an intellectual force so insidious it merited no protection. With the
support of occupation authorities, he took this message across Japan on a

lecture tour of twenty-seven universities.70
By the time the occupation ended in the spring of 1952, organized
communism in Japan had already suffered a considerable blow. While
U.S. occupation authorities and the Japanese government, like the U.S.
government, never outlawed communism as such, they used ever-increasing
measures to delegitimize the communists’ message and diminish their
freedom of action, while also targeting civil society institutions—labor
unions, the press, and education—that they believed were vulnerable to
communist infection. In the process, Americans argued that democracy
necessitated ongoing anticommunist mobilization rather than an unwavering
commitment to free speech, free thought, or economic and political equality.
Indeed, in its meetings with the Japanese government, GHQ / SCAP urged
Japanese officials to maintain constant vigilance. Alertness, argued U.S.
officials, was always a constitutive part of democracy. As Government Sec-
tion’s Frank Rizzo proclaimed in a September 1951 meeting with Japanese
attorney general Ōhashi Takeo, only days before the signing of the peace
treaty that would end the occupation, SIB needed to continue utilizing
the purge directives to “remove Communists and fellow-travellers from the
government positions, especially in critical areas like telecommunications . . .
This is necessary to protect the Government from disloyalty from within . . .
it should not take the shape of a new drive, but should be done routinely
as a continuing thing.”71
As the occupation drew to a close, both GHQ / SCAP and the Japanese
government dedicated their energies to ensuring that key occupation ordi-
nances, which were set to expire with the end of American military con-
trol, would endure as Japanese laws operative in postoccupation Japan. As
members of Government Section asserted, the problem was to replace the
“ ‘Potsdam ordinances’ for the control of extremist elements with Diet leg-
islation which will meet the test of constitutionality and not prove an in-
strument for destroying political freedom.” In particular, U.S. and Japanese
authorities focused on updating the purge regulations by writing a Subversive
Activities Prevention Law, which empowered the government to dissolve
“organized groups” involved in “dangerous terroristic subversive activities.”
Working closely with GHQ / SCAP in the drafting process, the Japanese gov-
ernment claimed that it “needed this law in order to protect the state against
the subversion and violence [that] the Communists are planning against the
Government in the coming months.” The Subversive Activities Prevention
Law was the culmination of a multiyear shared American–Japanese effort
to firmly place communists—and alleged subversives—outside Japan’s legiti-
mate body politic.72
The law’s origins, however, were not simply Japanese, even as the gov-
ernment received heavy criticism for resurrecting the prewar Peace Preser-
vation Law. Rather, it was part of a broader ongoing effort to strengthen
democratic societies against the perceived threat of internal enemies. Taking
a page from American anticommunist efforts, the Japanese government
modeled the new law on the United States’ McCarran Act. Just like the
original, the Japanese law established a Subversive Activities Control Board
to investigate communists, subversives, and those who allegedly sought to
overthrow Japan’s democratic government. In a telling demonstration of
its significance, the Subversive Activities Prevention Law was the first major
piece of legislation passed by the Diet in postoccupation Japan. In an inde-
pendent and democratic Japan, fostering the psychology and “spirit” of an-
ticommunist mobilization was a top priority.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the occupation of Japan was marked by key ideological conti-
nuities that extended from initial wartime planning through the end of the
occupation in 1952. For over a decade, American officials consistently pro-
claimed that democracy necessitated psychological strength, freedom of
thought and an independent conscience, and the construction of rational,
responsible, autonomous citizens. They conceived the occupation as a quest,
in part, to instill these values in the Japanese. In part, this emphasis on
mental transformation as the key to Japan’s democratic reform stemmed
from specific and racialized interpretations of Japanese history, culture, and
psychologies that conceived of the Japanese people as irrational, overly
emotional, and prone to follow the leader. But it also drew from an em-
phasis on mentalities and psychologies as sources of political action across
the globe, and broader fears about democracy’s weaknesses in an apoca-
lyptic challenge against a deviant and nefarious enemy. Whether they focused
on Japan’s allegedly unique mind or on more universal challenges, these
commentators repeatedly conceived of democracy as a struggle that required
constant mobilization. The “spiritual disarmament” of which James Byrnes
spoke in 1945 was a never-ending process, whether it was targeting mili-
tarism or communism.
This definition of democracy was so powerful in part because it was re-
markably malleable, and facilitated the suppression of alternative political
visions. In the early years of the occupation, it enabled elections, educational
reform, land reform, and the recognition of labor rights as key ways to
create democratic mentalities and unleash the individual conscience. Yet it
simultaneously fueled GHQ / SCAP’s imposition of restrictions on po-

litical speech and action, and elevated vigilance as a core democratic value.
With the intensification of the Cold War, as GHQ / SCAP came to see de-
ceptive communists as the biggest threat to democracy, the very same lan-
guage and concepts inspired and helped justify different policies. The no-
tion of “healthy” spirit and constant vigilance against “psychological
subversion” now facilitated economic retrenchment, curtailed labor ac-
tivism, and justified widespread restrictions on political activities. Indeed,
throughout the occupation, the belief that democracy was a “state of mind”
privileged vaguely defined “mindsets” over concrete political and economic
rights, precisely because it argued that democratic rights, such as freedom
of speech or thought, could be democracy’s greatest weakness. This restric-
tive definition of democracy also served as a point of convergence between
GHQ / SCAP and Japanese conservatives, a process that would continue in
the postoccupation years.
Ultimately, U.S. policymakers believed that democratic societies had
entered a new era, in which the fate of the state rested on the mental and
emotional strength of individual citizens. This psychological definition of
democracy was prevalent in both the United States and Japan. It was in
part for this reason that anticommunist policy in Japan evolved in remark-
able parallel with the United States. Policymakers on both sides of the Pacific
developed a new and similar set of ideas, laws, and institutions, all designed
to identify and curtail communism as the major threat to democratic poli-
tics. By the end of the occupation, combatting communism at home and
abroad had become the primary focus of the U.S.–Japanese relationship,
leading to policies that were unthinkable in 1945.
• 2 •
Militarizing Democracy
O ver the course of the U.S. occupation, perhaps the biggest policy
transformation was the decision to rebuild Japanese military power.
During the occupation’s early stages, U.S. policymakers placed the destruc-
tion of the Japanese military at the center of Japan’s political and mental
transformation. Yet by the early 1950s, U.S. civilian and military officials
elevated the rebuilding of the Japanese military to a paramount goal in
their vision for the nascent U.S.–Japanese alliance and Cold War mobiliza-
tion throughout “free” Asia. As argued in a 1951 National Security Council
Staff study, “Japan’s importance lies in . . . [its] reservoir of military and
naval personnel, skilled and experienced in modern warfare.” Japanese
forces could therefore not only defend Japanese territory but “could
eventually contribute to the defense of the free nations in the Pacific.”
Commander in Chief Far East (CINCFE) Matthew Ridgway, who had re-
placed General Douglas MacArthur in April 1951, was even more blunt in
his expectations. “The importance of creating at the earliest possible mo-
ment consistent with its political feasibility a well equipped, well orga-
nized, properly motivated Japanese Ground Force with fighting spirit and
ability equivalent to that displayed by Japanese Forces in World War II—is
to my mind presently paramount over any other long range project in the
Far East.” With the shocking start of the Korean War in June 1950, which
caused the departure of U.S. occupation soldiers for the Korean battlefields,
MacArthur had ordered the Japanese government to create the National
Police Reserve (NPR) to guarantee Japanese internal security. Over the next
several years, with the help of American funding, arming, and training, the
NPR developed into the National Safety Forces (NSF); and finally, the Self-
Defense Forces (SDF), which remain Japan’s military into the twenty-first
century.1
On the surface, this shift is hard to explain. How could American poli-
cymakers conceive of rebuilding the military that it had taken four long
years and thousands of American lives to destroy, let alone describe it as
the defender of freedom in the Pacific? The belief that Japanese militarism
was a uniquely odious force was widespread and GHQ / SCAP had even
enshrined it in the new Japanese constitution. Written by the U.S. occupa-
tion authorities, it included a provision that renounced the use of force to
settle international disputes and prevented Japan from maintaining war
potential or land, sea, and air forces. Yet less than five years later, U.S. oc-
cupation authorities not only called for the creation of Japanese defense
forces, but also hoped that these forces would serve as the nucleus of a new
Japanese army. In part, this startling shift was prompted by changing geopo-
litical calculations, especially communist victory in China in October 1949
and the outbreak of war in Korea the following year, which convinced
American policymakers of Japan’s value as a bulwark against regional
and global communist expansion. It also stemmed from a shared Amer-
ican and Japanese belief that Japan required more robust internal security
mechanisms against communist infiltration; the creation of the NPR took
place at the same time as the Red Purge and a growing focus on anticom-
munist legislation such as the 1952 Subversive Activities Prevention Law.2
Yet even though security—external and internal—served as the central
motivation for the creation of the NPR, American policymakers and military
leaders did not conceive of security simply in terms of expanded military
capabilities. Less recognized, they also hoped that the NPR would produce
the responsible and committed citizens and leaders believed necessary to
create a physically, ideologically, and psychologically “sound” democracy.
They believed that Japanese defensive forces and Japanese democracy were
complementary rather than oppositional, and that security depended on
both physical and psychological strength. Even before the start of the
Korean War, U.S. officials wondered how to foster the resilience, confidence,
and leadership that would allow the Japanese masses to transcend their al-
leged irrationality and emotionalism. As U.S. occupation officials became
concerned about a communist assault on the Japanese mind, they increas-
ingly hoped that Japanese defensive forces, built under American supervi-
sion, could infuse Japan with the military, political, and psychological
strength to oppose communism. As U.S. authorities worked to purge alleged
Militarizing Democracy 73
communists, stabilize Japan’s economy, and empower the Japanese state

to pursue subversive forces, they also hoped that expanded police and
military power would build Japanese confidence and morale against the
communist threat.
Like the other policy shifts in the occupation’s later years, the creation
of the NPR and Japan’s subsequent integration into a massive web of Amer-
ican military assistance and training programs was not isolated to Japan.
It also reflected fundamental ideological shifts taking place in the United
States, in particular changing ideas about the vital role of the military in
safeguarding democratic societies. Drawing from perceptions of their own
history, many Americans had long been suspicious of military power, espe-
cially a large standing army. Politicians and scholars feared that unelected
military forces could undermine the authority of elected politicians, and that
the military’s reliance on strict command structures, authority, and unques-
tioned obedience threatened democratic debate, openness, and individu-
alism. Both before and during World War II, Japan served as primary proof
of these fears. Japan, many warned, was the ultimate “garrison state,” in
which ruthless militarists destroyed freedom and subjugated the entire
country to their whims. Yet the experience of World War II also changed
long-held American fears about military power. In particular, the scale of
wartime mobilization expanded and solidified a vision of the military as a
tool of social integration and ideological education, which would empower
citizens by deepening their loyalty to the state. This strain of thinking con-
tinued into the postwar years, and was bolstered by the Cold War. Postwar
advocates of expanded military training and capabilities, most visibly Pres-
ident Harry Truman, not only emphasized its deterrent strength but also
argued that military training would disseminate a deeper commitment to
democratic values. The military, they claimed, could prepare needed Cold
War leaders, and foster the social, physical, and psychological vigor neces-
sary to building healthy and strong democratic societies.3
This radical transformation in thinking about the relationship between
democratic values and military capabilities also facilitated broader changes
in American security policy. In particular, U.S. civilian and military leaders
increasingly embraced military assistance—the funding, arming, and
training of foreign militaries—as a central component of American Cold
War strategy across the globe. In doing so, they emphasized not only the
defensive and deterrent value of local military power, but also the belief
that military defense capabilities would provide foreign societies with the
confidence, vigor, and leadership—the capabilities and mentalities—
necessary to combat internal and external communist threats. This line of
thinking became especially potent in the United States’ approach to East
and Southeast Asia. With the rapid disintegration of formal European,

Japanese, and American colonialism, the victory of the Chinese Commu-
nist Party, and the outbreak of the Korean War, American anticommunist
strategy came to depend on the support of newly independent nations.
For U.S. officials, military training emerged as a solution to creating like-
minded leaders committed to the defense of the so-called free world. As at
home, Americans conflated democracy with Cold War convictions, and
believed that the military would provide both firepower against commu-
nism and the leadership, ideological, and spiritual pillars for voluntary
mobilization. The American emphasis on the re-creation of Japanese mil-
itary capabilities was thus far more than a regional geostrategic calcula-
tion or a change in occupation policy. It was a momentous shift, reflecting
an ambitious American attempt to infuse Japanese democracy with new
leaders and foster both physical and mental strength against communist
predations.
Japan’s new defensive forces, however, were not simply the product of
American thinking. In the aftermath of expansive empire building, aggres-
sive war, and foreign occupation, the Japanese were also engaged in a fierce
debate over the relationship between democracy and military power. The
memory of Japanese military aggression and its horrific consequences—
including the U.S. bombing campaign—was potent and fresh in Japan.
Indeed, many Japanese argued that the NPR (and its later incarnations) was
antidemocratic and fundamentally illegitimate, especially under Japan’s
postwar constitution. The NPR, they claimed, was simply a vehicle to res-
urrect wartime militarism and destroy Japan’s postwar commitment to
democratic peace by reasserting Japanese adventurism on the Asian conti-
nent, under the guise of American military “assistance.” Rather than pro-
tecting Japan’s new democracy, the NPR was the primary threat to it. Nor
were these fears simply held by those on the Left; even conservative Japa-
nese prime minister Yoshida Shigeru, while supportive of increasing Japan’s
internal security capabilities, feared the return of militarist power, ideolo-
gies, and personnel within the NPR.
Yet other Japanese, especially rightists and former members of the military,
argued that Japanese military forces were necessary not only for anticom-
munist internal security, but also because military power and defensive
capabilities could renew Japan’s independence, prestige, and spirit after a
devastating defeat. With rising Cold War tensions in Asia and an active
Communist Party in Japan, these ideas dovetailed with the thinking of U.S.
policymakers and military officials, leading to growing collaboration be-
tween wartime enemies. Building a larger, more capable Japanese military
became a point of convergence over the need for leadership and national
spirit to survive in a Cold War world. U.S. military officials even actively
recruited former imperial Japanese army officers to the NPR in the name
of improving the force’s capabilities, training, and “spirit.” After the end of
the occupation in the spring of 1952, this cooperation between U.S. offi-
cials and Japanese conservatives culminated with Japan’s inclusion in the
Mutual Security Program (MSP), the United States’ ongoing program of
military aid and assistance. Pouring resources and energy into building its
armed forces, Americans made Japan one of the cornerstones of their global
military vision.
To examine the emergence of this new idea and practice of militarized
democracy in the early Cold War, this chapter proceeds in four parts. The
first part examines changing American conceptions of the role of military
training and power in democratic societies, especially through the debates
over Universal Military Training (UMT) and the rise of international mili-
tary assistance. The second section analyzes how similar ideas shaped the
U.S. approach to Japan, specifically the decision to create the NPR with
the start of war in Korea. The third part considers Japanese debates over
the creation of the NPR and rearmament, and examines how these debates
shaped the actions of the Japanese government, including Prime Minister
Yoshida Shigeru. The final section examines the process of training and
staffing the NPR, especially the fear that poor quality personnel left the
force open to communist infiltration, and the turn toward utilizing former
imperial military officers in the NPR as a source of strength and “spirit.”
The formation of the NPR, in short, reflected the radical transformation of
American thinking about democratic politics and military power, with all
its tensions and contradictions, and its indebtedness to interactions with
Japanese allies. On both sides of the Pacific, the military and democracy
became deeply entangled, one of the most lasting consequences of World
War II and the early Cold War.
Democracy and Military Power in the Cold War

Concerns about the maintenance of a large standing army were long-standing
in American political culture. While some self-proclaimed democracies, such
as revolutionary France, had envisioned universal male conscription as en-
hancing the people’s control over the state, American politicians worried
that a large standing army could serve as the instrument for democracy’s
destruction. As James Madison famously declared during the Constitutional
Convention in 1787, “A standing military force, with an overgrown Exec-
utive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence
against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at

home.” These fears remained throughout the nineteenth century. Renowned
naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, for example, argued that only a po-
tent navy with global reach, rather than a large army, could foster the
commercial success necessary to domestic peace and prosperity. Even in the
early twentieth century, the United States demobilized after global conflicts
such as World War I; though some in the military advocated for more ex-
panded training programs, the United States instead returned to what many
considered democratic and civilian “normalcy.”4
Yet in the 1940s, the experience of unprecedented international aggres-
sion, large-scale national mobilization, and a global war waged on multiple
fronts challenged these suspicions of the military’s corruptive influence. As
historian James Sparrow notes, during World War II, the United States
rapidly “departed from some of its longest and most dearly held political
traditions,” particularly with the inauguration of a peacetime draft in
1940, which continued into the postwar era with only slight interruptions.
World War II made military experience more widespread than ever before.
Civilian and military wartime propaganda contrasted American soldiers—
“tolerant individualists, down-home democrats, rights-loving paragons
of a free society”—with the “fanatical soldiers of Germany and Japan . . .
automatons easily incorporated into the fascist war machine.” The citizen-
soldier GI accrued “symbolic” power as the highest form of democratic
citizenship, an understanding enshrined after the war through preferen-
tial programs such as the GI bill. Moreover, though the U.S. military remained
racially segregated during the war, it acquired a new image of diversity and
social integration, symbolized in part by the inclusion of Japanese Amer-
ican and Jewish soldiers. This narrative was furthered by the integration of
African Americans in the military in the late 1940s.5
This belief in the citizen soldier, alongside the idea that modern warfare
required a quicker mobilization of forces, fostered growing interest in Uni-
versal Military Training (UMT) as the key to efficient national defense in
an era of total war. In 1943, the Army proposed a program of universal
training that required a year of military training for all men, followed by
membership in a citizen reserve army. In contrast to the United States’
historical aversion to a large standing army, advocates of UMT such as
Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General George Marshall, and Assis-
tant Secretary of War John J. McCloy asserted that only widespread military
training could instill the skills and mobilization capacity needed to quickly
defend the United States in an era of total war; military leaders believed
that the time it took to produce a well-trained, well-armed military force
was the Achilles heel of American defense. In the summer of 1945, Presi-
dent Harry Truman also began to advocate for UMT, sparking three years
of fierce political debates about the role of military power in a democratic
state.6
UMT supporters did not simply emphasize its deterrent value or role in
facilitating a quick response to external aggression. They also argued that
the program would disseminate democratic values and inculcate a deeper
commitment to citizenship. As a 1945 War Department pamphlet argued,
a military trainee had acquired the valuable ability “to adjust himself so-
cially to the personalities of people with diverse backgrounds [which] has
made him more tolerant and understanding. He has learned to assume re-
sponsibility and exercise leadership. He has had an experience in democ-
racy . . . He should be proud, for he is a responsible citizen now, prepared
to defend his country if ever the need arises.” Military leaders emphasized
that the program fostered the equality, opportunity, and civic responsibility
necessary to a successful democracy. In an August 1944 circular explaining
why the War Department sought UMT, Marshall, then army chief of staff,
asserted that UMT represented the American democratic tradition of “full
civic participation in defense.” In fact, it was a professional standing army,
with selected citizens serving as privates and noncommissioned officers, that
violated American values: “Under this system,” Marshall explained, “lead-
ership in war and control of military preparations and policy in peacetime
are concentrated largely and necessarily in a special class or caste of
professional soldiers . . . this is the system of Germany and Japan.” In
Marshall’s eyes, military training was a unique opportunity to ensure that
defense forces would not threaten the United States’ democratic char-
acter. Military service would instead build a citizenry infused with “a sense
of duty [and] esprit de corps.”7
President Truman repeatedly struck this note in his enthusiastic and vocal
advocacy for UMT. In his eyes, the program was not simply a solution to
America’s expanded postwar defense needs. Through UMT, he argued in
June 1945, the United States would build “a real democratic army, a real
citizen army, which could be continually trained in the ideals of a repub-
lican form of government . . . and which under no circumstances could be
turned into a military machine for the personal aggrandizement of some
dictator.” UMT would train young bodies and minds in the ways of democ-
racy and imbue them with the resistance to demagogic, authoritarian, and
totalitarian politics that policymakers such as George Kennan and Paul
Nitze had deemed so necessary to waging a sustained battle against com-
munism. After all, as Truman argued, great republics such as Greece and
Rome had collapsed when “their peoples became fat and prosperous and
lazy.” This equation of physical strength, military duty, and democratic spirit
also informed Truman’s October 1945 message to Congress urging the pas-

sage of UMT; this program would “provide ample opportunity . . . to raise
the physical standard of the nation’s manpower, to lower the illiteracy rate,
to develop citizenship responsibilities, and to foster the moral and spiritual
welfare of our young people.”8
Infusing the U.S. military with a new commitment to “moral and spiri-
tual welfare” felt especially urgent in the fall and winter of 1945 and 1946,
when the army seemed to be falling apart in the aftermath of its largest
victory. During those months, soldiers’ intense frustrations at the slow pace
of demobilization led to a wave of riots at American military bases across
the globe, which many attributed to a “precipitous collapse of morale.” A
series of news reports depicted American soldiers that were ostensibly
teaching Germans and Japanese the ways of democracy as “brazenly en-
joying the fruits of victory,” engaging in black marketeering, corruption,
violence, and rife with sexual disease. Concerns about the quality and
moral vigor of American personnel increased even further as experienced
combat soldiers demobilized, replaced by inexperienced eighteen- and
nineteen-year-olds; military leaders such as Marshall openly worried that
America’s military would be “naïve, impressionable and prone to vice.”
Against the fear that moral, psychological, and social weakness was one of
democracy’s greatest enemies, advocates of UMT emphasized its universal
nature and ability to foster a “disciplined and virtuous citizenry.”9
Such goals were clear in UMT’s test program, carried out with 664
volunteers at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 1947. Seeking to demonstrate that
military service could strengthen the physical and moral character of Amer-
ica’s youth, the program emphasized paternal, rather than authoritative,
relationships between officers and recruits. It mandated religious attendance
and education, and included lectures on citizenship, morality, and manners,
which were carried out by the chaplaincy. UMT advocates used the Fort
Knox experiment to extol UMT as a way to simultaneously strengthen and
reinvigorate the military while securing American democracy. Indeed, a re-
port lauded this program for exposing young Americans to “the funda-
mental principles from which all moral values stem.” To its backers, UMT
would disseminate the mental toughness, spiritual vibrancy, morality, and
active commitment to republican values necessary not only to successful
military defense but also to prevent the rise of militarism, totalitarianism,
or social disintegration.10
Yet a vocal chorus of opposition to UMT revealed the radical challenge
it posed to American thinking about democracy, politics, and military power.
Drawing on earlier fears, critics warned that Cold War efforts to expand
military training could severely undermine American democracy. These de-
tractors, many of whom were conservative Republicans such as Ohio senator

Robert A. Taft, did not simply bemoan the expansion of federal power,
though this was integral to their critique. Equally important, they argued that
military values—the “military mind”—required blind obedience, and thus
directly contradicted and challenged the values, practices, and mindsets of
a democratic society. As Taft asserted in his opposition to UMT, “the Army
wants boys for twelve months consecutively, because it wants to change
their habits of thought, to make them soldiers . . . for the rest of their lives.”
University of Chicago political scientist Charles E. Merriam expressed sim-
ilar anxieties. As he warned in 1948, “the military principle and the
democratic principle stand in direct opposition to one another. The mili-
tary hierarchy involves authority from the top down, while the democratic
systems are based on consent of the governed from the grass roots up. The
military principle develops the idea of discipline and unquestioning obedi-
ence. Democratic political society is based on consent of the governed, freely
given.” UMT seemed to depart from core American traditions; many feared
it would set “the stage for a ‘military dictatorship’ ” by creating a perma-
nent military class and an obedient psyche.11
No term captured the fears of UMT’s opponents better than the “gar-
rison state,” a concept originally coined in 1937 by political scientist Harold
Lasswell to describe militarist Japan. According to Lasswell, wartime
Japan exemplified a certain kind of regime, which the militarist “specialist
on violence” controlled and shaped society. Such a regime was the inverse
of democracy: “Decisions will be more dictatorial than democratic, and in-
stitutional practices long connected with modern democracy will dis-
appear.” In congressional debates over UMT, critics of the program reg-
ularly invoked these fears to assert that UMT would destroy the values it
purported to defend, and would transform the United States into its recent
German and Japanese enemies. As critics bemoaned in congressional de-
bates, even an expanded program of peacetime conscription would “[ape]
the military clique of Hitler,” create a “permanent military caste,” and lead
to a “complete militarization of the country.” Coined at the same time as
new concepts such as “totalitarianism,” the garrison state framed the key
democratic threat not as external aggression, but a deeper, more pernicious
menace of domestic weakness. It captured fears that the structures of
liberal democracy would crumble due to the pressures of wartime mobili-
zation, that they would be subverted to enshrine and legitimize antidemo-
cratic ideas and values. In essence, the term’s proponents warned that in the
totalizing world of the Cold War, democracy could turn—or be turned—
against itself. It was therefore crucial not only to maintain institutional
civilian control over the military but also to ensure that the United States’
political and social order maintained a strong resistance to militarist

ideologies.12
The specter of the garrison state not only haunted political debates over
key legislation such as UMT and the 1947 National Security Act, but also
sparked new popular and academic interest in the field of civil-military re-
lations. Early studies exploring the proper role of military power in a ci-
vilian democracy replicated Lasswell’s assertion that the emergence of the
garrison state would be facilitated by civilian weaknesses. As Louis Smith
wrote in his 1951 study American Democracy and Military Power, pub-
lished in the University of Chicago’s prestigious Studies in Public Adminis-
tration series, Americans should not fear the simple seizure of power by a
military coup:
The far more plausible danger is that the heavy blows and deep anxieties of
wartime would cause the people to demand the almost complete subordina-
tion of the traditional democratic processes and the institution of an authori-
tarian rule based on military discipline for the whole nation, which means of
course the coming of the garrison state. Military ideas and military discipline
might then come to dominate in America, not because of forcible seizure of
power by the military command, but rather because the minds of men in Amer-
ica, under the stress of long crisis and bloody war, have come to accept the
military way as the way of salvation.
Smith’s assessment profoundly echoed the claims of policymakers such as

Nitze, in particular, who expressed fear that American society would be un-
done by the mental and spiritual weaknesses of the American people. It
was accompanied by a wave of titles such as The Civilian and the Military
and Civil-Military Relations in American Life, all of which debated whether
the United States could avoid the garrison state’s shadow.13
These fears derailed the creation of UMT. Yet the military’s growing role
as democracy’s guardian nevertheless enjoyed increasing traction. In
June 1948, Congress agreed to Marshall and Truman’s pleas on a smaller
scale by passing the Selective Service Act, which established the United
States’ program of peacetime conscription. Though not as drastic as UMT,
selective service was a radical break with previous traditions. It was pre-
mised on similar ideas, especially the belief that military service was an
integral component of male democratic citizenship and the necessity of
rapid mobilization capabilities in the Cold War. Selective service high-
lighted that the creation of the national security state was not simply about
expanding the United States’ military capabilities, but also about forging a
society that could engage in—and resist the pressures of—constant battle.
Moreover, the U.S. government and U.S. military continued to draw from
the UMT experiment at Fort Knox. In October 1948, Truman created the

President’s Committee on Religion and Welfare in the Armed Forces, better
known as the Weil Committee after its chairman Frank Weil. The Weil
Committee recommended expanding key elements of the Fort Knox pro-
gram, including its emphasis on civic education, religious morality, and
character guidance. For example, the navy’s 1953 moral leadership pro-
gram proclaimed “the core of the threat of communism” was “through the
exposure of our own weakness in the moral and spiritual area.” The Weil
Committee also posited that military bases could help invigorate civilian
society, calling for expanded religious and social links between bases and
their surrounding communities. This, Weil explained, would foster a mutu-
ally beneficial relationship designed to safeguard the welfare of both mili-
tary forces and American society.14
Equally important, UMT’s vision of the military as a key source of the
confidence, moral strength, and spirit of self-sacrifice necessary to de-
fending “free” and democratic society was not confined to the United
States. Rather, it shaped U.S. policymakers’ approach to defense and secu-
rity across the globe. In particular, these ideas manifested in the growth of
international military assistance after World War II, part of a broader
commitment to creating “healthy” societies capable of resisting commu-
nist incursion. A key turning point in this policy was the decision to offer
aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947, explained through Truman’s famous
March 12, 1947, address to Congress. Drawing a strong rhetorical con-
trast between the free world and totalitarianism, the so-called Truman
Doctrine speech committed the United States to a policy of supporting
“free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities
or by outside pressures.” As the president put it, “I believe that we must as-
sist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.” Such
statements ultimately translated into massive economic and military for-
eign commitments such as the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).15
Yet policymakers and congressional leaders feared that these new inter-
national responsibilities, coming on top of the expensive occupations of
Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea, would bankrupt the American
economy. Military assistance—in the form of training and weaponry—
emerged as a solution to fostering Europe’s commitment to its own defense.
A militarily capable Western Europe could deter communist expansion
and maintain the viability of the free world. In his inaugural address on
January 1949, Truman announced a plan to “strengthen freedom loving
nations against the dangers of aggression,” which included NATO, military
assistance, and a program of technical and economic assistance for the
“improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas,” which would ulti-

mately become the development assistance program known as Point
Four.16
Advocates of international military assistance certainly emphasized the
deterrent value and budgetary benefits of military aid, premised on cold
calculations of geopolitical power. But as with UMT, a vital strand of ar-
gument highlighted the necessity of military power to building confident
and vigorous societies mobilized around a spirit of Cold War sacrifice. George
Marshall, now secretary of state, was one of the most vocal proponents of
this line of thought. Looking at France in the late 1940s, he argued that
the United States should not provide much-needed heavy armaments but
rather small arms; weapons that people could “put in their hands” would do
far more to create “the spirit and will of resistance.” Other leaders agreed.
An April 1947 report by the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee,
one of the first comprehensive examinations of military assistance, asserted
that “The broad purpose of U.S. foreign aid and assistance is . . . supporting
economic stability and orderly political processes, opposing the spread of
chaos and extremism, preventing advancement of Communist influence
and use of armed minorities, and orienting other foreign nations towards
the U.S. and the U.N.” Far from a threat to free societies, the psychological
benefits of military assistance would provide the strength and confidence
necessary to resisting communism’s alleged chaos, internal extremism, and
“armed minorities.”17
Military assistance was thus a crucial complement to economic aid in
Europe. Speaking at Senate hearings on military assistance in August 1949,
Secretary of State Dean Acheson argued that shoring up Europe’s resis-
tance to the communist threat required much more than rebuilding its
economies. “Economic recovery itself,” he explained, “depends to a con-
siderable degree upon the people being inspired by a sense of security and
the promise of the future to put forth their best effort over a long period.
This sense of security and faith in the future in turn depends upon a firm
belief in the ability of free nations to defend themselves against armed ag-
gression.” Though Germany’s recent history seemed to counsel against re-
building military power in the heart of the European continent, Acheson
asserted that other countries, such as France, and even formerly fascist
Italy, demonstrated that “if strength in the hands of democratic govern-
ments is resolutely and wisely used, they can prevent aggressive Commu-
nist minorities from seizing power by force.” Speaking for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, General Omar Bradley reiterated such claims. “In our visit” to
Europe, he explained, “we were everywhere heartened by the strong resur-
gence of spirit and morale that United States aid and encouragement have
fostered. The nations of Western Europe are on the uptrend. They have
hope. They are working. Arms aid by adding to their strength will add to
their confidence and will hasten the day when we may see a world united
in striving for peace.” Military aid, argued Acheson and Bradley, fostered
the confidence, hope, and faith in the future necessary to combatting the
communist threat.18
These sentiments were not confined to members of the Truman adminis-
tration. They quickly spread among the political establishment, and in
October 1949, Congress passed the Mutual Defense Assistance Act (MDAA),
which inaugurated a large-scale program of military assistance premised
on the principle of “self-help and mutual aid.” MDAA offered 1.314 bil-
lion dollars of military assistance to thirteen countries, including members
of NATO along with Iran, the Philippines, Greece, Turkey, and Korea. Con-
tinuing into the Eisenhower administration, military assistance was a
major component of American security policy in the 1950s, ultimately ex-
tended to over forty countries. The initial emphasis on self-help continued to
permeate the program throughout the next decade; essentially, it sought to
ensure that American aid fostered the confidence and sense of responsi-
bility deemed necessary to resisting communism. Congress expanded mili-
tary assistance with the passing of the Mutual Security Act in 1951, which
created the Mutual Security Agency to administer economic, military, and
technical assistance under the auspices of the Mutual Security Program
(MSP). This law set forth clear expectations about active participation by
recipient countries, beyond even their own immediate defense. Sec-
tion 511(a) of this act “required that signatory states agree to six principle
conditions, including a willingness to develop and maintain the defense ca-
pabilities of individual countries and the free world as a whole.”19
This emphasis on creating vigorous societies and boosting morale was
hardly limited to Europe. If anything, it became even more important in
Asia, especially as U.S. policymakers confronted the consequences of the
Chinese Communist Party’s October 1949 victory in the Chinese civil war.
For U.S. policymakers, the Chinese Nationalists’ loss further demonstrated
the necessity of confidence, strong leadership, and a spirit of public sacri-
fice to ward off communist aggression. In one of a series of reports written
during a 1947 visit to China to assess the possibilities of military assistance,
General Albert C. Wedemeyer, who had worked closely with Nationalist
leader Jiang Jieshi as commander of U.S. wartime forces in China, argued
that “the Nationalist Chinese are spiritually insolvent . . . they do not under-
stand why they should die or make any sacrifices. They have lost confidence
in their leaders, political and military, and they foresee complete collapse.”
In this narrative, a lack of dynamic leadership, including military leadership,
meant that China was unable to summon the social vigor and national will
to defeat communism.20
More broadly, U.S. policymakers sensed that Asia was embroiled in a
revolutionary moment. In the wake of the collapse of the Japanese empire,
the end of U.S. imperial rule in the Philippines, Britain’s departure from
India in 1947, and ongoing anticolonial insurgencies in Indonesia and In-
dochina, many Americans feared that U.S. influence would be swept out of
the Pacific in a wave of anti-imperial revolutions, leaving a legacy of insta-
bility that was rife for communist exploitation. In response, Americans
elevated technical and economic aid, such as Point Four, to ward off the
appeal of communism in Asia by developing “the nations and peoples of
Asia on a stable and self-sustaining basis.” By fostering economic and po-
litical stability, along with a sense of vigor and initiative, U.S. policymakers
sought to increase the Western orientation of the Asia-Pacific region
while decreasing the possibility of communist infiltration.21
While historians have paid close attention to such economic aid and de-
velopment projects, the American focus on creating vigorous and stable
societies in Asia also relied heavily on military assistance. Korea received
aid and training under the 1949 Mutual Defense Assistance Act; after the
start of the Korean War in 1950, the United States expanded military as-
sistance to countries such as the Republic of China (Taiwan), Vietnam,
the Philippines, and Indonesia. U.S. leaders were well aware that not all these
countries were flourishing democracies. They knew that many of these
leaders, such as the Republic of China’s Jiang Jieshi and South Korea’s
Syngman Rhee, were autocrats and dictators, even as they spoke of their
commitment to the so-called free world. Yet military assistance to Asia was
not simply a question of deterrence through defensive strength. In their con-
viction that anticommunism required the active participation of entire
populations, U.S. leaders envisioned military training as a site to build
morale and confidence in newly independent Asian states. Writing about
Indonesia, which became independent from the Dutch in December 1949,
historian Bradley R. Simpson notes that the U.S. military began training
and assisting Indonesia security forces in August 1950, a process that as-
sumed great “importance as a means of transmitting ideas and influence
[and] reinforced the proclivity of Indonesian armed forces officers to en-
vision themselves as guardians of political order.” Among other goals, mili-
tary assistance was to serve as a venue for American hegemony and values
by fostering the social vigor and political stability believed necessary to
resist communist infiltration.22
The Decision to Rearm Japan

It was in this context—intense debates over the relationship between
democracy and military power; a new American commitment to building
military strength overseas; an emphasis on fostering vigorous, anticommu-
nist allies; and a sense of revolutionary crisis in Asia—that U.S. policymakers
considered a radical break with their policy of demilitarization in Japan.
Rearmament and self-defense, rather than demilitarization and neutrality,
would encourage Japan to stand strong against internal and external
enemies, contribute to the United States’ Cold War security, and bolster
anticommunist hegemony in the Pacific.
As was the case with the UMT initiative at home, this new path seemed
fraught with danger. How could the United States ensure that Japan, the
“garrison state” itself, would not again turn to aggressive militarism? What
would be the consequences of rearming Japan after several years of claiming
that military power was illegitimate in Japan’s new democracy? U.S. wartime
planning had placed the blame for the Pacific War squarely on the Japanese
military and its dominance of the Japanese state and people alike. During the
early years of the occupation, U.S. officials devoted intense time and atten-
tion to demilitarizing Japan through demobilization, the curtailing of military
benefits, changes in school curricula, and censorship of speech and cultural
expression. They worked to actively remove the military from political influ-
ence and the purge targeted not only Japan’s wartime leadership but also
thousands of former soldiers. Every military officer above the rank of cap-
tain, approximately one-half of the captains, and all graduates of Japan’s
military schooling system, including wartime officer candidate schools, were
removed from their former positions and banned from participating in po-
litical activities or expression. Occupation regulations, policies, and institu-
tional reform deemed militaristic activity, broadly defined to include the mere
presence of a military, as inherently oppositional to Japanese democracy.23
Japan’s new constitution was the most potent manifestation of this firm
separation between military power and popular democracy. Alongside pro-
visions that stripped political sovereignty from the emperor and vested it
in the public, Article 9 rendered military force an illegitimate use of state
power, declaring:
The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation
and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and
air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right
of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
Though Article 9 has received the lion’s share of attention from commen-
tators and historians, other articles of the constitution also worked to fun-
damentally limit military capabilities. In particular, the new constitution
sought to ensure that the military could not exert political authority inde-
pendent of elected politicians. Article 66 stated that Japan’s prime minister
and other top officials had to be civilians, a provision that echoed the Amer-
ican concept of civilian control over the military and sought to prevent the
high level of military influence and control over Japan’s government that
had marked the 1930s and early 1940s. Article 18, which prohibited slavery,
was later interpreted as rendering military conscription unconstitutional;
Japan’s defensive forces have always relied on volunteers. Article 76, which
vested judiciary power in the supreme court and lower courts, served to
prevent the court-martial of Japanese military personnel; they were instead
tried in civil courts. These legal provisions defined the return of militarism
as a threat that would arise from inside Japan, a threat that had to be con-
tained and eradicated through an institutional and ideological commitment
to nonmilitarized, civilian-based democratic control.24
Yet by the late 1940s, with communism seemingly on the march in
Eastern Europe and China and rising concern about communist infiltration
in Japan, U.S. policymakers and military officials began to reassess this
policy of total demilitarization. This was in part sparked by discussions over
a possible peace treaty in 1947 and 1948, which raised questions about
Japanese security if occupation forces withdrew. For example, General
Robert Eichelberger, head of the Eighth U.S. Army, which was responsible
for much of the military occupation of Japan, discussed Japanese rearma-
ment with both leading Japanese politicians and MacArthur in the summer
and fall of 1947. An independent Japan, he feared, would be temptingly
vulnerable to communist aggression, whether from the Soviets or the Japa-
nese. These discussions continued into 1948 and served as an important topic
when George Kennan visited Japan in March, which led him to caution
State Department policymakers not to take “Japan’s powers of resistance
to Communism . . . for granted.” Kennan advocated strengthening Japa-
nese internal security by expanding Japanese policing capabilities, though
he stopped short of calling for the re-creation of the Japanese military.
Prime Minister Yoshida, too, had unsuccessfully pressed MacArthur for
the expansion of Japanese police forces. In a letter to MacArthur, written
amid high anxieties that communists were effectively sabotaging Japan in
the heated summer of 1949, he bemoaned Japanese police forces as overly
decentralized; “independent, isolated, and often helpless”; and unprepared
for “swift, vigorous and effective action” in “these unsettled times.”25
As was the case with UMT, American opponents and proponents of

rearmament both cast their arguments in terms of protecting, maintaining,
and invigorating Japanese democracy. Those who spoke against rearma-
ment repeatedly warned that militarization would endanger Japan’s fragile
new political structure. If Cold War democracy was plagued by internal
threats, Japan had not yet built the democratic strength and vigor necessary
to resist the return of militarism or the threat of communist subversion. As
the State Department wrote in 1949, Japan was facing a “conspiracy from
within—and whether it succeeds depends primarily on the political, eco-
nomic and social health of Japan itself.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff raised
similar concerns in November 1949, noting that before the United States
seriously considered rearmament, “the continuing Soviet policy of ag-
gressive communist expansion makes it essential that Japan’s democracy
and western orientation first be established beyond all question.” The Na-
tional Security Council went further by rooting its hesitancy in deeply
racialized assumptions. Duplicating fears of wartime planners, it asserted
in 1949 that Asians “lack historical experience of liberty and personal ex-
perience of individualism,” implying that rearmament in Japan was a dan-
gerous prospect.26
What is more, U.S. policymakers worried that rearmament would under-
mine the legitimacy of U.S. dominance in Japan, poisoning the possibility
of a strong U.S.–Japanese relationship in the future. Rearmament required
Japanese participation, yet due to the controversy caused by contradicting
the occupation’s stated goals of democratization and demilitarization, goals
that had been adopted by many Japanese, it could also undermine Japanese
willingness to actively support U.S. security planning. General Douglas
MacArthur, one of the strongest voices against rearmament, consistently
made this argument. Weighing in on this debate in October 1948, he pro-
claimed in typical bluster that under his guidance, “militarism has been
eliminated and armament industries destroyed.” Reversing this successful
policy could deeply harm the United States’ image. As he asserted, “Aban-
donment of these [occupation] principles now would dangerously weaken
our prestige in Japan and would place us in a ridiculous light before the
Japanese people.” In MacArthur’s telling, U.S. power in Japan was both
absolute—it had completely “eliminated” militarism—yet utterly depen-
dent on Japanese consent. What is more, MacArthur argued, demilitariza-
tion epitomized the mental transformation of the Japanese people. Article
9, he claimed in a March 1948 conversation with George Kennan in
Tokyo, was not simply imposed by the United States; rather, losing the war
“had a profound effect on Japanese psychology,” with the renunciation of
war power best understood as “a reaction to a tremendous national

experience.”27
Supporters of rearmament, especially military planners, were cognizant
of the importance of democratic legitimacy. Though they repeatedly cited
military necessity as the primary rationale for rearmament, their logic, while
at times tortured, also relied on the claim that a Japanese military could
encourage the qualities necessary to a Cold War democracy. A 1948 U.S.
Army study claimed that rearmament would not only deter communist in-
cursion, but also contribute to the “revival of national prestige” within
Japan, and thus contribute to U.S. leadership in Asia by strengthening Japa-
nese confidence and morale. Furthermore, it could bolster the prospects of
Japanese democracy in the years to come. By taking the initiative to rearm
Japan, argued the army, the United States would dilute the power of wartime
militarism by ensuring that remilitarization would be channeled in support
of democratic values, U.S. hegemony, and international stability, which it
took to be synonymous. Echoing Marshall and McCloy’s claims during
the debate over UMT, the army claimed that “[r]earming Japan by the
creation of small Japanese military units, equipped with light weapons and
organized, initially trained, and strictly supervised with the U.S. Army
would safeguard against the reemergence of the Japanese military clique
and tend to alleviate the fears of other western Pacific nations of a resur-
gence of Japanese aggression.”28
The start of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, resolved U.S. policymakers’
debate. In combination with the victory of the Chinese Communist Party
and the recent Soviet acquisition of atomic capabilities, it seemed as though
communist countries—China, North Korea, and the Soviet Union—were
making a bold move to dominate Asia. Along with sending American troops
to South Korea under the guise of the United Nations—the first troops from
the Eighth U.S. Army departed directly from Japan—the United States
continued its financial support of French forces in Indochina and sent the
U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, exacerbating the militarized
divisions spreading across Asia. The Korean War also transformed Japan
into an active ally of U.S.-led U.N. troops. Throughout the three-year war,
Japan served as the key staging and mobilization point. U.N. troops pre-
pared to deploy from Japan, were hospitalized there, and took R&R in
Japan. Japan also manufactured large amounts of materiel and weaponry.
The Korean War therefore demonstrated that a strong U.S.–Japanese alliance
was integral to the United States’ political and military ability to respond
to communist aggression in Asia and beyond. Though the war remained
confined to the Korean peninsula, U.S. intelligence estimates argued that
the Soviet Union would attack Japan in the event of World War III.29
With the outbreak of war in Korea, MacArthur acted quickly to bolster

Japan’s internal security and defense capabilities. On July 8, 1950, he in-
structed Japanese prime minister Yoshida Shigeru to create a new policing
force—the National Police Reserve (NPR)—to help ensure internal and do-
mestic security. MacArthur was not alone in advocating fundamental
changes in the United States’ Japan policy. Former New York senator John
Foster Dulles, now special adviser to the State Department, was in Japan
to explore the possibilities of a peace treaty when the war began. In a letter
to Paul Nitze, head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, Dulles
argued that “the United States would assume an almost impossible burden
in attempting [Japan’s] defense without any help from the Japanese them-
selves.” William Sebald, political adviser to the occupation authorities, dra-
matically concurred in August 1950: “The entire premise of the previous
policy of a disarmed and demilitarized Japan has been invalidated by the
march of events in the Far East.” In explaining this drastic shift after five
years of demilitarization, the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff as-
serted that the Korean War created a situation “radically different” from
that foreseen in the mid-1940s. The United States was therefore justified in
“resorting to extraordinary measures” that would “allow” Japan to not
only enhance internal security, but also contribute to its own defense.30
Though MacArthur’s letter “authorizing” the creation of the NPR may
have been an immediate product of the Korean War, its creation also en-
capsulated U.S. policymakers’ divided (if not contradictory) thinking about
the Japanese military and democracy. On the one hand, MacArthur’s letter
sought to reconcile the deep contradiction between the occupation’s foun-
dational separation of democracy and military force and the decision to
build defensive capabilities in Japan. MacArthur opened his order by as-
serting that the occupation had laid the foundation for a “modern and
democratic police system oriented to an effective decentralization of police
responsibility in harmony with the constitutional principle of local au-
tonomy.” According to MacArthur, the success of this new system demon-
strated that it could be expanded without threatening Japan’s postwar
democracy: “I believe that the police system has reached that degree of effi-
ciency in organization and training which will permit its augmentation to a
strength which will bring it within the limits experience has shown essential
to safeguard the public welfare in a democratic society . . . Accordingly, I
authorize your government to take the necessary measures to establish a
National Police Reserve of 75,000 men.” Though the NPR was a different
institution than Japan’s now heavily localized police, MacArthur pre-
sented the NPR as merely a continuation of the larger democratization
and reform process. Moreover, in keeping with contemporary fears that not
just Japanese democracy, but all democracies, were most vulnerable to in-
ternal enemies, he emphasized that the new force would “safeguard the
public welfare” by preventing “subversion” by “lawless minorities.”31
On the other hand, for all of MacArthur’s claims about the NPR as a
guardian of representative Japanese democracy, the NPR was not a product
of occupied Japan’s limited representative politics. To create the NPR, oc-
cupation authorities chose not to introduce parliamentary legislation in
Japan’s Diet, in contrast to earlier occupation reforms such as labor laws,
agricultural reform, or educational reform. The Japanese cabinet instead
issued an order on August 10, 1950; the delay was in part to ensure that
the Diet was no longer in session. U.S. military officials defended their ap-
proach, claiming that issuing a cabinet order “was necessary and desirable”
because “the freedom of discussion and debate enjoyed by [the Diet] would
undoubtedly have been seized by the Communists and other leftist mem-
bers” to criticize both the NPR and broader U.S. policies in Japan. In the
U.S. military narrative, democracy was a necessary precondition to the cre-
ation of the NPR, which would in turn ensure the survival of this political
system in Japan. At the same time, democracy was dangerous. The
NPR—and Cold War security more broadly—was far too delicate and
important to subject to the democratic process or the emotional and dem-
agogic possibilities of open political debate.32
As with UMT and military assistance to Europe, American policymakers
and military leaders’ goals for the NPR extended far beyond enhancing
Japan’s defensive capabilities. On a fundamental level, they hoped that the
NPR could guard against democracy’s structural and psychological vulner-
abilities to communist ideas and forces. Writing in September 1950, the
State Department asserted that the Korean War raised questions about “the
psychological attitudes of the Japanese people. Unless the Japanese people
have some sense of continued security from external attack by Communist
forces,” warned the author, “it will be natural to expect a growth of a sense
of futility of resistance to communism.” American policymakers thus hoped
that the NPR could instill both physical and psychological strength, confi-
dence, and “spirit” through expanded defensive capabilities.33
Japanese Debates over Rearmament and Democracy

American debates over the relationship between military power and demo-
cratic security provided an important context for the creation of the NPR,
but they were far from the only factor. Japanese politicians and activists
shaped the new force, alongside Japanese officials, Japanese staff, and the
Japanese recruits who populated it. Indeed, the NPR’s very premise required
Japanese actions and support; this new security force could only foster Japa-
nese psychological and spiritual vigor if the Japanese people adopted it as
their own. Yet rearmament quickly exploded into a painful controversy, be-
coming an intense and toxic political issue. As disheartened U.S. officials
quickly learned, Japanese opinions about rearmament often diverged dra-
matically from American ideas, drawing on different ideological convictions
and historical experiences. While some Japanese, especially conservative and
rightist politicians, celebrated rearmament as necessary to fostering Japa-
nese independence and reviving Japan’s national spirit, others, especially
intellectuals and left-leaning activists, warned it would destroy the coun-
try’s new and cherished democracy. Just like for the Americans, rearmament
was not simply a question of security for the Japanese. Rather, for both right
and left, it was the key test of the nature and values of Japan’s postwar
democratic politics. These debates deeply shaped the creation and the char-
acter of the NPR.
From the beginning, visible Japanese conservatives argued that rearmament
was a way to regain national independence, honor, and purpose. Ashida
Hitoshi, who had briefly served as prime minister during the occupation
before resigning due to a corruption scandal, was a prominent proponent
of this view. After the stunning start of war in Korea, Ashida repeatedly
argued that this nearby conflict fundamentally threatened Japan, which
could not stand on the Cold War sidelines. As he asserted, “the war in
Korea is not just the battle for the Korean peninsula but also the prelude
to the coming struggle for Japan. Standing at the middle of a fierce con-
frontation between two worlds, the people who do not defend themselves
will ruin the nation.” For Ashida, rearmament was not just about building
new capabilities for the defense of Japan. It was also the key to rebuilding
the sense of national spirit and purpose necessary for nations to survive
and flourish in the Cold War world. As he wrote in a 1950 opinion paper
requested by the occupation authorities, “Present-day Japan is in urgent
need of unifying its national will . . . the task of the government is to take
the initiative to tell the people that Japan is on the brink of danger, to
remind them that we must defend the country by our own efforts.” By iden-
tifying defense, and by extension military capabilities, as the key to “uni-
fying the national will,” Ashida looked back to a version of Japan’s history
where military power and the institution of the military itself served a
central role in Japanese political, social, and cultural life, and in Japan’s
nationalist imaginary. Ashida did not speak specifically about Japanese de-
mocracy. But his emphasis on spirit and confidence as fundamental com-
ponents of waging the Cold War dovetailed with the emphasis on social
vigor put forth by American policymakers in the United States and Japan,
from Kennan to MacArthur.34
Rearmament became not only a site of conservative advocacy but also a
path to replenish nationalist leadership. Japanese conservatives quickly rec-
ognized that building this new security apparatus might accelerate the U.S.
decision, taken as part of the “reverse course,” to begin depurging wartime
political leaders, allowing their return to public life. Hatoyama Ichirō, for
example, who had been minister of education in the early 1930s and rep-
resented Tokyo in the Diet during the war, sought to channel U.S. advo-
cacy of rearmament to regain his own political standing. In 1950, while
Hatoyama was still barred from public and political service, he met with
Dulles in Tokyo, and gave him a memorandum detailing his support for
rearmament in an attempt to cultivate U.S. support for his political rebirth.
Upon his return to politics, Hatoyama utilized rearmament as a site to chal-
lenge Yoshida’s leadership of the Liberal Party from the right. In contrast
to Yoshida, who was supportive of the NPR but cautious about broader
rearmament due to its economic cost and controversial nature, Hatoyama
spoke openly in support of constitutional revision and the need to “estab-
lish a self-defense force,” developing a separate party platform prior to the
1952 Diet elections. Another conservative party, the Progressive Party, also
advocated for rearmament, calling for the construction of a “democratic
self-defense force” that would allow Japan to exert true national indepen-
dence. Conservative voices often seized on the language of democratic
autonomy, independence, and even popular rights to argue for expanded
Japanese defensive and military forces, asserting that Japan should not be
dependent on the United States.35
If armament proved appealing to disgraced politicians, it held an espe-
cially strong allure for former military officers. Rearmament advocacy
emerged as key way to reenter public life with the goal of resurrecting “tra-
ditional” values. Perhaps the most well-known figure in this campaign was
former imperial army officer and strategist Tsuji Masanobu, who had helped
to plan Japanese army campaigns—and military atrocities—in Nomonhan,
Malaya, Singapore, and Guadalcanal and was listed by the British as a war
criminal. After secretly traveling through Southeast Asia and China disguised
as a Buddhist monk to avoid trial after the war, he returned to Japan, pub-
lished bestsellers about his wartime exploits, and was elected to the Diet’s
lower house in 1952, 1953, and 1955 on a platform that advocated rear-
mament. A similar story unfolded with former general Ugaki Kazushige,
who had served as governor general of Korea, and was elected to the Diet’s
upper house in 1953 with the largest number of votes received by any can-
didate in the election. More broadly, Japan’s defense became a key center
of ex-soldier activism. Throughout the 1950s, veterans formed numerous

groups of ex-officers and servicemen who advocated for a number of is-
sues, including an increase in military pensions, and constitutional revisions
that would strengthen the power of the emperor and confirm Japan’s right
to self-defense. Such advocacy included large, visible rallies and parades,
and sensationalist moves such as petitions signed in blood. As historian
Sandra Wilson has noted, despite American demilitarization efforts during
the occupation’s early years, the military maintained considerable political
and popular appeal. “[F]ormer soldiers were everywhere” in 1950s Japan,
and for many, the armed forces continued to function as a touchstone of
pride, nationalism, and patriotism.36
Despite this advocacy for a renewed Japanese commitment to military
power, the combined impact of the Korean War and the creation of the NPR
also fostered strong anti-rearmament and antiwar sentiments among many
Japanese. Building on their political mobilization against the occupation’s
rightward shift in the late 1940s, Japanese activists, labor unionists, leftist
politicians, and intellectuals argued that rearmament was a fundamental
threat to postwar Japan culturally, politically, and economically. Like their
counterparts on the right, leftist politicians, especially members of the So-
cialist Party, sought to elevate rearmament to a major political issue in order
to position themselves in opposition to U.S. policy, the conservative Japa-
nese government, and the broader divisions of the Cold War. Leaders of
the nascent Japanese Left, in particular, drew on still-fresh memories of the
horrors and devastation of World War II to articulate their conviction that
rebuilding military forces would destroy any possibility of peace and neu-
trality in the future.
Just as Japanese nationalists mobilized in support of rearmament, the left
wing of the Socialist Party developed slogans such as “Permanent peace and
absolute independence” and “We are opposed to rearmament—youth!
Don’t take up arms.” Campaigning for a lower house seat in the 1952 Diet
elections, for example, victorious candidate Hara Hyō countered the argu-
ment that rearmament would foster Japanese independence by asserting
that “rearmament [will] become an army in the employment of the US or
USSR.” Depicting the two superpowers as equally dangerous to Japan, Hara
contended that military buildup increased the likelihood that the “the
danger of war will visit” and Japan would again suffer the “cruel eye of
the atomic bomb.” This assertion that rearmament made Japan an active
Cold War target—and would again bring atomic devastation—was not only
a crucial thread of anti-rearmament advocacy. Just as important, it would
become a major and oft-reiterated criticism of the U.S.–Japanese alliance
itself throughout the 1950s.37
Such warnings of international and domestic catastrophe were deeply in-

tertwined with visions of democratic politics, and they became an impor-
tant axis of leftist political organization. This was especially true for the
Socialist Party, which sought to cloak itself in the mantle of popular repre-
sentation. In 1951, for example, the party issued a statement directly criti-
cizing conservative advocacy of rearmament as reminiscent of the path to
war and as a violation of the true feelings of the Japanese people.
How can we ask the people of our country to take up guns and swords? People
are just recovered from the grave defeat of the war, which ended only six years
ago. These are people whose homes burned, whose property was lost, whose
fathers, husbands, and brothers’ lives were taken in war . . . The calls for re-
armament and patriotism are degeneracy, bring us back to ten years ago, and
such calls are far from the feelings of the people who have been suffering from
the defeat of the war.
The Socialist Party called on the people to distrust conservative leadership

and actively oppose militarism as a threat to peace and a people’s democ-
racy. In particular, their statement emphasized the suffering of the Japanese
people, a point that was echoed by ordinary citizens. Criticizing Ashida for
his advocacy of rearmament, one man sent him a letter asking, “How dare
you drive us into this horrible fear. Are you hoping to push us again to war
and starvation?” In arguing against rearmament, and more broadly, Japa-
nese support for the United States in the Cold War, these critics envisioned
a democracy in which the responsibility of the Japanese people was to pre-
vent these horrific events from reoccurring. As prominent leftist intellec-
tual Maruyama Masao would later assert, “the people’s power of control
over the government in order to prevent war” is at the very heart of demo-
cratic politics. Anti-rearmament activists argued that the Japanese state had
to represent the wishes of “the people”; the development of military force
was not a legitimate use of state power, because it did not protect the people
and exposed them to potential destruction.38
In calling on the Japanese people to take an active role in preventing re-
armament and securing democratic accountability, leftist activists empha-
sized the importance of protecting Article 9 of Japan’s constitution. In a
December 1954 pamphlet, Aichi University professor Takakuwa Sumio, an
active member of Japan’s postwar peace movement, passionately empha-
sized the need to protect Japan’s no-war constitution from conservative calls
for revisions. According to Takakuwa, a successful anti-rearmament move-
ment required constant vigilance—a surprising echo of American occupation
claims about the necessity of popular vigilance to secure democracy. The
Japanese people, he argued, should be “concerned for the fate of the con-
stitution to the same extent you are for your own health [for the] funda-
mental rationale [behind constitutional revision] can be nothing more
than rearmament.” Asserting that rearmament, not communist aggression,
was the primary danger to postwar Japan, Takakuwa decried that “the big-
gest cancer blocking the safety of Japan is those who love war and argue
for the revision of the constitution.” For Takakuwa, preventing Japanese
rearmament was the most important issue facing the Japanese people: “For
us at present, the first issue is rearmament, the second and third issues are
also rearmament, and to the end it is rearmament.”39
Finally, in contrast to conservative assertions that rearmament was key
to Japan’s postwar revival, critics argued that remilitarization would under-
mine the creation of an egalitarian economy. To articulate the economic
consequences of rearmament, a group of Japanese economists focused on
developing the tenets of a “peace economy.” In a 1952 journal article en-
titled “Saigunbi no keizaigaku” (The economics of rearmament), Arisawa
Hiromi, later president of Hōsei University, contended that rearmament
meant that “a portion of the working classes’ purchasing power will be
handed over to the state” and that rearmament would do little to stimulate
productive growth in Japan. On a similar note, prominent economist Tsuru
Shigeto argued that “the strongest military defense . . . was a strong civilian
economy.” For both experts, eschewing rearmament to focus on “enhancing
civilian consumption and raising general standards of living at home would
better encourage national economic growth in Japan as well as promote
an egalitarian society.” Opposition to Japanese rearmament was therefore
not simply based on questions of neutrality, antiwar sentiment, or consti-
tutional limitations. Rather, rearmament—which, as envisioned by the
United States, included an industrialized Japan capable of producing both
soldiers and materiel—threatened peace, democracy, and future prosperity
by centering economic growth around militarization. Democracy, in this
telling, included egalitarian economic opportunity, not just political repre-
sentation and participation.40
These pitched debates over rearmament and democracy deeply shaped
Japanese politics and by extension, Japanese defense policy, the end of the
U.S. occupation, and the formal creation of the U.S.–Japanese alliance in
the early 1950s. In particular, parliamentary elections held in 1952 and
1953, the first two elections in an independent Japan, became an impor-
tant forum for national discussions about this controversial issue. A public
opinion poll conducted by the Mainichi newspaper in April 1952 captured
the ongoing confusion about the character and role of the NPR: 59.6 percent
of men and 41.5 percent of women called the NPR an army, while
24.5 percent of men and 17.5 percent of women said it was not an army,
and 11 percent of men and 36.3 percent of women were unsure. When the
Asahi newspaper asked about a 1952 statement by Yoshida that the NPR
should eventually become the foundation of a postwar military, 36 percent
agreed, 33 percent disagreed, and 29 percent said they did not know. Writing
about the 1953 election, the newspaper noted that the central debate of
the campaign was for “people to decide whether or not they agree with re-
armament.” Along with bringing rearmament to the fore, the 1952 and
1953 elections changed the composition of the Diet. The left wing of the
Socialist Party, with an anti-rearmament platform, gained seats, while divi-
sions among and within differing conservative parties weakened Yoshida
considerably. After 1953, Yoshida’s Liberals were no longer the majority
party, setting the stage for his eventual downfall in 1954.41
Indeed, the creation of the NPR in 1950 put Yoshida under pressure from
all sides. His approach to the development of the NPR, and rearmament
more broadly, sought to balance the demands of political controversy, his
own political legitimacy, and U.S. desires for expanded Japanese forces. On
the one hand, Yoshida shared U.S. policymakers’ belief in the need for ex-
panded policing powers. This was especially true against communist activ-
ists, whom he described in an August 1950 speech as “fifth columnists” who
cooked up “traitorous plots.” As the occupation drew to an end, he ex-
plained that in principle, he believed that Japan had to be capable of defending
itself. “It has always been my conviction,” he said in September 1951, “that
Japan, once she regains liberty and independence, must assume full re-
sponsibility of safeguarding that liberty and independence.” On the other
hand, Yoshida was also cautious of full-blown militarization, and balanced
his support for it by postponing it to some vague future. As he explained
in the same speech, this goal would be a long time coming: “Unfortunately,
we are as yet utterly unprepared for self-defense.”42
Walking this fine line between supporting rearmament and containing
its political consequences, Yoshida cooperated with MacArthur’s push to
build the NPR, but often opposed American pressure to expand its size and
scope. Rearmament, he explained, was necessary, but came with high eco-
nomic costs for a still-recovering Japan and was deeply unpopular at home
and abroad. Pushed too fast, it could cause sociopolitical disruption that
could resurrect wartime militarism or foster the instability Yoshida believed
was conducive to communist aggression. Yoshida’s choice for the first ci-
vilian director general of the NPR, Kagawa Prefecture governor Masuhara
Keikichi, reflected these concerns about the NPR’s internal consequences
and his belief that the NPR would primarily function as an internal secu-
rity force, at least in its early years. Masuhara had served in the imperial-
era Home Ministry, which had been on the front lines of Japan’s prewar
battle against domestic communism.43
Yoshida also sought to ensure that controversies surrounding rearma-
ment would not undermine his leadership and political legitimacy. To do
so, his government framed his advocacy for expanded policing and lim-
ited armament as a product of his commitment to Japanese indepen-
dence and popular postwar democracy. A government pamphlet issued
by the Public Information Division of Japan’s Foreign Office in Sep-
tember 1951 asserted that ultimately, rearmament would be decided by
democratic choice in an independent, postoccupation Japan. “[R]earma-
ment is still a matter for the future,” it stated. “It is one that must be care-
fully determined by the people and the government in power after Japan
recovers its independence . . . As Prime Minister Yoshida stated, only then
will the substance and scope of Japan’s contribution to its own defense be
determined according to the extent of its economic and industrial re-
covery.” To be sure, Yoshida’s own ideological commitment to postwar
democratic reforms was mixed. A conservative and deeply anticommu-
nist figure, his primary goals remained securing Japanese independence,
power, and prosperity. Yet his rhetorical appeals to “the people” reveal his
awareness of the potent political appeal of popular democracy and he
sought to coopt concerns about rearmament to secure his own political
control.44
From the beginning, then, Japanese rearmament was much more than a
tool of anticommunist geostrategy, especially for the Japanese. Like UMT
in the United States, rearmament quickly became a central proxy for on-
going debates about the nature and values of postwar democracy, and the
“right” way to attain stability and security in a violent and hostile world.
On the right, many hoped that rearmament could restore the sense of
national unity and purpose destroyed by Japan’s defeat, increase Japanese
independence, and protect Japan from internal and external communist
aggression. On the left, people argued that rearmament, not communism,
was the primary threat to Japan. By resurrecting wartime militarism, threat-
ening Japan’s constitution, and corrupting its economy, rearmament would
destroy Japan’s nascent democracy while placing Japan squarely in the
path of Cold War aggression. There was little that the two sides shared in
this debate. What they all agreed on, however, was that the question of
military power could determine the contours of Japan’s domestic values
and principles.
The National Police Reserve and the Democratic “Spirit”

Throughout the early 1950s, these diverse American and Japanese visions
of the relationship between democracy, military power, and Cold War se-
curity played a constitutive role in the development of Japanese defense
forces. The NPR was an important site where American and Japanese poli-
cymakers sought to infuse a democratic Japan with a new commitment to
Cold War security, while preventing the reemergence of a militarist state.
Yet their emphasis on the NPR as the source of not only new capabilities
but also psychological and spiritual mobilization led to unexpected out-
comes. In particular, it fostered a growing convergence between U.S. military
officials and policymakers and Japanese conservatives and even militarists.
The more American officials hoped that the NPR could function as an in-
cubator of spiritual leadership, the more they worried that it lacked the
psychological strength necessary in a democratic society to survive the
Cold War. In a strange twist of events, they increasingly turned to the im-
perial army, which they formerly blamed for Japan’s wartime catastrophes,
as a source of inspiration, knowledge, and “spirit” that could guide and
strengthen the NPR. They even began working to depurge wartime impe-
rial army officers for NPR service, and ultimately elevated Japan to one of
the largest recipients of the United States’ global military aid and training
assistance. The process of creating, training, and staffing this new force
was therefore rife with ironies and self-contradictions. It reflected the cen-
trality of psychological and spirit-based concepts of democracy, as well as
the rigid limits and glaring blind spots of these visions.
U.S. occupation authorities were deeply involved in the creation and
training of the NPR, to the extent that U.S. military adviser Frank Kow-
alski dubbed the force a “little American Army.” The recruitment and
training of 75,000 men—the size set by MacArthur’s letter—was carried
out by the Japanese government but overseen by the occupation’s Civil Af-
fairs Section from its headquarters in Tokyo. Working together closely, NPR
director general Masuhara and U.S. military representatives planned the
NPR from the ground up, debating uniforms, cars, and command struc-
tures. While the Japanese government provided pay, allowances, lodging,
and transportation, GHQ / SCAP provided U.S. officers as instructors, along
with weapons, ordnance, ammunition, communications technology, and
training materials, which were slowly translated into Japanese. These officers
supervised NPR training as part of the U.S. Army Advisory and Control
Group, and were ultimately stationed with each NPR regional command,
service group, and school. U.S. officials participated in regular discus-
sions with the Japanese about the funding, staffing, and size of this force,
both before and after the end of the occupation in 1952. The United States,
in short, was intimately involved in the NPR’s creation, development, and
legitimization.45
Hoping to disarm the Left’s vocal criticism of rearmament and soften its
potentially antidemocratic consequences, both U.S. and Japanese authori-
ties immediately sought to subsume the NPR into broader narratives of
peace and democratic possibility. NPR recruitment posters and advertise-
ments linked Japanese democracy, peace, and NPR service by using slogans
such as: “Peace-loving Japan wants you!” Posters showed NPR members
with images that seemingly reflected peace and representative democracy,
including the NPR symbol of a dove (which also decorated uniform caps)
and the Japanese Diet building, and were emblazoned with slogans: “Pro-
tect the public order in a democratic Japan,” and “Peace and law and order
is by our hand!!” Heavy-handed as they were, such slogans clearly sought
to coopt democratic language, presenting the NPR as fulfilling democra-
cy’s dependency on responsible, protective, and active citizens.46
While it is doubtful that these slogans drew people to join the NPR—the
majority of recruits cited economic rationales, not ideological commitment,
as their reason for joining this new force—they demonstrate that both
American and Japanese leaders believed that the NPR had to be presented as
a democratic force, a constitutive part of Japan’s postwar political order.
With their emphasis on public order, they also reveal the early focus on the
NPR as an internal security force, one that would ensure that Japan, as a
peaceful and orderly society, was not subject to internal or external com-
munist infiltration. For many leaders, these two objectives were intertwined.
As a senior U.S. military adviser declared in a September 1950 speech to
NPR, the new force would not only “ensure that the rights guaranteed to
each and every Japanese citizen under Japan’s new constitution remain in-
violate, but [. . .] also renew the confidence in your nation’s security and
ability to defend itself against internal sabotage, revolution, and lawless
depredation.”47
These early efforts to separate the NPR from Japan’s wartime past did
not just shape its public presentation; they also permeated its language,
everyday management, and key regulations. Though organized like a mili-
tary (with battalions, regiments, and divisions), the NPR did not use military
titles, instead relying on police ranks such as inspector second class
(second lieutenant) or superintendent (colonel). Foreign soldiers, such as
the U.S. occupation forces, were “soldiers,” but members of the Japanese
force were referred to as “group members,” a title they would carry into
the twenty-first century. The all-volunteer force did not have military law
and members did not commit to a term of service: they were free to leave
at any time. Once they passed a Special Investigation Bureau investigation to
ensure they did not have communist sympathies, new recruits took an
oath of service in which they pledged to protect the constitution of Japan
and observe all order and duties; they also recited this oath first thing every
morning.48
This desire to create a “democratic” force extended beyond the realm of
slogans, images, and regulations; it also deeply shaped the initial staffing of
the NPR and visions of its service to the Japanese state and people. Much
of the initial Japanese leadership lacked a military background, instead
coming from the civil police, the existing bureaucracy, and the legal world.
The NPR’s most senior officials, especially Senior Superintendent Hayashi
Keizō (who served under civilian director general Masuhara and was the
highest-ranking uniformed member of the NPR), often talked about the
NPR as the protector and defender of the Japanese people, seeking to dis-
tinguish it from its imperial predecessor. In an October 1950 speech, for
example, Hayashi declared that the new force’s loyalty was squarely with
the people, in contrast to the imperial army’s obedience to the emperor. “We
must never forget,” he exclaimed, “that the National Police Reserve belongs
to the people . . . we should advance earnestly remembering that the National
Police Reserve is a public institution charged to us by the state and the
people.” In parallel to U.S. military officers’ concerns about bolstering mil-
itary morals through programs such as the sample UMT exercise at Fort
Knox, Hayashi sought to infuse Japanese defense forces with a spirit of mo-
rality and discipline. Service members in the National Safety Force, the
1952 successor to the NPR, were required to carry several handbooks that
reproduced Hayashi’s speeches and listed “objectives for moral improvement.”
These articulated guidelines for everything from the proper demeanor—
honest and respectful during peacetime, courageous and decisive in case of
emergency—to proper manners, including table manners, and how to write
a letter.49
Similarly, both American and Japanese officials moved to prevent the
NPR from becoming a site of militarist revival by establishing a firm com-
mitment to civilian control. Prior to and during World War II, Japan’s
imperial military was not subject to control by the Diet or the prime min-
ister; it reported directly to the emperor, who was the commander of mili-
tary forces. In response to this history, the postwar Japanese constitution
explicitly stated that the Japanese prime minister, and all state ministers,
had to be civilians. Both American and Japanese policymakers elevated
civilian control as a break with militarism. The Diet legislation that reor-
ganized the NPR as the National Safety Force (1952) and Self-Defense
Force (1954) further specified that the NPR’s director general served
under the prime minister, and that the prime minister was the commander
in chief of the SDF. These reforms also explicitly limited the key internal
administrative roles that could be held by uniformed personnel. Japanese
scholars have noted that as Japan’s defense establishment developed, ci-
vilian control increasingly did not mean direct control by politicians or
elected leaders, but rather civilian dominance of the administrative work-
ings of Japan’s defense establishment and development of defense policy,
fostering friction with uniformed personnel. Nevertheless, the concept of
civilian control has remained a core principle of Japanese defense forces
and was encouraged by American advisers. As General Albert Watson as-
serted in a 1952 meeting with Cabinet Minister Ōhashi Takeo, “The best
structure . . . is to have civilians on the top as Defense Minister,” which, like
the recently created Pentagon, would have “also a separate Secretary of the
Army and Secretary of the Navy with both of them being civilians.”50
Yoshida was especially adamant about preventing the NPR from be-
coming a vehicle for the resurrection of militarism and militarists. He al-
legedly commented that senior wartime officers, such as former imperial
army colonel Hattori Takushirō, were “plotting to revive the Tojo clique,”
the group that surrounded Japan’s wartime leader; they had to be kept out
of the NPR at all cost. Indeed, Yoshida sought to ensure that the NPR’s lead-
ership understood the force’s political and institutional position in the
postwar Japanese state. He was especially interested in the 1952 creation
of the National Safety Academy (later the Defense Academy), which offered
bachelor’s degrees and training to future military officers. Along with
choosing a civilian as the inaugural head, Yoshida offered specific comments
on the new academy’s curriculum, an unusual level of interest from a prime
minister. The prewar education of officers, he claimed, had failed by incul-
cating a commitment to the military rather than the Japanese nation; unless
this gap between the military and the nation was rectified, NPR officers
would again “lead the country in the wrong direction by imposing policies
without the consensus of the people.” In a meeting with General Matthew
Ridgway, head of the occupation forces and the United Nations com-
mander in Korea after MacArthur’s firing by President Truman, Yoshida
argued “it was very important that Japan carefully select its future officers
and insure their proper education in the democratic spirit.” His use of “de-
mocracy,” vaguely defined, as a bulwark against the return of wartime
militarism and rooted in spirit, was a constant theme in early discussions
about the NPR.51
Yet for all the talk of the NPR representing the Japanese people, Ameri-
cans took it for granted that its true mission could only be fulfilled under
their guidance. Left to its own devices, they feared, Japan would succumb
to communist infiltration or resort to militarist revival; only prolonged
American supervision could facilitate the right military psychology in the
Japanese. With the occupation ending April 1952, for example, American
and Japanese officials engaged in fierce discussions about the role and lo-
cation of future U.S. military advisers. In particular, they were divided on
the question of whether these advisers would be stationed at every NPR
camp, which the Japanese government opposed out of a desire for the po-
litical appearance—and reality—of Japanese independence. General Watson,
who wanted to retain American advisers to urge the expansion of the NPR
and continue to exert American influence over training, argued that Amer-
ican advisers would act as a key barrier against the return of militarism.
“[T]he new security force should be as democratic as possible. To make this
a democratic organization as planned . . . it is absolutely necessary that the
American officers remain and see that it is organized, equipped, and initial
training completed. This should take at least 2 to 3 years before it is com-
pleted.” American interest in a “democratic” NPR thus stemmed from mul-
tiple sources; “democracy” was cited as a hedge against the past, but also
as a way for the United States to justify continued hegemony and control
after the end of the occupation.52
If civilian control seemed to be a clear way to infuse the NPR with demo-
cratic structures and values, other areas of personnel, staffing, and recruit-
ment sparked a much more painful clash between security calculations and
democratic pretensions. The NPR may have originated out of deep concerns
about Japan’s internal security, but U.S. occupation authorities also had an
evolutionary vision, hoping to expand the NPR beyond its initial function
as an internal policing and security force into the foundation of a well-
trained Japanese military. They talked internally about their desire for the
Japanese to revise the constitution, for example, to remove Article 9’s re-
strictions on offensive and overseas actions. The rapid collapse of the South
Korean military at the beginning of the war in Korea in 1950, despite
funding and support from the United States, had left U.S. military officials
reeling, and increased their focus on a well-trained, well-led force that could
ensure internal order and deter a foreign invasion. As Major General
Charles A. Willoughby wrote in August 1950, MacArthur “desires trained
individuals: he cannot afford to waste time in the type of abortive Amer-
ican training which produced [the South Korean military] . . . I have just
come from Korea and I assure you that any support that you can give to
this project, to produce a trained body quickly, before November, will make
a lot of difference to all of us.”53
Candidates undergo a physical examination as part of their application for the newly
created National Police Reserve on August 17, 1950. Asahi Shimbun / Getty Images.
While Japan had a large body of trained and experienced military per-
sonnel, officers with significant command experience had been purged
during the occupation. As a result, despite the success of initial recruiting—
within a month, 380,000 people had applied to join a force of 75,000—both
American and Japanese officials worried about the “quality” of NPR per-
sonnel. As Tomoyuki Sasaki has shown, this initial group of applicants
comprised 35.6 percent farmers, 13.1 percent industrial workers, and
13.5 percent unemployed, drawn to the NPR in part because of its steady
pay and welfare benefits (in both American and Japanese minds, unemploy-
ment in particular was a sign of low quality). These worries about NPR
personnel were especially acute because recruits could resign at any time,
and did so at a rate of 10 percent a year. Nor were such concerns totally
misplaced; NPR personnel later recalled that members of organized crime
syndicates—the notorious yakuza—were among the early recruits in the
NPR.54
Not surprisingly, then, American advisers responsible for NPR training
repeatedly expressed disappointment in both Japanese officers and enlisted
men. Often, they attributed their perceived weaknesses to a racialized belief
in an inferior Japanese mind. As one complained, “The regimental com-

mander, his staff, the battalion commanders and their staffs are not quali-
fied and they know that they are not capable of handling their present
assignments in all respects . . . [T]his has been slow due to lack of time that
can be afforded to special classes, slow assimilation by NPR officials of en-
tirely new and radical methods and procedures, and the natural barriers of
language and mental processes.” Such attitudes, of course, ran both ways:
early NPR personnel who went through American-led training recalled with
contempt how their American trainers could be overbearing and high-
handed. Yet U.S. advisers often singled out “inferior” Japanese communi-
cation styles, not American attitudes, as the major problem; responding to
the suggestion that U.S. advisers reduce their role to encourage Japanese
independence and self-confidence, one adviser asserted that “those of us in
camps cannot be bound by the ‘you give advice when asked,’ idea, because
the oriental feels that if, on his own, he must ask, he is ‘losing face.’ ”55
Both American and Japanese officials who shared a growing focus on
“spirit” and “quality” worried that “inferior” personnel did not just weaken
the NPR’s ability to thwart internal upheaval or a foreign invasion, but also
that such lowly men would weaken the force’s capabilities and leave it open
to communist infiltration. These fears were especially potent when it came to
officers, who many envisioned as the main vehicle through which American
leadership would translate its values; this was the core backbone of the
NPR’s internal strength. Indeed, contemporary U.S. Army doctrine, such as
the 1949 version of Field Service Regulations—Operations, emphasized the
importance of effective leadership. “A leader must have superior knowledge,
will power, morale, and physical courage, self-confidence, initiative, resource-
fulness, force and selflessness . . . Every leader must take energetic action
against lack of discipline, panic, rumor, pillage and other disruptive influences.”
This manual was translated and distributed to the NPR in 1952, but such
sentiments shaped the American approach to the NPR from the beginning. It
was “essential,” wrote one occupation official in August 1950, that “com-
manders and staffs from the lowest to the highest have the moral and patri-
otic stamina to resist communism and become a real force for law and order.”56
Japan’s most experienced officers, however, had been disqualified by the
purge. The initial classes of recruits therefore elected their own officers
during training, often choosing those with English skills or military experi-
ence. It took the next year to recruit approximately one thousand men to
fill high- and mid-level leadership positions, with many coming from Japa-
nese police; some also had experience in Japan’s military reserves. Yet oc-
cupation authorities asserted that these reserve officers were poor quality
because they had not attended Japan’s military academies, whose gradu-
ates were barred from service. “[T]here is a great danger,” one official la-
mented, “that if the standard is lowered we will only get the jobless and
probably uneducated type of no professional standards, which are wide
open to subversive influences.” Japanese leaders also feared this outcome,
raising concerns about the quality of NPR officers and recruits. Hayashi, the
NPR’s commander, lamented its lack of “seishin kyōiku (military spirit),” while
Tatsumi Eiichi, a former general trusted by Yoshida, described the early
NPR as an “undisciplined mob.”57
These assessments reflected the contemporary belief that a strong
military—and national security more broadly—did not simply require proper
training or technical capabilities. Equally important were the proper psy-
chologies and mentalities, the spiritual morale necessary to produce effec-
tive leaders and soldiers. If the ultimate resistance to communism came from
within, from confidence, morale, and psychological stamina, then only mili-
tary personnel with the proper mental and psychological spirit could secure
a democratic Japan against internal and external communism. During 1951,
U.S. occupation authorities raised the prospect of depurging experienced
military personnel, with the commitment and “spirit” of the imperial
National Police Reserve officers pose for a picture outside Camp Sapporo in 1951.
The heavy American influence on the NPR is reflected in the English language
signage. Carl Mydans / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images.
Japanese army, as the solution to these fears. Echoing Marshall and Truman’s
claims during the American debate over UMT, American supervisors of the
NPR now ironically began to claim that only these former soldiers could
supply the experience and spiritual expertise needed to buoy a social,
political, and psychological commitment to Cold War security. As American
adviser Frank Kowalski later recalled, purgees “possessed much they could
give the new force: military competence, strength of character, devotion
to country, and hopefully a deep understanding of past mistakes.” With
wartime “devotion” to militarism now recast as patriotism, their char-
acter could rectify NPR’s tactical and spiritual deficiencies.58
This turn to the imperial military also reflected the advocacy of Japanese
wartime officers, commanders, political leaders, and other nationalists,
who flooded both American and Japanese authorities with ideas about the
NPR and calls to end the purge. Some drew on their long-standing opposi-
tion to communism; as a group of purged military generals, including
former governor general of Korea Abe Nobuyuki and former commander
in chief in Burma Kawabe Shozo, told a U.S. foreign service officer, “there
[is] a crying need for the reestablishment of the Japanese armed services”
beyond the defensive power of the NPR. “So far as Japan is concerned, the
USSR and the Politburo had always been considered the prime enemy.” This
shared commitment to anticommunism would play a crucial role in pa-
pering over differences between American policymakers and former
members of the Japanese military.59
But anticommunism was not the only factor. Indeed, Japanese arguments
went a step further to claim that the imperial army was a necessary source
of vigor and spirit, now in short supply. It was demilitarization efforts,
conservatives maintained, and especially the pacifist postwar constitution,
that had “[obliterated] from the Japanese mind the ethical principle of
national self-defense. This is particularly true of the younger generation.”
In their conversations with Americans, Japanese observers argued that a
lack of “spirit” would undermine the entire project of rearmament. As
Hashimoto Tetsuma, head of the right-wing Shiunso society, complained:
“Supposing that Japan is determined to rearm itself, where is to be sought
the guiding spirit of the army? During six years’ occupation . . . [Ameri-
cans] have completely frustrated the spiritual foundation upon which the
Japanese army stood. If an army were rebuilt without founding its guiding
spirit, such an army would be useless in actual fighting.” In his memoir,
Kowalski demonstrated how Americans absorbed such arguments about
the imperial army’s unique strength. “More than any soldier, the Japanese
Imperial Army heitai (soldier) had seishin kyōiku, or ‘military spirit.’ Spirit,
heart, guts, or seishin kyōiku, whatever one calls it, is the essence of a
fighting force. Without it, no soldier is worth his salt and no army worth its
budget.” By 1951, complaints about the inferiority of the NPR to the imperial
army were becoming a broader consensus. As an officer who served in both
the NPR and wartime military explained, “While the Japanese soldier during
most of World War II believed that he was an invincible warrior fighting for
a divine emperor, the postwar Japanese young man . . . has as yet not ac-
quired enough faith in the new Japan to be ready to lay down his life for it.”60
These statements reflected the longevity of Japanese wartime ideology.
Yet they also appealed to U.S. officials and their Cold War conflation of
democratic protection with spiritual mobilization under strong and capable
leaders. Indeed, U.S. officials became convinced that former military offi-
cers were valuable not just for their technical knowledge and military ex-
pertise, but also for the sense of sacrifice and spirited defense that they were
bringing to the NPR, and perhaps to Japanese society more broadly. For U.S.
policymakers, channeling the energies and expertise of former officers into
the NPR seemed like the panacea for the resurrection of military capabili-
ties and national spirit without resurrecting militarism. As an official in the
Civil Affairs Section wrote in a July 1951 report, the NPR must take care
to apply certain safeguards, but it also had to allow these officers to bring
something new to the NPR. “After short period of indoctrination covering
the requirements of leaders in military organizations operating under
democratic concepts, [these officers] should be given, with a minimum of
limitations, an opportunity to display the leadership so vital to the NPR.”61
Such plans required changes to the purge regulations, which had origi-
nally mandated a blanket ban on all “career officers.” This process had
begun on October 13, 1950, when occupation officials slightly altered the
ban’s scope. They now excluded from the purge men who graduated from
military academies after December 7, 1941, who were not involved in plan-
ning the war against the United States. That same month, China entered
the Korean War, a move that shocked MacArthur and led him to ask for
heavy equipment for the NPR; the Department of the Army also recom-
mended that the NPR be dramatically expanded to a ten-division force,
with 300,000 men. As part of this process of strengthening the NPR, 245
now depurged officers from the most recent graduating classes of the im-
perial army and naval academies were hired in June of 1951, after being
solicited to apply. But U.S. authorities worried this was not enough, writing
in July 1951 that “the failure of officers to function in field grade staff and
command positions has been repeatedly borne out by Civil Affairs Section
officers conducting inspection trips to units and installations in the field.”
Several more groups of “career officers,” totaling approximately 800 per-
sonnel, were then inducted into the NPR in the fall of 1951.62
The dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur and the appointment of

General Matthew Ridgway as supreme commander helped substantially ac-
celerate this shift toward using career officers in the NPR. Ridgway, who
was more open to the use of imperial army personnel than MacArthur, per-
sonally intervened to facilitate revision of the purge restrictions to make
these officers available. The State Department remained concerned that
challenging purge restrictions, which had been approved by the multina-
tional Far Eastern Commission (FEC), would heighten international ten-
sions, especially as it sought to secure European and Asian support of a
peace treaty with Japan. However, Ridgway argued that restricting the defi-
nition of “career officers” would not challenge FEC policy. In his eyes, of-
ficers who graduated from war academies after Japan’s invasion of China
in 1937 should be allowed in the NPR because they only provided the “ser-
vice which a man owes his country in time of war,” and were “motivated
by normal patriotism.” These officers, Ridgway claimed, were only in their
early twenties during the war, and thus “entitled by reason of age alone to
the benefit of a presumption that they did not bear personal responsibility
for Japan’s past policies of expansionism and totalitarianism.” Utilizing the
psychological language of “normal” patriotism, Ridgway revised wartime
and early occupation narratives about the flawed Japanese mind. There was
nothing wrong with the Japanese mind as such; it was a small and perverse
elite that led the people to war, and if the people supported it, it was because
they were healthily patriotic, not emotionally problematic. He recast war-
time service not as the product of totalitarian mobilization, but a sense of
civic responsibility, a quality also desired in the NPR. Despite State Depart-
ment concerns about international consequences, Ridgway decided to
move the purge terms back to 1937. This opened access to a larger pool of
manpower for future recruitment.63
Despite this sense of urgency, fears about the resurgence of militarism
meant that recruitment progressed slowly. The process of choosing and in-
corporating depurged officers into the NPR was overseen by Yoshida and
his advisers, who were attentive to the prime minister’s oft-expressed con-
cerns about militarists in the NPR. In a July 1951 study on the integration
of depurged officers, NPR director general Masuhara opened by asserting:
“The employment of ex-soldiers aims solely to replenish officers of the NPR
by utilizing the knowledge and experience gained in their past career; and
it is far from us to mean that by such means the NPR would be organized
as the army similar to the old one nor it might bring the revival of milita-
rism.” He went on to state that career officers would receive careful
screening: “The personality, character, thought tendency, past career of the
individual to be employed will be strictly examined to secure the person
who is truly suitable for the NPR officer and not to bring any evil of the
old army and color of militarism into the NPR.” Only those with the “per-
sonality” and “character” that invigorated and strengthened the NPR would
be considered. In parallel to Yoshida’s concerns about the education of Japa-
nese officers, Masuhara also noted that particular care had to be taken to
ensure that the NPR did not become a unified base of power that could
challenge Japan’s civilian leadership: “Schools of the old army and navy
were monomaniac in their education and the graduates of them held fast
to a narrow cliquism based on school origin. Care must be taken upon the
employment and assignment not to introduce such an evil custom which
will surely result to form a special clique in the NPR.” Yet the question of
depurged officers remained fraught. In a 1952 conversation, as the Yoshida
government faced elections, the prime minister, NPR officials, and Amer-
ican advisers agreed that the NPR should also seek out new officers from
civilian life, rather than relying solely on those depurged.64
Americans’ increasing enthusiasm about militarization as the source of
spiritual vigor did not end with this turn to wartime officers. After the oc-
cupation’s formal end in April 1952, it also manifested itself in Japan’s in-
corporation into the United States’ global military assistance program. With
the end of the occupation, the United States could no longer fund Japanese
defense forces directly out of U.S. Army appropriations, nor could it di-
rectly influence the pace of their expansion. To clear these two hurdles,
U.S. officials quickly began planning to integrate Japan into the MSP. The
MSP offered both technical and military assistance in the form of training,
weaponry, and limited economic aid, including the presence of a Mutual
Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), a group of on-the-ground American
advisers who oversaw training and local force development. For leading
American policymakers, Japanese membership in the MSP was also a way
to continue building Japanese defensive forces as a source of Cold War mo-
rale and popular mobilization. Speaking to Japanese ambassador Araki
Eikichi in Washington on August 13, 1953, Dulles, now secretary of state,
expressed his hope that Japanese participation in the MSP would bring a
“revival in Japan of the spirit of sacrifice and discipline required to meet
the conditions of the world as we all face them. Japan once had shown great
national spirit” during the war. U.S. plans for Japanese membership in the
MSP budgeted aid for a projected ten-division force of 300,000 men, dem-
onstrating American policymakers’ firm belief that MSP aid should en-
courage Japan to increase its pace of military expansion.65
Like the creation of the NPR, the MSP was controversial in Japan; laws
governing MSP aid dictated that recipient countries practice “self-help” by
contributing not only to their own defense but also that of the free world.
Negotiations over Japanese entry were therefore protracted and gave rise
to intense critiques that Japan’s participation in the MSP was merely an
American ruse to force the creation of a “normal” military that could be
deployed overseas to places such as Korea. As a Foreign Ministry survey of
domestic news coverage gloomily noted, leading publishers decried the
MSP’s impact on the future of democratic institutions, values, and structures.
The Yomiuri newspaper, for example, criticized the agreement’s silence on
“situations outside the frame of the Constitution,” such as dispatching
troops overseas. The Asahi asserted that people still had “great doubts,”
especially over the question of Japan’s military obligations. This meant
that the Japanese government rarely publicly presented the MSP as the
route to military expansion. Indeed, speaking at the agreement’s signing
ceremony on March 8, 1954, Japanese foreign minister Okazaki Katsuo
emphasized that this agreement did not mean a change in Japan’s military
status: “There are no new and separate military duties. Overseas service
and so on for Japan’s internal security force will not arise.” Foreign Min-
istry publicity materials explaining the agreement instead foregrounded the
economic assistance it would bring to Japan.66
Despite such opposition, the final agreement perpetuated American
supervision over Japan’s armed forces, especially through training programs.
As MAAG head general Gerald J. Higgins proclaimed, these programs
made it “quite simple to ascertain the size of Japanese forces and what they
are doing with the equipment we give them . . . these things cannot be
hidden from the MAAG observers.” Moreover, as with other Asian coun-
tries that received military aid, U.S. military leaders emphasized Japanese
training visits to the United States, as “such a program would do much to
revitalize a Japanese officer corps oriented toward the United States.” Japan
soon became one of the largest recipients of U.S. training: between 1950
and 1960, 11,926 Japanese trained in the United States under U.S. military
assistance programs. Only France, South Korea, and Taiwan sent more
people, through programs that began three or four years before Japan’s.
As with the depurging, many officers brought to the United States had ex-
perience in the imperial military or had graduated from imperial military
academies. What had once been the conditions for the occupation-era purge
now became qualifications for American military training, and these visits
continued the growing relationship between the U.S. military, the Japanese
Self-Defense Force, and the Japanese imperial military.67
As the Americans never tired of reiterating, the purpose of these visits
was not only to provide technical knowledge but also to instill the sense of
civic responsibility and spiritual qualities that Marshall and Truman had
expected from U.S. troops. Indeed, in one of the clearest links between
American hopes for their own military and international military assistance
initiatives, programs designed for foreign visitors closely replicated the ones
crafted for the postwar U.S. military through the Fort Knox UMT program
and the recommendations of the Weil Committee. When foreign soldiers
and officers arrived at bases such as Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Col-
orado, their activities were not limited to classes on military strategy or
modern weaponry training. Like their American predecessors, the pro-
gramming they received also emphasized morals and spirit, and emphasized
connections to the surrounding community through visits to local civic insti-
tutions, such as colleges. As one official asserted, this programming aimed to
“promote the cultural and social integration of Allied students and their
families into Post [service] Life” and “assist . . . in adapting themselves to
our culture and way of life.” Such visits, to be sure, took a broad definition
of civic life, and included trips to Las Vegas, the Coors Brewery, and a
holiday party beauty contest that crowned “Miss Foreign Intrigue.” But
their educational function remained in line with the programs first drafted
in Fort Knox for UMT recruits in 1947—to embed military personnel in a
civic environment, so upon their return home, they could “maintain our
excellent civil relationships in the surrounding community.” Such goals
were reflected in the response of visiting foreign soldiers. In 1954, for ex-
ample, Hayashi, now chairman of the Japanese Joint Staff Council, came
for a month-long visit to the United States. After visiting a church service
on Sunday, he praised “the spiritual standard displayed” by participating
officers, and mused how Japanese commanders, like their American
counterparts, “must find the ways to stimulate a national spirit of patrio-
tism” among their troops.68
As these rhetorical and institutional links between programs such as
UMT, the NPR, and international military assistance demonstrate, these
military projects were animated by similar ideological convictions. Just as
Truman and others came to extol the U.S. military as an integrative, edu-
cational, and democratically invigorating anticommunist institution, Amer-
icans in Japan increasingly viewed the NPR, the use of former wartime
officers, and Japanese membership in the MSP as bolstering their vision of
a vigorous anticommunist Japanese democracy. Like the goals that animated
UMT, this vision was hierarchical and narrow, focused almost exclusively
on effective leadership, physical capabilities, and psychological strength
rather than independence, peace, political and economic rights, or equality.
Not surprisingly, this emphasis on morals and a militarized “spirit” as core
to democratic security clashed with leftist forces, who sought to claim the
mantle of popular democracy through their opposition and repeatedly crit-
icized the Far Right’s lionization of the wartime state and imperial military.
It also required an awkward reconciliation between the occupation’s early

push for total demilitarization with a new faith in Japanese military power.
While these factors made the Japanese context unique, they also reflected
a much broader shift in thinking about the importance of mobilized mili-
tary power in democratic societies. On both sides of the Pacific, a new vision
of the military emerged—one that equated spirit, democracy, obedience,
and anticommunism as one and the same.
Conclusion
The creation of Japanese defensive forces became ground zero for discus-
sions over the nature of democracy in postwar and early Cold War Japan.
For observers on all sides—American and Japanese, the government and
the public, military and civilian—the NPR and its successors represented
both the successes and failures of building a new postwar political, cultural,
and social order where military power was to serve peace and large-scale
militarization was to serve civilian authority. Writing in January 1952, with
the end of the occupation only months away, U.S. political adviser William
Sebald reflected on this effort’s mixed results. Responding specifically to
continued discussions about the use of depurged officers in the NPR, he
argued that the issues at stake were “much broader than the question of
whether a few former military officers may succeed in a struggle for con-
trol of the future Japanese military establishment or whether their re-
employment in the armed forces will stimulate militarism per se. The real
issue lies in the fact that the entire, newly-constituted political structure of
Japan will be on trial.”69
The decision to build the NPR, then, did not mean that U.S. policymakers
ceased to care about democracy in Japan, even as they simultaneously de-
purged wartime officers and increasingly relied on Japanese military exper-
tise. With the same logic that informed Marshall and Truman’s effort to
institute military service at home, U.S. officials across the Pacific believed
that the NPR was possible because Japan had become a democracy, and
that Japan could be a useful anticommunist ally only if this democracy
continued. Their definition of democracy was limited and placed mental
and psychological mobilization—often deemed “spirit”—on parallel
footing with political structures. Within this context, U.S. definitions of
democracy were self-serving and often tortured, reliant on the willful mis-
reading of recent history and growing collaboration with former enemies.
But such understandings of the necessity and consequences of Japanese
armament can only be understood by examining these debates over recent
history, democracy, and Cold War security.
Nor was Japan an isolated case. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s,
U.S. foreign and military policymakers embraced both the U.S. military and
foreign militaries as a source of political stability. Military service, they ar-
gued, offered the technical skills, ideological resources, and psychological
strength necessary to resisting communism and encouraging political, so-
cial, and economic strength. A 1960 study of the collateral benefits of
foreign military training made such beliefs explicit. For the 200,000 for-
eign military personnel who had trained in or visited the United States
over the prior decade, “conceptions about civil-military relations, delega-
tion of responsibility, democratic procedures, official integrity and other
matters related to orderly administration that foreign personnel acquire in
the course of their training may play an important role in guiding their be-
havior once constitutional crises occur in their own countries.” As with the
NPR, U.S. officials heralded American military training as a way to dis-
seminate ideas about the proper role of military power in democratic
society, and as a “unique psychological opportunity to influence the armed
forces of these nations towards attitudes conducive to an enlightened and
positive contribution to their country’s growth.” Japan’s experience, then,
was part of a larger American transformation, at home and abroad, that
came to see military power as the source of psychological, social, and po-
litical strength; especially, though not exclusively, against the institutional
and political openness of democratic societies.70
Yet this emphasis on Japanese remilitarization also fostered conflict as
political and public debates over rearmament became a key site to articulate
alternative democratic visions. Intellectuals, politicians, and sociopolitical
groups that claimed to represent the Japanese public remained unimpressed
by the United States’ vision of mobilized Cold War democracy. They uti-
lized their criticism of rearmament to contest state power, and rhetori-
cally and practically asserted that Japanese democracy depended on the
total eschewal of military force. Through their opposition to rearmament,
they articulated a democratic vision premised on active popular protec-
tion of peace and constitutional values. This opposition frustrated U.S. poli-
cymakers and worried conservative Japanese leaders, who sought to
walk a fine line between American security demands and political legiti-
macy. Ironically, it was in part because of this popular resistance, and its
calls for a neutral and peaceful Japan, that U.S. policymakers invested such
hopes in Japanese defensive forces as the source of democratic spirit, mo-
bilization, and confidence. Continued public opposition would therefore
leave them searching for other ways to build a mobilized, anticommunist
democracy in Japan.
• 3 •
The San Francisco Peace Treaty
T he creation of the National Police Reserve was only one aspect of

a broader American effort to realize its vision of Cold War democracy
in postwar Japan. Americans also rested their hopes on the drafting and
signing of the international treaty that would formally end World War II
and grant Japan independence by ending the U.S. occupation. From 1950
onward, alongside planning and building the NPR, American diplomats in-
vested enormous energy in negotiating and drafting this treaty with the
Japanese and other European and Asian governments. On September 8,
1951, their efforts reached a seemingly successful end, when over forty
countries signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, one of the era’s most impor-
tant diplomatic agreements. This treaty emphasized Japan’s reintroduction
to the international community and explicitly sought to be “generous” and
nonpunitive. While it stripped Japan of its former empire, there was no
war guilt clause, nor did it place restrictions on Japan’s future military or
economic development. Equally important, the treaty solidified American
designs for a divided Asia. Due to U.S. maneuvers, neither the Soviet Union
nor the People’s Republic of China signed the treaty, despite being crucial
belligerents in the war it concluded. American diplomats sought to utilize
“peace” to delineate the boundaries of the “free world”; nations outside
these boundaries could not be part of this settlement.
Just as U.S. policymakers envisioned the impact of the NPR as extending
beyond new defensive capacities, they believed that the San Francisco Peace
The San Francisco Peace Treaty 115
Treaty was far more than a mere diplomatic agreement. For officials such
as John Foster Dulles, who negotiated the treaty and became secretary of
state in 1953, its negotiation and signing would lay the foundation for a
cooperative and “democratic” alliance between the United States and Japan.
Dulles and other Americans believed that fully aligning Japan’s formidable
military, industrial, and political potential with the so-called free world re-
quired the active participation of its people. They repeatedly asserted that
a sustained and effective alliance against global communism could not
simply rely on military arrangements or government commitments but
demanded popular legitimacy and mobilization, all of which would be
strengthened by shared values. Dulles routinely claimed that peace was not
simply an end to hostilities, but an active process in which citizens would
mobilize around state institutions to protect stability and democracy. Along
with negotiating the peace treaty, he worked with the Rockefeller Founda-
tion to orchestrate postoccupation cultural and educational exchange pro-
grams, which were designed to foster this mindset of democratic vigilance
among the Japanese people. Like the architects of the NPR, Dulles conflated
anticommunism with democracy; the two were inseparable and mutually
dependent.
Equally important, the policymakers who negotiated the San Francisco
Peace Treaty were convinced that peace and democracy in Japan was not
simply a national project. In light of Japan’s history of aggressive and vio-
lent dominance of the Asia-Pacific; ongoing conflicts in China, Korea, and
Indochina; and the emergence of newly independent states in Indonesia and
India, many believed that Japanese democracy had crucial international im-
plications. Even before the peace treaty, American policymakers and
scholars argued that a democratic Japan could function as a model for other
Asian states by demonstrating that democratic politics were possible in
non-Western societies. Moreover, by “voluntarily” aligning itself with the
United States, Japan could inspire Indians, Chinese, Koreans, and others to
actively embrace anticommunist mobilization. As part of the security ar-
rangements accompanying the treaty, American policymakers sought to
create a multilateral Pacific Pact to reflect not only Japan’s reintegration
into Asia but also its new role as a showcase of mobilized Cold War de-
mocracy. Yet this vision failed on multiple levels. Due to widespread op-
position, the United States abandoned the Pacific Pact, instead signing a
series of bilateral and trilateral security treaties. More broadly, many of
these countries, such as the People’s Republic of China, India, and the Re-
public of Korea, either refused to sign the treaty or were prevented from
doing so. The treaty simultaneously revealed American policymakers’ broad
ambitions to transform Japanese democracy into an international model,
and the limits of their vision. Fixated on reconciliation between themselves

and Japan, they could not grasp how the violent legacies of war and em-
pire fundamentally challenged their agenda.
The legacy and consequences of the treaty were thus mixed. On the one
hand, in conjunction with a formal security treaty, the peace treaty laid the
foundation for the new U.S.–Japan alliance. As with rearmament, it func-
tioned as a site of convergence for U.S. policymakers and the conservative
Japanese government, particularly over the need for vigilance and spirit as
core democratic values in a newly independent Japan. Yet for all these
American claims of facilitating popular participation in Cold War mobili-
zation, the peace treaty failed to rally Asians, or even many Japanese, to
the United States’ side. Some Asian states, such as the Philippines, coun-
tered U.S. plans by demanding reparations and a security guarantee as their
price for signing the treaty. Others, especially India and Communist China,
used the treaty to mock and challenge American leadership, articulating
their own visions of “true” Japanese democracy and independence. Most
alarmingly, as the occupation neared its end, many Japanese seemed un-
moved by American plans. Rather than celebration, the end of the occupa-
tion and Japan’s new alliance with the United States were received with both
gloomy indifference and active protest; alongside the new U.S.–Japan alli-
ance, activists criticized the peace treaty as evidence of Japan’s ongoing de-
pendency and colonization by the United States. This opposition, across
Asia and in Japan, meant that the treaty could not fulfill the high hopes
assigned to it by American policymakers. Instead, it became the founda-
tion of protests that would shape this relationship for years to come.
To explore these dynamics, this chapter examines the creation and
reception of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The first section charts the
American decision to move forward with the treaty and U.S. policymakers’
goals for the treaty, particularly their hope that it would mobilize the Japanese
people around a “democratic” U.S.–Japanese alliance while also functioning
as a political and spiritual model for other Asian states. The second section
examines how U.S. policymakers, academics, and officials at leading foun-
dations, especially the Rockefeller Foundation, sought to implement this
mobilization. In particular, they complemented treaty negotiations with
parallel cultural and educational initiatives that perpetuated American ef-
forts to mold Japanese mentalities and psyches. This section further traces
how Japanese intellectuals, labor unionists, and political activists conceived
of the treaty as a test for Japan’s postwar commitment to peace and de-
mocracy, one that Japan could only pass by actively mobilizing against an
agreement they viewed as inimical to the peace, democracy, and popular
will in Japan and Asia more broadly. The third section analyzes how the
United States sought to use the San Francisco Peace Treaty Conference to
reintegrate Japan into the global order as a new model of a mobilized,
nonwhite democracy, and as evidence of the United States’ anti-imperial be-
nevolence. It traces the harsh responses to this goal across Asia and Japan,
an ominous sign for Americans’ ability to realize their Cold War visions.
The Korean War and the Decision for a Peace Treaty

The late 1940s witnessed dramatic changes across Asia. On the heels of
their triumphant entry into Beijing, Chinese Communist forces, under the
leadership of Mao Zedong, declared the founding of the People’s Republic
of China in October 1949. This shocking victory came against the back-
drop of local conflicts and uprisings across the continent, as the French
faced insurrection in Indochina, North and South Korea skirmished across
their border, a recently independent and war-torn Philippines struggled with
the Huk rebellion, and the Dutch withdrew from Indonesia. For American
observers, who after years of bloody war in the Pacific increasingly linked
Asia’s stability to their own security, Japan emerged as the key foundation
for transpacific strength and security. As the State Department asserted in
September 1949, “the spreading chaos on the mainland of Asia heightens
the importance of Japan to us.” Reporting to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in
November 1949 about the possibilities of signing a peace treaty, the Joint
Strategic Survey Committee concurred that “[T]he United States situation
vis-à-vis that of the USSR is at present so clear-cut as to make the continu-
ation of our dominant position in Japan of paramount importance to United
States security interests.” The simultaneous spread of communism and de-
colonization across Asia deepened American policymakers’ desire to hold
on tightly to Japan.1
Yet to secure Japanese support, American officials argued that it was not
enough to simply maintain U.S. military forces in Japan. Rather, the United
States needed to ensure that Japan was prepared to voluntarily participate in
the Cold War, that it would be “actively allied with us in the event of global
war.” The more anxious they became about alleged communist threats else-
where, the more Americans elevated an active and participatory Japan as the
key to U.S. power and security across the Pacific. In conjunction with turning
toward militant anticommunism in their occupation policies and initiating
rearmament, U.S. officials now envisioned a future U.S.–Japanese alliance as
a core component of American security. For U.S. policymakers, Japan’s
importance in the Cold War stemmed in part from its strategic location, its
potential industrial and military capabilities, and its formidable economic
capacities, which they hoped could revitalize and stabilize Asian economies
more broadly. But also crucial was the fact that Japan seemed to be the one
bright democratic spot in an increasingly disheartening Asian landscape.
Few articulated this sentiment as clearly as New Jersey Republican senator
H. Alexander Smith, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
who took part in a multicountry tour of East and Southeast Asia in the fall
of 1949. “Of all the areas we visited,” he proclaimed upon his return, “Japan
stands out as a beacon of light and hope in an otherwise alarming picture.
No one could be in Japan for even a short period without realizing that an
entirely new chapter in the history of the world is being written.”2
This belief that Japan modeled a path toward a positive Asian future,
especially when contrasted with communist success in China, was not lim-
ited to military and political leaders. Outside of government, perhaps the
most vocal proponent of this idea was Edwin O. Reischauer, a leading
scholar of Japan and faculty member at Harvard University. In his 1950
book, The United States and Japan, written for a popular audience, Reis-
chauer claimed that the occupied country could be the model for a revital-
ized Asia, economically and politically. Only a reindustrialized Japan, he
asserted, offered the skill and know-how to grow and improve economic
conditions across Asia, in states whose historical and cultural experiences
differed dramatically from the United States. Even more important, Japan
was the only Asian country that had any true experience with democracy.
If Asia was to be saved from going the way of China, Japan could lead the
way as the showcase of democratic possibilities for nonwhite peoples. As
Reischauer hyperbolically proclaimed,
Japan is a great ideological battleground, and the outcome of the battle there
has the greatest significance for us. We are anxious to prove that democracy is
an article for export, that it can work and will work beyond the borders of
the few really democratic states of today. We want to prove that the rest of
the world does not have to turn to the seemingly simpler totalitarian pana-
ceas of communism or fascism . . . No non-Caucasian people has ever made
democracy operate successfully . . . There is far more need for a demonstra-
tion that democracy works in Asia than there is in Europe, and this is what
makes the whole experience we are embarked on in Japan so important to us
and to the world.
This paternalist belief that success in Japan could mark the beginning of a
democratic revolution across Asia infused negotiations surrounding the end
of the occupation with a sense of regional and global significance.3
Such sentiments fundamentally informed early American discussions

about ending the occupation and signing a formal peace treaty with Japan.
Anxious about the spread of communism, many American policymakers,
especially in the State Department, believed that inaugurating Japanese
independence and formally ending hostilities between the two countries would
facilitate Japan’s active membership in the “free world” and ensure that
Japan remained firmly committed to the “right” kind of politics. As the State
Department wrote in 1949, “[T]he only hope for the preservation and ad-
vancement of such democracy and western orientation as now exists in
Japan lies in the early conclusion of a peace settlement with that country . . .
the problem before us . . . is [how] to contribute through a peace treaty and
a new relationship with Japan to the development within that country of
indigenous resistance to Communism or spontaneous orientation toward
the west.” Though the National Security Council (NSC) had recently decided
that the time was not yet right for a peace treaty with Japan “in view of the
serious international situation created by the Soviet Union’s policy of aggres-
sive Communist expansion,” the State Department advanced the argument
that only a peace treaty could secure Japan’s firm allegiance to the United
States in this global struggle.4
The State Department’s push to begin winding down the occupation re-
ceived a boost from the elevation of John Foster Dulles as a key figure in
U.S. foreign policymaking in Asia. After the “loss” of China in 1949, Re-
publican opposition fiercely condemned the Truman administration’s
perceived weakness, if not treason. Seeking to prevent this critique from
completely undermining all Asia policy, the administration sought to enlist
a prominent Republican to take part in negotiating the treaty with Japan.
On the strong recommendation of influential Michigan Republican senator
Arthur Vandenberg, the State Department brought in Dulles to offer “some
semblance of bipartisan unity.” Dulles quickly became a vocal advocate for
an early treaty; appointed secretary of state under President Dwight Eisen-
hower in 1953, he would shape U.S. policy toward Japan throughout the
1950s.5
A corporate lawyer and nephew of former secretary of state Robert
Lansing, Dulles had attended the 1919 Versailles Conference as legal counsel
and had long believed that the survival of democracy depended on the mo-
bilization of spirit and values. Deeply religious, he often conflated democ-
racy with Christianity; during World War II, he had spoken widely about
the United States’ need to embark on an international spiritual and mili-
tary campaign against antidemocratic and “secular” regimes, such as Nazi
Germany, militarist Japan, and the Soviet Union. During and after the war,
these efforts established Dulles’ reputation as a prominent authority on
foreign affairs. Among other things, he acted as adviser to Truman’s Re-

publican opponent in the 1948 presidential election, New York governor
Thomas Dewey, who also appointed Dulles to briefly serve as senator from
New York. For Dulles, the Japanese peace treaty was an opportunity to
put his ideas about spiritual mobilization and active peace into action, while
further burnishing his credentials as a leading Republican authority on for-
eign policy issues in advance of the 1952 presidential election.6
Like the wartime planners and occupation officials who preceded him,
Dulles conceived of Japan as a psychological and spiritual experiment, a
testing ground for universal principles. By forging peace, Americans would
inspire the Japanese, and by extension all Asians, to engage in zealous
spiritual mobilization, which Dulles claimed was the core of building peace
and democracy. In his 1950 book War or Peace, Dulles argued that socie-
ties had to mobilize for peace the same way they mobilized for war. By this
he meant not simply economic, military, or strategic planning, but rather
“the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which
we usually reserve for war.” According to Dulles, this was particularly impor-
tant in democratic societies:
Political leaders—and that goes for all, irrespective of party—tend to under-

estimate the people. They think that people want to be carried through life on
flowery beds of ease. They usually seem zealous to provide the good things,
the more abundant material life, that they think the people want. The political
leaders of the so-called “democratic” nations, who depend on popular choice,
seldom try to develop moral power and a sacrificial spirit until war is upon
them and when the task is no longer one of averting war but one of winning
it. If this time we wait that long, we shall have waited too long.
Like many others, Dulles believed that the energy for such spiritual mobi-
lization ultimately flowed from above, and as such, was dependent on the
stamina and vision of leaders. The duty of democratic elites, whether they
were elected or appointed (like himself), was to mobilize the spiritual and
moral resources necessary to combat communist attempts to “monopolize
the physical means of access to men’s minds and hearts.”7
With these ambitions in mind, Dulles moved to accelerate the end of the
occupation and the establishment of an independent Japan. If a democratic
Japanese society was to endure and serve as a model for all of Asia, Americans
would have to foster a broad process of participatory spiritual mobiliza-
tion, which required the settlement of wartime tensions. In Dulles’ envi-
sioning, detailed in a June 1950 memorandum, long-range objectives in
Japan included “[a] Japanese people who will be peacefully inclined” and
“be able by their conduct and example to exhibit to the peoples of Asia
and the Pacific Islands the advantages of the free way of life and thereby
help in the effort to resist and throw back communism in this part of the
world.” A treaty could help this cause if it disseminated specific norms,
which would lead the Japanese to actively join the United States’ anticom-
munist crusade. In Dulles’ mind, such voluntary recruitment could potentially
be achieved by crude means, such as playing on Japan’s alleged long-standing
sense of superiority vis-à-vis the rest of Asia and its desire to be accepted
as equal by the “West.” As he explained to a British diplomat, Japan should
be offered “access to an elite Anglo-Saxon club,” as a means to capitalize
on this potent mix of superiority and insecurity and bridge the racial divide
between the United States and Japan. For Dulles, such psychological
“deficiencies” could be legitimately used if they served the broader goal
of remaking Asia, both politically and ideologically, by mobilizing Japan
firmly behind the United States and the “free world.”8
As was the case with the anticommunist crackdown of the late occupa-
tion, Dulles’ soaring aspirations found some ideological convergence with
Japanese prime minister Yoshida Shigeru and other Japanese conservatives.
Yoshida had long believed that Japan’s purpose lay in being a great power
in Asia. Prior to World War II, when he served as ambassador to Great
Britain, he believed this could be achieved through a strong Anglo–Japanese
relationship. After Japan’s wartime loss, he saw this destiny best fulfilled
through an alliance with the United States. As the Japanese government
began debating its future policies in the international sphere, Yoshida and
his allies rebuffed calls for Japanese neutrality. Such a decision was not in-
evitable—the Japanese government had actually discussed a variety of
options throughout the late 1940s, including permanent neutrality and
a United Nations defense guarantee; a collective security agreement with
the United Nations or the United States; or a bilateral agreement that
placed Japan under a U.S. defense umbrella, with Japan in charge of in-
ternal security. Yoshida and his supporters committed Japan to the last
path. This constellation, they claimed, was Japan’s best way to achieve re-
birth as an independent, economically strong, and internationally influ-
ential power, free to focus on economic growth and political stability
under the defensive protection of the United States.9
The prime minister and his government thus sought to end the U.S. oc-
cupation as quickly as possible. In June 1950, Yoshida sent close associate
Ikeda Hayato, who had overseen the implementation of economic retrench-
ment policies, to Washington, DC. Though Ikeda ostensibly went to the
United States to discuss issues of finance and economics, a ruse to subvert
MacArthur’s tight control of the occupation, he used a meeting with eco-
nomic adviser Joseph Dodge to offer a solution to Japan’s security issues,
which had been a point of conflict in internal American discussions about

whether to move forward with a treaty. Ikeda emphasized that the treaty
was a point of widespread and continuous discussion in the Japanese Diet
and throughout the country, lending support to the State Department’s con-
tention that a treaty was important to sustaining Japanese enthusiasm for
a close relationship with the United States. The Japanese simply wanted a
treaty—any treaty—as quickly as possible. Japan, he promised, was willing
to facilitate the security aspects of a treaty arrangement by accepting the
continued presence of U.S. forces after the occupation, a requirement that
had been raised repeatedly by the Department of Defense and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.10
As was the case with the creation of the National Police Reserve, the start
of the Korean War in the summer of 1950 solidified the inclination to end
the occupation. In American fears of a pan-Asian communist takeover,
Japan was the “ultimate domino”; members of the U.S. government be-
lieved that if they lost Japan’s support, all of Asia would be lost and the
global balance of power would turn irrevocably in favor of the Soviet Union.
The United States’ ability to respond quickly by sending troops to Korea
from Japan only reinforced U.S. policymakers’ belief in the necessity of a
flexible U.S.–Japanese relationship. Without active Japanese cooperation,
the American war effort would be severely undermined, and the entire
Korean peninsula could be in communist hands. Mobilizing Japan became
even more crucial after the shocking entry of the People’s Republic of China
into the war in the fall of 1950, only a year after its revolutionary success.
The United States was now fighting a far larger enemy than North Korea,
giving the war added ideological and geopolitical urgency. It also made it
clear that reconciliation between Japan and China, which had borne the
brunt of World War II’s fight against Japan, would be difficult. The Korean
War simultaneously made a peace treaty more urgent and more arduous.
This tension would plague American efforts throughout the prolonged
negotiations.11
Dulles was in Tokyo when the war began, taking a series of meetings with
MacArthur, Yoshida, Japanese labor and opposition leaders, members of
foreign diplomatic corps, and U.S. business representatives. Writing to
Secretary of State Dean Acheson about his impressions, he reported that
the atmosphere in Tokyo was “confused and uncertain.” The Japanese
government did not seem to have a clear or active idea about Japan’s de-
fense, and despite the ongoing Red Purge, which began to directly target
the Japanese Communist Party with the start of war in Korea, the Japa-
nese government seemed unable to ensure “peace and order” in the country.
Such sentiments, of course, were key to the creation of the National Police
Reserve. Yet the trip left Dulles with an even stronger belief that the treaty
must move forward. “My impression is that the Korean attack makes it
more important, rather than less important, to act. The Japanese people
have been in somewhat of a postwar stupor,” he wrote. “The Korean at-
tack is awakening them and I think that their mood for a long time may be
determined by we taking advantage of this awakening to bring them an
insight into the possibilities of the free world and their responsibility as a
member of it.” The peace treaty presented the ideal opportunity to “edu-
cate” the Japanese—both government and public—about the necessity of
active participation in the Cold War. In Dulles’ mind, of course, it was the
United States’ role to do such educating. Despite Japan’s long history of
anticommunism, he believed that only the United States truly understood
the perils of the communist threat in the postwar world.12
Dulles and other members of the State Department therefore used the
Korean War as a powerful argument for the need to accelerate a peace
treaty. Only a nonpunitive treaty, he claimed, would foster the morale and
confidence needed to strengthen Japanese democracy against communism,
and build an active alliance between the United States and Japan. As a
December 1950 Department of State position paper asserted, “[t]he present
situation in Korea [shows that] . . . [o]ur policy toward Japan must be di-
rected not only toward the negative purpose of denying its great military
potential and strategic position to the Communists, but toward the positive
purpose of obtaining from Japan the maximum contribution to the purposes
of the free world in the Far East.” According to this line of thinking, “this
can only be accomplished if the Japanese people freely identify themselves
with the free world. This, in turn, can best be accomplished by a Japan
which is an active, self-determining member of the free world following a
liberal but just peace settlement.”13
Though the Department of Defense was more reluctant to end the oc-
cupation, arguing that total military control of Japan was necessary to wage
war in Korea, even military leaders began to accept this logic. As army
major general Carter B. Magruder, special assistant for occupied areas, as-
serted in December 1950, “The UN does not have sufficient military
power to spare from Europe to prevent a rearmed Japan from joining the
Russians if she should so desire. Japan must therefore, be held on our side
of her own free will. Our strongest argument to hold Japan on our side of
her own free will is that Russia does not accept allies, but only satelites [sic].
If Japan chooses to align herself with Russia she would have to accept Rus-
sian domination.” Magruder argued that a treaty would therefore make
the strong contrast between the United States and the communist bloc
crystal clear: “If we offer a treaty, Japan has her independence to gain if
she sides with us. On the other hand, if we offer Japan only the choice of
continued U.S. domination or of Russian domination, the preference is not
so great.” Ultimately, President Truman ended this debate by directing the
State Department and Dulles to move forward with treaty negotiations,
with the requirement that the treaty and any accompanying security ar-
rangements allow the continued garrisoning of U.S. forces in Japan after
the formal end of the occupation.14
The Korean War did not just accelerate this line of thinking among Amer-
ican policymakers. Just as important, Japanese government officials also
claimed that the war showed the urgent need to inculcate proper “demo-
cratic” values of national unity, consensus, and public morale. This would
secure and protect Japan by strengthening its commitment to the United
States and the anticommunist “free world.” As one Japanese diplomat
bluntly wrote, “the fight to protect democracy in Korea is also a fight to
protect democracy in Japan.” Writing in August 1950, the Foreign Ministry
argued that the Korean War showed that aggressive communist countries
sought only to disrupt peace and freedom, while democratic countries, led
by the United States, sought to defend these values. It asserted that the
Korean War served to deepen the split between “two worlds.” From this
perspective, for all their anti-imperialist rhetoric, communist countries were
not Japan’s potential allies in seeking Asian liberation from Western domi-
nance; while they claimed to be fostering freedom and “liberation through
‘peace,’ ” the Chinese and North Koreans sought to deny Japan—and other
states—these very outcomes.15
Discarding notions of Japanese neutrality, the Foreign Ministry asserted
that there was no way Japan could stand independent of this conflict; as
part of the “democratic camp,” Japan was in the “war zone . . . it is not an
exaggeration to say Japan stands in the maelstrom.” Nor did Japan have
the luxury of being uncertain, which would only create opportunities for
communist infiltration. The United States’ quick response to aggression in
Korea also did not go unnoticed within the Japanese government. In ques-
tioning what Japan’s position would be in a larger war, the Foreign Min-
istry noted that the United States and the United Nations stood up against
aggression, with support from a variety of countries, implying that Japan
was on the “right side” of the conflict. If Japan did not aid the U.S.-led co-
alition, why would other countries aid Japan in the future? In thinking
about the Korean War, the Foreign Ministry utilized language similar to U.S.
policymakers that described the United States as the defender of peace and
democracy in Asia, and asserted that cooperation with the United States
and a democratic future for Japan were one and the same.16
The decision by the United States and Japan to press ahead with a treaty
in the midst of the Korean War had significant consequences for the geo-
politics of the Asia-Pacific. Specifically, it meant that the treaty would not
include the Soviet Union or Communist China, though both were impor-
tant belligerents in World War II, wartime allies of the United States, and
signatories of the formal surrender documents ending the war on Sep-
tember 2, 1945 (though China’s government was then under the control of
Jiang Jieshi’s Nationalists). The earliest discussions of a peace treaty, in 1947
and early 1948, had envisioned a very different treaty that would perpetuate
some form of Allied control and permanently commit Japan to demilitar-
ization. However, as hostility and mistrust grew on all sides, this planning
fell apart. As early as 1948, policymakers such as George Kennan were
pushing for a different treaty, one that focused on U.S.–Japanese reconcili-
ation, was nonpunitive, and did not require reparations; as Kennan said to
MacArthur during his visit to Tokyo, “[The treaty] should, in my opinion,
be short, general, and inoffensive, and should constitute a pat on the back
and a gesture of confidence to the Japanese as they move in to a new pe-
riod.” Given Kennan’s belief in the need for social vigor to wage the Cold
War, it is not surprising that he emphasized confidence as a key benefit of
the peace treaty. U.S. policymakers therefore envisioned the treaty as a
core component of their crusade against communism in Korea and else-
where by offering a constructive model of peacemaking that would mobilize
the Japanese to the American side. They intended for the treaty to reinforce
Asia’s division, meaning that Chinese and Soviet participation was no longer
necessary to accomplish the treaty’s goals. This shortsightedness became a
key reason for the substantial controversy provoked by the treaty.17
With the start of the Korean War, both American and Japanese leaders
came to believe that the future relationship between the United States and
Japan did not simply depend on security arrangements. Rather, a successful
alliance required broad legitimacy, especially in a democratic Japan where
the government was subject to elections and the pressures of popular repre-
sentation. Such an alliance, then, also required “educating” and mobilizing
the people. U.S. policymakers hoped that a successful treaty would lay the
foundations for such a relationship. In solidifying these limited democratic
visions, the Korean War provided the foundation for both the convergence
and clashes to come.
Cultural Relations and Japanese Mobilization

With the decision to end the occupation, the stage was set to negotiate a
peace settlement. Yet for Dulles and others, for Japan to become a model for
all of Asia—a key treaty objective—the United States would have to continue
to mold Japanese minds in the shape of democracy. This meant that along-
side settling the details of the treaty, such as the future of Japanese occupied
territory, the question of reparations, and the settlement of war claims, Amer-
icans were equally fixated with utilizing the treaty’s signing to facilitate
Japanese support for the future U.S.–Japanese relationship, which U.S. poli-
cymakers regularly equated with a continued Japanese commitment to de-
mocracy. The coming treaty thus fueled a burst of American investments in
Japanese education and U.S.–Japanese cultural relations. Dulles, American
philanthropists, and scholars believed that the United States needed to con-
tinue instilling the “correct” democratic spirit across the Pacific. Only then
could the treaty fulfill its goal of rallying Japan to the so-called free world.
In January 1951, Dulles traveled to Tokyo to meet with Yoshida and
establish the basic contours of the peace treaty and the postoccupation U.S.–
Japan security relationship. American policymakers and Japanese conser-
vative leaders, including the prime minister, agreed on the need for the state
to mobilize the people against communism, and shared a vision of the treaty
as the key site to bolster the Japanese state legitimacy necessary to doing
so. However, they disagreed strongly on how to concretely realize these
ideas. Specifically, American and Japanese policymakers clashed over secu-
rity issues, especially the question of Japan’s militarization. Dulles, along
with U.S. military leaders, consistently elevated Japanese rearmament as
necessary to Japanese security and as an important site for Japanese par-
ticipation in the Cold War. In particular, he argued that Japan had to dra-
matically expand the NPR. Yoshida, heavily aware of continued popular
resistance and worried about the economic consequences, consistently dis-
agreed, warning that rearmament’s unpopularity would undermine his own
political rule and open Japan to communist infiltration. As the Japanese
Foreign Ministry asserted in January 1951, the “security of society is more
important than arms.” Yoshida went further, stating in a letter to U.S. poli-
cymakers that “[t]he burden of rearmament would immediately crush our
national economy, and impoverish our people, breeding social unrest, which
is exactly what the Communists want . . . Today Japan’s security depends
far more on the stabilization of people’s livelihood than on armaments.”
These disputes over rearmament were never fully resolved and would con-
tinue long after the end of the occupation.18
Nevertheless, after a series of meetings, the two emerged with the con-
tours of an agreement. The formal ending of the transpacific war in Asia
and the creation of a U.S.–Japanese security alliance would be achieved
through three separate documents, each with a different purpose and focus.
In keeping with the vision of U.S. policymakers, the planned peace treaty
was a simple and nonpunitive document detailing the settlement of war-
time issues, Japan’s territorial limitations, and its return to the international
community. This document would be signed by a wide array of countries
that had been belligerents in the Pacific War. The accompanying bilateral
security treaty, signed only by the U.S. and Japan on the same day as the
peace treaty, would create a formal U.S.–Japanese security alliance and
allow the United States to continue stationing forces in Japan. This agree-
ment included expectations of Japanese rearmament; controversially, how-
ever, it did not explicitly commit U.S. forces to defend Japan. The third
element of the package, an administrative agreement, would lay out the de-
tails behind the stationing of U.S. forces, including controversial issues
dealing with property usage, Japanese financial contributions, and criminal
jurisdiction. The Japanese Diet did not have to approve the administrative
agreement and it had not yet been negotiated when the United States and
Japan signed the peace and security treaties in September 1951.
Yet Dulles did not see his trip to Tokyo as simply a series of negotiations
over specific treaties or security calculations. Equally important was his
vision of the treaty as a key opportunity to instill a spirit of Cold War com-
mitment through a mobilized Japanese elite and public. In a February 2,
1951, speech to the America–Japan society in Tokyo, Dulles invoked ideas
that had become the mainstream of U.S. policymakers’ thinking, arguing
that democracy and peace required an active commitment and constant pro-
tection. Protecting Japan from internal and external aggression “requires,
most of all, a healthy and vigorous Japanese society.” The United States
therefore sought “a peace which will afford Japan opportunity to protect
by her own efforts the full sovereignty which peace will have restored; op-
portunity to share in collective security against direct aggression; opportu-
nity to raise her standard of living by the inventedness [sic] and industry of
her people; and opportunity to achieve moral stature and respected leader-
ship through the force of good example.”19
For this purpose, Dulles also embarked on a crusade to inaugurate post-
occupation U.S.–Japanese cultural relations. Expanding on the projects of
the occupation years, these efforts sought to mentally and spiritually mo-
bilize the Japanese people by cultivating the vigor necessary for Cold War
democracy. Dulles’ Tokyo traveling party included John D. Rockefeller III,
a philanthropist known for his work on East Asia who was tasked with
investigating the future of the U.S.–Japanese cultural relationship. In a long

report following the visit, Rockefeller accentuated the importance of mu-
tual cultural exchange “to bring [the United States and Japan] closer to-
gether in their appreciation and understanding of one another.” While
Rockefeller’s report emphasized that cultural relations had to be a “two-
way street,” in reality, U.S. policymakers and civilian officials hoped cul-
tural exchange would facilitate Japanese respect for American leadership
outside the direct hierarchy of the occupation. In this spirit, corresponding
with Rockefeller about potential follow-up projects in 1951, Saxton Brad-
ford of the U.S. occupation’s Political Advisor Public Affairs Office empha-
sized the need to bring visible and influential American intellectuals to
Japan. “There is a traditional feeling among the Japanese that American
civilization lacks a ‘spiritual’ and ‘cultural’ dimension; the most effective
counter to this attitude is to bring Japanese face-to-face with outstanding
thinkers whom they respect and who are capable of making a genuine con-
tribution to Japanese thought.” Cultural relations were singled out as a
crucial postoccupation tool to inculcate proper Japanese mentalities and
ways of thought.20
This belief in the power of cultural and educational exchange to trans-
form and stabilize entire nations was not new; it drew heavily on policies
first instituted during the occupation era, when education had been a major
focal point of American reform. As with the decision to continue U.S. mili-
tary training and incorporate the Japanese into the Mutual Security Pro-
gram, the looming end of the occupation prompted Americans to find new
ways to continue their efforts to reshape Japanese ways of thinking. In a
February 1951 memorandum, for example, Arundel Del Re, an adviser to
the occupation’s Civil Information and Education Section (CIE), called for
a continued American investment to set Japanese thought and cultural pat-
terns on a sound democratic basis. Del Re, who had taught in Japanese
schools and universities before the war, claimed that “It is self evident that
the task of, as well as the responsibility for educational reorientation in a
broad sense cannot be considered as terminating with the peace treaty.”
Educational policies that sought to deepen the new relationship between the
United States and Japan should “aim primarily at stimulating and assisting
the Japanese to analyze, determine, workout and gradually put into effect
a new Japanese way of life consonant with sound democratic ideas and
practices.” The United States, warned Del Re, should not become overly
confident about Japan’s institutional democratization; the real issues at
stake were “psychological and ideological. Without an ideal aim to inspire
and principles to guide them, the reconstruction of a free Japan . . . could
easily turn out to be superficial and unstable, a bad imitation of the West,
as that of the Meiji period has shown itself to be.”21
The social sciences emerged as the crown jewel of this postoccupation
plan to “uplift” the Japanese mind through education and cultural exchange.
A 1949 educational exchange survey team appointed by the occupation au-
thorities had identified social science fields, “such as sociology, political
science, applied economics, and psychology; philosophy, literature, and the
English language,” as the key to remaking Japanese modes of thought and
cultivating Japanese commitment to international cooperation. It was widely
believed that the sciences, including the social sciences, would instill the ra-
tionality, ethical commitment, individualism, and moral character necessary
to democracy and thus serve as an important tool to develop new normative
commitments across the globe. In particular, these seemingly universal
values would facilitate a commitment to consensus-driven democracy, based
on “rational negotiations between individuals and interest groups” rather
than a clash of irrational emotions and ideologies. Indeed, the social sciences
would “vanquish the risks to liberal democratic stability,” identified by
economist John Maynard Keynes as “risk, uncertainty, and ignorance.”22
The social sciences were popular in European and American contexts at
least in part because they confirmed the rigid political visions of con-
temporary political elites. The values that governments and Western intel-
lectuals alike believed would be propagated by the social sciences did not
emphasize contesting state power. On the contrary, the social sciences were
seen as a way to facilitate faith in expertise and leadership, both govern-
mental and private, as the key to democratic success and stability. For both
American academics and politicians in the early Cold War, it seemed evident
that the role of scholarly study and education was not to foster a critique of
power structures and hierarchies, but to help strengthen and solidify state
management, expertise, and power. Rather than engaging the public, these
experts would ensure the propagation of certain norms and in the words
of Andrew Jewett, “speak for a liberal consensus that floated somewhere
above the body of actual public opinion.” Not surprisingly, the early Cold
War witnessed intimate and wide-scale cooperation between politicians,
scholars, and philanthropists, who provided funding. In this new institu-
tional complex, what historians call the “Cold War University,” research
programs, curricula, and study centers were designed to foster a loyal and
mobilized citizenry that would feel attached to the existing political,
economic, and social order, including state institutions, and combat its
communist enemies. As Harvard University president James Conant as-
serted, “The primary concern of American education today [is] to cultivate
in the largest possible number of our future citizens an appreciation of both

the responsibilities and benefits which come to them because they are Amer-
icans and are free.” This cooperation also put scholarship and teaching at
the forefront of anticommunist hysteria; universities were often active part-
ners in purging “deviant” individuals for alleged political subversion.23
This belief in the transformative and democratizing power of cultural and
intellectual exchange, especially through the social sciences, meant that
Americans viewed academic-political-philanthropic cooperation as crucial
not only in the United States but also for its foreign allies. The impending
end of the occupation and the preparation of the peace treaty thus sparked
an increase in American educational outreach in Japan. In late 1949, Claude
Buss, a professor of Southeast Asian and Chinese history at Stanford
University and education consultant to GHQ / SCAP, proposed a seminar
on American studies to the U.S. authorities in Japan. Buss was inspired
by similar programs taking place in Europe, specifically the Rockefeller
Foundation–funded Salzburg seminar that brought together American
scholars, such as economic historian Walt Rostow and anthropologist
Margaret Mead, with European scholars and students to deepen European
understandings of American studies, and by extension, American thought,
culture, and democracy. As Buss envisioned it, the program would enable
the United States to “take advantage of any opportunity to encourage and
to help any outstanding Japanese individuals or organizations which see
the need of training Japanese students and teachers in the problems and
procedures of democracy.” For this effort, Buss enlisted Tokyo University
president Nanbara Shigeru, a leading figure in occupation-era educational
reform and the first president of the Japan Political Science Association,
who invited Stanford University to organize a summer seminar on Amer-
ican studies in Tokyo. Under these auspices, Buss applied for and received
funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.24
The first seminar took place in the summer heat of July and August 1950;
five American professors from Stanford University offered courses in Amer-
ican history, diplomacy, philosophy, government, and economics. One
hundred thirty Japanese professors and graduate students applied to take
part; final participants were selected by Tokyo University, which made ar-
rangements for housing, meetings, travel, and other activities. Along with
giving lectures and leading discussions, the American professors also met
with a wide array of Japanese leaders, including members of the Diet, uni-
versity faculty, officials from the Ministry of Education, student groups, and
intellectual groups. American reports on the success of the seminar were
mixed. They noted the eagerness and excitement of Japanese participants;
as Buss commented, “The only limit to their absorption was our physical
ability to deliver.” Yet the Stanford professors’ final report on the seminar
also worried that a great deal of work remained before Japanese intellec-
tuals adopted the psychological responsibilities and rationalities necessary
to remaking Japanese patterns of thought. “[A] certain uneasiness and in-
security exists,” they lamented, “because of Japan’s defeat . . . intellectual
uncertainties permeate Japanese scholars who feel the inhibitions of the
occupation. It will require a great deal of mental adjustment before con-
temporary studies become respectable and before there can be an easy re-
lationship between the scholar and the man in public affairs.” The Stanford
professors concluded that the seminars could play a vital role in developing
both American studies and a responsible psyche amongst Japanese intel-
lectuals. “The tendency of American scholars to insist on relating the con-
tent of theoretical considerations to the facts is an important lesson which
the Japanese need to learn from us.” The Rockefeller Foundation concurred,
and in December 1951, awarded a grant of $160,000 for a series of five
American studies summer seminars under the auspices of Stanford and
Tokyo University.25
These privately funded cultural outreach efforts were striking not only
in their ambition but also in their close ties to the diplomatic sphere. For
Dulles, Rockefeller, and others, the summer seminars were a useful way to
pursue their goal of mobilizing Japanese intellectuals—some of the most
vocal advocates of neutralism and critics of the rearmament and a future
U.S.–Japanese alliance—as vigorous democratic leaders who supported
the U.S.–Japanese relationship. Americans also claimed that cultural ex-
change programs modeled the importance of voluntary private mobilization
in contrast to communist authoritarianism. They believed that private ini-
tiatives, led by universities and foundations, would mitigate against charges
of cultural imperialism, even as participants clearly saw them as a process of
imperial uplift—it was, after all, the Japanese who needed to learn—as
much as intellectual exchange. The U.S. Embassy in Japan, for example,
wrote to the Rockefeller Foundation with a list of recommended projects
for private funding, including bringing “outstanding American intellec-
tual figures” such as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and political theorist
Ralph Bunche on extended visits to Japan, a Japanese–American cultural
center, and an international house in Tokyo that would become a center
of intellectual exchange.26
After their 1951 trip to Tokyo, Dulles asked Rockefeller to pursue
some of the goals outlined in his report as a private citizen. Rockefeller be-
came deeply involved in developing, funding (over $600,000), and building
an International House in Tokyo. The International House, which has con-
tinued to operate as a focal point of cultural, intellectual, and international
exchange into the twenty-first century, had a library and lodgings for vis-
iting students and scholars, and hosted visitors, seminars, and talks on a
regular basis. In detailing his activities to Dulles’ assistant John Allison,
Rockefeller too emphasized that cultural exchange had to be about re-
making mindsets and mentalities. He bemoaned how educational and
personnel exchanges had elevated English-language ability as a crucial
criterion for Japanese visitors, when the “primary emphasis should be on
such qualities as ability, character, and leadership.” For Americans, both
inside and outside government, the imminent signing of a peace agreement
and the formal conclusion of the occupation did not mark the end of the
United States’ commitment to a broader cultural, psychological, and intel-
lectual transformation in Japan.27
Yet just like rearmament did not achieve policymakers’ high hopes, these
educational efforts had ironic consequences. Despite Americans’ confidence
in their ability to transform a diplomatic agreement into an intellectual rev-
olution, it quickly became evident that Japanese scholars had their own
ideas. To be sure, many Japanese shared the belief that the social sciences
were a site to articulate visions of Japanese democracy. In the aftermath of
the war, Japanese intellectuals too invested the social sciences with what
one scholar calls “almost magical power,” arguing that the social sciences
were key to solving the myriad problems facing postwar Japan, from pov-
erty to democratization to purging militarist legacies. As Nanbara asserted
in October 1948, it was a “self-evident fact that the promotion of science,
natural and cultural, is the sine qua non of Japan’s rehabilitation as an
enlightened and peace-loving nation.” But many intellectuals hoped to mo-
bilize this knowledge toward radically different political goals. For leading
intellectuals such as political scientist Maruyama Masao, a “scientifically
imagined” vision of democracy would help transform an “intellectually de-
pendent and inert populace” into vigilant democratic citizens who had
acquired a “new normative consciousness.” Similarly, Tokyo University
economic historian Ōtsuka Hisao argued that democratic revolution in
postwar Japan required the creation of “modern human types” that in-
cluded a new mentality embodying “diligence and frugality, personal au-
tonomy, reasonableness, social consciousness, [and] consummate devotion
to economic values.” These qualities were meant to inspire resistance to
state-led mobilization.28
Many Japanese therefore seized the coming of formal independence and
an official peace settlement as an opportunity to assert their own visions of
Japan’s future at home and abroad. His leading role in facilitating the Amer-
ican studies summer seminar, for example, did not prevent Nanbara from
presenting Dulles and Rockefeller with a memorandum detailing Japanese
intellectual attitudes on the “present position of Japan.” According to Nan-

bara, all Japanese were actively seeking to dedicate themselves to the cause
of democracy and peace. This was, he claimed, a process of mental and
moral regeneration, calling on the Japanese people to “learn, as a nation,
the fundamental difference of the ideal of Western civilization, based on
the idea of the dignity and duty of the human individual, from the concept
of power politics of ‘popular’ democracies.” But Nanbara also used his letter
to argue against Japanese rearmament, which many intellectuals and leftists
feared would be a natural and dangerous consequence of the treaty. Re-
armament, he asserted, would pervert and undermine the necessary process
of moral regeneration: “Japan’s act of rearming, at the risk of endangering
the cause of democracy and peace in this initial stage of her generations,
will entail deplorable effects on moral and intellectual development of her
people, especially of the younger generation. The loss in moral factors may
well be greater than the gain in military establishments, viewed in light of
Japan’s defense as well as of international security with Japan as a strong
link in the alignment of free democracies.” Nanbara and others directly
challenged the American desire to equate democracy with active support
for the U.S.–Japanese alliance, at least its military components. The social
sciences, it seemed, could be a double-edged sword.29
This challenge to American visions was even more prominent in the ac-
tivities of the Heiwa mondai danwakai (Peace Problems Study Group), a
group of prominent intellectuals who articulated a forceful alternative to
Dulles’ and Yoshida’s visions. While the group’s first statement, printed in
the March 1949 issue of the leftist magazine Sekai, remained general in its
content—writers called upon Japanese intellectuals to learn from their
failure to resist the war—it quickly escalated its criticism of the forming
peace treaty. Its second statement, released in January 1950, condemned
the American and Japanese governments’ potential exclusion of the Soviet
Union and Communist China from negotiations, advocated neutralism, and
opposed any military alliance with the United States. After the beginning
of the Korean War, the group intensified this critique of Cold War diplo-
macy and the peace treaty as the main threat to Japanese democracy. Its
third and most influential statement, from September 1950, turned Dulles
and Rockefeller’s logic on its head, claiming that rational and logical Japa-
nese must mobilize against the Cold War, especially due to the threat of nu-
clear disaster. Largely authored by Maruyama, the statement claimed that
“for the sake of world peace, as well as for the welfare of the Japanese
people,” Japan should remain neutral in the Cold War. “What other courses
are left open,” it warned, “for the true independence and welfare of the
Japanese nation and for the preservation of world peace?” This third
statement articulated the strongest and clearest opposition not only to the
peace treaty but also to the logic of the Cold War itself. Enjoying wide at-
tention, it quickly became a key reference point for left-leaning political
mobilization, and elevated the peace treaty a central point of attention in
debates over the present and future of Japanese democracy.30
Indeed, like the push for rearmament, negotiations over the peace treaty
proved a galvanizing force for left-leaning activism and politics. As it be-
came clear that American leaders were seriously considering an end to the
occupation, groups flooded Dulles with their demands for “total” peace,
meaning the inclusion of the Soviet Union and Communist China in the
peace treaty, and articulated their opposition to an alliance with the United
States. The radical student group Zengakuren (All-Japan Federation of Stu-
dent Self-Government Associations) lambasted a “partial” treaty as putting
their lives at risk, while the Socialist Party declared that such an agreement
would undermine Japan’s security and freedom. For some, opposition to
the treaty became a matter of such profound importance that compromise
became impossible. After rocky debates about the treaty in the fall and
winter of 1951, the Socialist Party split in two over the question of whether
to support or oppose a “partial” peace treaty without the communist powers’
signatures: the Left Socialist Party developed a policy of unarmed neutrality
and opposition to the U.S. military presence, while the Right Socialist Party
advocated for a more moderate policy and supported the treaty. So funda-
mental was the treaty to the two sides’ conceptions of their political identi-
ties that they did not unite even after its formal passage; they would not
merge until 1955.31
Labor unions—which had been a major target of economic stabiliza-
tion policies and the Red Purge—also took an active role in criticizing the
treaty. In the summer of 1951, for example, the labor federation Sanbetsu
argued that by negotiating the treaty in secret, the Yoshida government
ignored public opinion. In other words, the treaty was not a product of a
democratic process, and was thus illegitimate. Moreover, the treaty en-
dangered the future of democratic practices. Though it declared Japan
sovereign, the military requirements accompanying the treaty did not re-
spect this sovereignty. Ironically, though Sanbetsu called for full respect
for Japanese sovereignty, it also criticized the draft for lacking restraints
on remilitarization and the revival of military industries in Japan. Finally,
the nature of the peace itself was questionable as the treaty draft made it
impossible to conclude a total peace—Sanbetsu too highlighted the exclu-
sion of Communist China as a signatory—and thus increased the possi-
bility of war.32
The new labor federation Sōhyō (General Council on Trade Unions)

released a similar statement, arguing that the treaty did not lay the ground-
work for international peace or Japan’s economic security. Formed in 1950,
Sōhyō quickly became Japan’s largest labor federation: approximately
60 percent of Japan’s unionized workforce was affiliated with Sōhyō, which
developed a powerful political position as the key organizational backbone
of Socialist Party activism and electoral politics. Founded as an “anti-red
national federation” with the support of occupation authorities, Sōhyō
became increasingly critical of U.S. occupation policy, the U.S.–Japan alli-
ance, and the broader logic of the Cold War. In particular, its ideological
position changed with the election of Takano Minoru as general secretary
in 1951. Fearing the growth of “reactionary tendencies” due to U.S. poli-
cies, which Takano believed entrenched a “coalition of ex-military officers,
ex-zaibatsu officials and purged politicians . . . the same combination of
forces that gained control of Japan in the 1930s,” he redirected Sōhyō into
becoming a leading agitator against the U.S.–Japanese relationship. Like
Sanbetsu, Sōhyō’s statement bemoaned the lack of concrete treaty provi-
sions that would ensure peace in Asia or living standards in Japan. For both
Sanbetsu and Sōhyō, just like for Dulles, the coming peace treaty for Asia
and the future of Japanese democracy were deeply intertwined. It was ex-
actly for that reason that their opposition was so intense and pointed.33
As the treaty drew closer, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) also used
the practice and language of democracy to advocate against the U.S.–Japanese
alliance and call for popular participation in the treaty process. Like many
leftists and intellectuals, the JCP called for a “total” peace that included
the Soviet Union and Communist China, arguing that only such a treaty
would safeguard Japanese peace and security, give Japan real indepen-
dence, and allow it to thrive through industry and foreign trade. In contrast,
a “partial” peace would leave Asia rife with tension, enslave Japan in the
service of the United States, and impoverish Japan due to rearmament. As
part of its mobilization and propaganda campaign, the JCP therefore pur-
sued a campaign of “votes for overall peace,” calling people to fill out a
ballot that expressed their support for a broad treaty. The JCP engaged in
the language of democratic representation and consensus by having people
participate in “voting” to build national unity: as their slogan asserted,
“Overall peace will be obtained through unity of the Japanese people. If we
demand overall peace in a united body, it can be realized without fail. Let
us all sign this ballot.” This unity, however, was not at the service of state
power but in opposition to it. This was not the first time that the JCP and
other activist groups had used the concept of voting as a mobilization and
propaganda tactic; in 1950, a campaign of local and national peace activ-

ists had gathered 6,800,000 signatures in support of the Stockholm ap-
peal, an international petition which called for a total ban on nuclear
weapons. Similar to Zengakuren, the treaty became a powerful tool for the
JCP’s efforts to seize the language of democracy as its own, claiming the
mantle of popular democracy in opposition to the plutocratic rule of
capital.34
The JCP’s emphasis on including Asia’s communist states, especially
China, received a further boost from scholars such as Takeuchi Yoshimi and
Inoue Kiyoshi, who argued that Communist China, not Japan, was Asia’s
truly modern nation. As Inoue later declared, “Today the various Asian na-
tions, led by the People’s Republic of China have already completely liber-
ated themselves from the long period of oppression and exploitation by the
imperialist powers including, for a time, Japan. Among the Asian nations
we Japanese are the furthest behind.” Rather than modeling itself on the
United States, argued such observers, Japan should study China’s national
revolution and its “indigenous national consciousness” to foster a deeper
Sino-Japanese relationship based on shared resistance to American imperi-
alism. The different people and groups calling for Japan to be a nation of
“peace” therefore emphasized national independence. Japanese democracy,
they claimed, had no future if it remained in thrall to U.S. Cold War policy, if
Japan remained a mere puppet to U.S. security needs, if Japanese politics
became distorted and dictated by the militarism and paranoia of the Cold
War, or if Japan lay in the path of future war due to its close relationship
with the United States. In an interesting parallel with U.S. policymakers’
argument that democracy, and by extension, anticommunism was a “state
of mind,” Japanese intellectuals and activists also argued that only an in-
dependent Japanese mind could protect Japan, in this case from the preda-
tions of U.S. Cold War policy. This was a key rationale behind the debate
over a “partial” versus “total” peace; not only did a “partial” peace offer
only a limited reconciliation of fifteen years of war that had torn apart Asia,
but it also left Japan in a neocolonial relationship with the United States,
while empowering the forces that had once led Japan into a disastrous war.35
Looking at this wide array of antitreaty activism, American policymakers
became concerned that the peace treaty was a catalyst for opposition, rather
than support for the future U.S.–Japanese relationship. Writing about in-
tellectual groups such as the Heiwa Mondai Danwakai, U.S. authorities
worried that their understanding of the key threats to democracy differed
dramatically from current American policy. As William Sebald, U.S. political
adviser to GHQ / SCAP, asserted, perhaps “the most important cause moti-
vating intellectual opposition” was “a fear that the peace and security ar-
rangements will further encourage a rightest resurgence in Japan. To many

Japanese liberals the possibility of a rightest revival constitutes far more of
a threat to democratic development than Communism.” Like participants
in the summer seminars, Sebald and U.S. Embassy attaché Richard Finn
attributed this stance to Japanese intellectuals’ insecurity and immaturity,
specifically their inability to understand communism’s menacing threat;
their “almost entirely [. . .] academic approach to Communism” made it
difficult for them to grasp that “oppression from the extreme left can be
equally ruthless.” Yet despite this paternalistic and dismissive assessment
of Japanese intellectual capacities, Sebald emphasized that intellectuals held
the potential to thwart American planning for the future U.S.–Japanese re-
lationship, because they could offer “leadership” and “unify critical
thinking” among educated Japanese. Intellectual opposition, warned Sebald,
might in time “kindle real forms of resistance to the politics of the Japa-
nese Government and the United States.”36
To American dismay, as the treaty evolved and Japan’s independence
drew closer, Japanese opposition to the peace treaty seemed only to inten-
sify. The months leading to the signing of the treaty witnessed the unfolding
of contradictory impulses: on the one hand, Americans such as Dulles ex-
panded their efforts to transform Japanese mentalities through a commit-
ment to cultural relations and educational exchange as the site to foster a
democratic “mind.” On the other hand, many Japanese increased their
attacks on the coming independence arrangements as illegitimate. The
American insistence that a postoccupation Japan could only fulfill its demo-
cratic future through a close relationship with the United States opened
rhetorical and ideological space for Japanese opposition to use the treaty
to define a different vision of independence and democracy. Rather than
settling the nature of Japanese democracy and its future, the treaty left these
issues open to continued debate.
The San Francisco Peace Treaty Conference

If American efforts to use the treaty to transform the Japanese government,
people, and psyche faced resistance, equal disappointment awaited them
in the international sphere. Americans never viewed the peace treaty as an
affair limited to Japan. From the beginning, policymakers such as Secre-
tary of State Acheson, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
Dean Rusk, and Dulles hoped to facilitate a broader moment of Asian
transformation by using the treaty to deepen U.S. power in the Asia-Pacific
in multiple ways. On the most basic level, by encouraging Asian signatures
on a nonpunitive and allegedly “generous” treaty, from newly independent

states and regions such as Indochina that were technically still under impe-
rial control, the United States sought to foster Japan’s legitimacy in the
region while bolstering its own image as an anti-imperial and even ben-
evolent leader of nonwhite and Asian states. But beyond such symbolism,
Americans also sought to use the end of the occupation to inaugurate a
defensive pact that would rally “free” Asian states behind U.S. leadership.
Such a massive and unprecedented alliance, they hoped, would curtail al-
ternative expressions of Asian nationalism or regional solidarity, and block
the expansion of communism by solidifying American hegemony in the
region.
Just like the plans to transform the minds of the Japanese, these grand
ambitions collided with reality. Countries such as Burma and India refused
to sign the treaty out of opposition to the United States’ geopolitical vi-
sion; countries such as the Philippines insisted on reparations—opposed by
U.S. policymakers—and a security treaty as the price for its signature; and
Indonesia signed but never ratified the San Francisco Treaty. Moreover,
many sneered at the United States’ remarkably elastic definition of “free”
Asia; both the Republic of China and the Republic of Korea (South Korea)
were prohibited from signing, yet Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, still under
French imperial rule as Indochina, signed as three separate states. Mean-
while, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China did not sign
the document, and their demands were ignored. Just as important, Ameri-
cans proved unable to separate democracy in Japan from broader interna-
tional cleavages and transformations. Even though (or perhaps because)
they did not hesitate to support authoritarian regimes elsewhere, such as
South Korea, or French imperialism in Indochina, Dulles and others were
determined to use the treaty to highlight Japan as a showcase of democratic
transformation and the possibilities of popular participation in the so-called
free world. They claimed the treaty was due to Japan’s new success as a
democracy and that as such, Japan would lead the way to victory in Asia’s
Cold War.
As part of treaty preparations in the fall of 1950, Dulles met with the
representatives of various governments, including Great Britain, Australia,
Indonesia, and the Philippines. In these meetings, Dulles sought to gain sup-
port for the kind of treaty that the United States envisioned: a nonpunitive
peace that stripped Japan of its former empire, but did not seek to punish
Japan through reparations, requirements that it maintain occupation re-
forms, or restrictions on future military or economic development. For
Dulles, such a treaty would not only foster Japan’s firm commitment to the
U.S.–Japanese alliance and the “free world,” but also would stand as a sig-
nifier of U.S. behavior toward nonwhite nations—specifically its willingness

to treat them fairly. Indeed, Dulles believed that after the treaty, Asian na-
tions would be “intently watching” American behavior toward Japan to
see if the United States could “deal with Orientals on a basis of respect and
equality” and develop “the kind of ‘friendly association’ with a defeated
nation of alien race.” Such sentiments were shared by countless U.S. diplo-
mats, who believed that a “generous” treaty would elevate the United States
as the exception to centuries of white dominance and racism in Asia;
American imperialism in places such as Hawai’i and the Philippines, and
ongoing U.S. support for European imperial repression in places such as
Indochina, remained a glaring blind spot that they never even mentioned.
On the contrary, U.S. officials believed that a “generous” treaty would up-
hold the National Security Council’s 1949 call for American policies and
behavior that “will appeal to the Asiatic nations as being compatible with
their national interest and worthy of their support.”37
From the beginning, this plan faced resistance from other governments.
Some, such as the Philippines and Indonesia, were deeply reluctant to forego
reparations after experiencing Japan’s aggressive and violent imperial ex-
pansion. Other states, such as Australia, worried about the prospect of a
resurgent or neo-militarist Japan; in keeping with the belief that Japanese
aggression stemmed from a stunted and overly emotional Japanese “char-
acter,” could Japan be trusted once the treaty removed the restraints of the
occupation? Finally, states such as India were concerned about the relation-
ship between the treaty and communist countries, especially the Soviet
Union and China; how could this treaty bring peace if two of the largest
countries in Asia—both of which were crucial wartime belligerents—did
not, or could not, sign it? While Dulles worried about securing Japan against
communist overthrow, other states worried about the consequences of a
seemingly permanent division of Asia or securing themselves against a re-
surgent Japan.
Truman, Acheson, and Dulles originally envisioned solving these con-
cerns by creating a Pacific Pact that would coincide with the end of the oc-
cupation. Signatories would pledge their common interest in defending the
Asia-Pacific region and their willingness to act collectively to repel aggression.
This pact would seek to prevent aggression against “free” Asian states, while
also containing aggression within “free” Asia, specifically by Japan. Such a
pact would, for the first time in history, entangle the United States in a
multilateral military commitment to nonwhite states, bringing together
former enemies. In the early spring of 1950, during discussions about the
treaty and security arrangements, U.S. policymakers hoped that such a pact
would emerge from “indigenous” organization in Asia and include the
United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and

Japan. When the expected members failed to show much interest in taking
the initiative, American policymakers decided to take the lead; prior to his
departure for Tokyo in January 1951, Dulles’s instructions from Truman
directed him to explore the possibilities of “mutual assistance agreement
among Pacific island nations.” Dulles conceived of a Pacific Pact in part as
a solution to gaining Asian and Pacific support of a “generous” peace treaty,
especially against their fears of renewed Japanese aggression. Yet, he si-
multaneously hoped such a pact would solve Japan’s ongoing security
questions; a multilateral Pacific arrangement would create a framework in
which Japan could re-create military forces “as part of an international
security arrangement rather than merely as a national force.”38
Dulles struggled to enlist other states in support of this vision. Though
the United States and Britain worked closely together on the peace treaty,
ultimately taking joint ownership of the treaty draft (which U.S. policy-
makers utilized to prevent the British from writing their own, more punitive,
treaty), Britain opposed American visions of a regional pact out of racial
and imperial calculations. As British policymakers quickly grasped, U.S.
policymakers saw the pact in part as a vehicle to displace European, espe-
cially British, imperial influence in the Asia-Pacific. In discussions with
British representatives in Tokyo in January and February 1951, Dulles pro-
posed that the pact include the United States and offshore Asia-Pacific
states—Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, and the Philippines—but
not European states and certainly not the British. Dulles argued that in-
cluding Great Britain would open the way for other European states, leading
Asian countries to view—and reject—the pact as the mere reassertion of
Western imperial control; he raised no such worries about American
membership.39
British policymakers and military leaders, however, recognized the con-
sequences of facilitating a multilateral alliance in which recently decolo-
nized nations actively participated under American leadership. Meeting to
discuss the proposed pact in January 1951, the British chiefs of staff as-
serted that “From the point of view of the United Kingdom’s position as a
world power, [this] proposal would be interpreted in the Pacific and else-
where as a renunciation of our responsibilities and possibly as evidence of
a rift in policy between us and the United States. There would undoubt-
edly be grave repercussions in Hong Kong and Malaya,” by raising fears
that the United Kingdom was no longer committed to imperial defense.
British officials also worried that such a pact would undermine the mili-
tary value of Commonwealth states, mentioning, for example, the need for
Australia and New Zealand to send troops to the Middle East, rather than
to Japan as part of a Pacific Pact. For Britain, the proposed agreement, un-
like NATO in Europe, signaled the reduction of British influence, power,
and legitimacy.40
If imperial doubts from the British metropole were not enough, the
Pacific Pact also crumbled due to the fears and prejudices of its intended
members. After negotiating with the Japanese in January and February of
1951, Dulles traveled southward to the Philippines and Australia to dis-
cuss the peace treaty and security arrangements. Over the course of this
trip, the Pacific Pact was increasingly sidelined in favor of three separate
but related security pacts designed to secure foreign signatures on a
“generous” peace treaty: a bilateral pact between the United States and the
Philippines; a trilateral pact between the United States, Australia, and New
Zealand; and a bilateral pact between the United States and Japan. Aus-
tralia, in particular, saw the Pacific Pact as unacceptable due to the inclusion
of Japan, and instead argued for a firm security treaty with the United States.
Acheson later recalled that “strong Australian and New Zealand preference
for a ‘white’ Pacific Pact” undermined the United States’ desire to use the
pact to prove its anti-imperial leadership. “To us in the State Department,”
he wrote, British and Australian proposals “implied a guarantee of Euro-
pean colonial possessions in or on the Pacific,” which would undermine the
pact’s whole purpose. Alongside the United States’ maintenance of military
bases in Okinawa and Oceania, ongoing fighting in Korea, commitment to
protecting Taiwan, and funding for the French in Indochina, these three
treaties further expanded the United States’ security presence in Asia. More-
over, all three agreements were signed at the same time as the peace treaty in
San Francisco, highlighting the growing reach of American security commit-
ments and the United States’ desire to use the Japanese peace treaty as an
entry point to secure its presence as a leader in the Asia-Pacific by remaking
Asian geopolitics.41
Other Asian states objected to U.S. intentions to exclude Japanese repa-
rations from the treaty. For Dulles, who viewed the United States as Japan’s
primary victim and operated under the memory of the harsh Treaty of Ver-
sailles and in the context of growing American postwar prosperity, for-
going the tradition of imposing reparations was key to the treaty’s regional
and even global symbolic meaning. It proved the United States’ benevolence
toward its defeated enemy and would help set Japan on the path to eco-
nomic recovery. This turn away from reparations was such a departure in
international politics that it upended the United States’ recent plans. In the
early years of the occupation, U.S. authorities had planned on Japanese rep-
arations; their commitment to “just reparations” was in fact asserted in
the Potsdam Declaration. Limited reparations payments, in the form of
industrial equipment, war production facilities, and electric power capacity,

began in early 1948 to China and the Philippines. Despite the outcry from
the recipient countries, however, occupation authorities stopped this
program in 1949 out of the fear that diminishing Japan’s industrial capacity
would thwart its economic rebirth.42
Yet for those who languished under Japanese imperial and military rule,
reparations remained a crucial demand. U.S. policymakers had hoped to
reduce reparations demands from countries such as the Philippines through
a security guarantee and a Pacific Pact. But while President Elpidio Quirino
had been an early supporter of some Pacific security arrangement, U.S. am-
bassador H. Merle Cochran argued that security commitments would not
replace the Philippines’ desire for reparations. Reporting on a visit to Manila
in a letter to General MacArthur, Dulles similarly bemoaned, “Repara-
tions seemed to occupy the mind of everyone to the exclusion of almost
everything else—including a Pacific Island Pact.” As usual, Dulles attributed
resistance to his ideas to weak leadership and a lack of rationality. As he
put it, “there remains the problem of overcoming the emotional prejudices
of the people . . . the present Government has neither the political stability
nor the courage to undertake such a task.” Faced with a decision between
the principle of reparations and potential Asian refusals to sign the treaty,
Dulles chose the path of legitimacy in Asia. In the summer of 1951, he
reinserted clauses into the treaty that recognized the principle of repara-
tions, though for states rather than individuals and in technical assistance
and other services rather than industrial materials; Japan would negotiate
reparations agreements with several Asian states, including the Philip-
pines, Vietnam, and Indonesia, after the treaty was signed.43
The failure of the Pacific Pact and Asian insistence on reparations served
as a cautionary tale to U.S. policymakers’ ambitious regional plans. But an
even bigger disappointment awaited them as other Asian countries used the
treaty to lambast the militarization and division of the Asia-Pacific, the
American language of democracy, and the logic of the Cold War itself. India,
which had only recently gained its independence and sought to position it-
self as a regional and even global leader, took a leading role in developing
this critique. Early in the treaty process, Indian diplomats in Asia and the
United States expressed suspicions about U.S. plans for Japan and the le-
gitimacy of a divided Cold War Asia. Reporting on a meeting with Indian
ambassador Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit in December 1950, Acheson noted
that India sought a comprehensive treaty that included the Soviet Union
and Communist China, and called for Japan to be demilitarized under a
United Nations security guarantee. Indian policymakers also criticized con-
tinued U.S. control over territories like Okinawa, and more broadly, the
maintenance of U.S. forces in the region. These forces, they warned, would
“carry the seed of future dispute and possible conflict in the Far East.” India
even raised the possibility of a separate Asian peace conference, which U.S.
policymakers feared “could hardly fail [to] open [the] way to [the] Chi
Commies [sic], USSR” and “would encourage states to refrain from the
united participation in [the] re-estab[lishment] of Jap[anese] sovereignty.”
Reporting from New Delhi, U.S. ambassador Loy W. Henderson complained
that Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was narrow-mindedly fo-
cused on his own desires for global influence. In rejecting the treaty, Hen-
derson argued, Nehru “has laid [the] basis which will enable him carry on
subsequent campaign [to] stimulate and gain influence over nationalistic
and anti-white elements in Jap[an]” and unite Asia under the slogan of
“Asian nationalism.” As it turned out, India was not alone in its opposi-
tion. Burma also chose not to sign the peace treaty and suggested a sepa-
rate Asian peace convention with Japan after the conclusion of the San
Francisco Conference.44
The Chinese Communist government was equally vocal in utilizing the
treaty as an opportunity to articulate its own vision for Asia. For Mao
Zedong and others in Beijing, who had been embroiled in war with Japan
long before Pearl Harbor, China’s exclusion from the negotiations was sym-
bolic of American imperialist intentions and the United States’ inherently
antidemocratic nature. In a December 1950 statement, Chinese foreign
minister Zhou Enlai accused the United States of militarizing and exploiting
Japan by delaying and limiting the treaty. “The United States Government,”
he decried, “through its military control, attempts to make Japan a United
States colony, and drive Japan forward as the United States’ tool in aggres-
sion against the Asian people.” Contrary to its claims, lambasted Zhou, the
United States did not have peaceful intentions. “Only a peace treaty with
Japan based on . . . international agreements [and therefore including
China] can bring about the democratization of Japan, can eliminate the ag-
gressive forces of Japan and prevent the resurgence of the aggressive forces
of Japan. Only a democratic Japan, free from the control of foreign influ-
ence, can contribute to the peace and security of Asia.”45
Even Zhou engaged in the language of democracy in envisioning Japan’s
future, arguing that only a truly democratic Japan—one free of American
control—could rejoin the Asian community. Writing to Rusk in 1951, Dulles
lamented that the Communist Chinese had resurrected Japan’s old slogan,
“Asia for the Asiatics” and were attempting to rally Asia, especially India,
against the West. Like India, Chinese leaders sought to use the treaty and
U.S. claims for promoting democracy to criticize American policy and ar-
ticulate their own leadership within Asia. China would issue a series of
similar statements throughout 1951, criticizing the treaty for resurrecting

Japanese militarism and perpetuating American imperialism. The People’s
Republic, it proclaimed, supported the “Japanese people’s patriotic struggle
against the traitorous San Francisco Peace Treaty.”46
The question of China fostered significant blowback against U.S. policy
in Japan and beyond. Just as it undermined American outreach to the Japa-
nese Left, it became a visible and difficult point of tension between the
other signatories, especially the United States and Great Britain. Throughout
the spring and summer of 1951, disagreements between the United States
and Britain over which, if any, Chinese government would sign the treaty
plagued the process of creating a joint U.S.–British treaty draft. The United
States did not recognize the Communist government and financially and
militarily supported the Nationalist regime in Taiwan. U.S. policymakers
therefore insisted on excluding the People’s Republic of China from the
treaty; intense criticism from the so-called China Lobby—the rationale for
hiring Dulles to work on the treaty in the first place—also would have made
passing a treaty signed by Communist China extremely difficult. In contrast,
the British government recognized the Communist government in Beijing
and believed that excluding Communist China undermined the treaty’s
goals. In an effort to solve this conflict, Dulles and British foreign secre-
tary Herbert Morrison agreed that neither the Communist nor Nationalist
Chinese governments would attend the conference and that Japan make
arrangements of its choosing after the close of the occupation, though
Dulles intended to ensure that Japan did not “choose” a settlement with
Communist China. In British eyes, this compromise was still dispiriting. By
injecting a strong dose of the “‘Chinese poison’ into the Japanese situation,”
one diplomat wrote, the exclusion of China gave “the Chinese Communists
and the Russians . . . a good propaganda point . . . which will probably ap-
peal to anti-Japanese feeling among all sorts of people who were not them-
selves convinced Communists.”47
Even Japan—the United States’ core ally in the emerging Asian
architecture—proved hesitant about China’s exclusion from the treaty. For
all his anticommunism, Yoshida disagreed with Dulles and did not believe
that Japan should economically isolate Communist China; moreover, the
Japanese business world eagerly sought to resume trade with China as part
of Japan’s economic recovery. Yoshida believed that communism was ill-
suited for China and often presented Japan’s cultural, economic, and im-
perial knowledge of China as a reason that Japan could and should try to
draw mainland China back to the “free world.” Yet concerns about being
caught in the middle of Anglo-American friction meant that Japan wanted
to avoid offending either state; above all, the Japanese government did not
want this issue to delay the treaty, nor did it want to threaten future po-
litical and economic prospects with the British or other Asian states.
When U.S. and British policymakers sought Japan’s opinion on the “China
question,” the Foreign Ministry recommended that the Japanese govern-
ment state that it did not want Communist China to sign the treaty. At the
same time, it cautioned that all options—both Chinas signing the treaty,
neither China signing the treaty, or Japan signing a separate treaty with
one or both Chinas—had “legal difficulties,” and that its recommendation
was not based on any enthusiasm or confidence. Ultimately, the Republic
of China signed a separate peace treaty with Japan in the spring of 1952
and did not press a claim for reparations.48
Alongside China, the United States also excluded any representatives
from Korea. The stated rationale for this approach was that Korea was not
an official belligerent in the Pacific War, despite Korean service in the im-
perial Japanese military and the widespread use of Koreans as forced la-
borers and enslaved sex workers (known as comfort women) by Japan. This
decision was based on tortured and inconsistent logic; Korea was not an
official combatant because it had been colonized by Japan, yet such expe-
riences did not serve to prevent other colonized countries, such as those in
French Indochina, from signing the treaty. Korea’s exclusion, it seems, was
largely a product of anticommunism and shared American–Japanese racism,
as both the Japanese government and the occupation authorities slammed
Korean residents in Japan as a communist fifth-column. Yoshida, for ex-
ample, urged Dulles to prevent any representative of Korea from signing
the treaty, stating in a meeting “the government would like to send almost
all Koreans in Japan ‘to their homes’ because it had long been concerned
by their illegal activities.” Dulles concurred with this judgment; as he re-
sponded, “Korean nationals in Japan, mostly Communists, should not
obtain the property benefits of the treaty.” After the treaty was signed,
Korean nationals were denied the ability to make claims under its provi-
sions. With the end of the occupation, the Japanese government also
stripped all resident Koreans and Chinese of Japanese nationality, making
them subject to onerous immigration and alien registration laws. Racial-
ized conceptions of the Japanese nation and racist assumptions about Ko-
rean “illegality” thus merged with Cold War security calculations into a
toxic mix that excluded Korea from the treaty.49
Ultimately, when forty-eight countries signed the peace treaty in a mas-
sive ceremony on September 8, 1951, it symbolized broad American ambi-
tions for Japan and the limits imposed by rigid American conceptions of
democracy and the geopolitics of war, empire, and Cold War in Asia. Held
in San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House—the same site as the 1945
United Nations conference—the peace treaty conference stretched over

several days, and was broadcast live on television. Under the direction of
Acheson and Dulles, Americans sought to present the treaty as a grand per-
formance of a democratic Japan’s reentry to the international community
and by extension, the United States’ transformative capabilities and anti-
imperial benevolence. In his self-congratulatory address, Dulles stressed the
generosity and unity shaping the treaty: “Is it based upon some narrow con-
ception of self-interest where we gather together to plunder Japan and put
our hands together in the pot to gather something for ourselves?” he asked
rhetorically. “No, because the treaty in that respect is the most self-denying
treaty that has ever been imposed by victors over a great country after a
long and costly war.” President Harry Truman argued that the treaty with
Japan would inspire other nations because it reflected both American trust
in a “free” Japan and Japan’s new democratic spirit. “We know that a free
and independent people have more vigor and staying power and can do
more to help secure the peace than a people held under alien control.”50
Under the watchful eye of U.S. secretary of state and San Francisco Peace Treaty
Conference president Dean Acheson (center), Japanese prime minister Yoshida
Shigeru signs the San Francisco Peace Treaty on September 8, 1951. AP Photo.
For Americans, it seemed obvious that the entire Asian continent would
be looking at the conference; it was imperative that the peace treaty sent
the right message. Writing from Tokyo, Sebald proclaimed that since “Japan
is an Asiatic nation,” the “eyes of Asia will be upon San Francisco and upon
manner in which each and every Asiatic nation, including Japan, is received
and treated by United States and other ‘white’ nations.” The treaty would
therefore stand at the center of U.S. efforts to “make Japan acceptable to
other nations of the free world as an equal member of the international
community.” Early planning documents noted that “USIE (United States
International Education) [coverage of the treaty should] be specifically
geared . . . to Far Eastern Countries.” In this propaganda material, the
United States argued that the integration of a democratic Japan made all
free world countries safer and more secure: a “lenient and unrestrictive
peace with Japan” was “the only feasible, constructive, and foresighted
method of incorporating Japan as a voluntarily cooperating and reliable
member of the free world.”51
As the American speakers did not tire from reiterating, the treaty that
was finalized and signed in San Francisco was indeed nonpunitive compared
to the diplomatic standards of previous major conflicts. While it disman-
tled Japan’s empire and stripped it of its former colonies, the treaty placed
no limits on economic or military development. Nor did it require Japan
to accept responsibility for the war, and it limited the nature of reparations.
The treaty opened by claiming that the “Allied Powers and Japan are re-
solved that, henceforth, their relations shall be those of nations which, as
sovereign equals, cooperate in friendly association to promote their common
welfare and to maintain international peace and security.” Officially ending
the war, the treaty recognized “full sovereignty of the Japanese people over
Japan and its territorial waters.” However, this was a territorially dimin-
ished Japan; many of prewar Japan’s island territories, most notably Oki-
nawa, remained occupied by the United States. The treaty further declared
that as a sovereign nation, Japan would be required to respect U.N. princi-
ples to settle disputes by peaceful means and refrain from utilizing force as
a means of international policy. As a sovereign nation, however, Japan
“possess[ed] the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense.”52
At the same time, all this talk of benevolence and generosity could not
hide the American conviction that freedom meant the “freedom” to join
the Cold War under U.S. leadership. The American delegation managed the
peace conference very firmly, delineating strict procedural rules that disal-
lowed treaty amendments or lengthy discussion, particularly by the Soviet
Union and other communist bloc states, which attended the conference but
did not sign the treaty. For all their claims about Japan’s newfound freedom
and independence, U.S. policymakers allowed no open discussion of the

treaty; the conference itself presented a stark contrast between American
visions of itself as a magnanimous and enlightened global leader and its
deep fear that challenges to this vision, especially communist ones, funda-
mentally threatened American security. As the representatives of other
countries noted, despite the celebration of American benevolence and self-
denial, the conference betrayed its lack of faith in other states’ ability—
especially nonwhite states—to recognize the supposed opportunities and
superiority of the anticommunist camp. “The whole show was in fact the-
atrical if not Opera bouffe,” scoffed one British diplomat. “It took place in
the San Francisco Opera House, an enormous theatre . . . There was no
desks or tables and we all sat in the ordinary theatre seats.” Rather than a
moment of participatory mobilization, the conference was a farcical per-
formance, undermined by the reality of its closely managed format.53
Moreover, the United States and Japan signed a bilateral U.S.–Japan se-
curity treaty—the remnant of the United States’ original goal for a regional
pact—the same day as the peace treaty, further undermining American at-
tempts to utilize the peace treaty as an example of American benevolence.
Signed in a private and unheralded ceremony after the peace treaty, the
security treaty established a formal U.S.–Japanese security relationship to
combat “irresponsible militarism” and “deter armed attack.” It allowed
for the continued stationing of U.S. forces in Japan, and enumerated Amer-
ican expectations that Japan would “increasingly assume responsibility for
its own defense against direct and indirect aggression.” Though the United
States did not formally commit itself to defending Japan, in practice, the
security treaty meant that Japan’s defenses would rest on the deterrent
capabilities of American military power. After becoming Eisenhower’s sec-
retary of state in 1953, Dulles placed deterrence—including nuclear de-
terrence—at the core of his security policy. This stemmed, in part, from his
work on the Japanese peace and security treaties. Writing to New York
Times correspondent James Reston in 1954, Dulles noted, “I originally de-
veloped the thesis of deterrent retaliatory power in connection with my
work on the Japanese peace treaty . . . This was in connection with the
broad thesis that Japan’s primary responsibility would be to prevent indirect
aggression and that direct aggression could be protected by the deterrent
of our retaliatory striking power.” The security treaty with Japan, then,
played a significant role in the evolution of U.S. Cold War security policy.54
Though the security treaty framed this alliance in the language of Japa-
nese independence, noting that “Japan as a sovereign nation has the right
to enter into collective security agreements,” it was controversial throughout
Japan and Asia. Accompanied by similar treaties with the Philippines, Aus-
tralia, and New Zealand and signed against the backdrop of the Korean
War, it entrenched the division of the Asia-Pacific and secured widespread
U.S. military access to the region. It firmly placed Japan on one side of the
Cold War, countering occupation-era dreams of a future Japan committed
to peace, culture, and neutrality; and indeed, made a mockery of U.S. claims
to Japanese independence and freedom through the continued occupation
of places such as Okinawa. As historian Franziska Seraphim notes, “the
conditions attached to independence only highlighted the extent to which
Japan remained politically, economically, and spiritually dependent on the
United States. This sense of betrayal permeated Japanese public life across
the political spectrum in the early 1950s.”55
Even worse, with specific language about expanding Japanese defensive
capabilities, combined with ongoing American efforts to expand the Na-
tional Police Reserve, the security treaty also raised fears—in Japan and
throughout Asia—that the United States sought to resurrect Japanese mili-
tarism and authoritarianism in the service of waging the Cold War. As the
State Department noted, “In the minds of a great many people, particularly
in the Far East, Japan is still regarded as an aggressive nation which launched
a war of conquest and sacrificed millions of lives and untold treasure to a
vaulting ambition.” British participants in the conference were deeply crit-
ical of the security treaty, with George Clutton, minister at the British Liaison
Mission in Tokyo, scoffing that seeing the pact “all in cold print was some-
thing of a shock. My first reaction was the feeling that if the Peace Treaty
was a triumph for the Allies and American statesmanship, the Security Pact
was on the contrary about as good an example of ham-handedness as can
be imagined.” British policymakers feared not only the impact of the treaty
in Japan but also on Asia more broadly, especially in recently independent
states like Burma and Indonesia.56
This skepticism resonated across the Pacific, especially in Japan.
While U.S. policymakers framed the peace treaty as a cause for celebration,
the Japanese press was far more wary. The leftist magazine Sekai published
a special 199-page issue on the treaty, warning that the accompanying se-
curity arrangements compromised Japan’s international maneuverability
and its democratic future, emphasizing “most intellectuals felt that the peace
treaty debate was about the fate of democracy in Japan.” Titling one ar-
ticle “Happiness Mixed with Foreboding as New Era Opens,” Tokyo’s
Nippon Times reported “the joy of Japan in regaining sovereignty is ac-
companied by a profound agony and apprehension.” While many Japanese
certainly had a positive reaction to the prospect of ending the occupation
and gaining independence, concerns about the future tempered their re-
sponse to the treaty. In an article on popular reactions to the treaty, the
Nippon Times described the “average Japanese” as “like a man who has been
given his freedom but has a premonition that an accident is about to happen
to him.” In a “man on the street” interview, one man noted that he was
pleased by Japan’s independence, but he feared for the nation’s economic
future, concerned that “we will be forced to stick to the side just to exist—
just like the case of myself (working for a foreigner).” Antitreaty groups’ ef-
forts to link together broader questions about equality and security within
the U.S.–Japanese relationship with the reality of democracy, independence,
and sovereignty in postoccupation Japan thus fell on favorable ground.57
Indeed, the signing of the peace treaty and security treaty further ener-
gized those who viewed the new Cold War alliance as a threat, rather than
boon, to democracy in Japan and peace in Asia. In July 1951, a few months
before the San Francisco conference began, Sōhyō’s Takano created the
Heiwa suishin kokumin kaigi (People’s Conference for the Promotion of
Peace). Designed as a center of peace activism separate from previous com-
munist-led efforts, the Heiwa Suishin Kokumin Kaigi was an umbrella
organization that brought together labor unions, women’s groups, religious
organizations, the Japanese Socialist Party, and other groups who shared
the conviction that Japan had to actively seek peace and that the impending
alliance with the United States was the key detriment to democracy. With
the signing of the peace and security treaties in September, the Heiwai
suishin kokumin kaigi mobilized in full force in an effort to prevent their
ratification in the Japanese Diet. The group proclaimed that the peace treaty
reversed postwar processes of peace and justice, infringed on Japanese sov-
ereignty, and opened the road to nuclear war. The group thus promised to
protect the peace constitution “to the bitter end,” continuing its opposition
to the future. It would “hold steadfastly for neutrality and resolve to re-
alize a total treaty,” protest rearmament and any military agreements for
Japan, “protect freedom of speech, assembly and association,” and oppose
all kinds of violent war. The organization’s call to action mixed domestic
and foreign issues, reiterating the extent to which leftists and progressives
had come to see the treaty, Japanese democracy, and international peace as
deeply dependent on one another.58
The profound divisions raised by the treaties were apparent in the sub-
dued mood that prevailed in Japan on April 28, 1952, the official end of
the U.S. occupation. Historian John Dower notes that the Japanese did not
engage in widespread public celebrations. “The streets, everyone reported,
were strangely quiet. Perhaps twenty people gathered before the imperial
palace and shouted Banzai! A department store in Ginza sold about one
hundred rising-sun flags.” The continued presence of U.S. forces made clear
that Japanese activists were correct in their concern about the limited nature
of Japan’s posttreaty independence, an issue that protests continued to con-

front. The radical student group Zengakuren staged a “ritual wake for the
nation’s independence.” Marching around the campus of Tokyo University,
the demonstrators welcomed students from other colleges and handed out
flyers stating: “We respectfully mourn the loss of Japan’s independence!
With the traitorous treaties and administrative agreement, Japan has be-
come a colony . . . All people are resolved never to forget this day the 28th,
the day of humiliation, the day of darkness. We shall fight. We believe that
the nation’s students will fight for peace instead of becoming slaves.”59
A few days later, on May 1, labor unions and left-leaning parties and
organizations held their annual May Day demonstrations, where protes-
tors and police violently clashed in what came to be known as “Bloody May
Day.” Protestors’ grievances extended far beyond working conditions or
labor practices. Led by Sōhyō’s own demonstration at Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine,
activists staged demonstrations across the country, carrying placards that
stated “Go Home, Yankee!” and declared “April 28th—the Day of National
Disgrace.” In Tokyo, the ensuing melee left two dead, twenty-two demon-
strators hit by bullets, and injured eight hundred policemen and over fifteen
hundred demonstrators. Demonstrators also burned U.S.-owned cars parked
by the palace and threw three U.S. soldiers into the palace moat, where
they were stoned. For these activists, the end of the occupation was a
moment of mixed emotions, a missed opportunity to build a truly inde-
pendent and fully democratic Japan.60
In light of the mixed and even violent Japanese reactions to the treaties,
U.S. policymakers believed that their work with Japan—including placing
Japan on firm democratic footing—had only begun. Writing from the em-
bassy in Tokyo on April 9, 1952, a mere three weeks before the end of the
occupation, U.S. official Niles Bond warned that a potentially toxic combi-
nation of disillusionment from war and defeat, disarmament, and antimili-
tarist sentiments had given rise to a “widespread neutralist attitude among
Japs,” strengthened by the ongoing conflict in Korea and communist pro-
paganda. Bond emphasized that the United States had to continue to guide
Japan in the ways of anticommunist democracy; it could no longer depend
on Japanese gratitude for what he claimed was a benevolent occupation or
a liberal peace treaty. One of the most important tasks in the coming months
would be “to teach Japs [the] ‘facts of life’ re [the] true nature of Commie
threat to Japan and [the] futility of trying to carry on ‘business as usual,’
both politically and economically, with Sov-dominated Commie govts.”61
Writing the following year, the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), which
coordinated psychological efforts overseas, further reiterated the necessity
of expanding Japanese public understandings of the responsibilities of
Protestors march energetically toward the Imperial Plaza to join the May 1, 1952,
May Day rallies. Michael Rougier / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images.
democracy. With the conclusion of the occupation, claimed PSB’s report,

Japan’s public arena was full of “conflicting views and interests. To a degree
perhaps unique in Japan’s history, public policy is affected by the opera-
tion of public attitudes and overly active pressure groups.” To ensure that
the public—and thus the government—remained rationally and pragmati-
cally committed to a democratically aligned Japan, the report advised the
United States to reach out to leaders of varied segments of the Japanese
population, including labor groups (if necessary, the United States should
use covert influence to woo them from communism), students, women, and
Japanese intellectuals.62
Ultimately, U.S. policymakers hoped that the peace treaty would be a
significant step in their attempts to cultivate and elevate Japan as a model
of a spirited, vigorous, mobilized Cold War democracy. They talked about

the international and the domestic in the same language, emphasizing
the necessity for public morale, confidence, and mobilization around
state power. Moreover, they sought to use the treaty to demonstrate
American benevolence and leadership, both within Japan and throughout
the Asia-Pacific; their “generosity” toward Japan, they hoped, would
convince other Asian states that the United States was a fair and valuable
ally, especially as decolonization unfolded throughout the region. Yet
across the globe, this vision clashed with British thinking about its own
shifting imperial calculations; Pacific War belligerents that feared Japan’s
resurgence; postcolonial regimes such as India; and Filipino, Chinese,
and Korean calls for a truer postwar justice. As with rearmament efforts
in Japan, American visions of a mobilized, independent, and anticom-
munist democracy seemed to inspire more frustration than excitement.
The consequences, U.S. policymakers soon learned, would unfold in the
years to come.
Conclusion
In historical assessments of the development of the Cold War, the San Fran-
cisco Peace Treaty has received comparatively little attention from histo-
rians. Compared to the violence of the Chinese Civil War, the shock of the
Korean War, and the dramatic unfolding of decolonization, a mere peace
treaty has seemed like an afterthought, a symbolic conclusion to World War
II when Cold War violence already raged through the region. Yet to U.S.
policymakers, this treaty was a vital component of their efforts to transform
and mobilize Asia under the banner of American anticommunist hegemony.
It facilitated Japan’s reentry into Asia as a democratic and independent
state—and as a firm American ally, now reformed and redeemed through a
seemingly transformative American occupation. Through its nonpunitive
nature, U.S. policymakers sought to construct an international model.
Japan’s fate was to embody the opportunities supposedly available to non-
white states in the so-called free world, a democratic future under the United
States’ benevolent and anti-imperial hegemony. Moreover, by preventing
Communist China and the Soviet Union from signing the treaty, the
United States sought to firmly stake its claim to leader of the Asia-Pacific.
The security arrangements accompanying the treaty—not only between the
United States and Japan, but also between the United States and the Philip-
pines, and the United States, Australia, and New Zealand—deepened and
formalized Cold War divisions in Asia beyond Korea and China, while
perpetuating and increasing the U.S. military presence by inaugurating al-

liances that continue to exist into the twenty-first century.63
Yet as anxious American policymakers forcefully pushed these visions,
they were alarmed to discover contradictory and competing agendas. In the
international sphere, the leaders of India, the Philippines, Korea, Britain,
and China developed deep and varying doubts about American visions of
the Cold War order in the Asia-Pacific. Scoffing at American proclamations
about willing Asian anticommunist mobilization, they viewed the treaty not
as a mobilizing inspiration, but as a dispiriting symbol of American arro-
gance and coercion. Even more alarming, the Japanese people did not
compliantly fulfill the inspiring role that Dulles and others imagined for
them. Countless intellectuals and leftists who claimed to represent the
Japanese public articulated an increasingly divergent vision of democracy,
premised on securing government accountability to the people and main-
taining a critical and autonomous distance from the state. Democracy was
not about mobilizing the people to wage the Cold War but rather securing
popular support for peace, neutrality, and independence. By formalizing the
division of Asia and firmly placing Japan on the side of the “free world,”
the peace and security treaties threatened, rather than defended democracy
in Japan.
Alongside the debates surrounding rearmament, U.S. diplomacy in the
early 1950s fostered growing Japanese resistance. While American visions
of a militarized and anticommunist democracy enjoyed some support
among Japanese conservatives, they alienated many other Japanese, who
came to view the United States and the Cold War alliance as an obstacle to
forming a truly democratic Japan. With the end of the occupation, Ameri-
cans would witness the rise of confrontational and mobilized opposition
to their ideas and policies that would seriously challenge their agenda. Many
in Japan, it turned out, had their own vision of vigorous democracy in the
Cold War.
• 4 •
Bloody Sunagawa
T hroughout the 1950s, Tachikawa Air Force Base stood at the

center of the United States’ transpacific military empire. It was a clear
manifestation of American global hegemony: once a major base for impe-
rial Japanese army aviation, it was taken over by U.S. troops during the
occupation and became a long-term home for U.S. forces with the signing
of the U.S.–Japan security treaty in September 1951. Located on the out-
skirts of Tokyo, “Tachi” was a 1,450-acre base at its peak, with a popula-
tion of 40,000 and amenities to match, including multiple officers’ clubs, a
Shopper’s Mart, an American village, swimming pools, a large hospital, and
a high school. Tachikawa-based planes flew around the clock; they evacu-
ated Americans from mainland China in 1948 before departing to join the
Berlin airlift; shuttled soldiers and supplies to the battlefields of Korea; re-
fueled and repaired transports bound for Vietnam; and made regular troop
lifts and transport runs to other U.S. military bases in Hawai’i, Alaska, the
Philippines, Formosa, Okinawa, and Guam. The on-base hospital treated
so many wounded soldiers, including POWs from the Korean War and sur-
vivors of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, that the New York Times
later declared the hospital “the best barometer of American military activity
in the Far East.” As Major Paul Sjordal remembered from his arrival at the
bustling base in 1963, “This was the big time . . . [The Shopper’s Mart] had
a sign that said ‘Through these portals passed almost everyone in the mili-
tary.’ It was true.”1
Yet Tachikawa was a strange choice for such a logistically crucial base.
Its runways were oddly short, too short for the jet aircraft and large-scale
transport planes so central to the projection and operation of American mil-
itary power. As a former member of the air force stationed at Tachikawa
from 1959 to 1962 recalled, “Still have scary memories of those Take-Offs
on C-124. As I’m sure you know . . . Tachi runway was pretty short for A
Loaded ‘OLD SHAKEY.’” Tachikawa’s runways were short not because of
geographical or financial limitations; rather, between 1955 and 1957, the
base had been the site of extended protests. In response to opposition from
local residents, civic leaders, and farmers, labor unionists, students, religious
leaders, and peace activists flocked to the neighboring town of Sunagawa
to prevent Japanese government representatives from surveying the land
necessary to extend the runways and expand the base. Three years after
the end of the U.S. occupation, the “Sunagawa struggle” propelled the Japa-
nese antibase movement to the center of Japanese national politics. Violent
and large-scale clashes between protestors and Japanese police under the
shadow of departing and arriving U.S. military planes were front-page news.
Ultimately, the Sunagawa protestors prevented the extensions; Tachikawa’s
duties increasingly shifted to other bases, including nearby Yokota Air Force
Base, and Tachikawa reverted to Japanese control in 1977.2
While these clashes have received little attention in the English-language
scholarship of the U.S.–Japan alliance, they were a key moment in its
evolution. In protests such as the Sunagawa struggle, soaring American rhe-
toric about U.S.–Japanese reconciliation, democratic mobilization, and mu-
tual cooperation met a harsh reality as Japanese citizens articulated their
own notions of democracy. Drawing on the experiences of war and occu-
pation, a growing body of Japanese activists claimed that democracy was
premised not on anticommunism and spiritual mobilization behind state
leadership, but on the exercise of popular vigilance that held the Japanese
state accountable to the people. They argued that the main threat to Japa-
nese democracy was the predations of the state—which, despite its rhetoric
of freedom, sought to mentally and spiritually control its citizens. Drawing
from the narrative that the Japanese government had sacrificed its own
people in a reckless, catastrophic, and misguided war, these Japanese de-
cried the presence of U.S. troops and the expansions at Tachikawa as the
resurrection of an overly centralized and militarist wartime regime that will-
ingly used violence against its own people. Like U.S. policymakers, these
activists believed that democracy relied on healthy mindsets and psycho-
logical vigilance. But they sought to direct these qualities toward very dif-
ferent ends.3
Bloody Sunagawa 157
What is more, this criticism fundamentally challenged American claims

about the mutually supportive relationship between democracy at home
and cooperation overseas, logic that was central to their argument for the
San Francisco Peace Treaty and the U.S.–Japanese security alliance. Building
on increasing popular resentment, Japanese activists warned that the pro-
longed presence of U.S. troops exposed the people to sexual exploitation,
moral degeneracy, atomic peril, and even racial impurity. Seizing Japanese
land and subjecting the Japanese people to militarized violence endangered
their rights to a peaceful daily life and productive livelihood. These activ-
ists also argued that the U.S.–Japanese alliance perverted the natural rela-
tionship between a democratic state and its people by making the Japanese
government accountable to the United States. This international relation-
ship, they lamented, forced the Japanese government to elevate abstract and
dangerous concerns about defense, prestige, and Cold War security over the
principles of democratic representation and the political, economic, phys-
ical, and psychological well-being of the Japanese public. In this line of
thought, the expansion of military bases—and the land expropriation it
required to build runway extensions—was a direct assault on the values,
reality, and lived experience of popular autonomy and postwar democracy.
It not only resurrected militarism and obedience to state power but also
violated national sovereignty and the people’s democratic control over their
government.
For U.S. policymakers and Japanese officials, the political implications
of this criticism were deeply troubling, threatening both security coopera-
tion and their broader mission of mobilizing the Japanese population. While
they never respected the protesters’ demands, U.S. and Japanese elites nev-
ertheless feared that the growing antibase movement had the power to fun-
damentally undermine the legitimacy of the Japanese government and a
stable U.S.–Japanese relationship. Their efforts to explain the necessity of
U.S. bases and runway expansions failed to subdue the protests. Rather, in
combination with a high-profile base shooting, these protests ultimately
caused U.S. policymakers to alter the foundational arrangements of the
U.S.–Japanese relationship. In the aftermath of these events, the U.S. with-
drew 40 percent of its troops from Japan and opened unprecedented dis-
cussions on the most controversial elements of the security treaty governing
their presence—a rare victory for Japanese protesters. In making this deci-
sion, U.S. policymakers explicitly sought to bolster the ability and legiti-
macy of the conservative Japanese government to tackle opposition and
muster “national sentiment” against communism at home and abroad. De-
spite growing Japanese resentment, they continued to believe that mobilizing
Japanese psychologies and securing the “democratic” legitimacy of the

Japanese government was the key to a successful alliance relationship.
This chapter therefore examines Japanese resistance to American mili-
tary bases, particularly the protests at Sunagawa. This antibase movement
was crucial for two reasons. First, it served as an important site to articu-
late Japanese understandings of popular democracy and democratic ac-
countability. Second, it forced American policymakers to make unexpected
security concessions. In making this argument, the first part of this chapter
examines the physical, institutional, and political arrangements guiding the
U.S. military presence after the end of the occupation and traces the main
Japanese criticisms of this presence. The second section examines the antibase
movement in Sunagawa and Japanese visions of democratic accountability
and local autonomy. The third part traces American policymakers’ growing
concerns about the Sunagawa antibase movement, particularly their
fears that it undermined the legitimacy of the Japanese government and
the broader workings and value of the U.S.–Japan security relationship.
The final section examines Japanese uproar over the murder of a Japanese
woman by a U.S. soldier; combined with the impact of the Sunagawa pro-
tests, this shooting led American policymakers to alter important tenets of
their security policy in Japan. Yet despite such gestures, U.S. officials
could do little to satisfy the opposition. Convictions that the U.S.–Japanese
alliance was a fundamental threat to Japanese democracy would only in-
crease in the years to come.
The U.S. Military in Postwar Japan

During the U.S. occupation, U.S. military forces had served as the most vis-
ible marker of Japan’s defeated status. With the Japanese military de-
stroyed and demobilized, U.S. military forces took over existing military
bases and facilities, which the U.S. engineering corps expanded in a flurry
of construction. By the end of 1945, the United States had stationed ap-
proximately 430,000 U.S. troops throughout Japan. During the occupation,
military publications reminded U.S. troops that they were in Japan to “teach
authority ridden people the meaning of democracy.” This was no mere rhe-
toric; military government teams stationed throughout the country were re-
sponsible for implementing and reporting on occupation reforms.4
For many Japanese, the reality of American military occupation was far
from benevolent or democratic. Black marketeering, plunder, and violence—
especially sexual assault—were common and unavoidable for many Japa-
nese. With privileged access to food, commercial goods, cars, and stylish
Bloody Sunagawa 159
clothing through the military PX system, American soldiers often symbol-

ized material wealth, consumerism, and prosperity rather than political rev-
olution. This image was further bolstered by the adoption of policies that
allowed U.S. soldiers to bring spouses and children to Japan. To accom-
modate them, the military constructed American-style suburban neighbor-
hoods with large houses, curving streets, yards, and extensive recreation
facilities in the middle of dense cities such as Tokyo. Like the trains, bars,
hotels, and other facilities available to occupation forces, the Japanese were
not allowed to enter these privileged enclaves, which contrasted heavily
with the devastation, black markets, food insecurity, and housing shortages
of Japan’s heavily fire-bombed urban cores. The center of Tokyo became a
“Little America,” filled with American flags, occupation authorities, and
their families. As the wife of a U.S. colonel recalled, “We could walk from
one end to the other [of this neighborhood] without being out of sight of
an American face or an American vehicle.”5
As indicated by the increasingly permanent nature of U.S. facilities,
growing Cold War tensions in the late 1940s and early 1950s led U.S.
policymakers and military leaders to rethink the function and purpose of
U.S. troops in Japan. No longer just an occupying force, these troops be-
came integral to Japanese security and defense—and by extension U.S.
security—against communist expansion in Asia, a fact made clear by the
start of the Korean War in June 1950. Speaking in May 1951, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff asserted that in light of Soviet military capabilities, which
included atomic weaponry, “a Soviet surprise attack against Japan consti-
tutes the most serious single threat to the United States over-all security
position in the Far East . . . [T]he current danger to Japan,” the Joint Chiefs
warned, “warrants all practicable measures for its protection.”6
This shift marked a major transformation in U.S. thinking about its own
defense. With American security now reliant on alliances such as the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and an increasingly global military
base network, it was also fundamentally dependent on the ongoing coop-
eration of other states and peoples who allowed foreign bases—and for-
eign laws—to exist on domestic soil. In fact, without local cooperation, the
United States would be unable to use these bases in times of conflict. U.S.
alliances existed not just on paper; they had to be stable, long-term, and
cooperative, even as they raised delicate and difficult issues about local sov-
ereignty. As MacArthur’s successor, General Matthew Ridgway, asserted
only days after the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, “the projected
concept for the defense of the Japanese homeland is without precedent in
American [military] history. Theoretically, Japan will enjoy full political sover-
eignty. Actually her national [security] will be dependent for an indefinite
period upon the capability of combined US and Japanese [military]

forces to meet and destroy an all-out [attack] launched without prior
warning.” Ridgway touched on a key conundrum: while Japan was techni-
cally a sovereign nation, the extensive presence of U.S. bases both compro-
mised this sovereignty and necessitated full Japanese cooperation to fulfill
perceived American and Japanese security needs.7
The United States and Japan formalized this transformation with the bi-
lateral security treaty, signed in a private ceremony after the San Francisco
Peace Treaty on September 8, 1951. Along with establishing a formal U.S.–
Japan security alliance, this security treaty ensured the postoccupation
garrisoning of U.S. forces, and denied Japan the right to host troops from
other countries. Aware that these measures would be controversial, U.S.
policymakers sought to use the treaty to shed the association of U.S. forces
with defeat and occupation. It stated that the presence of U.S. forces was
an “exercise” of Japan’s “inherent right to self-defense” and its sovereign
right to “enter into collective security arrangements.” Despite such rhetor-
ical gymnastics, the bilateral security treaty endowed the U.S.–Japanese de-
fense relationship with fundamental inequalities. Though Japan hosted
U.S. forces, for example, and thus potentially could be implicated in Amer-
ican conflicts in Asia, the treaty did not explicitly promise that the United
States would come to Japan’s defense in a time of attack. Perhaps most
glaring, the treaty gave U.S. troops the right to assist the Japanese govern-
ment in putting “down largescale internal riots and disturbances in
Japan, caused through instigation or intervention by an outside power or
powers.” For all the talk of Japanese independence, it was therefore clear
that its sovereignty was substantially diminished by the U.S. military pres-
ence. That the security treaty signing came mere hours after the signing
of the San Francisco Peace Treaty only furthered this feeling of a funda-
mentally unequal alliance.8
The security treaty was supplemented by an administrative agreement
that detailed other issues such as customs fees, bases, and facilities and
housing for U.S. troops. In particular, it laid out the provisions for criminal
jurisdiction over U.S. troops; the United States would retain full jurisdic-
tion for one year. After that point, at Japanese urging, the two states rene-
gotiated the issue of criminal jurisdiction in a manner similar to the “NATO
formula,” which assigned jurisdiction based on whether the accused U.S.
soldier was on or off duty at the time of the crime. Since the administrative
agreement was an executive agreement, and not a treaty, it did not have to
be approved by the U.S. Congress or the Japanese Diet. Japanese critics con-
sequently asserted that the administrative agreement undercut the basic
mechanisms of representative democracy. During the negotiations, the op-
Bloody Sunagawa 161
posing Socialist Party issued a statement that the government of Japanese

prime minister Yoshida Shigeru was “secretly concluding [an] agreement
that restricts sovereignty of state and basic human rights of people.” Such
measures, decried the Socialists, “is dictatorial politics, ignoring [the] Di-
et’s right of deliberation.” The Asahi newspaper was equally blunt in its cri-
tique: “there is not a clause in [this] agreement that reminds us of [the]
appearance of [an] independent Japan.” Tracking Japanese responses to the
agreement, the U.S. Embassy identified multiple sources of opposition.
Many Japanese, reported diplomats, believed that U.S. forces were a second
occupation, with their presence epitomizing a patronizing U.S. view of
Japan as a mere security tool. Similarly, many viewed the agreement’s crim-
inal provisions as an unwelcome return of late nineteenth-century “un-
equal treaties,” which included extraterritoriality provisions that shielded
Western subjects from Japanese criminal jurisdiction.9
U.S. policymakers were aware that this criticism could undermine the
larger goal of an effective and cooperative U.S.–Japanese relationship. In a
memorandum entitled, “Principles to be Applied in the Stationing U.S.
Forces in Japan,” U. Alexis Johnson, director of the Office of Northeast
Asian Affairs, echoed discussions of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, noting
that “one of the principle security objectives of U.S. policy toward Japan is
to obtain maximum contribution from Japan to free world opposition to
Communist imperialism.” This “contribution,” however, depended on the
“free identification of the Japanese people themselves with the cause of the
free world.” Johnson listed a variety of ways in which he believed U.S.
troops could undermine this “free identification,” including racial and cul-
tural differences, the revival of Japanese nationalism, economic frictions
engendered by U.S. military bases, and Japan’s sensitivity to issues of extra-
territoriality. He concluded: “The degree to which the U.S. forces stationed
in Japan will effectively contribute to U.S. security and other U.S. objectives
in the Far East is dependent on the degree to which Japan accepts and
cooperates with such forces.”10
Despite these concerns, Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru had helped bring
about the end of the occupation by making clear his support for the con-
tinued presence of U.S. bases and forces. U.S. military forces also allowed
Yoshida to focus on economic growth without spending a hefty budget on
defense or paying the heavy political cost of dramatically expanding Japan’s
own defensive forces. Still, Yoshida feared that U.S. forces would under-
mine his political legitimacy. Writing to Ridgway after the signing of the
peace and security treaties, for example, Yoshida sought assurances that
the U.S. military would give “tangible evidence of the transformation of the
occupation forces into security forces.” Yoshida suggested that the United
States move its headquarters outside of downtown Tokyo, and provided a

list of other facilities that various companies, schools, and agencies of the
local or national government had requested be returned to Japanese hands.
As part of the preparation for transition to the postoccupation world, the
Japanese government also formed the Procurement Agency. During the oc-
cupation, the U.S. military had simply seized the needed bases, land, ad-
ministrative buildings, and housing without compensation (a policy also
adopted in other occupied countries). After the occupation’s conclusion, it
would be the job of the Procurement Agency to manage U.S. forces–related
procurement of arms and equipment, land requisition, and the compensa-
tion of local landowners; the Procurement Agency had local offices in towns
near military bases and facilities. Through the Procurement Agency, it was
now Japan’s responsibility to mediate these sensitive issues, placing the
Japanese government in a difficult position between the demands of U.S.
security policy and local residents.11
Alongside the Procurement Agency, U.S. and Japanese officials pursued
a variety of tactics designed to foster local acceptance of U.S. forces. Amer-
ican officials encouraged base commanders and local consulates to reach
out to the surrounding community through various events, a process that
echoed outreach efforts within the United States. The consulate in Sapporo,
for example, reported on English-language classes, discussion groups of
current events, a military wives’ fashion show (with overwhelming turnout),
cavalry band concerts, a marionette show, and tours of the camp. U.S. bases
and soldiers also worked with local U.S. cultural centers to develop troop-
community programming, such as an open-air summer concert by the Yo-
kohama Police Band and Japan Logistical Command Army Band, which
performed using American music (scores provided by the cultural center)
and featured U.S. military musicians as soloists. The U.S. Embassy also
focused on creating positive publicity for U.S. forces, collecting human
interest stories to publish in pamphlets or place in Japanese newspapers,
developing Japanese-language film and radio programming extolling the
benefits of U.S. forces, and collecting positive material to distribute through
cultural centers. Programming emphasized themes such as “peace through
strength,” the importance of U.S. forces in protecting Japan from aggres-
sion, and the economic benefits of the military presence. The overall goal
was to transform bases from a source of controversy to a “positive source
of prestige.”12
Despite these efforts, criticism of U.S. bases in Japan quickly coalesced
into a vibrant antibase movement. The first nationally visible antibase
protests, which took place in 1953 in a small coastal town named Uchi-
nada, gave important momentum to this movement. After the Japanese
Bloody Sunagawa 163
government decided to allow the U.S. military long-term use of a beach-

side firing range, Uchinada became a focal point of antibase protests as
labor unionists, student activists, and Socialist Party and Communist Party
activists joined residents in conducting a sit-down strike. To these groups,
Uchinada was not merely a local issue, nor was it solely premised on fears
about local residents’ physical safety, though both of these concerns were
significant. Protestors also framed their demonstrations in the language of
peace, independence, and autonomy against a government that neglected
the needs and wishes of the people. As a local railway union declared, by
requisitioning the land, “the government is rashly disregarding the will of
the people and trampling on the spirit of democracy.” These critiques gave
rise to a vital narrative that shaped the debates over U.S. bases and forces
for years to come: by hosting U.S. troops, the Japanese government acted
against the interests of the Japanese people.13
Along with these local strikes, a delegation from Uchinada picketed the
Diet building in Tokyo and the Socialist Party introduced a Diet resolution
to block the use of the Uchinada sand dunes for weapons testing. U.S. Em-
bassy observers feared that these activists sought to use Uchinada as the
foundation for a broader antibase movement. They were proven right: in
response to the events in Uchinada, the Nihon heiwa inkai (Japanese Peace
Group), formed during the debate over the San Francisco Peace Treaty, ex-
panded its activities and renamed itself Gunji kichi hantai zenkokumin
taikai (National Conference against Military Bases), an early step toward
the creation of a national movement. In rhetoric similar to that used by
protestors at Uchinada, this group called for a broader coalition involving
laborers, farmers, and citizens, and criticized Prime Minister Yoshida
Shigeru’s base policy as a “betrayal” of Japan that suppressed the people’s
hopes for peace and independence.14
Precisely because the protestors at Uchinada attacked not only the pres-
ence of U.S. forces and the U.S.–Japanese alliance but also the broader
democratic legitimacy of the Japanese government, they posed a difficult
challenge to U.S. policymakers. Embassy officials in Japan had limited
means to combat criticism of U.S. policy. They could distribute propaganda
materials and seek to reduce forces’ visibility by keeping them out of city
centers, but it was far more difficult to counter critiques of the Japanese
government that stemmed from a desire to develop and protect a represen-
tative postwar democracy. Following these events closely, U.S. consular of-
ficials commented that the issues involved were not as simple as direct
anti-Americanism, though they believed the Socialist and Communist Par-
ties were certainly trying to stoke such sentiments. Rather, “antagonism ap-
pears directed not so much against the firing range as against the central
government in its attempt, as the Prefecture sees it, to ignore the rights of
local government and to proceed with a course of action in violation of
those rights.” The broader ramifications of Uchinada became clear through
prefectural elections, where the candidate attacking the firing ground
defeated the candidate defending the government’s position. This elec-
tion highlighted the potential political impact of U.S. military bases, which
U.S. officials did not want to see play out on a national level. Yet, unless
they simply removed U.S. forces, they could not prevent the deployment of
U.S. military power from becoming entangled with domestic political
narratives.15
Building on the events at Uchinada, Japanese activists worked to publicize
the detrimental effect of military bases not only on Japanese democracy
but also on Japan’s moral fabric, physical safety, and national pride. In
1953, well-known intellectual Shimizu Ikutarō published a lengthy article
and pictorial about Uchinada in the prominent leftist magazine Sekai. Fol-
lowing his lead, similar reportage, exploring issues such as noise and
prostitution, quickly became common, raising awareness of base issues
beyond host communities. That same year, Shimizu and others released the
widely read anthology Kichi no ko (The base child), which collected two
hundred essays by students from first to ninth grade and emphasized U.S.
troops’ violent behavior, with stories of U.S. soldiers hitting and kicking
Japanese people. In 1955, renowned filmmaker and documentarian Kamei
Fumio released the documentary Kichi no kotachi (Children of the bases),
depicting “shocking conditions outside the base fences” at several sites,
including Tachikawa Air Force Base.16
Sexual relationships that developed between U.S. forces and Japanese
women, especially sex workers, also became a major point of attention. At
the end of the war, sex work was legal in Japan and widespread during the
occupation, especially surrounding U.S. military facilities. It was not until
1956 that Japan criminalized prostitution; according to historian Sarah
Kovner, this was in part due to the high visibility of sexual relationships
between Japanese women and U.S. soldiers. The result was a large-scale sex
work industry in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Historian Naoko Shibu-
sawa estimates that approximately half of the $185 million that U.S. forces
spent during the occupation went toward sexual services and that up
through 1949, almost 130,000 Japanese women worked in the sex trade,
both in the early occupation state-run brothel system and outside that
system. Suzuki Teiji, who worked as a busboy at Chigasaki base in Kanagawa
Prefecture, remembered scenes of privileged soldiers surrounded by longing
Japanese at a local movie theater: “From outside all the local people would
watch. And then, while drinking beer, the soldiers would try to pick up
Bloody Sunagawa 165
U.S. occupation soldiers regale their Japanese waitress with a drinking song in
September 1945. Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images.
girlfriends.” Not infrequently, those relationships spilled into violence and

even murder. In 1958, when American specialist Gregory J. Kupski was
tried for strangling a sex worker with her bra, he simply offered the ratio-
nale: “I had been drinking and I was feeling good.” Kupski’s case was
likely exceptional only in that he was tried for the crime.17
Unsurprisingly, sex work was central to the economic and social land-
scape of the Japanese communities that surrounded Tachikawa. The number
of sex workers in the area increased from 600 in 1946 to 5,000 in 1952.
As a major hub for military transportation throughout the Asia-Pacific,
Tachikawa became “a name that has long been known to servicemen” due
to its “shady reputation.” Streets outside the main entrance to the base were
a “market of sin” teeming with bars, cabarets, and night clubs; as Nishida
Minoru wrote in a 1953 ethnography of Tachikawa sex workers entitled
Kichi no onna (Women of the base), “I saw the women of the night who
accompanied the soldiers of Tachikawa base—special women swarming
around the city, showing the soldiers around with reckless abandon.” In
December 1954, the air force attempted to curb these activities by ordering
much of the city off-limits, undercutting 100 bars, 400 brothels, and, de-
pending on the source, 3,000 to 5,000 sex workers.18
News coverage and public discussions of sexual relationships between
Japanese women and U.S. soldiers, which had been censored during the oc-
cupation, became far more visible after the peace treaty. These sexual rela-
tionships became a major point of public condemnation of the U.S.–Japanese
alliance and its effect on Japan’s independence. The best-selling anthology
The Chastity of Japan (1953) heavily criticized the U.S. presence through
what it claimed was personal testimony by prostitutes detailing their inter-
actions with U.S. occupation forces. Images and discussions of prostitution,
rape, and sexual violence became a common metaphor that linked sex and
nation by framing the treatment of women as “a personal and a shared na-
tional trauma brought from outside Japan.”19
These discussions did not focus just on sex workers, but also on the
children inevitably produced by such work. With the lifting of occupation
censorship, commentators increasingly decried the “menace” of mixed-race
children (konketsuji) as a severe threat to the nation’s future. As one Japa-
nese publication declared in April 1952, “As souvenirs of the occupation
army, two hundred thousand konketsuji have been left behind in Japan”
(this number was drastically inflated). As historian Kristin Roebuck notes,
the issue of konketsuji quickly became a “manufactured moral panic” that
cut through political and social lines; the call for Japanese racial purity, in
contrast to these children, served as a way to “(re)build Japanese nation-
alism, laid low by defeat and occupation on a new and stronger basis: the
‘pure’ race rather than the failed state.” Nationalist politician Nakasone
Yasuhiro, who would serve as prime minister in the 1980s, explicitly con-
nected racial purity with resistance to U.S. forces when he proclaimed to
the Diet in 1954, “true independence starts with the removal of the Amer-
ican military.” Yoshida’s emphasis on the economic benefits of the U.S.–
Japanese alliance, he declared, was “sordid Jewish thinking” that elevated
abstract economics above “our first duty, which is the return of our sover-
eignty and protecting the purity of our blood.”20
Such ideas were also popular among the Left, which made opposition to
the U.S. presence a central pillar of its politics. Japan Socialist Party member
Umezu Kin’ichi declared in 1953 that “the black children in particular have
become a particular problem.” In making such calls for racial and ethnic
purity, leftist politicians, and intellectuals “offered an ethnic form of the na-
tion that positioned the people as victims of internal colonization by capi-
talist elites as well as of external colonization by the West.” The Japanese
Communist Party, for example, took up the theme of “racial nationalism”
Bloody Sunagawa 167
and the notion of “the mythical nation, bound by a single bloodline” in

opposition to foreign infiltration. Such sentiments played an important role
in the antibase movement, undergirding the larger argument that a homog-
enous Japanese people was oppressed by a state beholden to an American
military empire.21
Both the protests at Uchinada and these declarations of U.S. forces’ del-
eterious moral and racial impact emphasized the ways in which U.S. forces
not only endangered Japanese sovereignty, independence, and democracy,
but also the physical harm that they posed to the Japanese people. This
strand of criticism intensified dramatically with the March 1954 Lucky
Dragon incident, when a Japanese fishing boat (the Lucky Dragon, or
Fukuryū Maru) experienced nuclear contamination due to the fallout from
U.S. nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll. The incident viscerally highlighted how
the U.S.–Japanese relationship—and the defense exigencies of a Cold War—
exposed Japan to real physical danger by renewing the possibility of nu-
clear trauma. Nor was this trauma limited to a nuclear explosion: the death
of the boat’s radio operator, Kuboyama Aikichi, of radiation sickness in
September 1954, “whipped popular fears to a peak because it drove home
the point that one could die from nuclear bombs without ever having actu-
ally been hit by the original blast.” The Japanese press also seized on the
sale of radioactive tuna from the Lucky Dragon’s contaminated catch,
which resulted in the temporary closure of fish markets and widespread
examination of foodstuffs. As historian James J. Orr described it, “Geiger
counters became common stock in social commentary cartoons, and news-
papers carried stories of radioactive air, radioactive snow, even radioactive
cherry blossoms.” Along with sparking the organization of Japan’s formal
antinuclear movement, the Lucky Dragon incident intensified the domestic
antibase movement by viscerally tying U.S. Cold War power in Japan and the
Pacific to the threat of nuclear endangerment. Not only did American bases
make Japan a tempting target in the case of nuclear war, but they could
also be used to deliver nuclear weapons elsewhere. Lucky Dragon dramati-
cally expanded the doubts that many Japanese held about the wisdom of the
U.S.–Japanese alliance because of the diverse ways it appeared to imperil
Japan—politically, culturally, and physically.22
Throughout the first half of the 1950s, U.S. military bases became a
potent issue in Japan. For U.S. officials, these bases were the center of se-
curity planning in Asia. Through these bases, the United States sought
to protect itself against communist power by taking on the vast new re-
sponsibility of ensuring the defense and security of an ally and a region far
from American shores. Yet for many Japanese, these bases were the source
of domestic anger and fear, political mobilization, and deeper concerns

about the fate of Japanese democracy and even Japan itself. As a variety of
anxieties manifested themselves around U.S. bases, Japan was poised for
conflict.
Democratic Mobilization in Sunagawa

The Sunagawa protests began against this backdrop of a growing antibase
movement. The immediate cause of these protests was a request from
the United States that the Japanese expand the runways at several air force
bases so that the U.S. military could use jet aircraft. At Tachikawa Air Force
Base, where the runways were especially short, these extensions required
the expropriation of land from the town of Sunagawa, a farming commu-
nity that bordered the base’s northern edge. After a long delay, the Japa-
nese government formally agreed to pay for the expansion in the spring of
1955. This commitment came after the Japanese repeatedly refused to expand
the size of Japanese defensive forces and after the United States begrudg-
ingly agreed to reduce the sum paid by Japan in support of U.S. troops. U.S.
policymakers therefore fixated on the runway extensions as reassurance of
Japan’s continued commitment to the U.S.–Japan defense relationship,
giving them added symbolic weight. Though representatives of the Japa-
nese government cautioned that the program faced local opposition at its
inception, U.S. officials heralded the extensions as the solution to a
“major defense problem” because they would allow the military to use new
jet aircraft technology and increase its capabilities.23
The presence of military forces at Tachikawa Air Force Base—and the
controversies sparked by that presence—was not new. Tachikawa had long
been a military town; since its establishment in 1916, the base was a center
of imperial army aviation, housing a flight school, research institutes, and
aircraft production facilities. This led to heavy U.S. bombing during the war,
an experience that would foster lingering bitterness not only toward the
U.S. military but also the Japanese state for bringing on such a fate.
When U.S. military forces descended on the base in 1945, in the words
of civilian employee Norman Sapiro, “the streets were filled with bomb
craters . . . we bombed the, uh, heck out of this place.” The occupation au-
thorities rebuilt the base for U.S. use, and activity at the base reached a
frenzy during the Korean War, when locals suffered the noise of departing
and arriving planes twenty-four hours a day. Pollution was also a significant
problem. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the water wells of households
and businesses surrounding the base were repeatedly contaminated by oil
Bloody Sunagawa 169
and gasoline, affecting up to 26,767 people. Living in the shadow of a noisy

and polluting base, resentment was brewing.24
These issues were common to military bases in Japan and beyond, but
they were further exacerbated by demographic and civic changes taking
place in Tachikawa and its environs. Between 1945 and 1955, the popula-
tion of Sunagawa increased by 42 percent to 12,000; the number of
households in the town increased by 35 percent. Based on this population
surge, which stemmed in part from the employment opportunities provided
by the base, Sunagawa had just become an independent town in 1954. But
Sunagawa was not simply a town of newcomers. Some families had long
lived in the area and could trace their family farmland back to the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. Moreover, Tachikawa Air Force Base had
already undergone four expansions since the end of the war, most recently
in 1953. It also absorbed Yamato Air Station in nearby Higashiyamato (di-
rectly east of Sunagawa) as the site for personnel housing and eventually, a
high school. The plan for the newly expanded runways, however, was es-
pecially drastic. Not only would the new runways require ancestral land
from local farmers, but the base would be inserted directly into the center
of Sunagawa by dividing the town in half; key facilities such as the town
hall, post office, and police station would have to be moved to make way
for the expanded base.25
On May 4, 1955, the Japanese Procurement Agency announced the plan
to expand Tachikawa. The first step would be surveys of the needed land.
Despite the promise that landowners would be compensated, local opposition
developed quickly. Under a newly elected mayor, Miyazaki Denzaemon, on
May 12 the Sunagawa City Council passed a resolution against any base
expansions that would take local land or residences. Local residents quickly
formed organizations, drafted petitions, and greeted the visits of procure-
ment office officials with signs and placards stating their firm opposition.
For example, a June 18 statement by the Sunagawachō kichi kakuchō zettai
hantai chōmin sōkekki taikai (Townspeople’s Solidarity Rally in Absolute
Opposition to the Expansion of the Base in Sunagawa) charged that exten-
sions would divide the town and “snatch away” ancestral land that had
long been the “grounds of life” for the Sunagawa population. The language
of “snatching” evoked a rapacious state that preyed on the everyday lives
and livelihoods of its people, a potent issue given the sustained poverty in
many rural areas in Japan. This organization also expressed “deep distress”
that the extensions expanded U.S. military capabilities, which directly im-
periled Tachikawa—and Japan—by placing them on the “front lines” of
atomic war. In a U.S.–Japan joint committee meeting at the end of May, a
Japanese representative noted the growing opposition at Sunagawa. The
Japanese government, he stated, planned to undertake an education pro-

gram explaining the benefits of the extensions, but it was unclear whether
the extensions would be completed on time.26
Following the Japanese government’s announcement, representatives
from the Procurement Agency made their first attempt at surveying land
for the base extensions on June 30. In response, local opposition groups
and labor union representatives physically prevented the survey from taking
place. Hoping to spur along the program, the Japanese government released
a public statement on August 5 arguing that the longer runways were nec-
essary because jet airplanes would strengthen Japan’s defense power. Ac-
cording to the cabinet of Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichirō, this program
aimed simply to defend Japan, not to “turn Japan into a nuclear base.” The
cabinet promised quick surveys in limited areas and agreed to pay full com-
pensation and return any unused land. This statement, however, did little
to assuage the opposition. A group of local farmers joined labor unions and
socialist activists to form the Sunagawa hantai kichi kakuchō dōmei (the
Sunagawa Antibase Expansion Alliance), and issued a defiant statement
that was printed on the front page of national newspapers. The resistance
to land appropriation, this group claimed, was not just about land, but a
struggle for citizens’ rights in a new democracy. “The entire town is resolved
to win,” it thundered, “in order to protect the basic rights that are guaran-
teed by our Constitution.”27
Protestors backed this strong rhetorical stance with an equally strong
physical commitment. On August 24, protestors, surveyors, and police
clashed again: according to the U.S. Embassy, which closely tracked the pro-
tests, a “solid wall” of 1,000 residents and 500 labor unionists stopped a
twenty-two-man survey team, and later clashed with a 300- to 600-person
police force. On August 27, Hatoyama again addressed the issue, admit-
ting that the protests at Sunagawa were a “serious problem,” but that it
was “absolutely necessary to enlarge the air bases from the point of view
of this country’s own defense.” Seeking to reframe the issue as a matter of
Japanese sovereignty, he claimed “not only the U.S. Security Forces but the
Japanese Self-Defense Forces will require wider air bases for jet training.”28
A joint statement from townspeople, labor groups, and the Socialist Party,
however, criticized the government’s “ugly program of financial placation.”
It called Sunagawa a fight to protect local lifestyles, the town, local farming,
and Japan’s peace and independence. Opposition forces consistently pre-
sented Sunagawa as a local issue with national implications, a test not
merely of the negative impact of bases but also of the very principles of
peace, economic opportunity, and democratic representation that under-
girded Japan’s postwar constitution and democracy. Sunagawa, claimed
Bloody Sunagawa 171
these protesters, was a trial of whether Japan would be an independent and

representative democracy, where the state could not prey on the livelihood
and lives of the people. Miyazaki Akira, the son of Sunagawa’s mayor, viv-
idly described the link between land, autonomy, and democratic politics:
“when the war was over and food was really scarce my dad used to say ‘if
all you have is land you could grow soybeans (or something else) and have
enough to eat to survive.’ Though Tachikawa airfield forcibly took land,
the symbolic resistance of protecting the land became central to postwar
democracy.”29
This emphasis on local autonomy and land ownership as constitutive
components of Japanese democracy was not new. In fact, it was an impor-
tant theme of Japan’s postwar constitution. Drafted by the occupation au-
thorities, this constitution contained a chapter on local self-government that
called for representative local assemblies, legalized the principle of “local
autonomy,” and gave “local public entities . . . the right to manage their
property, affairs and administration.” Land reform, one of the signature pro-
grams of the occupation period, had transferred five million acres of land
to former tenants. It innately argued that ownership of land and private
property was necessary to fostering individualism and democracy, removing
Japanese farmers from “the economic bondage which had enslaved the
Japanese farmer to centuries of rural oppression.” The occupation authori-
ties and their Japanese counterparts had therefore worked furiously—land
reform required a bevy of new laws, ordinances, and local regulations—to
tie agrarian land ownership and local control to democratic autonomy. The
protests at Sunagawa therefore built on ideas once deemed central to
Japan’s democratization to argue that a truly democratic Japan included
the right to protect one’s land and livelihood against the predations of
both the American and Japanese states.30
As activists mobilized in the homes, streets, and schools of Sunagawa, it
became clear to both the U.S. and Japanese governments that the protests
would not end quickly. U.S. Embassy reports noted that both the govern-
ment and opposition were mobilizing for a long fight and that the govern-
ment was delaying surveying programs at other bases until “the resistance
at Tachikawa was broken.” The first failed surveying attempts represented
a larger pattern, as the Procurement Agency, police forces, and opposition
groups continued to clash. A series of bloody collisions on September 13
and 14 between opposition groups and the police resulted in twenty-nine
arrests and hundreds of injuries. After these clashes, opposition forces
adopted the slogan “You can stake our land but you can’t stake our spirits,”
emphasizing their plan for sustained resistance. Such slogans emphasized
that “spirit” and popular vigilance were the core of democracy; in contrast
Under the shadow of a departing U.S. military plane, protestors fill the streets of
Sunagawa on September 15, 1955. AP Photo / Mike Yamaguchi.
with American and Japanese leaders, this call for “spirit” was directed
against the threat of the state rather than as a call for mobilization behind
state needs and interests. Activists asserted that the clashes confirmed the
need to “protect the land and a way of life” after “two days of tears and
fury” showed that the government was “blood thirsty and violent.” Indeed,
the violence of these events was a source of concern for activists and
Bloody Sunagawa 173
government officials alike. U.S. Embassy observers bemoaned the national

media’s “shots of clearly marked American military planes flying over at
crucial points in the struggle—as pickets were hauled away by police, as
young guys stood by crying, as the surveyor’s stake was hammered into the
ground of a rice paddy.”31
The conflicts in 1955 ultimately left the issue unsettled, and over the next
two years, the ongoing protests continued to receive national attention,
drawing in new participants. In February 1956, government authorities
convinced a portion of the landowners to sell their land—some of whom
worked at the base or for the Procurement Agency—but the total opposi-
tion of others made the extensions impossible. The Japanese cabinet then
chose to forcefully expropriate the remaining land and, in the words of the
U.S. Embassy, “intimidate the opposition” into submission. In response, rep-
resentatives from the Socialist Party joined local activists in staging a rally
and burning the ultimatum notices. Members of Sōhyō, Japan’s largest labor
federation and a significant actor in leftist politics, also joined this rally.
Major national groups therefore recognized Sunagawa’s mobilizing power,
and sought to join and utilize grassroots activities to advance their cause.
At a 1955 conference of the Zenkoku gunji kichi hantai renraku kaigi
(National Antibase Coalition), composed of labor unions, youth groups,
women’s groups, the Socialist Party, and religious groups, Oyama Yoshi-
haru, president of Sōhyō’s Government Affairs Division, had declared that
that the Sunagawa battle was “at the center of the nation’s base struggles”
and was “becoming the struggle for all citizens.” The following spring, the
group held a nationwide rally at the end of May and organized protests
outside the U.S. Embassy and other government offices. A number of po-
litically active artists also joined the protests and gave them new visibility
by producing work depicting the conflict. Between 1955 and 1956, docu-
mentary filmmaker Kamei Fumio released three films detailing the conflict
at Sunagawa; the third film, entitled Ryuketsu no kirooku: Sunagawa 1956
(Record of blood: Sunagawa 1956), was distributed to theaters across the
country. That same year, composer Akutagawa Yasushi composed a choral
work entitled Sunagawa, with the words written by a labor organizer.32
This national attention was in part a response to local efforts, which pre-
sented the Sunagawa struggle as a harbinger of Japan’s political and spiri-
tual future. In response to an announcement that the Japanese government
would resume the surveys in October 1956, opposition groups released a
plea to the “hearts of their countrymen” for continued support as a “people
who love peace,” questioning why Japan continued to “prostrate itself”
before the United States. Local women, who played a central logistical role in
the protests, also popularized their experiences. In 1956, the Japan Federation
of Women’s Organizations published a collection of writings entitled Even

if the Wheat Is Trampled: The Collected Writings of Sunagawa’s Mothers
and Children. As one woman articulated, the fight at Sunagawa was not
just about protecting local land but also about maintaining mental vigi-
lance: “During the fighting, the lies of the trusting-people [people who
agreed to sell their land] or government authorities were the beginning of
our unity as housewives.” Vigilance was necessary not just against the govern-
ment, but also against people who accepted the government’s explanations
for the expansions. Mobilization required a disruption of both government
action and the obedience it fostered among fellow citizens.33
These domestic anxieties about democracy clearly converged with inter-
national politics for participants from Zengakuren, the radical college
student group that joined the protests. At this point, Zengakuren was a
seasoned protest group; founded in the late 1940s, its members were at the
vanguard of antiwar, antialliance, and antinuclear activism throughout the
1950s. Zengakuren bused in students from Tokyo universities who pro-
tested by day and slept in the halls of local schools by night. According to
members of Zengakuren: “Land surveys for the eviction of residents with
the help of police force was against the law and against decency. If the
government pushed ahead with the base expansion, it was the right and
duty of Japanese people to resist.” One college student explained her par-
ticipation as “a very natural thing . . . Sunagawa was in the news almost
every day. The student government was appealing: ‘The expansion of Suna-
gawa is the first step toward making Japan a base for atomic and hydrogen
bombs, and will threaten Japan’s peace. We wish for peace. Let us go to
Sunagawa to protect Japan’s peace.’ ”34
This student articulated the widely shared belief that it was not simply
land in Sunagawa that was at stake, but also the legitimacy and behavior
of the Japanese government, its security policies, and the broader Cold War.
As an October 3 statement by a unified group of activists proclaimed: “What
started as a simple fight to protect life and land has changed completely,”
calling on the protestors to resist the unlawful and unjust behavior of the
police and the Japanese government, a government that was abusing its
power. The resistance at Sunagawa drew not only from the continued presence
of U.S. forces and the ways in which they disregarded Japanese lives, posed
a physical threat, or even challenged peace and independence. These pro-
tests were also about the principle of protecting an active and representa-
tive Japanese democracy, particularly the right to secure one’s livelihood
and live a peaceful daily life. As local labor leader Ishino Noboru later re-
called, the principles driving the fight at Sunagawa were a desire to “pro-
tect peace, protect democracy and protect the rights of the people.”35
Bloody Sunagawa 175
The growth of the Sunagawa protests into a widespread movement that

drew both local and national groups brought increased physical peril. In
the middle of October 1956, these various mobilizations culminated in a
series of violent clashes between protestors and the police—an event that
earned the name “bloody Sunagawa” in the Japanese press. The U.S.
Embassy reported that a “battle royale” between 1,300 policemen and
3,000 demonstrators left 260 injured, with no surveying accomplished.
Police returned the next day, and after a five-hour struggle, in which the
press reported 875 injuries, managed to survey a portion of the remaining
land. According to a graphic embassy report: “In the front line of the
opposition forces were a number of Buddhist priests beating drums to
raise the spirits of the demonstrators; according to the more lurid press
accounts, the white robes of the priests were soon spattered with blood as
the struggle continued.”36
These events sparked intense public criticism against police violence and
brought Sunagawa back to front-page headlines. Sunagawa had turned into
a testing ground for postwar democracy: what did it mean to be a democ-
racy under the shadow of U.S. military power; power that perverted the
interests of the Japanese government and turned the Japanese people against
themselves? The occupation, after all, had ended only four years before. It
still was not clear how Japan would develop as an independent state held
in a tight alliance with the United States. Indeed, this alliance seemed to be
resurrecting the militarism and violence of wartime Japan, all in the ironic
service of abstract claims to protect international peace and Japanese secu-
rity. The protests at Sunagawa were thus an attempt to give Japanese de-
mocracy meaning by forcing the Japanese government to be responsive to
public concerns and popular rights. They were a site for the Japanese people
to call for mental vigilance and popular responsibility, to articulate a vi-
sion of democracy wherein the state was held accountable to serving the
interests of the people, rather than the reverse. In doing so, these protests
argued that Japanese democracy included the right to a peaceful daily life,
personal property, and economic livelihood; these goals trumped the state’s
concept of national security or international treaty obligations, neither of
which, protestors consistently argued, represented the interests of the people
themselves.
This vision of democracy shared rhetorical and conceptual terrain with
that articulated by U.S. policymakers and Japanese conservatives in proj-
ects such as the creation of the National Police Reserve. Strikingly, both
visions focused less on formal institutions, though each saw them as cru-
cial to democratic politics. Actors on both sides heavily emphasized vigi-
lance and mental strength, popular responsibility and active mobilization,
and the importance of resisting lies, misinformation, and easy answers.

Where the two sides differed was in their conception of the state and its
ability to genuinely represent the interests of the people, especially after the
dual catastrophes of war and occupation. For American policymakers and
Japanese leaders, firm mobilization behind state power was the only solu-
tion to communist threats at home and abroad; to Japanese activists, these
calls for state-based national unity would destroy the democracy they pur-
ported to defend. Not surprisingly, this symbolic significance also made
the struggle over bases one of the decade’s key sources of electoral and po-
litical conflict. Throughout the 1950s, the Socialist Party used the broader
unpopularity of bases as a key point of opposition to Japan’s conservative
government. While it remained in the minority in the Diet, it gradually
gained seats, a trend that worried Japan’s governing party and gave credence
to concerns that bases were a damaging political issue. By placing firm
limits on the expression of U.S. power in Japan, protestors and leftist po-
litical leaders who backed them sought to force the Japanese government to
submit itself to what they perceived as the authentic will of the people.
The pressure applied by the sustained protest movement at Sunagawa
proved to be successful. After “bloody Sunagawa,” the Japanese govern-
ment decided to postpone the remaining survey work with the blatantly
weak excuse that “the most important parts of the survey had been com-
pleted.” U.S. Embassy reports attributed the government’s sudden decision
to the political costs of the surveys, especially the Socialist Party’s constant
emphasis on the protests in Diet debates. Though the government resumed
its plans to survey the needed land in July 1957, protests continued with
more clashes with the police, and the U.S. and Japanese governments ulti-
mately abandoned the extensions at Sunagawa. Despite the Japanese gov-
ernment’s stated commitment to the runway extensions, the costs posed by
protests—political and otherwise—forced the government to reverse course.
The dynamics unleashed at Sunagawa showed the limits of American and
Japanese conservative visions, limits that triggered deep concerns among
U.S. policymakers about the effectiveness of this Pacific alliance.37
U.S. Reponses to the Sunagawa Protests

For U.S. policymakers, the Sunagawa protests fostered growing anxieties
about the deployment of U.S. power in Japan. From their start in May 1955,
U.S. policymakers and military leaders paid close attention to the protests.
In an era where the specter of atomic war necessitated both extensive air
power and the ability to quickly deploy it, they were concerned that the
Bloody Sunagawa 177
sustained opposition fundamentally threatened U.S. military effectiveness in

Asia. In an August 1955 memorandum detailing the development of the pro-
tests, the commander in chief Far East worried that the failure of the runway
extensions “seriously jeopardized [Far East Air Force] combat capabilities
against . . . the known menace of modern Communist air power.” It also
criticized the Japanese government as “loath to make timely intervention
in these local disputes for political reasons.” The protestors at Sunagawa,
however, would soon force American officials to confront the power of
popular resistance.38
U.S. officials’ initial response was to put pressure on the Japanese gov-
ernment to fulfill its obligations. Confident in their ability to demonstrate
the benefits of this relationship, they proclaimed that the Japanese protests
were a case of misunderstanding, and that firm leadership would educate
the public. During an August 1955 meeting with Japanese foreign minister
Shigemitsu Mamoru, U.S. representatives bemoaned that “the scope and
organization of demonstrations in opposition to this program have been
discouraging. It is important that the Japanese people understand that this
program is in its own interest, particularly since Japanese aircraft will
eventually need the extended space for their operations.” Shigemitsu re-
sponded that occupation reforms had stripped the Japanese government of
the needed mechanisms to deal with popular resistance, especially commu-
nism, which he identified as the source of the protests: “The only power
available to the Japanese Government at present is that of persuasion,” he
explained. “The Japanese people do not listen to the Government, which
has promised to extend the runways and may even be forced to confiscate
the necessary land. This, however, might play into the hands of the leftists.”
Blaming American reforms for his limited options, Shigemitsu asserted that
a strong government push at Sunagawa would only bolster the opposition.
The postwar Japanese state, he explained, could not direct or control Japa-
nese opinion.39
While pressuring Japan to fulfill its obligations, U.S. policymakers pri-
vately fretted that antibase protests and the Japanese government’s seem-
ingly weak response undermined Japan’s value as an ally in Asia. In
July 1955, right after the first clashes at Sunagawa, Ambassador John Al-
lison argued that U.S. officials had to think seriously about the impact of
U.S. bases on Japanese public opinion. Noting that the runway extension
program had caused “renewed vigor in the Japanese drive to contract our
facilities,” Allison ironically claimed that it was not U.S. base expansions,
but the Japanese who demonstrated a “continual land hunger.” Allison rec-
ommended that the United States “face up to the fact that in general the
trend is definitely in the direction of restricting, rather than broadening, U.S.
rights and bases in Japan . . . any effort we make to fight this trend head on
by insisting on our ‘rights’ is not likely to be successful and can only result
in further aggravating our current relations with Japan to the detriment of
our long-term base position here.” According to Allison, public opposition
did not only affect U.S. bases: the difficulties of the runway extension
program had made the Japanese government fearful of future base commit-
ments, “or any base politics which promise to arouse public criticism,”
raising questions about the usefulness and flexibility of the alliance itself.40
The growing intensity of the antibase movement in Okinawa, which was
still occupied by the U.S. military, further contributed to the pressure felt
by U.S. policymakers. Upon arrival in Okinawa in 1945, the U.S. military
had forcefully confiscated large amounts of private land without compen-
sation: by the mid-1950s, the United States was using approximately
20 percent of all arable farmland in Okinawa, displacing 250,000 people.
An islandwide antibase movement, sparked by continued U.S. military land
acquisition, expropriation, and usage, gained momentum throughout the
1950s, exacerbated by the extremely low lump-sum payments that the U.S.
military made for land. In 1956, after a U.S. congressional delegation pub-
lished a report calling for no changes in this system—instead proclaiming
Okinawa to be a “showcase of democracy”—political leaders across the
island quit their positions in protest, and an estimated 25 percent of local
residents joined rallies. The Okinawa antibase movement was also gaining
increasing attention in the mainland Japanese press; in January 1955, for
example, the Asahi newspaper published a letter from Okinawan land-
owners to mainland Japanese, calling for Okinawa’s return to Japan, along
with a series of articles critical of the United States’ forceful land acquisi-
tion practices. This new visibility was furthered by the actions of labor
unions, antibase activists, and leftist organizations in mainland Japan, who
increasingly connected their own antibase struggles to events in Okinawa.
Even the Japanese government began to carefully press for a change to
American land practices in Okinawa.41
Though they worried about their consequences, U.S. policymakers were
dismissive of antibase protests in Japan and Okinawa, falling back on war-
time claims about an immature Japanese mind. Writing in 1956, the Eisen-
hower administration’s advisory Operations Coordinating Board (OCB)
complained that the issue was becoming a “first-class mess.” The “excite-
ment over Okinawa and the related issue of bases in Japan,” it lamented,
“has caused a recurrence of the near hysteria which we last experienced in
1954,” a reference to the Lucky Dragon incident. Words such as “excite-
ment” and “hysteria” not only reflected long-standing stereotypes of the
Japanese as prone to emotional outbursts but also served to dismiss legiti-
Bloody Sunagawa 179
mate concerns as emotional overreactions; these Japanese activists, such

language inherently claimed, lacked the rationality necessary to practice re-
sponsible democracy, making protests such as Sunagawa intrinsically
antidemocratic. This paternalism meant that U.S. officials increasingly wor-
ried that popular opposition would rile the emotions of the people and
fundamentally undermine the effectiveness of the U.S.–Japanese relation-
ship and U.S. Cold War security by constraining the Japanese government’s
willingness to actively commit to this alliance.42
By 1957, as a consequence of two years of contentious, headline-grabbing
base conflicts in Japan and Okinawa, multiple U.S. officials asserted that
the controversies over U.S. bases were poised to undermine the very foun-
dations of the U.S.–Japanese relationship. On January 7, 1957, Assistant
Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Walter Robertson wrote a lengthy
reappraisal of the United States’ Japan policy. Robertson emphasized
Japan’s centrality to U.S. security in Asia, while identifying bases as a key
source of growing Japanese discontent within the U.S.–Japanese security
relationship. Robertson particularly cited a “groundswell” of growing calls
for revision of the security treaty and the reduction of U.S. facilities. He
argued that U.S. policy needed to reflect awareness of these changes and
make concessions, “which will tend to increase the prestige of the Conser-
vative government” to strengthen the U.S.–Japanese relationship. According
to Robertson, if the United States did not alter its approach to Japan—in
particular, reassess its security policy and its reliance on U.S. bases and
facilities—the consequences would be grave:
We could, of course, do nothing and simply try to hang on to what we have,

giving up bit-by-bit under pressure, but such a course is inevitably doomed to
failure over a period of time, and we risk losing not only our military facilities
but also permanently alienating the Japanese, losing their friendship and co-
operation in all fields and encouraging them in a neutralist direction . . . We
risk seeing all the unrelated contentious issues coming together in a focal point
of hostility in the Japanese mind resulting in domestic Japanese convulsions
impairing permanently our future relations with Japan.
If the Japanese developed a mindset of fundamental hostility, claimed

Robertson, the future U.S.–Japanese relationship was doomed. Without
firm Japanese support—which required the Japanese people to believe in
the legitimacy of the Japanese government—the U.S.–Japanese alliance
could cease to function.43
This was not simply a question of political opposition: especially con-
cerning was the fact that these hostile “mindsets” and “attitudes” would
constrain Japan’s usefulness as a military ally. A January 8, 1957, letter
signed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to Secretary of Defense

Charles Wilson argued that a favorable climate in Japan and Okinawa was
essential, because “hostility of the local population would largely negate
the utility of military bases.” At the end of the month, the U.S. Embassy in
Tokyo reiterated Dulles’ concerns about the feasibility of using U.S. bases
in Japan in a time of conflict, and Japan’s broader reliability as a wartime
ally: “In the event of limited or localized hostilities, it is uncertain that
Japan, in view of its present political attitudes, would permit the United
States to use Japanese soil as a staging area and base of operations . . . Fear
of involvement might cause Japan to delay the use of its facilities to the
United States.” As evidence for this assessment, the embassy cited Japan’s
resistance to U.S. defense planning, including the problems of the runway
program. Ultimately, U.S. policymakers believed that the antibase move-
ment not only placed political strains on the relationship but also threat-
ened America’s very ability to use these bases in a time of conflict. The pro-
tests at Sunagawa therefore set the stage for a broader reassessment not only
of the presence of U.S. forces but also of U.S. security arrangements in Japan.44
Legitimacy and Leadership in the U.S.–Japan Alliance

In January 1957, with U.S. bases and forces the most potent political issue
in the U.S.–Japanese relationship, a lethal base shooting committed by U.S.
soldier William S. Girard escalated these tensions to the point of crisis. The
political furor that followed this event was a culmination of various issues
raised by the Sunagawa protests. What was the relationship between Japa-
nese sovereignty and U.S. military troops and bases? Who controlled the
legal fate of U.S. troops in Japan, especially when these troops harmed and
even killed Japanese citizens; should Girard be tried by Japan or by the U.S.
military? Did the Japanese government legitimately represent the interests
of the Japanese people? U.S. popular interest in whether Girard would be
tried by the Japanese government brought another factor into U.S.–Japanese
policymaking—namely the reactions of Congress and the U.S. public. The
case was so contentious that the final decision on which government would
try Girard rested with President Dwight Eisenhower himself; Japanese up-
roar over the U.S. military presence was felt at the highest levels. The
Girard case bolstered the Japanese protesters’ claim to speak on behalf of
“the people” and democratic norms and challenged the joint efforts of
American leaders and Japanese conservatives. Rather than promoting
peace, the nexus of military bases and Cold War diplomacy seemed to be a
source of raw violence and foreign oppression.
Bloody Sunagawa 181
The events at the heart of the controversy were dreadful. On January 20,

1957, Specialist 3rd Class William S. Girard shot a Japanese woman named
Sakai Naka in the back as she collected used cartridges at a firing range at
Camp Weir (near Sōmagahara, Gunma Prefecture). The firing range was in
an area that Japanese civilians could enter and use as farmland when not
in use by U.S. or Japanese forces, but it was also common for locals to enter
the range during military maneuvers. An affidavit by the general counsel to
the Defense Department later estimated that over 150 Japanese civilians had
been present on the range the day of the shooting, to the point that U.S.
forces were given blanks to replace ball ammunition. During a break in ma-
neuvers, Girard’s superior ordered him to guard a machine gun on a ridge; it
was during this time that he shot Sakai. Girard insisted that his motivations
were simple—he had been ordered to keep the Japanese away from the gun.
He claimed that he did not aim at Sakai, but the Defense Department could
not find witnesses to corroborate these statements. Several Japanese ob-
servers stated that Girard actually had thrown empty cartridges on the
ground to entice her to come closer to him before he fired. A fellow soldier
reluctantly revealed that Girard had told him to lie about the nature of his
actions during the shooting and that he had called out “daijōbu” (it’s okay)
to the Japanese on the range to encourage them to approach.45
The Girard shooting quickly sparked public uproar, highlighting the di-
rect physical threat stemming from the presence of U.S. forces. The first
embassy report on the case, in early February, noted that it was “erupting
as front-page press subject and [as a] heated political issue . . . Socialists
have seized on [the] issue to add fuel to anti-base campaign, organizing local
rallies, pushing [a] Diet investigation charging ‘deliberate murder,’ de-
manding GOJ [Government of Japan] take jurisdiction of the case, protest
occurrence and demand strong measure to prevent reoccurrence.” Building
on the momentum it gathered since the antibase protests coalesced around
Sunagawa, the Socialist Party used the Girard controversy to emphasize its
long-standing critique. General Secretary Asanuma Inejiro blamed the
United States’ “new-style colonization policy,” asserting that it increased
the Socialist Party’s resolve to push for the abolition of the formal U.S.–
Japan security alliance. So strong was the public response that Japanese
prime minister Kishi Nobusuke feared that the case would damage U.S.–
Japanese relations. Citing “political and PR purposes,” the Japanese gov-
ernment repeatedly demanded that the State Department issue an official
statement of regret. Though the United States did comply and made com-
pensatory payment to Sakai’s family, the Socialist Party continued to de-
nounce the U.S. military, planning a rally in Tokyo, distributing pamphlets
and leaflets, and holding discussion groups.46
On trial for mortally shooting a Japanese woman on a firing range, U.S. Army
specialist 3rd class William S. Girard (center) leaves the courthouse in Maebashi,
Japan, on October 5, 1957. AP Photo.
The Girard case, however, also became a test of Japanese sovereignty. The
key point of contention was the issue of criminal jurisdiction: who would
try Girard? The administrative agreement governing the presence of U.S.
forces asserted that the U.S. military maintained criminal jurisdiction over
all crimes committed while U.S. forces were on “official duty.” The U.S. mil-
Bloody Sunagawa 183
itary therefore sought to maintain jurisdiction over Girard, since he had

been ordered to guard the machine gun. Japanese officials, however, con-
tended that Girard deviated from his assigned duties by throwing the car-
tridges and inviting the Japanese to come near him. Due to differences over
the definition of “official duty,” the case went to the criminal jurisdiction
subcommittee of the administrative agreement’s joint committee. The U.S.
military eventually agreed not to exercise jurisdiction in this case, allowing
Japan to try Girard, though on a confidential agreement that the Japanese
would indict Girard on the least serious charge possible.47
This decision prompted a strong outcry in the United States. Ohio
Republican representative Frank Bow sent a letter to President Eisenhower
to protest the “abandonment of one of our servicemen to prosecution in a
foreign court.” Bow also proposed an amendment to an appropriations bill
under review in Congress that would revise all status of forces agreements
to give the United States exclusive criminal jurisdiction over forces stationed
overseas. Eisenhower strongly opposed Bow’s amendment and made it clear
to congressional Republicans that he expected their support, noting that if
Republicans “desert[ed] him on the Bow amendment, he would be more
disappointed than any other thing that happened during his presidency.”
Despite this presidential stance, congressional opposition intensified, often
fueled by racism and lingering memories of World War II. On the Senate
floor, Senator Strom Thurmond cited an editorial that called Girard “a
martyr to the cause of American soldiers forever” and accused the Japanese
of being treacherous, uncivilized, and unable to give a U.S. soldier a fair
trial, as evidenced by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Residents of Ottawa,
Illinois, Girard’s hometown, echoed Thurmond’s language in a petition to
Eisenhower. As one woman argued, “You have traded the loyalty of the
mothers of America for the treacherous yeses of a country that has proven
its sneakiness.” News coverage implied that Girard was an innocent boy,
unfairly ripped from his family and cruelly abandoned to the whims of the
Japanese. As Time noted, “nearly every mother’s son and every son’s mother
had an opinion about the case of an American soldier facing trial in a Japa-
nese court.”48
As the extent of congressional and public criticism became clear, the
Defense Department sought to reverse this earlier decision to allow the
Japanese to try Girard. This prompted frenzied meetings and phone calls
between representatives of the Departments of State and Defense. Secre-
tary of State John Foster Dulles worried that the consequences of reneging
on the agreement to allow Japan to try Girard would be dire, arguing that
“our whole relationship with Japan may be in jeopardy.” In a telegram
from Tokyo, U.S. ambassador Douglas MacArthur II (a career foreign
service officer and nephew of General Douglas MacArthur) reiterated

Dulles’ concerns, arguing that a U.S. decision to proceed would not only
be viewed by Japan as a “deliberate violation of existing international
agreements with us,” but would also “shake confidence in the United
States and undermine our entire position in Japan.”49
The decision ultimately rested with President Eisenhower. Eisenhower
had been heavily critical of congressional wrangling over the case, which
directly contradicted his belief about the importance of sharing the burdens
of the Cold War with allies. He was personally disgusted by congressional
reactions, particularly Bow’s attempt to use it as an opportunity to revise
status of forces agreements. As he stated in a letter to childhood friend
Swede Hazlett, “In any event, right at this moment lack of understanding
of America’s international position and obligation accounts for the fact that
we seem to be trying to make a national hero out of a man who shot a
woman—in the back at something like ten to fifteen yards distance.” In a
May 24 telephone conversation, Dulles and Eisenhower agreed that the
United States had to allow the Japanese to try Girard. In response to Dulles’
assertion that he was “satisfied if we don’t turn this fellow over in Japan as
Defense originally agreed we might as well write Japan off,” Eisenhower
reflected on the broader difficulties posed by recent events, which included
the ongoing antibase movement in Okinawa. In a conversation between the
two, Eisenhower “said that we have to look at the Asiatic countries and
see if they should stay there. If they hate us, can’t do it.” Ultimately, Japa-
nese courts tried Girard and found him guilty of the lightest charge pos-
sible. He was given a suspended sentence and returned to the United States
with his Japanese wife.50
The impact of the Girard case extended far beyond this specific contro-
versy. Coming in the aftermath of the Sunagawa protests, U.S. policy-
makers—and Eisenhower—became convinced that reducing U.S. troops
could be the key to rebooting an alliance that seemed to be veering danger-
ously off track due to popular resistance. In a June 6 meeting with Dulles
and Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson on the U.S.S. Saratoga, Eisenhower
ordered Wilson to downsize U.S. troops in Japan by up to 60 percent. Eisen-
hower’s motivation behind this decision was partially fiscal, in line with
his administration’s broader goal of curbing military expenditures under
the “New Look” program. This reduction was also not the first time the
United States had withdrawn troops from Japan—the number remained at
102,000 in mid-1957—and the army had been planning for a broader re-
duction by the end of 1959. However, Eisenhower’s directive accelerated
this process, which resulted in a 40 percent reduction in U.S. forces, in-
cluding all ground troops. This withdrawal took place despite vocal military
Bloody Sunagawa 185
concerns that it effectively ended the United States’ ability to defend main-
land Japan from potential invasion, the security rationale that undergirded
U.S. troops’ very presence in Japan. This was a striking shift in the goal
and function of U.S. forces.51
Though the Girard case was the immediate catalyst for this decision, the
reduction of U.S. forces in Japan ultimately stemmed from fears that by
losing the Japanese people, the Japanese government would be unwilling
to actively support the U.S.–Japanese alliance, fears that had been made
especially visible and tangible by the Japanese antibase movement and
events such as the Sunagawa protests. Popular protest, and its electoral and
political consequences, could drastically diminish Japan’s military value
and spell a potential end to the alliance itself. In a discussion with Eisen-
hower over the withdrawal decision, Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, asserted that “the Joint Chiefs feel we cannot count on use of
Japan, and therefore are willing to pull out.” U.S. policymakers sought to
secure the political foundations of the U.S.–Japanese relationship by making
concessions. Fewer troops meant less military capacity, but it was a price
worth paying to undercut Japanese opposition.52
The timing, planning, and announcement of the decision—during a visit
by Japan’s new prime minister Kishi Nobusuke—made it clear that this
withdrawal served the political goal of bolstering specific visions of legiti-
macy. Kishi represented the culmination of growing cooperation between
U.S. officials and Japanese wartime leaders, perpetuating a trend that had
been crucial in the process of Japanese rearmament and creation of the Na-
tional Police Reserve. Kishi had served as deputy minister of industrial
development in Manchukuo in the 1930s, where he worked to develop a
state-planned economy, based in part on forced labor, to foster Japan’s in-
dustrial growth and the Japanese war effort. He then served as minister of
commerce and industry in the Tōjō cabinet, where he signed the 1941 dec-
laration of war against the United States. While Kishi was purged as a war
criminal in the early months of the occupation—he was held at Sugamo
prison—he was never tried and like many members of the wartime state,
he reentered Japanese politics with the end of the occupation.
Kishi represented important changes in postwar Japanese politics. During
the early 1950s, Japan had multiple conservative parties that clashed with
one another repeatedly over issues such as leadership, cooperation with the
United States, rearmament, and constitutional revision. However, with
the decision of Japan’s two Socialist Parties to reunite in 1955, creating a
unified voting bloc in the Diet, Japan’s two major conservative parties, the
Liberal and Democratic Parties, also united to create the Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP). This unification was welcome news to U.S. policymakers, who
had openly criticized conservative infighting, which they argued weakened

both the Japanese government and the U.S.–Japan alliance. In August 1955,
for example, Dulles had denied Japan’s request to revise the increasingly
unpopular security treaty, telling Japanese foreign minister Shigemitsu
Mamoru that he lacked confidence in the “unity, cohesion and capacity” of
the Japanese government to “operate under a new treaty arrangement.”
Kishi had been a major player in facilitating the creation of the LDP and
he became the party’s general secretary, with a wide array of financial re-
sponsibilities. In 1957, he rose to prime minister.53
As prime minister, Kishi immediately sought to utilize the U.S.–Japanese
relationship to solidify conservative dominance and quell the Left’s anti-
authoritarian vision of democratic politics. In contrast to previous leaders,
who had emphasized the political unpopularity of U.S. requests and the
strength of political opposition in their discussions with U.S. policymakers
over issues such as the Sunagawa protests, Kishi presented himself to U.S.
policymakers as an active partner, hoping to secure concessions by demon-
strating his willingness to work cooperatively. In the early 1950s, he had
openly called for the revision of Article 9 of the constitution and the ex-
pansion of Japanese defense capabilities, proclaiming that for Japan to
become a “respectable member (of) the community of nations it would
first have to revise its constitution and rearm.” Whereas Foreign Minister
Shigemitsu complained about the strength of leftist opposition during
Sunagawa, Kishi told Ambassador MacArthur II that the government
“must deal firmly with leftists,” referencing Sunagawa as an example of
previous governments’ ineffectiveness. Kishi advocated for revision of the
U.S.–Japan security treaty, telling U.S. policymakers that revision was nec-
essary not merely because of the treaty’s asymmetry but also so that
Japan could take more responsibility and play “its proper role in defense
matters.”54
U.S. policymakers were excited about the prospects of working closely
with Kishi; they took his commitment to Japan’s defense as an indicator of
a shared political vision and evidence of much-needed firm leadership.
Writing in May 1957, soon after Kishi’s rise to power, MacArthur II cele-
brated that “we have at last an able leader of Japan.” Kishi, proclaimed
MacArthur II, “indicates he wants to make a bold new start with us . . . his
basic views on the world situation, the Communist threat in the Far East,
and Japan as a major Communist target, are the same as ours.” Indeed, it
was not just Kishi’s policies that excited MacArthur II. Equally important
was his belief that Kishi was a true leader, one committed to actively stew-
arding the Japanese people into an active and participatory U.S.–Japanese
alliance by making clear the true stakes of the Cold War. “In Kishi we have
Bloody Sunagawa 187
an able, very ambitious, and skilled politician . . . he is determined to con-

solidate the ‘national sentiment’ behind him and lead it forward.” This
emphasis on Kishi’s mobilization of national sentiment overlapped with
U.S. policymakers’ long emphasis on the Cold War—and democracy—as a
process of psychological mobilization, dependent on spirit and a firm sense
of national will. This assessment would feed into a deeply consequential
misreading of Kishi’s popularity and political maneuverability over the
next three years. Yet MacArthur II and other government officials force-
fully argued that by working closely with Kishi, the United States could
finally have the strong and committed U.S.–Japanese alliance that policy-
makers had envisioned since the signing of the peace and security treaties
in 1951. The decision to invite Kishi to Washington so early in his term signi-
fied the deep excitement that U.S. policymakers felt about his leadership.55
Tensions over U.S. military forces had convinced U.S. policymakers that
the reduction of these forces—and changes in the agreements governing
their presence—was not only a useful political tool. In their minds, “doing
business” with Kishi by reducing a visible and ongoing source of tension
would redirect and strengthen the U.S.–Japanese relationship. As Eisen-
hower stated in a meeting with Kishi during his Washington visit, “We are
aware of the problems created for Japan, and for the United States, by the
presence of our troops in Japan. We do not like to be anywhere where we
are not wanted.” Along with removing 40 percent of its forces, the United
States also finally agreed to open discussions over the “unequal” bilateral
security treaty, the first step toward the renegotiation requested by Japan
in 1955. U.S. policymakers had bluntly denied that earlier request, but
by mid-1957, the rise of Kishi, combined with the experience of the Suna-
gawa protests and the Girard shooting, had fundamentally changed their
calculations.56
In discussing the joint communiqué to be released at the end of Kishi’s
visit, Dulles made it clear that U.S. officials saw a connection between these
concessions and Japan’s commitment to the bilateral relationship. He pre-
sented the force withdrawals and the future discussions over the security
treaty as a “major change” toward “develop[ing] a relationship of real mu-
tuality and real cooperation.” According to Dulles, Kishi had shown him-
self to be “a prime minister in whom we can have confidence and who has
a genuine dedication to the principles of the free world.” By withdrawing
troops, U.S. policymakers sought to bolster Kishi’s legitimacy, his ability to
commit fully to the transpacific alliance, and thus the foundations of the
alliance itself. Equally important, they sought to foster more cooperative
Japanese attitudes and mentalities that they believed were conducive to the
construction of an effective alliance. As Dulles would later state, the United
States was “less interested in what we might get technically in a mutual se-
curity treaty than what we could win in Japanese psychological alignment
with the free world.”57
Despite U.S. policymakers’ efforts to bolster the U.S.–Japan alliance
through these concessions, the forces unleashed by the Sunagawa protests
and further fueled by the Girard case continued to bedevil this relationship.
During the protests on July 8, 1957, a group of labor unionists and stu-
dents had broken through a barbed-wire fence and entered Tachikawa Air
Force Base. Seven protestors were arrested and tried under a special tres-
passing law related to the U.S.–Japan security treaty. Almost two years later,
in March 1959, Tokyo District Court judge Date Akio determined that the
seven protesters were not guilty. Date’s rationale shocked both the U.S. and
Japanese governments: he argued that the security treaty itself was uncon-
stitutional because U.S. troops in Japan constituted “war potential,” pro-
hibited by Article 9 of Japan’s constitution, and therefore did not merit
privileged protection. The Japanese government immediately appealed the
decision to Japan’s Supreme Court, and a highly publicized court case en-
sued. It was made all the more momentous by the fact that the U.S. and
Japanese governments were trying to wrap up negotiations on the new se-
curity treaty.58
After six public sessions about the case, in December 1959 the Supreme
Court handed down its decision. It rescinded the district court’s assertion
and ruled that U.S. troops were not part of Japan’s defense forces, and thus
could not violate Article 9. At the same time, the Supreme Court did not
rule on whether the security treaty itself was valid. “[T]his question,”
claimed the justices, “was a political matter that should be determined by
the Diet, the cabinet, and ultimately, the people.” This ambiguity reflected
the growing divide over the issue. On the one hand, the decision quashed the
hopes of Japanese observers who wanted the court to invalidate the
American presence; it instead bestowed formal legitimacy on U.S. troops.
Yet Japan’s highest legal authority also echoed the argument that U.S. bases
and the broader U.S.–Japan security alliance should be determined through
the vigorous exercise of representative democratic process. As it would soon
become clear, Kishi’s rise would not diminish Japanese activists’ determi-
nation to make this notion a reality.59
Conclusion
Given the expanse, reach, and violence of the United States’ military base
empire throughout the Asia-Pacific, it is surprising that the Sunagawa
Bloody Sunagawa 189
struggle ended in the United States’ capitulation. In part, this was due to
the fact that the United States had other options; Tachikawa’s duties shifted
to other bases, some of the withdrawn forces were redeployed to still-
occupied Okinawa, while others moved to South Korea. As one of the
United States’ most significant global allies, the Japanese government and
people could influence this alliance in ways that other states and peoples
could not. Still, the Sunagawa protests registered so strongly with both
Americans and Japanese because they functioned as a clash over the nature,
realities, and consequences of democracy in the Cold War. For the protestors,
it was an opportunity to preserve land, lifestyles, and economies. Equally
important, it was a chance to articulate visions of local autonomy, the vig-
orous exercise of individual rights, and accountability against a govern-
ment that sought to expropriate land and livelihoods in the name of secu-
rity and its alliance with a foreign state. It was in the streets and houses of
Sunagawa that U.S. policymakers’ aspirational rhetoric about cooperation
and spiritual mobilization clashed with alternative visions and everyday re-
alities. Seeking to remake the Japanese mind, Americans and Japanese
conservatives met the reality of active Japanese protesters, who staged a
physical and spiritual mobilization in the name of a very different concept
of the democratic state.
This is not to say that U.S. policymakers accepted the vision of democ-
racy articulated by Japanese protestors; on the contrary, they were far more
excited about Kishi’s declaration of a mobilized “national will” than pro-
testors’ emphasis on individual autonomy and state accountability. Yet in
an unanticipated consequence of their recent campaign for Japan’s democ-
ratization, they helped to provide the Sunagawa protestors with powerful
language and a political structure that could be turned against U.S. Cold
War military policy. Indeed, the public pushback against U.S. military bases
and forces was especially consequential because Japan was a democratic
system, where the conservative government’s authority rested not only on
an elected parliamentary majority but also on the legitimacy offered by con-
tinued public support. The U.S. and Japanese governments stopped the
extensions because they worried that a failure of government clout, caused
by sustained public resistance, would have serious political and security
consequences. In particular, U.S. policymakers and military leaders feared
that if the Japanese government lacked maneuverability or the ability to
allow U.S. forces to use these bases in times of conflict, then this alliance
would lose its value and meaning.
After two years of protest, the ultimate U.S. response—withdrawing some
U.S. troops and opening discussions that would lead to renegotiation of the
security treaty—was a political and diplomatic concession unthinkable in
the early 1950s. The protests at Sunagawa, combined with the impact of
the Girard shooting, challenged U.S. policymakers to reassess some of the
foundations of the relationship, concluding that political goodwill super-
seded military forces previously deemed the lynchpin of U.S. security in
Asia. The upheaval that surrounded U.S. bases in mainland Japan thus re-
flected the constant tensions between government policymaking and everyday
democratic activism that fundamentally influenced the alliance between
the two countries throughout the 1950s. In the coming years, U.S. policy-
makers and the Japanese government would come to see just how contro-
versial their ambitious visions for this transpacific alliance had become.
• 5 •
A Breaking Point
I n May and June of 1960, Tokyo was the site of dramatic, large-
scale, daily protests. Students, labor unionists, intellectuals, women’s
groups, and citizens gathered in the streets to voice their fierce opposition
to Japanese prime minister Kishi Nobusuke and the new U.S.–Japanese
security treaty (abbreviated to Anpo or Ampo in Japanese), slated to come
into effect on June 19. Protestors gathered outside Japan’s Diet building,
marching, chanting slogans, singing songs, carrying placards, and distrib-
uting handbills. Describing student protestors, one observer depicted a
cacophonous scene:
The rhythm in these marches was a left-right, left-right pair of double beats
[as protestors shouted] “Ampo Hantai!” (Down with the Treaty!), “Kokkai
Kaisan!” (Dissolve the Diet!), “Kishi Taose!” (Overthrow Kishi) and sometimes
“Kishi Korose!” (Kill Kishi). The demo leaders trotted like drill sergeants at
the side of the main body, leading the chants and songs, and using megaphones
and whistles to keep order. A leader on the left would blow two short blasts
for the challenge: “Ampo” and a leader on the right would give two corre-
sponding blasts in lower pitch: “Hantai!” A long blast on the whistle would
bring the column to a halt.
The deep urgency and commitment that marked these demonstrations rep-
resented broader fears ascribed to this new treaty: many believed that
the treaty—and Kishi’s enthusiastic support for it—was the death knell
for democracy in postwar Japan. Nor were protests limited to late spring
1960; they were part of a longer sequence of antitreaty activism, which
started in March 1959 and drew an estimated thirty million participants
from throughout Japan before coming to a close with Kishi’s resigna-
tion and the enactment of the treaty at the end of June. Ultimately, the
Anpo protests were the biggest and longest series of protests in Japanese
history.1
On the surface, these protests are puzzling. The new treaty was designed
to replace the 1951 security treaty that the United States and Japan had
signed alongside the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and specifically addressed
long-standing points of Japanese criticism. In a reversal of the initial agree-
ment, it committed the United States to defending Japan and to consulting
with the Japanese government before deploying forces. It removed the never
used, yet deeply controversial provision that allowed U.S. troops to put
down riots and disturbances in Japan. In return for these concessions, the
revised treaty asked nothing new of Japan; Japan’s obligations, mainly
hosting U.S. bases and facilities, were the same as in the first treaty. U.S.
policymakers chose to renegotiate the treaty not because they sought
changes to U.S.–Japan security arrangements—the U.S. military initially op-
posed the renegotiations—but because they believed that removing key
points of tension would deepen the commitment of the Japanese govern-
ment and public to this alliance, especially after the disruption of the Suna-
gawa protests and the Girard incident. The new treaty, U.S. policymakers
believed, would help realize their long-standing vision of a vibrant alliance
of voluntarily mobilized, militarized Cold War democracies.
Yet rather than marking the culmination of this vision, the revised treaty
became alarming evidence of its potential collapse. Coming after years of
simmering antibase protests, it pushed Japan to the point of crisis. Many
protestors saw the 1960 treaty as a tragic choice to renew Japan’s commit-
ment to this alliance. Rather than taking the opportunity to forge an inde-
pendent path, the government was again disregarding the wishes of the
people by placing Japan in the path of Cold War aggression, endangering
democracy at home and peace abroad. Even the treaty’s approval by the
Diet did little to calm these fears; the protests exploded after Kishi forcibly
pushed the treaty through Japan’s parliament in the absence of the opposi-
tion parties. A massive coalition of students, workers, intellectuals, and citi-
zens gathered in the streets across Japan, lambasting Kishi for undermining
representative democracy, waging violence against the people, and flouting
the rule of law. Building on critiques developed in previous years, they be-
lieved Kishi was returning to his authoritarian wartime roots. This move-
ment coalesced into an unstoppable storm of protest and ultimately led to
A Breaking Point 193
Kishi’s humiliating resignation and the cancellation of a long-awaited trip

to Japan by President Dwight Eisenhower, which was to be the first by a
sitting U.S. president. The protests were so extensive, and the issues at stake
so deeply felt because actors on all sides—the U.S. government, Japanese
conservatives and government leaders, and the expansive antitreaty
movement—elevated the new security treaty as the key to enshrining or re-
sisting visions of a Cold War democracy in Japan. Anpo became the ulti-
mate clash between competing visions of Japanese democracy, which seemed
irreconcilable.
Though the new treaty passed, the outcome was far from U.S. policy-
makers’ dream of broad and voluntary Japanese mobilization under the um-
brella of American hegemony. Having long promoted a bond with the
former Japanese enemy as a broader Cold War model across Asia, the Anpo
protests cast a dark shadow over U.S. visions not only for Japan but also
for the broader possibilities of American leadership and power across the
Pacific. These demonstrations took place simultaneously with a labor and
student uprising in South Korea, which led to the fall of Syngman Rhee, an
autocratic leader and close U.S. ally; civil war and a coup in Laos; and
growing instability in Vietnam, including the creation of the National
Liberation Front and expanding resistance to the leadership of Ngo Dinh
Diem. American policymakers increasingly feared that the United States’
legitimacy as a Cold War leader was at stake. In the aftermath of June 1960,
they blamed the protests on Japan’s alleged failures to absorb both proper
democratic mentalities, especially rational and cooperative individualism,
and democratic practices such as power-sharing, the will of the majority,
and the rule of law. Perhaps, then, the Anpo protests had shown that
democracy was no longer a viable goal for all states. If Japan, the seeming
beneficiary of fifteen years of close American tutelage, still did not truly
understand the workings, responsibilities, and sacrifices of democracy, the
prospects for American developmental and democratic plans elsewhere
were ominous.2
To explore how protesters and American policymakers alike saw Anpo
as a test for Japanese democracy, this chapter proceeds in four parts. The
first section examines U.S. and Japanese policymakers’ visions of a new se-
curity treaty, particularly their desire to use this treaty to legitimize and
strengthen the U.S.–Japanese security alliance by mobilizing the Japanese
public in support of this relationship. The second and third sections ex-
amine the antitreaty protest movement and draw connections with the
earlier anti-rearmament and antibase movements; as in these earlier move-
ments, antitreaty protestors argued that Japanese democracy required the
people to actively hold the government accountable to popular desires for
peace, independence, individual autonomy, and the protection of everyday

life. The final section explores immediate American reactions to and under-
standings of the protests, specifically U.S. policymakers’ belief that the
protests offered continued evidence of an immature and psychologically
weak Japanese “mind.” In response, they redoubled their efforts to forge
more “responsible” Japanese mentalities under American tutelage. Indeed,
in the aftermath of Anpo, U.S. policymakers in the newly formed Kennedy
administration did not give up on the U.S.–Japanese alliance or on their
vision of a mobilized Japanese public. If anything, the protests that began
in Sunagawa and reached their climax in Anpo made the quest to mobilize
the Japanese even more urgent and crucial. With the appointment of
Harvard scholar Edwin O. Reischauer as the new ambassador to Japan,
this effort took new directions. U.S. officials sought to repair what Reis-
chauer termed a “broken dialogue” through renewed outreach to intellec-
tuals and students they had blamed for the protests. Ultimately, these ef-
forts would embolden those who claimed that the “healthy” Japanese
mind—and that of all of Asia—would be best achieved not through poli-
tics, but economic growth.
Crafting a New Security Treaty

In 1957, U.S. policymakers made an unexpected and important concession
to Japan. They committed to opening discussions over the security treaty
that had structured the two countries’ alliance—and American security
in the Pacific—since 1951. This decision did not stem from a desire to change
the security provisions of this relationship. Rather, U.S. policymakers were
convinced that a new treaty was the key to reinvigorating an alliance that
seemed to be wilting in the face of popular resistance and Japanese gov-
ernmental apathy. In their mind, a revised treaty that responded to Japa-
nese criticism and was openly ratified by Japan’s parliament would be the
apex of voluntary Japanese commitment to this Pacific alliance. It seemed
to place the long-standing goal of channeling the Japanese people behind
the Cold War tantalizingly within reach.
This vision was not limited to U.S. policymakers. Japanese prime min-
ister Kishi Nobusuke had advocated heavily for a new treaty. Kishi believed
that Japan’s success and prosperity—and his own political success—was
deeply linked to the U.S.–Japanese relationship. But he also sought to move
beyond a sense of dependency to make this relationship more equal, calling
for a “new age in Japanese–American relations” that would also increase
Japan’s independence. In speaking to U.S. policymakers about the neces-
sity of a new treaty, he argued that it would prove that the U.S.–Japanese
relationship—and Pacific security—drew from popular legitimacy, consent,
and a renewed sense of national mission. Both American and Japanese
leaders thus hoped that a new treaty would undermine popular resistance
and revitalize the U.S.–Japan alliance, in part by rooting it in a popular
consensus around state-centered security goals, and in part by reinforcing
Japan’s commitment to its own defense. This new treaty was to be the mo-
ment of triumph for their political visions of a militarized and mobilized
U.S.–Japanese alliance.3
In considering whether to negotiate a new treaty, U.S. policymakers’
growing sense of urgency drew not only from recent events such as the
protests at Sunagawa but also from Japan’s economic and international
resurgence. Japan’s domestic and international position had changed dra-
matically since the 1951 treaty, which was signed in the midst of the Ko-
rean War. In 1951, Japan was still under occupation, its economy strug-
gling to recover from the loss of its empire and extensive wartime bombing
of domestic industry and infrastructure. Throughout the 1950s, however,
Japan’s economy expanded at a breakneck pace. In 1955, Japan’s Gross
National Product (GNP) surpassed its prewar peak, leading a 1956 govern-
ment paper to declare that the postwar era had ended. By the end of the
decade, many Japanese were awash in new consumer products such as
refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, televisions, and washing machines, sparking
excitement about Japan’s culture, national character, and its potential re-
gional and global influence. Alongside this economic flourishing came
new international prominence; Japan joined the General Agreement on
Trades and Tariffs (GATT) in 1955 and the United Nations in 1956. In-
creasingly flush with prosperity, Japan seemed on the verge of once again
becoming a strong and independent Pacific power.4
While U.S. policymakers helped spur this growth—for example, facili-
tating Japanese access to both American and international markets in the
hope it would energize capitalism and diminish communism’s appeal across
Asia—they also met this rising prominence with anxiety. They worried that
new international opportunities and broader freedom of action would
weaken Japan’s commitment to the United States and the Cold War by
allowing Japan to strike out on its own. Such concerns were not un-
founded, as several conservative leaders had pondered the benefits of
greater international autonomy. Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichirō (1954–
1957), for example, sought to expand Japanese connections with Commu-
nist China, and restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, both
of which raised the dreaded specter of Japanese neutralism for U.S. policy-
makers. Writing to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles from Tokyo in
May 1957, Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II emphasized that Japan

was changing rapidly: the key task was “aligning a resurgent Japan—and it
is resurgent—with the free world structure.” According to MacArthur II,
the challenge posed by this resurgence could come in multiple forms: a
turn toward neutralism, an accommodation with communism, or a return
to past aggression. “Japan has come back so quickly and so far in the last
eighteen months,” he warned, “that some former Japanese attitudes are
beginning to be visible again. Japan has had neither the leavening influence
of close association with dependable free world neighbors, which Germany
has had, nor Germany’s first hand exposure to Soviet brutality.” Concerned
about the limits on their own ability to shape this alliance, U.S. policy-
makers struggled with growing fears that their most important ally in Asia
might turn away from or even against them. A new treaty was thus a cru-
cial opportunity to remobilize Japan’s growing power and influence.5
This potential turn away from the United States was even more fraught
with meaning because of U.S. policymakers’ long-standing belief that Japan
was a vital example for other Asian states. Writing to President Dwight
Eisenhower, Dulles concurred with MacArthur II’s assessment that “a strong
cooperative Japan is fundamental and essential to our Far Eastern position,
and the road that Japan chooses to follow will influence greatly the path
which other free Asian nations take.” U.S. policymakers feared that changes
in the U.S.–Japanese alliance would symbolize a broader decline of Amer-
ican power in Asia. Japan’s changing economic and geopolitical position
therefore dramatically heightened U.S. concerns about the necessity of fos-
tering a strong sense of shared interests between the two countries to en-
sure that both Kishi and the Japanese public still believed that they needed
the U.S.–Japanese alliance.6
Yet U.S. policymakers also disagreed on what the new treaty could—and
should—achieve. For MacArthur II, who invested great hopes in Japan’s
conservative leadership, the key to capitalizing on Japan’s resurgence was
accommodating Kishi’s wishes through a new treaty. In a continuation of
the logic undergirding the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces in 1957, he
argued that a new treaty would deepen Kishi’s political legitimacy and
strengthen his leadership by showing his ability to achieve long-sought
American concessions. This leadership-focused assessment elevated the ac-
tions of elites as the key to facilitating consensus around the U.S.–Japanese
relationship; it reflected the broader belief that charismatic and effective
leadership was the key to securing Cold War democracy. Through a new
treaty, MacArthur II proclaimed, the United States could encourage Kishi
to “take leadership by instilling in Japanese minds the fact that such a
treaty is by far their best guarantee against aggression. This would serve to
identify Japanese security interests firmly with ours.” This approach unques-
tionably reflected how Kishi had presented himself to U.S. policymakers
from the moment he stepped into office in 1957, as a vigorous and com-
mitted Cold War leader prepared to rejuvenate Japanese popular will behind
the anticommunist struggle. MacArthur II’s reliance on Kishi as the key to
a strong U.S.–Japanese alliance would deeply limit and pervert his under-
standing of the scope, popularity, and impact of the protests to come.7
In contrast to MacArthur II, military leaders were less convinced of the
need to rebuild democratic legitimacy. A new treaty, many worried, would
in fact compromise U.S. security by perpetuating a dangerous dynamic of
U.S. concessions. In the eyes of the Pacific command, Japan had never fully
taken responsibility for its own defense. It had refused to develop adequate
military forces and it had not revised its constitution to allow for anything
beyond a purely defensive military. As a 1957 letter from Air Force chief of
staff Earl Barnes complained, “Apparently, the Japanese interpretation of
equal standards would be that the United States give them total security,
both military and economic, without any indication on their part of as-
sumption of responsibility of furthering the aims of ‘Free World’ security.”
Commander in chief, Pacific admiral Harry Felt shared this belief that U.S.
concessions would only foster further demands. Recycling racialized ste-
reotypes of Japanese untrustworthiness, he claimed that a new treaty would
only “generate additional demands . . . To continue this practice of not ob-
taining an adequate quid pro quo is a doubtful tactic, especially in the
Orient.” Military leaders simply did not see the same benefits to changing
the treaty. As John Steeves, political adviser to the commander in chief,
Pacific, bemoaned, military leaders “feel Japan has everything to gain and
nothing to lose by any change in the present arrangement. We, on the other
hand, they feel, have little to gain and much to lose.”8
Seeking to address these concerns, which had prevented earlier attempts
at treaty revision, Kishi continually argued to U.S. policymakers that a new
treaty would strengthen this alliance—and enhance Cold War security—
by securing popular support. A key criticism of the 1951 accord was its
relationship to the peace treaty and the end of the occupation; though the
security agreement had been passed by the Diet, it was not the product of
independent democratic debate or sovereign political choice. By negotiating
a new treaty and having it passed through the Diet, Kishi could negate ar-
guments that it perverted Japanese democracy. Kishi therefore emphasized
that his reelection as prime minister in the summer of 1958 meant that the
moment was right for a new treaty. MacArthur II embraced this self-
fashioning: “[Kishi] had just been re-elected with increased majority and
his electoral platform had been based on close ties with the US . . . It would
be a good thing, he felt, to decide on a new treaty and then fully debate it
in Diet so that there would be no [repeat] no doubt in Japan that Japan’s
policy of voluntary, close and long-term security alignment with the US
was based on the support of the Diet and the Japanese people.” Both Japanese
and American policymakers thus conflated firm conservative leadership
and democratic consensus, implicitly deeming any opposition to the treaty
as illegitimate and even undemocratic. They repeatedly emphasized this
theme throughout the treaty negotiations and the protests.9
Despite Kishi’s enthusiasm, Japanese policymakers and bureaucrats also
worried about the implications of the new treaty. In particular, they feared
that it would set a dangerous new precedent of expanded Japanese mili-
tary participation in regional conflicts and that reopening the treaty would
lead the United States to call for new Japanese defense commitments. Given
the U.S. military’s deeply negative assessment of Japan’s lack of participa-
tion in East Asian security strategy, this fear was not unwarranted. The
Japanese Foreign Ministry warned that any American concessions, such as
an explicit obligation by the United States to defend Japan, could lead U.S.
negotiators to call for concrete Japanese defense participation in response.
Japanese diplomats recommended that the government try to forestall this
possibility by thinking of ways that the two countries could cooperate de-
fensively within the realm of Japan’s constitutional limitations. As had been
the case throughout the 1950s, the Foreign Ministry also feared that vocal
U.S. calls for constitutional revision and Japanese defense development were
likely to spark popular resistance. Like the U.S. military, the Japanese For-
eign Ministry did not celebrate the new treaty for its security provisions; if
anything, the implications for military policy were a reason not to renego-
tiate the treaty. This shared reluctance further highlighted the American and
Japanese governments’ desire to use the treaty as a political tool. The goal
was to enhance security not through a new military relationship, but in-
stead through popular mobilization and the democratic legitimacy achieved
by passing the treaty through the Diet.10
These overlapping ideological and political convictions converged in
September 1958, when the United States formally acceded to Kishi’s request
for a new treaty on the basis that it would foster a necessary spirit of close
and active cooperation. Strikingly, despite military concerns that a new
treaty would undermine U.S. security, U.S. policymakers largely agreed to
Japanese suggestions for alterations. For example, as requested by Japan,
the Defense Department ultimately expressed a willingness to consult with
Japan before deploying U.S. forces from Japanese bases, though the Joint
Chiefs of Staff asserted that this agreement was not to be interpreted as
giving Japan veto power. As with the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces in
1957, the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff accepted the
new treaty on the reasoning that the “political situation” demanded it.
With the decision to move forward with a new treaty, MacArthur II
quickly met with Japanese foreign minister Fujiyama Aiichirō to draw up
a treaty draft, which was ready for Kishi’s perusal by October 5, 1958.11
In the eyes of diplomatic, political, and even military elites on both sides
of the Pacific, Cold War security extended far beyond mere military agree-
ment. Even though the military leaders and bureaucrats who discussed and
would ultimately negotiate the treaty were unelected, both sides were con-
vinced that their alliance required popular legitimacy. Through the new
treaty, U.S. and Japanese leaders sought to ensure that the continued power
of democratic rhetoric and ideas would be firmly tied to the expression of
Cold War security agendas and transnational state power. Yet from the
beginning, both American and Japanese conceptions of legitimacy were
fundamentally limited. In both states, policymakers emphasized strong
leadership as the key to building consensus around this alliance; in this top-
down vision, governmental leaders would draw the public into supporting
and strengthening state goals, rather than seeking to reflect the will of the
people. Yet as officials on both sides of the Pacific would soon discover,
this rigid vision of consensus-driven democratic politics was far from uni-
versally accepted. Instead of securing this vision, the new treaty would
foster protest, violence, and despair.
The Antitreaty Movement

Even before the United States and Japan signed the new treaty in January
1960, there were clear signs that these governments’ attempts to mobilize
“democracy” behind the renewed expression of domestic and interna-
tional state power would be deeply contested. From the beginning, op-
position to the treaty was driven by far more than anti-Americanism or
fears about the dangerous, even nuclear, consequences of this military alli-
ance. In a growing antitreaty movement, protestors articulated a vision of
democracy that drew both from lessons of the war and the language of ear-
lier anti-rearmament and antibase movements to argue that democracy
required the presence of a critical public that held the government account-
able to the people. In contrast to American and Japanese elite’s ideas that
democracy stemmed from mobilization and consensus, the antitreaty move-
ment posited an ideological conviction that democracy demanded wide-
spread, popular challenges to state power. The opposition movement thus
argued that the new security treaty did not symbolize popular legitimacy
and the national will, but in fact eroded Japanese democracy. It was
destroying the proper representative relationship between the state and
the people.
The first blow to Kishi’s plans took place in October 1958, when the
prime minister suddenly introduced a new bill to the Diet. As part of Kishi’s
broader goal of cracking down on leftists and labor organizations, the new
bill sought to dramatically expand police power and state legal capabili-
ties. It empowered the police to take suspicious individuals into custody
before committing a crime, to conduct searches if it believed a crime was
going to happen, and to prevent demonstrations and parades. These were
all provisions that recalled memories of Japan’s wartime state. Seeking to
prove his willingness to crush the opposition that had long advocated
against the U.S.–Japanese alliance, Kishi told the U.S. Embassy that he was
“determined to deal firmly with Japanese labor unions in order to smash
Communist and extreme Leftist control of Sōhyō, particularly [the] teach-
er’s union.” Kishi later admitted that he also saw the Police Duties Bill as a
key step toward “forcefully realizing the revision of the Security Treaty,”
since it would allow the government to deal more effectively with poten-
tial demonstrations.12
The sudden introduction of the new bill caused an uproar. Sixty-five
groups quickly formed a national congress against the bill, led by the
Socialist Party and Sōhyō. Alongside a Diet boycott by the Socialist Party,
Sōhyō organized a series of demonstrations and united actions that culmi-
nated in a general strike by four million workers. In a continuation of the
rhetoric and ideas developed at protests such as Sunagawa, these opposi-
tion forces presented the police bill as a frontal assault on Japanese democ-
racy. They accused Kishi of returning to his fascist and authoritarian roots
and reviving the wartime “police state,” with little respect for the workings
of the Diet or the rights of the people. Despite the government’s claim that
the bill would simply maintain public order by providing “protection for
juveniles and control[ling] gangsters,” the opposition’s anger was clearly
widespread. As U.S. Embassy observers noted, a wide swath of the Japa-
nese public viewed the bill as an “oppressive measure designed to abridge
civil liberties,” and even members of the LDP, Kishi’s own party, joined the
opposition in killing the bill, a serious political blow. This political humili-
ation demonstrated Kishi’s vulnerability to charges of antidemocratic be-
havior, a liability enhanced by his personal history as a high-level colonial
official, member of the wartime cabinet, and postwar arrest and imprison-
ment as a war criminal. The connection that the opposition drew between
Kishi’s wartime past and the fate of Japan’s postwar democracy would be
expanded and strengthened during the protests against the security treaty.13
The deep ties that all observers believed existed between Japan’s domestic
and international politics meant that the success of the movement against
the policing bill directly fueled the rising movement against the new secu-
rity treaty. In March 1959, as Japanese and American policymakers nego-
tiated the treaty, 134 organizations gathered to form the Anpo jōyaku kaitei
soshi kokumin kaigi (People’s Council to Stop the Revision of the Security
Treaty). Over the next sixteen months, the People’s Council held a series of
demonstrations, rallies, and united actions, distributing printed material and
sponsoring speakers to rally the Japanese people against the treaty. Members
included the Japanese Socialist Party, Sōhyō and other labor unions, the
Japanese Communist Party (JCP), women’s groups, and religious organ-
izations. It also drew groups founded through 1950s activism, such as the
Kenpō yōgo kokumin rengō (Citizen’s Federation to Protect the Constitu-
tion), founded to advocate against U.S. calls for Japanese rearmament, and
the Zenkoku gunji kichi hantai renraku kaigi (National Antibase Coalition),
which was active during the Sunagawa antibase protests. Over the next year,
this umbrella organization expanded to include 1,633 member groups. By
the spring of 1960, it had become the main leader of an increasingly vis-
ible antitreaty movement.14
From the beginning, the People’s Council predicted dire domestic and in-
ternational consequences if Japan signed the treaty. It argued that Japan
should be turning away from a military alliance, rather than normalizing
and strengthening it through a revised treaty. Picking up a long-standing
narrative from activism against rearmament and U.S. military bases, it
warned that the treaty would make Japan an “accomplice” to U.S. policy
in Asia and thus risked engulfing Japan in violence by making Japan the
target of potential Cold War aggression. In its statement of purpose, the
People’s Council further recalled memories of World War II: “We have not
forgotten how irresponsible militarism and a military alliance led to a war
with China and Asia and brought misery and hardship on the people.” This
concern about the treaty’s impact on Asia, and the resurrection of Japa-
nese dreams of conquest, were important themes for the opposition. But
the People’s Council did not limit its critique to the treaty’s international
consequences. It repeatedly asserted that the treaty’s security obligations
would decimate Japanese democracy by entangling Japan in international
conflict. Another war, the People’s Council claimed, would “destroy the
peaceful foundations of the constitution and advance anti-democratic laws.”
As it had throughout the 1950s, leftist opposition continued to assert that
Japanese democracy at home was inseparably connected to peace and
neutrality abroad. Rather than ensuring equality and independence in the
U.S.–Japanese relationship, the revised treaty would repress people’s rights,
regulate education, suppress peace, and force people to live under military
policy; in short, it would ruin any hope of a peaceful democracy in Japan.15
The People’s Council thus pledged to be at the front lines of the anti-
treaty fight, calling for active public participation in the antitreaty move-
ment. It adopted slogans such as: “Abolish the Anpo system that oppresses
democracy and vandalizes daily life,” “Through popular power, prevent re-
vision and abolish the new treaty,” and “Guarantee Japan’s security
through goodwill with all countries and a policy of neutrality.” The People’s
Council’s reference to daily life, in particular, highlighted another strand of
thought running through antitreaty activism; namely rising economic ex-
pectations and the desire for a secure private life. Like calls to protect pri-
vate land and everyday life in Sunagawa, this desire was deeply connected
to the experience of the wartime state. As historian Jordan Sand asserts,
“With the memory still fresh of an emperor-centered wartime state that ex-
torted Japanese subjects to ‘sacrifice the private’ and devote themselves to
the nation (messhi hōkō), participants in postwar democratic movements
fought to protect their private rights as much as to have a voice in national
polity.”16
As with its predecessors from the 1950s, the antitreaty movement was
composed of different groups, rationales, and protest techniques. Among
its key figures were public intellectuals, who took a prominent role in de-
fining the terms of opposition. Throughout 1959 and 1960, famous thinkers
such as political scientist Maruyama Masao and Shimizu Ikutarō published
articles in prestigious journals such as Asahi Jānaru, Bungei Shunjū, Chūō
Kōron, Shisō, and Sekai, gave numerous talks, and issued pamphlets and
statements. Sekai furthered these intellectual efforts with the publication
of the popular ANPO Handbook in November 1959. In this special issue,
Sekai presented a series of questions and answers about the treaty revision,
clearly designed to address perceived misconceptions and broaden the ap-
peal of the antitreaty movement. Like the People’s Council, the ANPO
Handbook emphasized the theme of democratic responsibility. The first
treaty, it noted, had been negotiated when Japan was not independent:
Japan had no choice but to sign the treaty. However, the new treaty was an
opportunity for Japan to take charge of its own fate. If the government
chose to sign the new treaty, it would be responsible for the outcome. Even
if the treaty brought renewed tensions and even war to Asia, the treaty’s
impact would be “[Japan’s] own intention and responsibility, regardless of
the effect.” The handbook closed with a call to marshal popular energy and
for the Japanese people to decide their own fate by participating in the an-
titreaty movement; it was the people’s responsibility to ensure that the
government represented authentic popular will to prevent it from making
the wrong choices. Publications such as the ANPO Handbook sought to

turn the occupation-era rhetoric of democratic responsibility on its head,
arguing that responsibility meant protecting Japanese independence from
American security policy.17
Alongside the People’s Council and intellectuals, a third pillar of the op-
position movement was Japanese students, led by the student group Zen-
gakuren (All-Japan Federation of Student Self-Government Associations).
After playing a central role in the Sunagawa protests, leaders of a radical
Zengakuren faction called the Bund argued that the key lesson of those pro-
tests was the effectiveness of mass clashes with authority. As one scholar put
it, “[s]uccess in the Sunagawa protests whetted the Bund leadership’s ap-
petite for physical clashes with the police.” On November 27, 1959, as the
People’s Council undertook a petition march on the Diet, the Bund opened
the gates of the parliament building and led the demonstrators into the
compound. The Bund had not planned a protest on the grounds of the Diet:
its members believed that the protest’s value lay in the violent act of breaching
the gates. This collision hinted at the scope of the protests to come. These types
of clashes would become symbolic of the opposition for treaty supporters
and a potent source of division within the antitreaty movement.18
As the activities of opposition groups accelerated throughout 1959, the
Japanese government sought to defend and explain the benefits of the new
treaty. Echoing their messages to the United States, Kishi and other mem-
bers of the LDP proclaimed that the treaty’s benefits lay not just in its con-
tributions to Japanese security, but also in reflecting Japan’s resurgence
and growing international influence. The revisions, so the logic went,
addressed long-standing charges of inequality and would strengthen the
Japanese people’s sense of confidence and self-worth. Defending the treaty
in September 1959, for example, Kishi claimed that the new treaty was a
“rational” response to Japan’s economic growth, “national power,” and
rising international standing. Neutrality, on the other hand, was a “pipe
dream under today’s circumstances” because Japan’s defense required inter-
dependence with the free world. Drawing from the long-standing conser-
vative goal of rebuilding postwar Japan’s independence and influence as a
regional and even a global power, Kishi argued that rising state power justi-
fied the renewal of the treaty. Kishi’s vision of a mobilized Japanese state
left little room for critical voices or challenges from the Left. Indeed, to reaf-
firm the connection between the treaty and his leadership, in November 1959,
Kishi decided that he would personally fly to Washington, DC, to sign it
alongside President Eisenhower, a decision that was supported by the U.S.
Embassy in Tokyo. The Japanese government hoped that such theatrics
would consolidate public opinion behind Kishi and the treaty. It would
show how highly the United States—and Eisenhower himself—valued

the U.S.–Japanese relationship, further restoring a sense of Japanese power
and purpose on the domestic and international stages.19
On January 19, 1960, two and a half years after the first discussions of
a new treaty, Kishi and Eisenhower signed the revised pact in Washington,
DC. The updated treaty showcased the transformation of the U.S.–Japanese
alliance over the course of the 1950s. Japan gained a commitment from
the United States to protect Japanese territory and consult with the Japa-
nese government before deploying Japan-based forces. The United States
secured the continued usage of bases and facilities in Japan. In his remarks
following the signing of the treaty, Eisenhower proclaimed that the new
treaty “represents the fulfillment of the goal set by Prime Minister Kishi
and myself in June of 1957 to establish an indestructible partnership be-
tween our two countries in which our relations would be based on com-
plete equality and mutual understanding.” In a joint statement, the two
leaders further asserted that they were “convinced that the treaty will ma-
terially strengthen peace and security in the Far East and advance the cause
of peace and freedom throughout the world.”20
Ironically, for all their mutual animosity, the U.S. and Japanese govern-
ments and the opposition movement shared several core conceptions about
Japan’s postwar democracy. All sides believe that democracy was deeply con-
nected to Japan’s international position, its role in the Cold War, and its rela-
tionship with the United States. They all believed that this democratic mobi-
lization had to take place not just within states but across state lines; leftist
opposition forces also saw Japan as a potential regional leader, but in this
case for independence, peace, and neutrality in Asia. They all placed ques-
tions of Cold War security at the heart of democracy; international alliances
and military power were primary means of assessing the reality and future of
democracy in Japan. Finally, all groups in the treaty fight firmly believed that
democracy required active engagement and protection. Democracy would
not simply endure; rather, both the government and the people had to take
personal responsibility to ensure its survival. It is odd, perhaps, to describe
Kishi’s wartime-inspired vision of top-down mobilization as “democracy.”
But he existed in the reality of a representative political system in which the
success of his rule depended, in part, on popular legitimacy.
Similarly, both sides shared the conviction that democracy’s key vulner-
ability was internal. Both Kishi’s aggressive efforts to suppress leftist ac-
tivism and the opposition’s uproar relied on a dualistic dichotomy, in which
each side’s agenda was the only democratic one, while the other’s stance
represented morally corrupt authoritarianism, whether it came from the
Right or the Left. Indeed, the opposition and government mirrored each
other’s claims, even though their thinking about the treaty differed dra-
matically. Both decried the other camp’s domestic and international agenda,
whether it called for armed mobilization or peace and neutrality, as the
destruction of democracy. Pro and antitreaty forces certainly used these
claims about democracy to advocate for very different goals. Yet it was
the fact that these shared understandings were simultaneously deployed in
favor of and against the treaty that imbued the treaty with such deep sig-
nificance and sense of consequence. It was the deep connection that both
pro and antitreaty forces drew between the U.S.–Japanese alliance and the
future of Japan’s political system that laid the groundwork for the explo-
sive protests to come.
The Protests Explode

The Anpo protests shook postwar Japan and the U.S.–Japanese relation-
ship to their cores. Kishi struggled to move the treaty through the Diet, and
in May 1960 resorted to forcing it through in the absence of the opposi-
tion, which had been removed from the Diet chamber by the police hours
earlier. Ironically, the Diet, the site where Kishi hoped to facilitate the treaty’s
political legitimacy and secure his own political future, became his undoing.
His deep and violent disregard of the norms of representative democracy
led to an explosion of protests, with daily strikes and demonstrations that
drew both established opposition groups and everyday citizens to the
streets by the thousands. Historians have argued that the forceful passing
of the treaty was a turning point that transformed the protests from being
antialliance to anti-Kishi, divorcing them from the transpacific relationship.
While it is true that Kishi became the central target of the opposition, this
does not mean the protest movement lost its ties to the previous decade of
activism against the U.S.–Japanese alliance. In identifying Kishi as an exis-
tential threat to Japan’s postwar democracy, specifically through actions
that he had taken on “behalf” of the U.S.–Japanese alliance, protestors
continued to draw on narratives that had developed throughout the 1950s.
In turn, these momentous events would reverberate through the United
States, challenging how U.S. policymakers thought about U.S. capabili-
ties and leadership in Japan and throughout Asia.21
For all the fanfare that surrounded the ceremony in Washington, signing
the new treaty was only the first step. Since Kishi still had to pass the treaty
through the Diet, the antitreaty movement shifted to preventing its passage.
Hoping to vote on the treaty as quickly as possible, Kishi called for an
up-or-down vote. However, the Socialist Party, which was at the peak of its
political influence with approximately one-third of the seats in the lower

house of the Diet, sought to make the treaty the focus of intense and pro-
longed debate. Its members repeatedly attacked various details of the new
treaty’s language, meaning, and consequences. Meanwhile, activist groups
such as the People’s Council stepped up their coordination of protests, peti-
tion movements, and meetings, hoping to mobilize public opinion against
the treaty and raise the political consequences of voting for its passage.
The antitreaty protests intensified not only due to concerns about the do-
mestic implications of the treaty, but also visceral fears that the treaty
would again embroil Japan in Cold War violence. The Soviet Union’s open
critique of the treaty strengthened these concerns. Upon Kishi’s return to
Japan after signing the treaty in Washington, DC, Soviet foreign minister
Andrei Gromyko warned Japan’s ambassador in Moscow that “in condi-
tions of a modern rocket-nuclear war all Japan with her small and thickly
populated territory, dotted . . . with foreign war bases, risks sharing the
tragic fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the very first minutes of hostili-
ties.” The Soviet Union also fired a test intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) that passed directly over Japan before landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaking to MacArthur II, Kishi argued that most Japanese, including the
opposition, resented Soviet intervention in Japanese affairs. Soviet actions,
however, seemed to support the opposition’s argument that the new treaty
would not bring peace and security but instead exacerbate Cold War ten-
sions and place Japan in greater danger.22
These fears reached a fever pitch in May 1960 with the U-2 incident. In
early May, the Soviet Union shot down a U.S. spy plane that was in the
midst of conducting a high-level flight over the Soviet Union to photograph
ICBM sites. Believing that the pilot had died in the crash, Eisenhower
claimed that the plane was conducting weather research. On May 7, how-
ever, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev stunned the United States by re-
vealing that the pilot had survived; this ultimately led to the collapse of a
planned diplomatic summit in Paris. Since Japan hosted U-2 planes at U.S.
bases—a fact that was publicly confirmed by an air force spokesman—the
U-2 incident quickly became a major story in Japanese politics. It raised deep
fears that Japan-based planes also violated Soviet airspace and would cause
the Soviet Union to take revenge; Khrushchev had demanded that the
planes be withdrawn from Japan, threatening that they placed Japan in
“potential danger of nuclear destruction.” A column in the Yomiuri Shimbun
called the U-2 planes “black jets,” likening them to “evil spirits.” The Asahi
Shimbun wondered why the Japanese government openly accepted the
U.S. government’s weather explanation, asserting that the incident “cast
doubt” on the mutual trust that was supposed to be the foundation of the
new security treaty. The Socialist Party folded the U-2 incident into its an-
titreaty campaign in the Diet, dismissing the government’s assurances that
the Japan-based U-2s had not violated other nations’ airspace. The State
Department authorized Kishi to issue a statement that U-2s in Japan had not
conducted flights over the Soviet Union, but this seemed to have little effect: a
member of the Foreign Ministry lamented privately to MacArthur II that if
the plane had taken off from Japan, Kishi would no longer be in office.23
With controversy brewing due to the U-2 incident and a growing anti-
treaty movement, Kishi resorted to extreme measures to push the treaty
through the Diet. On May 19, less than two weeks after the U-2 incident,
Kishi suddenly proposed a fifty-day extension of the Diet. This move was
designed to take advantage of Diet procedure; after the lower house passed
the treaty, it would automatically come into effect after thirty days as long
as the Diet was still in session. In response to lower house speaker Kiyose
Ichirō’s call to vote on the extension, Socialist Party members conducted a
sit-in outside his office to prevent him from reaching the Diet floor. Hours
later, Kiyose summoned the police to remove the legislators blocking his
path to the floor of the Diet. In shocking scenes broadcast live on Japanese
national television, Socialist Party representatives struggled with the police,
who removed them, one by one, in a deeply distressing display of police
aggression. Aided by the police, Kiyose pushed his way back to the ros-
trum, where he called for the extension. With the Socialist Party absent, LDP
representatives passed the extension.24
Yet simply passing the extension was not the end of Kishi’s plan. Just after
midnight, on May 20, Kiyose again called the Diet into session. In the ab-
sence of the opposition, the Diet passed the treaty itself. In what historian
Nick Kapur calls “a famous and indelible image,” the NHK television camera
captured LDP Diet members raising their hands to vote their approval, and
then swung dramatically to the right to show that all the seats in the other
half of the chamber, where the opposition parties normally sat, were empty.
In a grotesque turn of events, the passing of the treaty achieved the opposite
symbolic effect than that promised by Kishi to American policymakers.
Rather than a source of the new treaty’s legitimacy, many Japanese saw the
Diet as the site of a gruesome violation of what should have been a peaceful
democratic process, all in the name of the U.S.–Japanese relationship. Indeed,
the timing of Kishi’s action ensured that the treaty would come into effect
upon Eisenhower’s arrival in Japan, scheduled for June 19.25
Kishi’s surprising and forcible passage of the treaty sparked a firestorm
that ultimately led to his downfall. The leftist intellectual Hidaka Rokurō
compared Kishi’s actions to Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, im-
plying that like that misguided war, the treaty would lead to Japan’s—and
In the largest single-day demonstration of the Anpo protests, protestors fill the streets
surrounding the Japanese Diet building on June 18, 1960. Asahi Shimbun / Getty
Images.
Kishi’s—own annihilation. Following May 20, protests became a daily oc-

currence throughout Japan. On June 4, as many as 5.6 million people par-
ticipated in a general strike across the nation; Sōhyō also organized strikes
on June 15 and June 22. In Tokyo, protestors gathered regularly outside
the Diet building. They marched, carried placards and banners, shouted slo-
gans, circulated leaflets and handbills, and sang songs. The most famous
protests were those by the Bund faction of Zengakuren, who, in one ob-
server’s description, “favored the ‘snake-dance’ (jigu-jigu) for important oc-
casions: in these, ranks of six abreast locked arms and careened from side
to side down the street in long columns; the flankers brushed aside all
obstacles, causing skirmishes with the police who resented being bumped
or swatted with placards.” As had been the case with demonstrations
throughout the 1950s, established sociopolitical groups such as Zengakuren
and labor organizations such as Sōhyō played a central part in developing
and sustaining the protests throughout May and June.26
Yet the Anpo protests were not just composed of experienced demon-
strators. Kishi’s behavior was so shocking that a variety of first-time pro-
testors also took to the streets. As a high school teacher described his
participation: “We didn’t belong to any organization. In the beginning, I
participated in the students’ demonstrations, but when I got to the Diet
I ran into some other unaffiliated people like myself. I realized then that I
wanted to make a marching association for solitary citizens who could not
participate in the opposition [movement].” As the teacher explained, “We
shared the common feelings of isolation in being nonaffiliated and also a
[sense of] opposition to Anpo and [a desire] to protect democracy.” Rather
than joining as a mobilized member of a union or student group, many of
these people based their participation on their identification as active citi-
zens concerned about the future of Japanese democracy. These actors framed
democracy as the product of authentic popular will, of personal responsi-
bility, as fundamentally shaped by the voices of the people. By forcibly
facilitating the treaty’s passage through the Diet—the institution that
claimed to represent “the people”—Kishi had violated a fundamental tenet
of legitimate politics in postwar Japan.27
The most prominent group created on this basis called itself the Voice-
less Voices. This name drew from and appropriated a speech that Kishi
had given defending the treaty, where he insisted that he spoke for the silent
masses. In a flyer written for a June 11 protest, the Voiceless Voices encour-
aged people to come together:
Anyone can join the voiceless voices! Citizens! Let’s all walk together . . . let’s
walk together and quietly show our opposition. Maybe you’re busy with work
every day and maybe you’re embarrassed to take part in a demonstration, but
if we give up and keep silent here and now, Japan will never get any better . . .
As for Prime Minister Kishi, who in his duty to America has trampled on his
own people, he should resign . . . Citizens all, be brave! Walk with us; show
them how we feel.
The Voiceless Voices called on the Japanese people to resist as citizens, as-
serting that only active participation could save Japan.28
In writing about protests against the security treaty, historians have em-
phasized this new rhetoric of citizenship, framing Anpo as an important
departure from 1950s activism, which largely drew from organized groups
such as labor unions and student groups. They have stressed that Kishi’s
machinations to pass the treaty fundamentally shifted the terms of the an-
titreaty protests and dramatically broadened their appeal. As historian
Yoshikuni Igarashi asserts, Kishi’s actions shifted the “focal point of the
movement . . . from the international ramifications of the treaty to the do-
mestic democratic order in postwar Japan.” Yet the development of Japan’s
postwar democracy—and its presence or absence—had long been refracted
through the U.S.–Japanese relationship. As the Voiceless Voices argued,
Kishi “in his duty to America has trampled on his own people.” One man
later recalled: “People were embittered by the filthiness of the situation in
which Kishi was trying to appropriate U.S. power, flattering the very
country against which he, as a member of the [Tōjō] administration, de-
clared war.” Much like the protestors at Sunagawa, antitreaty forces criti-
cized Kishi for his use of police power to pervert the workings of represen-
tative democracy in the name of the U.S.–Japanese alliance.29
In mobilizing the Japanese people to prevent the treaty from coming into
effect, opposition forces thus elevated three key themes that drew from
longer traditions, historical imaginaries, and narratives developed not only
against Kishi, but also through activism against the U.S.–Japanese alliance
throughout the previous decade. First, on the most basic level, protestors
emphasized that the structures and values of Japanese democracy were
under threat and could be saved only by the vigorous exercise of popular
responsibility. As historian J. Victor Koschmann has noted, despite the op-
position’s strong language and occasionally radical actions, the antitreaty
movement sought to “preserve ‘postwar democracy,’ protect the constitu-
tion and prevent reactionary tampering with the postwar order,” rather than
pushing for radical changes to Japan’s political system. For example, in a
May statement, the People’s Council argued that Kishi’s heavy-handed
method of enforcing ratification was stripping away democratic mecha-
nisms such as popular protest and the Diet debate. Similarly, the Socialist
Party heavily criticized Kishi for bringing “police and organized crime
(yakuza) into the Diet” and ending the debate over the new treaty “under
the authority of violence.” The party called on the people to “fight with all
our power” to dissolve the Diet and force Kishi to resign, thus protecting
the people’s “real feelings of peace and democracy,” which in this telling,
eschewed violence in the name of peaceful, vigorous democratic debate. As
they had throughout the 1950s, opposition forces adopted a mantle of emo-
tional authenticity, asserting that democracy ultimately rested not simply
with governing structures or representative politics—after all, Kishi was an

elected official—but on critical popular mentalities that fostered a sense of
responsibility to hold leaders accountable to popular will.30
Second, protestors connected their focus on the protection of represen-
tative structures and authentic democratic values to the treaty’s interna-
tional implications. Like criticism of the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the
original security treaty, opposition forces in 1960 argued that the new
treaty placed Japan in the path of war, potentially a nuclear one. This was
not only because it strengthened strategic and military cooperation in a di-
vided Asia. By negating the power of popular democracy, the treaty re-
moved the peaceful and moderating influence of “the people,” who in this
telling were naturally antiwar. One participant in the Voiceless Voices em-
phasized that Kishi’s behavior sparked visceral fears of a return to the dismal
experiences of World War II. “No matter if it’s for the country or whatever,
those who start wars, those so-called big shots, never become its victims.
When a war starts, it’s always people like us who are the victims that suffer,
who are wounded or killed.” For this participant, “[c]ertainly the forcible
ratification of the 1960 Anpo treaty compelled even people like me to turn
toward the Diet. In my case, I hate war and, feeling that way, I thought it
would be really terrible if we got steamrollered into one.” Only a vigorous
critical democracy that upheld the wishes of the people could prevent Japan
from being “steamrollered” into another war. The specter of World War II
hung heavily over the protests, which became a means to expunge Japan’s
postwar past and ensure a democratic future.31
Finally, with Japan’s booming economy, securing a future of economic
growth, prosperity, and an affluent and private daily life was a third major
strand of thinking that drew people to antitreaty protests, which would
have crucial repercussions for both American and Japanese governmental
responses to the crisis. Activists had raised these themes throughout the
1950s; arguing, for example, that rearmament would militarize Japan’s
budget, threatening Japan’s nascent postwar recovery and the economic
possibilities of people’s daily lives. Similarly, protestors at Sunagawa,
particularly local farmers, feared the extended runways’ impact on their
farmland, lifestyles, and economic future. This “everyday life conservatism
(seikatsu hogoshugi)—a position on national political issues based on
the determination to keep state power and the military demands of the
U.S. alliance from infringing on the sovereignty of the private sphere” had
played an important role in activism throughout the 1950s. With the
economic growth of the latter part of the decade, however, the possi-
bility of prosperity and affluence took on wider resonance. It was, in part,
“[s]trong popular support not only for rapid economic growth but also for
individualism and rationalism, consumerism, and the domestic happiness”

that drew a wide variety of people into the antitreaty protests. In their
statements and speeches, protest leaders regularly referred to Japan’s
growing prosperity and the necessity of protecting seikatsu, a term that
signified daily life or livelihood. In an article in the intellectual journal
Shisō no kagaku (The science of thought), sociologist Katō Hidetoshi as-
serted that “the energy course for countless numbers of people lay in the
realization that in order to protect their ‘lives,’ political action was neces-
sary.” Both the Japanese and American governments would pick up on this
strand of thinking in the aftermath of the protests, elevating prosperity,
economic growth, and private consumer possibilities as a productive,
shared foundation for this international relationship.32
The treaty was scheduled to come into effect on June 19, coinciding with
Eisenhower’s visit. The United States followed Kishi’s brutal parliamentary
maneuvers closely, yet the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo seemed unaware of the
firestorm they would create. Writing to the State Department, the embassy
asserted that the “Government’s decisive action in summoning police to pre-
serve order in Diet for vote on treaty will remain a most controversial
issue for some time to come.” While this telegram acknowledged the con-
troversy, the use of the term “decisive” was a positive assessment coming
after a decade in which U.S. policymakers consistently complained that the
Japanese were passive freeloaders who refused to actively commit to the
U.S.–Japanese relationship. Moreover, it was in keeping with MacArthur
II’s overall approach to the treaty, which equated Kishi’s political triumph
with the success of the treaty and the broader U.S.–Japanese alliance. This
equation was not uncommon; U.S. policymakers had long relied on close
relationships with conservative, often antidemocratic and authoritarian
leaders as central to American security throughout the twentieth century.
This assessment of Kishi, however, simply did not grasp the depth of the
anger and passion that developed in response to Kishi’s actions.33
Over the next six weeks, however, the explosive growth of antitreaty ac-
tivism intensified American fears that their decade-old vision of a political
and security alliance of mobilized democracies was collapsing. MacArthur
II’s assessments became increasingly urgent: it seemed the Kishi government,
the U.S.–Japanese alliance, and the foundations of American hegemony in
the Asia-Pacific hung in the balance. Writing to the State Department on
June 4, the same day as a massive general strike, MacArthur II asserted that:
“The basic issue at stake in the current political crisis in Japan is not [re-
peat] not the question of the security treaty or the future of the Kishi govt
but that of survival of democracy in Japan . . . [A] militant pro-Communist
minority in Japan influenced by Russia and Communist China has refused
to accept the majority vote of the Parliament of elected representatives of

the Japanese people and is challenging the future of parliamentary democ-
racy in Japan.” MacArthur II resurrected the narrative, so crucial to the
second half of the U.S. occupation, that Japanese democracy was under
threat by a communist minority that sought to poison the Japanese body
politic. It was the protestors, not Kishi, who fundamentally endangered the
future of Japanese democracy by disrespecting the will of the majority and
the rule of law. As MacArthur II asserted, “Only if the rule of law is main-
tained can democracy survive.” Democracy in this telling was not the
product of a critical public, but rather widespread respect for order and
structure that had to be protected from subversive forces and overly emo-
tional, mentally weak, and highly vulnerable people. In the eyes of the
embassy, it was this vision of democracy as order, rather than representa-
tion, which was on the verge of destruction. Moreover, MacArthur II’s re-
liance on now long-standing tropes of Cold War dualism—democracy was
under threat by a fanatical, alien, maniacally antidemocratic communist
minority—reflected his total unwillingness, even inability, to engage with
alternative democratic visions. For him, there was only one way to be demo-
cratic, and opposition to this vision was not rational, but the product of a
“militant” communist plot that preyed on vulnerable people.34
As U.S. policymakers came to grasp the widespread nature of the pro-
tests, they shifted their attention to ensuring that Kishi remained in power
until the treaty came into effect on June 19. They debated whether to cancel
Eisenhower’s planned visit, which had become tied to the fate of the treaty:
would Eisenhower’s presence help or hurt Kishi’s cause? MacArthur II ad-
vocated heavily for going forward with the trip, arguing that cancellation
would be devastating evidence of a lack of faith in Kishi that would em-
bolden the opposition. But Eisenhower, despite MacArthur II and even
Kishi’s insistence that the trip go forward, clearly had misgivings. Speaking
with Secretary of State Christian Herter (John Foster Dulles had died of
colon cancer in May 1959), Eisenhower worried aloud that the trip would
be a “flop.” He wanted simply to pay respects to Japan as a “sister democ-
racy” and “not try to be appearing as a supporter of a Treaty, or of Kishi,
or anything else.” In light of the fact that he had signed the new treaty only
months before, Eisenhower’s attempts to disassociate himself from it were
absurd. More broadly, though, Eisenhower’s desire to simply be a “sister
democracy,” somehow disconnected from a treaty that policymakers had
elevated as the key to mobilizing Japanese democratic legitimacy, demon-
strates a blindness to the reality of the U.S.–Japanese alliance for many
Japanese. Ironically echoing ideas expressed in the streets of Tokyo, Eisen-
hower voiced fear that alliance with the United States was, in the eyes of
many, undermining rather than bolstering democracy. As Herter reported

to his colleagues, “[t]he President said he was trying now to get together a
speech for the Diet, but it is a sorry thing when you think you are going in
there with armed guards at the doors.”35
With MacArthur II’s insistence that the visit proceed, Eisenhower’s press
secretary James Hagerty landed at Haneda airport on June 10 to undertake
advance planning. As Hagerty and MacArthur II left the airport by car, a
crowd of six thousand protesters, largely members of Zengakuren, con-
fronted their vehicle. Swarming upon the car, the protestors rocked it back
and forth, hitting it with poles and placards, cracking windows and smashing
lights, and chanting “Hagerty, go home!” (Hagachii gō hōmu) and “Don’t
come Ike!” (donto kamu Aiku). These attacks on Hagerty and MacArthur II
not only showed the depth of anger against Kishi, and even the United States,
but they were also deeply disturbing to those who had not taken to the streets
against the treaty. It seemed like Kishi had lost all ability to govern effectively
and that any semblance of order and civility was lost in a sea of violence.
Police who arrived to free the Americans were driven back with a rain of
rocks. Hagerty and MacArthur II were ultimately rescued by helicopter. Yet
in describing the incident to the State Department, MacArthur II argued that
the experience netted positive gains for the United States. It might, he mused,
“shake [people] out of their passive acceptance of the use of force, violence
and illegal action by a militant pro-Communist minority.”36
Five days later, however, on June 15, the controversy surrounding the
treaty reached its explosive culmination after the shocking and tragic death
of a Tokyo University student in a Diet protest. Opposition forces had
planned several events for June 15. Sōhyō organized its second general
strike, while Zengakuren orchestrated a massive day-long protest at the
Diet, planning to enter the Diet compound in a bold demonstration of defi-
ance. In the late afternoon, protestors swarmed the south entrance and
pushed into the parliament gates. After a few hours filled with speeches and
singing, the police struck back. The ensuing melee crushed a female Tokyo
University student named Kanba Michiko. News of her death spread
through the crowd, encouraging the students to continue clashing with the
police. The two sides attacked and counterattacked for the next several
hours. In the early morning hours, the police received orders to clear the
protestors, which they accomplished with batons and tear gas. As histo-
rian Nick Kapur vividly described it, “[p]ictures from that night show
bloody students beaten unconscious and being carried away to ambulances,
and the Diet compound strewn with rocks, shoes, broken placards, and
pools of blood and water, as well as eighteen wrecked paddy wagons which
the students had overturned and set on fire.”37
Kanba’s shocking death unleashed a wave of anger that led to the col-
lapse of Kishi’s government. A journalist from Radio Tokyo reported the
events live before being dragged off by the police: “There’s no law here, no
order or anything. Only suffering. Only the rampage of the police and the
suffering of the students.” In a stream of bellicose statements, opposition
forces blamed Kishi for declaring war on his own people, a narrative for
which Kanba became a useful symbol. As Chelsea Szendi Schieder notes,
“Citizens’ groups and the mass media transformed Kanba . . . into a maiden
martyr for Japan’s fragile postwar democracy.” Sōhyō released a statement
blaming Kanba’s death on Kishi and the police, calling the clash a “planned
provocation” and part of Kishi’s plan to use “cruel violence to totally an-
nihilate the opposition.” The Socialist Party statement, “The Kishi Cabinet
Killed Kanba Michiko,” claimed that “frenzied police who colluded with
yakuza to attack like wild beasts” intentionally and “mercilessly” clubbed
Kanba to death. Cooperation between the government and organized crime,
declared the Socialists, made the treaty not only illegitimate but criminal.
On June 18, approximately 330,000 people took part in a united action
outside the Diet. This protest, the largest single demonstration of the entire
Anpo movement, was a dual expression of sorrow over Kanba’s death and
the fact that the treaty would come into force one minute after midnight.
Kishi’s political career, once so integral to the future of this alliance, could
not recover from the violence and emotion of the protests. Under heavy
pressure from the public and his own party, Kishi resigned after the treaty
had come into effect.38
Even though the treaty passed, the Anpo protests ended more than Kishi’s
political career. Since the end of the occupation in spring 1952, U.S. poli-
cymakers had sought to mobilize Japan, both government and public,
behind their own visions for a “free,” militarized, and anticommunist East
Asia. They sought to legitimize and strengthen this international bond by
arguing that it benefited from and protected Japanese democracy, that a
democratic Japan had no choice but to mobilize behind American leadership
to survive in a dangerous Cold War world. A democratic public, then, had
to actively support the state and accept its claims about what constituted
security (such as U.S. military bases) and peace. Kishi too had hoped that
the new treaty would be the capstone of his political career, a moment
when his vision of a conservative and militarized Japan would assert itself
as an Asian power, engender wide popular support, and secure his political
rule. Instead, the treaty and the protests it sparked exposed the fundamental
weaknesses of this joint project. These protests revealed the continued po-
tency of “democracy,” not simply as a tool to facilitate legitimacy and con-
sensus but also as a way to mobilize a broad array of people in a robust
Protestors and police wage a bloody clash on the grounds of the Japanese Diet
building on the night of June 15, 1960. AP Photo.
demonstration of public opposition. The public activism of the Anpo

protests would fail to alter U.S.–Japanese security mechanisms. But indi-
rectly, it would spark a broader shift in U.S. thinking about hegemony in
Asia, and the very values, ideas, and possibilities assigned to democracy
itself.
Re-Envisioning the U.S.–Japan Alliance

In the aftermath of the Anpo protests, how did U.S. policymakers explain
and overcome such a profound challenge to their transpacific vision? Ex-
tensive popular mobilization against this alliance, and the fall of a friendly
leader upon whom U.S. policymakers had pinned their hopes for the future
of this relationship, represented everything that the United States had feared
since the end of the occupation in 1952. These protests challenged their
ideas about democracy as a tool to facilitate popular consensus around elite
leadership and state power and undermined their advocacy for Japan as a
showcase for alleged American benevolence toward nonwhite countries.
Perhaps for these reasons, when U.S. policymakers reflected on these events,
they developed an explanation of Anpo that extended beyond communist
infiltration (though this did remain a factor). The protests, they decided,
reflected Japan’s failure to understand the values, sacrifices, and responsi-
bilities of democracy. Rather than abandoning public recruitment or moving
to rely on autocratic dictators, alarmed U.S. policymakers instead sought
to renew their efforts at public persuasion. Through their network of intel-
lectual and educational programs, they doubled down on the mission to
foster shared norms between the United States and Japan, to rebuild Japa-
nese minds around rationality and responsible individualism. They also
developed a new language for the U.S.–Japanese relationship—“equal
partnership”—designed to cloak this alliance in the rhetoric, and sometimes
even the reality, of cooperation.39
U.S. policymakers’ initial assessments of the Anpo protests reflected du-
alistic Cold War thinking; any opponent to the U.S.–Japanese alliance, they
argued, had to be a product of communist subversion and infiltration.
Writing about the decision to forcefully maneuver the treaty through the
Diet, MacArthur II reported, “Kishi said he had really had no alternative.
A fanatical minority acting as the agents of Moscow and Peking and com-
pletely out of accord with the Japanese people, plus some others who are
not members of this fanatical minority but who have been influenced by it,
have created a situation which challenges the very existence of law and
order in Japan.” Kishi, too, echoed this assessment in a letter to Eisenhower,
calling the protests the result of “disorderly activities of a misguided and

violent minority.” The Eisenhower administration responded in kind, with
Hagerty expressing Eisenhower’s regrets that he would not be able to visit
a “sister democracy” due to the actions of a “small organized minority, led
by professional Communist agitators acting under external direction and
control.”40
Despite this initial fixation with communist agitation and infiltration, U.S.
policymakers soon came to fear that the protests posed a broader and more
fundamental challenge to American hegemony. During the summer of 1960,
high-level politicians and diplomats, from the staff of the embassy in Tokyo
to the National Security Council, fiercely debated the causes and conse-
quences of the protests. In a National Security Council meeting that took
place in early June, for example, policymakers discussed fears that these
protests undermined the free world claim that democracy was a superior
system suitable for all societies. Speaking about events in Japan and South
Korea (which was also experiencing labor and student protests that led to
the fall of conservative leader Syngman Rhee), Vice-President Richard
Nixon wondered if recent events had dire consequences: “We have looked
upon Japan as a good example of a people formerly without democracy or
freedom who had been able, since the war, to run a good show. Now com-
munist control of student organizations, the press, and the labor unions en-
ables virtual communist control of the country. The experience in Japan
raised the question whether democratic forms would really work in newly-
independent countries, if minority violence and mob rule can overturn
anything.” Nixon’s description of Japan—as a “good example”—highlights
its centrality to American conceptions of its global mission, especially with
the rise of “newly-independent countries” in Africa and Asia. In 1960 alone,
sixteen countries in Africa became independent, making the so-called Third
World a new center of attention for Cold War competition and placing re-
newed pressure on the United States to prove its democratic bona fides at
home and overseas, especially vis-à-vis nonwhite peoples.41
More broadly, however, Nixon’s comments reveal the continued fears
that had shaped U.S. policy toward Japan, and broader U.S. fears about
democracy, since the late 1940s. Indeed, Nixon’s assessment of what had
happened—communists had worked through civic organizations, such as
student groups, and a free press to corrupt Japanese democracy from
within—was strikingly in line with documents such as NSC 68, which pos-
ited that communists would consistently seek to subvert the free world
internally, turning the openness of democratic society against itself. In using
such language, Nixon’s comments also reveal a strain of thought that
had long restricted U.S. policymakers’ willingness to embrace democracy
as actually practiced by foreign states and peoples: the belief that non-
Americans, and nonwhite peoples more broadly, especially the Japanese,
were deeply vulnerable to emotional, demagogic, antidemocratic subversion—
“mob rule”—and might be simply incapable of exercising democratic
discipline and responsibility.
Nixon was far from alone in this assessment. Writing in June 1960, Mac-
Arthur II blamed the protests on Japan’s “shallowness of experience with
and lack of understanding of democratic mechanisms, particularly in labor,
press and educational fields. There is much latent neutralism, pacifism and
fuzzy-mindedness in Japan.” The Japanese, claimed MacArthur II, simply
had not developed the rigorous mentalities necessary to building an effec-
tive and responsible democracy; they were not simply pacifist, a political
stance, but “fuzzy-minded,” a broader assertion that the Japanese lacked
the mental and psychological capabilities necessary to clear thought.
For U.S. policymakers who shared these paternalistic visions, Anpo did not
simply reveal weaknesses in the U.S.–Japanese alliance. After six years of
occupation and eight years of international cooperation, Japanese democ-
racy was so closely aligned with U.S. policy that these protests challenged
the core claims of democratic superiority upon which U.S. policymakers
sought to build U.S. Cold War hegemony.42
Yet rather than working toward the establishment of a “reliable” author-
itarian regime in Japan, as they often did elsewhere, U.S. policymakers
sought to find new ways to mobilize public support behind the Pacific alli-
ance. In their minds, this alliance—and Japan’s active engagement with
it—was simply too crucial to eschew. In this reconfiguration, a key to this
improved bond would be renewed outreach to intellectuals, students, and
universities. U.S. policymakers had long believed that intellectuals were the
key determinants of public debate in postwar Japan; this grew from their
equally strong belief that democracy required specific mindsets and atti-
tudes, which “proper” public intellectuals could instill. Writing in 1955,
the Eisenhower administration’s Operations Coordinating Board, which
tracked the implementation of security policy, asserted that “[v]irtually all
intellectuals . . . hope for the strengthening of democracy in Japan. They are
defenders of the idealistic constitution of 1947.” In MacArthur II’s eyes, this
made the intellectual community all the more responsible for the events of
June 1960, because it had fostered fanciful and misguided public debate
that caused the protests by ignoring the realities, dangers, and high stakes
of the Cold War. After the Diet battle of June 15, which caused Kanba’s
death, MacArthur II cited the “ignorance and sometimes lack of moral
courage of Japanese intellectual and university community, important ele-
ments of which fully supported action of pro-communist left in resorting
to force and violence . . . While we believe majority of Japanese intellectuals

are not pro-communist, many are profoundly ignorant of what has gone
on in world in recent years and of nature of basic struggle between freedom
and slavery.” MacArthur II was so anxious to draw attention to “flawed”
Japanese intellectuals that he spoke with New York Times reporter Bob
Trumbull about an editorial that would attribute responsibility for the pro-
tests specifically to the “moral sickness and lack of courage of [the] Japa-
nese intellectual and university community.”43
Building on this assessment, in August 1960 the U.S. Embassy in Japan
submitted a 209-page analysis of the protests that focused on the role of
students, universities, and intellectual leaders. Composed of a summary by
the embassy in Tokyo and a series of reports from various consulates, this
report identified two key factors as the cause of the protests. First, it attrib-
uted Anpo to a racialized assessment of the Japanese mind and character. The
protests were due to “predisposing factors in the Japanese nature, student
nature and peculiar characteristics of the post-war generation of students
(disillusioned, materialistic and morbidly afraid of war).” These circum-
stances made simple explanations like Marxism—a “facile explanation of
everything from history and economics to biology and the structure of
language”—attractive to the “Japanese mind.” In asserting that the Japa-
nese were simplistic and nonindividualistic, the embassy report harkened
back to wartime propaganda films and images that depicted the Japanese
as an irrational, uncivilized, and obedient herd incapable of critical or
original thought. Like wartime claims that the Japanese were a “hot-
blooded, emotional people,” vulnerable to “frustration that may explode
in violent action,” the Anpo protests became yet another explosion by a
simplistic (attracted to “facile explanations”) and emotional (“morbidly
afraid”) Japanese people. World War II–era narratives loomed heavily over
American assessments of Anpo, providing a convenient and familiar expla-
nation of the protests as a psychological failing rather than a legitimate
political critique.44
This lack of critical faculties, the study claimed, made students deeply
susceptible to the second factor, the “pervasive and deep rooted nature of
the leftist malady in the universities and among intellectuals.” In Japan, the
United States had witnessed the results of a perceived intellectual failure
with dangerous historical antecedents:
[If the Anpo protests prove] anything about the situation in the universities
and the attitude of the mind of the intellectuals, they show how pervasive and
deep-rooted the malady is. Julien Benda wrote a book before the war enti-
tled La Trahison des Clercs [The Betrayal of the Intellectuals] about the
failure of intellectuals to protect democracy and liberty of spirit against
Nazi authoritarianism. A question which easily comes to mind is whether we

are now witnessing in Japan another trahison des clercs, in the failure even to
understand, much less to honor, democracy confronted by the authoritari-
anism of the Left.
As with Nixon’s assessment before the National Security Council, the em-
bassy argued that the Anpo protests raised troubling questions about
whether the Japanese were capable of democracy. Like Nixon, it echoed
the claim that Japanese democracy was threatened by internal weaknesses,
especially emotional and psychological weaknesses that took the form of a
“pervasive” and “deep rooted . . . malady.” Anpo was a failure of Japanese
mindsets above all else; the problem did not lie in U.S. policy or Kishi’s gov-
ernance. Rather, it was the Left that was authoritarian, a point driven
home by the comparison to Nazi brutality and aggression.45
Yet for all this hyperbole and doubt, the U.S. diplomats in Tokyo also
argued that not all hope was lost. This emphasis on psychological weak-
ness was familiar territory to Americans; like the occupation, the post-Anpo
moment required a renewed commitment to remaking Japanese minds. As
the embassy study asserted, the “weaknesses” in Japan’s intellectual com-
munity and character could be transformed into a strong Japanese com-
mitment to the United States under proper American guidance: “Nearly
every element which works for student-leftism and the prevalence of a
Sino-Soviet type of Marxism among intellectuals—their tendency toward
conformity, docility in accepting a popular theory, absence of strong con-
victions, follow-the-leaderism etc.—could work in the opposite direction
if a proper kind of lead were given.” By giving Japan the opportunity to
experience and absorb superior American thinking, the United States could
help “correct deficiencies in the Japanese intellectual community” by en-
abling it to choose a new path. As they did with the decision to retain the
emperor, U.S. policymakers believed they could use the “sheep-like” ten-
dencies of the Japanese to mobilize the Japanese mind behind a vigorous
commitment to responsible Cold War democracy.46
Following this line of thinking, the embassy and the State Department
recommended that the United States dedicate new and increased energy to
bring together American and Japanese intellectuals to strengthen the U.S.–
Japanese relationship. This approach was not new: through programs such
as Fulbright educational exchanges and with the support of groups such as
the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the United States had long sought
to build postwar Japanese academia in a pro-American and prodemocratic
mold. For example, in partnership with Stanford University and the Uni-
versity of Illinois, the Rockefeller Foundation had funded a series of American
Studies seminars across Japan throughout the 1950s, which brought U.S.
scholars to engage with Japanese professors and students in lengthy
summer sessions. Other programs, such as Harvard’s International Seminar,
run by the young political scientist Henry Kissinger, brought promising
foreign leaders to the United States, including future Japanese prime min-
ister Nakasone Yasuhiro. After Anpo, because intellectuals and students
had played such a strong role in the protests, U.S. policymakers devoted
even more attention to academic and educational outreach as a new focal
point in this alliance.47
Nothing better represented the United States’ post-Anpo emphasis on
deepening intellectual and cultural ties than the appointment of Edwin O.
Reischauer as the new U.S. ambassador to Japan. In contrast to the career
diplomat MacArthur II, Reischauer was a professor of Japanese history at
Harvard University. Alongside people such as National Security Advisor
MacGeorge Bundy and ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith, Reis-
chauer represented the Kennedy administration’s broader melding of gov-
ernment service, policymaking, and academia. Reischauer was exactly the
kind of “responsible” intellectual that American policymakers, philanthro-
pists, and scholars sought to create through their extensive outreach to
Japan. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, he regularly published and
commented on Japan and the U.S.–Japanese alliance in nonacademic venues,
repeatedly identifying Japan as a vital American ally and globally signifi-
cant model of nonwhite democracy.
This is not to say that Reischauer was in complete agreement with the
State Department’s assessment of Anpo. Drawing from his own writings
and experiences with Japan, Reischauer offered a dramatically different
take on the Anpo protests. In October 1960, he published a lengthy discus-
sion of the protest’s motivations and consequences in the magazine Foreign
Affairs. Entitled “The Broken Dialogue with Japan,” Reischauer argued
that the protests represented “a huge current of discontent within Japa-
nese society—a frustration with present trends and a strong sense of alien-
ation from the existing order” that could not be disregarded or underesti-
mated. He encouraged U.S. readers to look beyond outward extremism
and see the protests as rooted in Japan’s historical experiences, particularly
the way that World War II destroyed Japan’s nascent prewar democracy.
“Undoubtedly the vast majority of the demonstrators went out on the
streets because they felt that Kishi, in his refusal to dissolve the Diet and in
his ramming through of the treaty ratification, was trampling on democ-
racy and leading Japan back to rearmament and war.” Rather than blaming
Japanese intellectuals “for being so unrealistic,” Reischauer argued, “the
fault also lies with us for failing to understand what is in their minds. The
shocking misestimate of the situation in May and June on the part of the
American Government and Embassy in Tokyo reveals how small is our
contact with the Japanese opposition.” Reischauer believed that it was this
article that led to his appointment as ambassador to Japan, precisely
because it distinguished him from his predecessors. He felt a strong respon-
sibility to change the tone of the relationship. “I was, in a sense,” he stated
in a later interview, “given carte blanche to try to change the emphases.
That’s exactly what they’d chosen me for, to try to set up a different feel
and a different kind of dialogue.”48
Reischauer’s emphasis on “feel” and “dialogue” is telling. After his ar-
rival in Tokyo, Reischauer met actively with intellectual, labor union, and
student groups. Despite his argument that the United States had failed to
listen to the Japanese effectively, he always considered his mission to be ex-
plaining “the basic rightness of U.S. foreign policy,” rather than changing
U.S.–Japanese relations based on Japanese reactions. As he wrote in a pri-
vate letter in February 1962 to William J. Lederer, author of the 1958 best-
seller The Ugly American and Far East editor of Reader’s Digest, “The lack
of understanding and support of the opposition groups is primarily the
result of some entirely mistaken but deeply ingrained Marxist ideas” that
equated U.S. capitalism with American imperialism. Reischauer dis-
missed this strain of thought as “patently ridiculous . . . The most impor-
tant thing in Japan-American relations is to help more of the Japanese public
see how absolutely wrong their ideas are.” Ongoing tensions over policies
and the presence of U.S. military bases, he claimed, “are subordinate in im-
portance to the problem of understanding.” During his ambassadorship,
Reischauer worked hard to foster a new appearance of the United States
as receptive and open to leftist and progressive concerns, rather than simply
a partner of Japanese conservatives or business organizations. But he
continued to believe that the U.S.–Japanese relationship was premised on a
fundamental hierarchy, wherein it was the United States’ responsibility to
educate the Japanese in the ways of responsible and healthy democracy. In
the coming years, Reischauer actively sought to change Japanese ideas about
its past and future to strengthen U.S.–Japanese relations and elevate Japan
as “the key to the future” of Asia.49
Both the embassy and Reischauer’s assessment of the problems plaguing
the U.S.–Japanese relationship reveal that attitudes, mentalities, and psy-
chologies continued to play a central role in American understandings of
the U.S.–Japanese alliance and Japan itself. In response to the upheaval of
Anpo, U.S. policymakers fell back on long-standing conceptions of Japa-
nese emotionalism and the need for an American-led transformation; only
by remaking the Japanese mind, Americans believed, could they mobilize

the Japanese behind American anticommunist leadership. Such explana-
tions dismissed a year of extensive popular protest as an emotional out-
burst and removed any need to critically reflect on American policy; even
Reischauer, who faulted the U.S. Embassy’s shortsighted response, re-
mained convinced of the overwhelming rightness of the United States’
global mission and its leadership of the U.S.–Japanese alliance. Still, U.S.
policymakers increasingly wondered whether their overwhelming focus on
political institutions and the military was the most effective path to their
paternalist goal of reforming Japan. Perhaps a new avenue of action was
needed, one that would finally solidify the public support that often proved
elusive throughout the decade.
Conclusion
The Anpo moment—both the creation of the new treaty and protests that
followed—brought the ongoing U.S.–Japanese friction over ideological and
democratic visions to the boiling point. This was because actors on all
sides—the American government and private actors, the Japanese govern-
ment, the Japanese opposition movement, and everyday Japanese citizens—
elevated the new security treaty as a vital testing ground for Japanese
democracy. For U.S. policymakers and Japanese conservatives, Anpo was
meant to revitalize this alliance by firmly rooting it in Japanese democratic
will. Dulles, MacArthur II, Kishi, and the people around them believed the
treaty could foster a renewed Japanese commitment to this relationship,
prove that it enjoyed robust democratic legitimacy, and mobilize the Japanese
people behind American anticommunist hegemony in Asia. But as simmering
protests throughout the previous decades demonstrate, the Japanese opposi-
tion had a very different idea of democracy. Calling on the public to take
personal responsibility to act as a restraint on the expression and strength-
ening of transnational state power, opposition forces such as the People’s
Council asserted that democracy was best expressed not through government-
centered consensus, but critical mobilization against the state. It was this
ideological clash that led all sides to imbue the treaty and the protests with
such deep meaning, fostering explosive protests and resentment.
Though the treaty passed, to U.S. policymakers this passage came at a
high price. The Anpo protests did not simply represent tensions in the U.S.–
Japanese alliance; they potentially symbolized the broader failure of
consensus-focused and militarized democracy, as well as the United States’
ability to foster democratic transformation in nonwhite states. U.S.
policymakers therefore anxiously sought out new points of agreement in

the U.S.–Japanese relationship, reaching out to intellectuals and students
to rebuild the U.S.–Japanese alliance. Rather than admitting shortcomings
of U.S. policymaking, they claimed that Anpo was a failure of Japanese
understanding—a convenient explanation that resurrected the wartime
scapegoat of the Japanese mind. In many ways, the American response was
a reflex, redoubling efforts that began during the occupation. As Reis-
chauer embarked on a renewed crusade to mobilize Japanese intellectual
and public opinion around the U.S.–Japanese alliance, U.S. policymakers
retained their firm belief that American tutelage could remake the Japanese
and secure American regional and global hegemony.
Yet 1960 was not 1945. Japan was no longer a defeated and devastated
enemy; instead, it had entered a period of unprecedented growth, indus-
trial expansion, and consumer possibilities. For many, this development was
a source of unanticipated optimism. As U.S. policymakers sought new ways
to recruit diverse populations, both in Japan and throughout Asia, Japan’s
economic prosperity and modernity came to symbolize universal possibili-
ties, a historical trajectory that could be facilitated around the world. In
response to such beliefs, Americans increasingly poured resources and en-
ergy into solidifying a new economic focus to the U.S.–Japanese alliance.
Economic growth and productivity, they now believed, could achieve the
long-sought “right” psychology, spirit, and willing mobilization. This new
approach would have far-reaching consequences.
• 6 •
Producing Democracy
T he Anpo protests raised serious questions not only about the

fabric of the U.S.–Japanese security alliance but also the broader Amer-
ican mission of fostering a stable and cooperative democracy in Japan—two
goals that policymakers routinely conflated. As Secretary of State Christian
Herter wrote to the embassies in Tokyo and Seoul in 1960, the riots may
have been unsuccessful in derailing the security treaty, but they still revealed
an alarming failure of the larger postwar project. Fifteen years removed
from the war, lamented Herter, Japan was “still a nation in search of it-
self,” its democracy far from secure. “Although the political forms that pres-
ently operate are predominantly those of democracy and representative
government . . . this system is now under severe test.” For Herter, the mas-
sive opposition staged by students, labor unionists, and citizens against
rearmament, military bases, and the revised security treaty viscerally
demonstrated that the prolonged effort to establish a firmly anticommu-
nist, psychologically strong, and thus “democratic” Japan had not yet suc-
ceeded. “Certainly,” he mused, “there is Japanese political leadership which
grasps the meaning of freedom in about the same fashion as do we. But
there are other forces in Japanese politics, significant forces which do not
share this understanding, even though they may use the vocabulary of
freedom.” In Herter’s telling, the democratic transformation that began
with wartime planning and continued through the occupation and inde-
pendence seemed far more fragile than anyone anticipated.
Yet U.S. officials also saw signs of hope. Highlighting Japan’s surging eco-
nomic growth, they embraced new possibilities for Japan’s future that em-
phasized economic prosperity and efficiency. Consistent in their belief that
a stable and cooperative U.S.–Japanese alliance was vital to their security,
Americans increasingly claimed that economic prosperity, rather than
defensive power or political institutions, would be the key to the future.
Japan’s economic resurgence, many now claimed, would not only enhance
U.S.–Japanese collaboration but also spark the needed Japanese spiritual
and psychological support for democracy. As Herter explained in his mes-
sage, “political freedom in Japan, as it is everywhere else where it func-
tions, is not only an idea to answer the needs of man’s spirit; it is also a
system of government which must meet the material needs of the Japanese
people. So long as Japan’s economy under a free system is adequate, as it
now is, to those needs and so long as it holds a reasonable promise of pro-
gress, as it now does, the prospects for political stability in freedom are
good.” For Herter and a growing chorus of U.S. policymakers, Japan could
overcome the people’s stubborn and misguided opposition and still be a
fully mobilized democratic Cold War ally. But this goal would be achieved
first and foremost through capitalist growth. As Herter claimed, American
policymakers believed that a “healthy,” democratic, and stable Japan rested
on the ability to fulfill material and consumer dreams for economic pro-
gress and a better life. This vision meant that the United States had to deepen
its focus on economic cooperation; Japan’s political and diplomatic future
now rested on its economic dreams.1
To be sure, this belief in prosperity’s stabilizing and democratizing po-
tential was not a post-Anpo invention. Since the economic retrenchment
programs of the late occupation, U.S. policymakers had emphasized that
economic growth was central to fostering political stability and the mental
dispositions necessary for democratic and anticommunist politics. In the
middle of the 1950s, as the U.S.–Japanese relationship became mired in de-
bates over rearmament and military bases, this narrative became increas-
ingly appealing to U.S. and Japanese leaders, who invested growing time
and attention in bolstering industrial capabilities and technological skills
in Japan. The crown jewel of this joint effort was an American program of
technical assistance that centered on the concept of productivity. Produc-
tivity programming sought to transplant American industrial practices and
management ideologies to Japan through a series of lecture tours, exchange
visits, and publications. It was premised on the claim that expanding the
economic “pie” would not only grow the economy but also benefit society
as a whole by offering “higher profits, better wages, and lower consumer
costs,” and thus a new level of social and political stability. Productivity
Producing Democracy 229
programming crafted by both the United States and Japan relied on the as-
sumption that labor and management should avoid clashing over the
division of resources, and instead collaborate in the creation of wealth. In
particular, such programming targeted Japanese labor unions, which had
long been resistant to Cold War political visions; productivity activities
called for the cooperative and steady pursuit of national economic growth.
In essence, they disseminated a vision of “freedom” premised on economic
prosperity. Such programming was not uncontroversial, but labor union
participation in productivity efforts steadily increased over the late 1950s
and early 1960s.2
Though both Americans and Japanese portrayed productivity activities
as technocratic and apolitical, their logic and assumptions overlapped
heavily with earlier thinking about democracy. The ideas that U.S. policy-
makers had once identified as key to the creation of Japanese democracy
were front and center in productivity programming. Like democracy, pro-
ductivity required a “healthy” mental state, a “productivity consciousness”
that would channel human action into the peaceful and cooperative pursuit
of growth, rather than disruptive protests. Like democracy, productivity re-
quired people to think of themselves as individuals (rather than members
of a class) who could personally and economically benefit from high wages,
increased production, and new consumer products while realizing the need
to cooperate with others. Like democracy, productivity required a willing-
ness to engage and solidify, rather than challenge, existing political and eco-
nomic structures, hierarchies, and institutions. The growing fixation with
economic growth in the late 1950s and early 1960s thus not only helped
naturalize capitalist hierarchies but also channeled languages, ideologies,
and concepts once used to describe political democracy into a language of
economic cooperation and productivity. It was in part thanks to this con-
ceptual continuity that productivity emerged as a key site of American–
Japanese cooperation.3
Equally consequential, the United States’ emphasis on productivity and
growth recalibrated Japan’s function as a model for all of Asia, a vision ea-
gerly seized upon by U.S. and Japanese policymakers, along with private
agents such as Japanese businessmen and American officials in organizations
such as the Ford Foundation. During the signing of the San Francisco Peace
Treaty, American policymakers had zealously sought to promote Japan’s
postwar political transformation as a showcase of the opportunities avail-
able under benevolent American leadership. While the wave of protests that
coalesced around military bases and exploded with Anpo severely under-
mined such hopes, Japan’s rising economic fortunes offered new possibili-
ties for the Japanese “model” in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Between
1955 and 1960, Japan’s GNP grew at an average annual rate of 9 percent,
spurring widespread talk of an “economic miracle.” Riding this economic
surge, Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato announced his famed Income Doubling
Plan in November 1960, promising to dramatically increase every Japanese
family’s earnings. American and Japanese policymakers repeatedly cited this
growth as validation of their efforts to boost Japanese productivity. It there-
fore seemed increasingly natural to present Japan as a model not of milita-
rized democracy, but of productive and harmonious capitalist prosperity
that could assist other states in turn. Just as Japan had benefited from Amer-
ican tutelage, went the logic, other Asian states—especially in Southeast
Asia—could now benefit from Japan’s knowledge, technical expertise, and
success.4
With American aid and support, Japan worked to build a technical as-
sistance and development aid apparatus that brought economic elites from
across Asia to Japan to learn the wonders of Japanese industrial, consumer,
and technical progress. With U.S. funding, government officials and busi-
nessmen from Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan traveled to study in Japan
while Japan sought to export its “productivity consciousness.” Beyond the
material benefits and technical exchange offered by such programming, it
also had visible diplomatic value. As both Americans and Japanese noted, it
sought to bolster Japan’s still shaky legitimacy throughout Asia, associating
its experts less with imperial violence and more with technocratic benevo-
lence. These efforts began in the 1950s and accelerated in the aftermath of
the Anpo protests, especially with President John F. Kennedy’s emphasis on
development aid, epitomized by the creation of the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID). American aid officials also con-
ceived of such efforts as targeted at the Japanese themselves; active Japa-
nese participation in economic development, they hoped, would move
Japan away from the psychological torment of Anpo and infuse it with a
new sense of national and regional purpose. Indeed, despite historians’
focus on Western-led development diplomacy, Japanese economists, busi-
nesses, and specialists became increasingly crucial agents in propagating
capitalist and consensus-driven economic models among those deemed
“underdeveloped.”5
The ideological continuities between U.S. thinking about psychology, de-
mocracy, and anticommunism in the 1950s, and productivity, develop-
ment, and political stability in the early 1960s meant that American efforts
also perpetuated key contradictions. Like the reverse course and rearma-
ment, the elevation of Japan as an efficient and technologically advanced
model of economic growth resurrected imperial and wartime ideas, proj-
ects, and personnel. American visions relied on ideologies of Japanese sci-
entific and technical superiority, which Japanese leaders had once cited to
justify the aggressive pursuit of empire under the banner of allegedly be-
nevolent Japanese domination over Asia. Though Asian countries criticized
Japanese aid efforts as the revival of the wartime imperial quest to build a
“co-prosperity sphere,” many also accepted Japanese loans, aid, and assis-
tance and joined international development projects led by the United
States and Japan. This included countries such as India and Indonesia, which
refused to sign the San Francisco Peace Treaty out of opposition to the U.S.–
Japanese alliance.6
This chapter traces how productivity programming channeled ideologies
once associated with political democracy to envision a psychologically
“healthy” and cooperative national body mobilized around economic
growth at home and abroad. In the second half of the 1950s, such efforts
became an important focal point in the U.S.–Japanese alliance. They ac-
celerated in the early 1960s in the aftermath of the Anpo protests, providing
a key foundation for joint American–Japanese development efforts, which
sought to export the Japanese “productivity consciousness” to facilitate
Asian cooperation, Japanese regional hegemony, and American legitimacy
across the region. To tell this story, this chapter proceeds in three parts. The
first section examines the origins and ideological contours of American and
Japanese productivity efforts in the early Cold War, particularly the belief
that productivity was the “state of mind” akin to democracy. The second
section examines how American and Japanese leaders sought to utilize the
productivity program to tame Japanese labor activism, and labor unions’
reactions to the claim that “democratic unionism” necessitated cooperation
and the pursuit of growth behind managerial leadership. The final section
examines American and Japanese efforts to turn productivity programming
outward in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The United States and Japan
worked together to elevate Japan as a model of economic growth across
Asia through training programs in Japan and the creation of a regional pro-
ductivity organization under Japanese leadership. By the early 1960s, the
discourse, ideologies, and practices of productivity, in Japan and throughout
Asia, had become a new foundation of transpacific cooperation, serving as
a key site to remake and revitalize this crucial alliance.
The Origins of Technical Assistance and Productivity Programming

In the aftermath of World War II, fostering economic growth and prosperity
became a central goal of American Cold War diplomacy. Both in Wash-
ington, DC, and abroad, U.S. policymakers were convinced that the United
States needed to help other countries to become technologically advanced

and capitalistic economies that engaged in a global web of trade and com-
merce. This thinking drew on imperial philanthropic and government
projects of earlier decades, in which Americans sought to “civilize” and
“uplift” nations such as the Philippines, Cuba, and China by exporting
their own technological and economic systems. But such measures were
dwarfed by the urgency and scope of postwar projects. With memories of
the Great Depression still fresh in their minds, U.S. officials took it as
self-evident that economic distress sent people and nations into political
extremism, especially communism. To prevent the recurrence of global
chaos and war, Americans had to export knowledge, expertise, and money
(both private and public), revitalize overseas economies, and prevent class-
based conflicts that fostered extremist ideologies.7
In American eyes, this was a project of global proportions that would
benefit both “developed” and “underdeveloped” states. In 1948, the United
States embarked on the European Recovery Plan, better known as the
Marshall Plan, to rebuild and revitalize the war-torn economies of Western
Europe. In his 1949 inaugural address, President Harry Truman extended its
logic to the rest of the world when he announced the Point Four program, a
quest to make “the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress
available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas . . . Our
aim should be to help the free peoples of the world, through their own ef-
forts, to produce more food, more clothing, more materials for housing, and
more mechanical power to lighten their burdens.” While historians have
highlighted the differences between U.S. efforts in the industrial world and
the global south, the visions and logic that animated both were equally am-
bitious and included key similarities. In particular, they emphasized that eco-
nomic growth would foster the mental strength and cooperative attitudes
necessary to ward off external and internal extremism and aggression.
Moreover, both projects offered the United States as the model and inspira-
tion for economic, industrial, and material abundance, which in turn would
foster social stability and peace. Alongside military might, U.S. economic
knowledge would be the tool of anticommunist mobilization.8
One key to this effort was the export of American business practices and
management techniques. U.S. industry, went the logic, had been so successful
in increasing production that the fruits of its growing wealth reached busi-
ness owners and workers alike, allegedly transcending “the class conflicts
that arose from scarcity” and plagued other societies. While labor unrest at
home occasionally raised questions about the soundness of this vision, it
was integral to the Marshall Plan. With the participation of U.S. business
leaders, the U.S. government sought to transfer American corporate and
management models overseas to foster industrial growth and social stability.

As part of the Marshall Plan, U.S. officials launched the United States Tech-
nical Assistance and Productivity Mission in 1948. Among other things, it
arranged for European business and labor teams to visit the United States,
offered productivity training at seminars on both sides of the Atlantic, and
helped found productivity centers in various countries. In 1953, these efforts
culminated in the creation of the European Productivity Agency (EPA),
which shared techniques and information, coordinated study missions
throughout Europe and the United States to foster European unity, and
evangelized the gospel of productivity as the solution to class conflict and
political division. The EPA was heavily funded by the United States, with a
2.5 million-dollar grant upon its formation, along with 10 million dollars of
additional funding to cover the first three years of the EPA’s operation.9
Similar visions led to the beginning of a productivity program in post-
occupation Japan. The initial impetus for this program came from Japa-
nese management organizations. Most important was the Keizai doyukai
(KD) (Economic Friends Association), a group of younger, middle-ranking
managers—most members were in their 40s—who argued that managerial
capitalism was the solution to Japan’s social, economic, and political ills.
Against a backdrop of vibrant labor activism and extreme postwar poverty
during the early years of the occupation, KD called for a new level of coop-
eration between capital and labor to “surpass old feudalism.” It envisioned a
“‘reformed capitalism’: a high-productivity, high-wage economy that could
afford to avoid strikes by nurturing cooperative labor-management rela-
tions.” For KD, the key to achieving this vision was enhancing managerial
authority, and KD called for more management participation by depart-
ment and section managers. Managers, claimed KD, were “politically neutral
and technically elite” and thus capable of thinking beyond their immediate
personal interests. Efficient and empowered management could link and
balance the interests of capital and labor in the construction of a newly
stable, equitable, and democratic political and economic order. KD mem-
bers quickly recognized that American business leaders were thinking
along similar lines and hoped that the United States would help popularize
an empowered managerial class in Japan. In 1953, KD director Gōshi
Kōhei toured Europe, including a visit to the Anglo-American productivity
council; he returned to Japan impressed by productivity as an allegedly
apolitical concept that could elevate the status and influence of manage-
ment and foster a cooperative spirit among unions. That same year, U.S.
Embassy commercial attaché Wesley Haraldson informed Japanese busi-
ness leaders, including KD, that the United States was interested in funding
a productivity program in Japan.10
In June 1954, this productivity push took institutional form. Several

Japanese organizations, including the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and
the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), with the support
of the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI), pooled together
800,000 yen to create the Japan Productivity Center (JPC). In its founding
statement, the JPC declared that it sought to “advance the mutual interests
of managers, workers and consumers, striving to . . . improve real wages
and the standard of living through a reduction of costs achieved by the
more effective and scientific employment of resources, manpower, and
equipment.” This emphasis on managers, workers, and consumers reflected
the belief that productivity involved far more than increasing work effi-
ciency or adopting new technology. Rather, productivity would expand
production, increase employment, and raise Japan’s standard of living; the
benefits would spread to all of Japan, diminishing economic barriers and
divisions through the reform, rather than eschewal, of capitalism. Gōshi
served as the JPC’s first managing director, working as an evangelist and
key partner with the United States in expanding productivity in Japan. Al-
though Gōshi talked about the JPC as a cooperative entity, the organ-
ization’s initial leadership and board was largely composed of business ex-
ecutives; no labor representatives were involved in its creation. Over the
next five years, the JPC would grow from a small office to a large operation
staffed by 170 people. It ran seminars and training programs; brought in
experts and consultants; distributed numerous pamphlets, books, and films;
arranged foreign tours and exchange programs for both management and
labor; developed a network of regional centers; and ran two demonstration
plants.11
The JPC became the United States’ formal partner in the pursuit of pro-
ductivity in Japan. In March 1954, as part of Japan’s entry into the Mutual
Security Program (MSP), the U.S. government also committed to funding
the “improvement of the managerial and marketing efficiency of Japanese
industrial enterprises through, among other means, technical assistance.” In
April 1955, Japanese foreign minister Shigemitsu Mamoru and U.S. ambas-
sador John Allison signed a formal agreement anointing the JPC as the
United States’ official partner in a formal productivity program. Over the
next five years, alongside money from the Japanese government, business
organizations, and corporations, American technical assistance aid funded
the programming and expansion of the JPC, reaching a peak of 2.5 million
dollars per year in 1958 and 1959. The American portion of this program
was coordinated through the International Cooperation Administration
(ICA), the government agency that managed MSP’s technical assistance
component; the ICA opened a special operations mission (USOM) at the
embassy in Tokyo that administered the American program in Japan. Ameri-

cans and Japanese alike celebrated this investment as the opening of a new
era of prosperity. As Gōshi mused in 1955, the productivity movement was
“the only way to modernize Japan, to make the lifestyle of the Japanese
people wealthy and bright.”12
Beyond spurring higher profits, Japanese participants hoped that produc-
tivity could bring structural changes to Japan’s economy. Their thinking
drew in part from the long-standing Japanese critique that Japan had a
“dual economy” of modern industry built on top of feudalistic social and
economic structures—namely agriculture and small business sectors still
driven by family loyalty and paternalism, low wages, and low productivity. A
desire to overcome these conditions led prominent Japanese economists,
including those who had opposed the deleterious economic impact of rear-
mament, to support productivity programming and work with the JPC. For
example, the famous economist Arisawa Hiromi, who served on the board
of the productivity center, argued that the only way to close this gap was
to improve and modernize Japan’s industrial structure, which would ulti-
mately expand employment. Other prominent economists such as Na-
kayama Ichirō, a member of the faculty at Hitotsubashi University who
chaired Japan’s central labor relations commission from 1946 to 1960,
served as vice-president of the JPC. It was Nakayama who first coined the
concept of wage doubling that would become the inspiration for Ikeda’s
income-doubling plan; the key to doubling wages, he claimed, was to in-
crease productive capacity.13
The desire to expand Japan’s productivity also stemmed from the end of
the Korean War. U.S. military procurement during the war had boosted
Japan’s economy significantly, yet the recession that followed the end of the
war quickly revealed the dangers of depending on U.S. military spending.
In 1955, the Japanese government announced a five-year plan for economic
independence, seeking to foster economic stability and full employment
while no longer depending on U.S. military procurement. Alongside a
growing emphasis on promoting exports and encouraging domestic con-
sumption, increasing Japanese productivity was central to this vision. In the
Japanese government’s Economic Planning Agency 1956 White Paper, which
famously declared that postwar recovery had ended, economist Gotō
Yōnosuke placed technological innovation and productivity at the center
of Japan’s growth, the source of a “great economic upswing.” Gotō therefore
called for the “modernization of Japan’s economic structure . . . [M]oder-
nization is the process for making economic resources, including human
capital, in a given country interact with each other in order to sustain the
process of promoting productivity.”14
Japanese economists, the JPC, and American officials therefore all talked
explicitly about the need to “modernize” Japanese small business as part of
expanding Japan’s economy. In June 1956, for example, the JPC established
a program for small business representatives. Through seminars and lec-
tures, it sought to teach participants the practices of larger, modernized in-
dustrial plants. By December 1959, 903 people had taken part. The JPC
hoped that its message would reach even larger audiences. As a 1959 JPC
pamphlet bemoaned, many small enterprises still preserved “the so-called
‘dual structure of the Japanese economy.’ And we keenly feel the necessity of
increasing productivity to modernize small business or the backward por-
tion of the economic structure.” Like earlier calls for educational reform and
military training, productivity and growth were portrayed as the solution to
long-standing social “pathologies” in Japan. Productivity was a way to bring
“backward” and “premodern” socioeconomic structures into the modern,
capitalist era.15
For both its American and Japanese boosters, successful productivity pro-
gramming would not just produce structural changes, whether through
technological innovation, new production techniques, or economic effi-
ciency. Equally important, productivity programming would inspire a
mental and psychological revolution. As the Eisenhower administration’s
policy coordination body, the Operations Coordinating Board, asserted in
1955, “the productivity programs . . . stress changes in attitudes which have
inhibited economic expansion abroad as distinguished from narrow con-
cerns with technological improvement and rationalization.” Indeed, both
American and Japanese efforts with the JPC conceived of productivity in
terms strikingly similar to democracy; like democracy, productivity relied
not simply on formal policies and techniques, but required proper psycho-
logical and spiritual attitudes, in particular the ability to overcome irratio-
nality, collectivism, and selfishness in favor of cooperative responsibility,
respect for leadership, and rigor. As one 1959 JPC pamphlet asserted,
higher productivity ultimately depended on the right “psychological cli-
mate” and the creation of a “productivity consciousness.” Nakayama, in
the short JPC pamphlet An Introduction to Productivity, similarly focused
on ideological inclinations and mindsets. “The most general and important
factor affecting long term productivity,” he explained, “is a change in the
general atmosphere of society which arises in the process of such economic
development. The change in the atmosphere can be defined, in a word, as
the birth of a way of life suitable for industrialization.”16
One key link between earlier political visions and “productivity con-
sciousness” was productivity programming’s emphasis on leadership, es-
pecially effective management, as the key to changing both practices and
psychologies. As Nakayama asserted, it “goes without saying that the ability

and character of leaders will affect labor production directly as well as in-
directly.” In keeping with the thinking of KD, JPC programming empha-
sized the creation of a new class of leaders—technocratic managers—that
would bring Japan into an efficient, productive, and cooperative future. Im-
proving Japanese management practices also became a major focus of
American efforts with the JPC. The first American exchange team to visit
Japan in the summer of 1955 explicitly aimed to enlighten the Japanese in
the wonders of American-style management. This team included William
Robbins, vice president of General Foods Corporation, who discussed top
management and costs; Arthur C. Nielson, executive vice president at mar-
keting and public relations firm A. C. Nielson; and Lee Vance, executive
vice president of the David C. Cook publishing company, who spoke about
production. The group gave seminars in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and
Fukuoka to more than three hundred Japanese upper management officials
to “provide Japanese industrial management with intimate contact with
outstanding American management personalities.” The team also toured
factories and other workplaces, where, armed with charts and visual aids,
they offered their thoughts on the needs of Japanese business. Alongside
lectures about cost estimating, profits planning, quality control, and other
technical issues, the group highlighted the importance of managerial lead-
ership and authority. Though they presented their expertise as apolitical,
they simultaneously claimed that such leadership best developed in an
economic system premised on market-based competition, rather than ex-
tensive state regulation or state control. “Without any dogmatism,” gushed
an American report on the trip, “the Americans have tried to inject . . .
the value of competition to able managements, consumers, and the nation
as whole.” JPC material echoed similar ideas. As one pamphlet claimed,
“respect for managerial authority is an indispensable element in the healthy
progress of business.”17
This emphasis on managerial authority also stemmed from trends in mid-
century America, where effective management was heralded as the key not
only to corporate prosperity but also worker satisfaction and broader social
health. Celebrated management consultants such as Peter Drucker empha-
sized that effective management not only produced better market results
but could also encourage employees to seek fulfillment and satisfaction
through the workplace. Managers, Drucker claimed, could inspire their
workers to actively take responsibility for the social and economic welfare
of the organization. Indeed, Drucker’s vision overlapped heavily with that
of KD; both sought “strategies in which profit making also solved social
problems” by producing social cohesion through the harmonization of
public and private interests. Throughout the second half of the 1950s, Amer-
ican management consultants regularly visited Japan. After his celebrated
1954 text, The Practice of Management, was translated into Japanese,
Drucker traveled to Japan several times and came to believe that Japanese
management practices best embodied his core teachings. Other management
consultants who gave talks and programs in Japan included Melvin J. Evans,
an advocate of the human relations management philosophy; and Walter P.
Coombs, an authority on small business management.18
In their seminars and lectures, these figures espoused the managers’ need
to assert authority and encourage workers’ close emotional and psycho-
logical association with the corporation’s success. As Evans put it, managers
had to foster “character, attitude, knowledge and energy” by benevolently
listening to their workers, considering their welfare, and creating “an at-
mosphere for employees to work voluntarily.” These messages seem to have
resonated with many attendees, who declared that following these teach-
ings would help them effectively lead their companies and manage labor
politics. Mitamura Yasutake, for example, managing director of the P. S.
Concrete company, observed that attendance at Evans’ seminar aided him
in negotiations with his workers. The seminar “educated” him on “the im-
portance of harmony . . . One thing which I keenly felt while negotiating
with the union on one hand and hearing the lectures on the other was that
managers must be honest and love their employees . . . if I had not taken
the lesson, an ugly labor dispute would have occurred in my company.”
Mitamura’s praise not only served to reinforce the lesson that Japanese
management could improve with American expertise and knowledge. He
also adopted the message that effective management would come from a
change in attitudes rather than the acceptance of worker’s demands—he
applied new ideas and education to foster harmony and social peace in his
company, which forestalled a strike that might have stopped work and
reduced profits. Harmony, cooperation, and respect for the individual,
then, were the keys to personal fulfillment and industrial success, which
were one and the same.19
Similarly, Coombs offered a seminar for small business management in
March 1961, jointly sponsored by the JPC and the State Department.
Seeking to foster the “development of modern methods in small business
sector of Japanese industry,” Coombs emphasized that effective manage-
ment would offer “new ideas for peaceful development and harmony.” To
do so, managers should reinforce that “each person is different,” appreciate
the “psychology of human nature,” and maintain awareness of the “results
of poor relationships.” Coombs closed with a discussion of “conflict or har-
mony—do we have a choice?” Clearly, his answer was yes; new manage-
ment techniques could harmonize labor relations even in small business.

Interestingly, this seminar was not for small business owners or executives.
Rather, participants were undergoing a year of training in order to do
consulting work for the JPC, the Japanese government, banks, and small
businesses in Japan. In disseminating American expertise, JPC programming
elevated not just the ideas of American management, but also the role of the
consultant as key to propagating this management revolution.20
The JPC also inaugurated a travel and study program for Japanese busi-
ness and labor leaders to visit the United States. In June 1955, just as the
American team arrived in Japan, the first Japanese study team crossed
the Pacific. Composed of iron and steel plant executives, along with the
chairman of the Kawasaki steel labor unions federation, this team returned
seemingly eager to spread the gospel of productivity. After meeting the
returnees in September, the American consul in Fukuoka, James Martin Jr.,
proclaimed that “The group was genuinely impressed by American produc-
tivity which runs about ten times as high as Japan’s.” As a memorandum
by the American reporting officer declared, “it was obvious from everything
that was said that the Japanese present were sincerely interested in produc-
tivity and that they would work hard to increase productivity here.” The trip
and subsequent meeting were “remarkably successful” in “spreading the
right kind of information about the achievements of the American economy.”
As far as Americans were concerned, the trip’s accomplishment stemmed
less from the exposure to new techniques and instead from building
Japanese awareness of new possibilities, especially the consumer and
material wealth enabled by American-style manufacturing, management,
and cooperative labor politics. As Martin concluded, the event was “suc-
cessful in arousing interest, which is the first necessary step to carrying out
a successful productivity revolution.”21
Yet like previous American discussions of Japan’s democratization, Amer-
ican hopes were laced with worries that the Japanese did not grasp pro-
ductivity’s dependence on proper attitudes and mental states. While all the
speakers talked positively about their experiences, a lot of work remained
to instill the spirit of productivity. “[A]ll of them seemed not to have com-
prehended the basic principles of the American economic system,” one report
exclaimed. “They believed that something could be done to improve Japa-
nese productivity. But they seemed not to have grasped why the whole
spirit was different in the USA.” American observers often lamented alleg-
edly simplistic Japanese thinking, which failed to recognize the need to rig-
orously adapt the U.S. model to Japan’s different circumstances and tradi-
tions. “They seemed to be looking for a magic key that would answer their
problems—one member of the team gave a verbatim digest of Mr. Robbins
(General Foods) three day lectures . . . the implication was that if a Japa-
nese company would pattern its organization on the line-and-staff chart
used by General Foods, all its problems would vanish.” This criticism was
rather absurd; the entire goal of the trip to the United States was to awaken
Japanese executives to the miracles of American industrial techniques, and
convince them to apply these ideas in Japan. Moreover, it drew from long-
standing stereotypes that the Japanese were simplistic copycats and incapable
of real innovation or complex rational thought. Americans thus perpetu-
ated the belief that an ill-defined “spirit,” not just changes in institutions and
practices, was the key to economic and political transformation. Like mili-
tary and political reformers before them, productivity program officials si-
multaneously celebrated and questioned Japan’s ability to embrace the
United States’ universal model.22
Nowhere was the intellectual continuity between American understandings
of the prewar failure of Japanese democracy and the postwar failure of
Japanese productivity clearer than in a 1956 report by industrial manage-
ment consultant W. S. Landes. Landes arrived in Japan in August 1955
and spent five months observing Japanese industry; he also provided
consulting services to seven companies, paid for by the JPC. In his final
report, which he wrote for USOM, and which was also published by the
JPC, Landes condemned Japanese productivity as “deplorably low” and in
urgent need of an infusion of American, ideas, and techniques. The Japa-
nese, he lamented, were still locked in backward “culture, habits, tradi-
tions, and methods of thinking.” Japanese managers, argued Landes, could
not delegate responsibility or make individual decisions. Hopelessly locked
in premodern mentalities, they remained dependent on the ideas and opin-
ions of others. “In large plants frequently as many as ten or twelve represen-
tatives of various management levels might have to be called together for a
discussion on problems that the average American executive would de-
cide without any hesitation.”23
This lack of an individual confidence was only part of the problem. Res-
urrecting wartime claims that described the Japanese as prone to emotional
extremes, Landes further excoriated Japanese executives for their “notice-
able absence of reasoning power” and complete “failure” to successfully
solve problems. “In some cases, the evidence was very strong that the indi-
vidual was incapable of making a decision without being influenced by
emotions such as envy, pride, suspicion, personal dislike or superstition. The
tendency to go from one extreme to the other was frequently noticed.”
Landes concluded that the Japanese would not only have to apply new tech-
niques but also new psychologies to achieve economic prosperity. “The
Japanese way of life is pleasant in many respects, but will have to depart
from some of their time honored traditions, and Japanese businessmen must
adopt more of the Western psychology, if we are to have the right founda-
tion for further gains in productivity.” Landes’ analysis depended on and
perpetuated deep stereotypes that had once served to justify American in-
tervention to transform the Japanese in the name of building a rational,
individualistic, democratic mind. Now this mental transformation would
serve the purpose of prosperity.24
This approach also served to maintain a sense of hierarchy in the U.S.–
Japanese relationship long after the end of the occupation. It perpetuated
a dichotomy of “traditional” and “modern,” a framework that now stood
at the core of contemporary American understandings about the non-
Western world and economic development. Despite its industrial economy
and democratic political system, Americans proclaimed that like so many
non-Western nations, Japan remained mired in the wilds of “tradition”; in
the words of historian Nils Gilman, “inward looking, inert . . . superstitious,
and fearful of change.” Having achieved the ways of modernity, the United
States was justified in continuing to treat the Japanese as a junior partner.
Just as the Japanese had once been democratic pupils, now Americans
would tutor them in the ways of capitalistic growth—not simply through
technology and techniques but also in the attitudes and psychologies of
prosperity. Nor was this merely an American assertion; rather, the JPC’s
own publicity materials also parroted this belief. As Ishizaka Taizō,
chairman of Toshiba, asserted in a JPC pamphlet entitled Japan Produc-
tivity Activities, “The United States is at the height of prosperity. American
people are convinced that the prosperity will continue and are determined
that it should be continued. To find out through observation where their
belief and determination come from will provide a guideline for the pros-
perity of the Japanese economy.” The United States’ position as teacher and
leader was not just dependent on its victory in the war, its superior political
system, or its overwhelming military power. Rather, the United States’ fa-
cility with the wonders of capitalism, prosperity, and proper economic
leadership—especially in the form of its spirit, “determination,” and man-
agerial skills—became equally important to its global hegemony.25
With so much work to be done in fostering the “belief and determination”
necessary to prosperity in Japan, the JPC developed a vast range of program-
ming that carried these ideas to thousands of people. By 1960, it had pub-
lished and circulated 106,900 copies of books and 385,700 copies of pam-
phlets, along with a Japanese weekly newspaper, two Japanese monthly
newsletters, and an English monthly newsletter. In addition, the JPC pub-
lished seventy-nine reports by teams returning from the United States and
Europe; often up to five hundred pages long, these books detailed their
experiences and included recommendations they believed especially appro-

priate for Japan. Titles included “Iron and Steel,” “Prosperity Economy and
Management,” “Automatic Parts Industry,” and “Management and Develop-
ment of Medium and Small Enterprise.” Films dealing with productivity,
many provided by the United States, had been shown to over 1,586,000
people by the JPC, regional productivity centers, supportive companies, and
trade unions. Together with a network of regional centers, the JPC conducted
233 seminars led by fifty-five different visiting experts in both industry and
labor fields, many recruited by American technical assistance officials.26
The productivity program also maintained a vigorous schedule of study
teams. In 1961, for example, Japan planned to send sixty-one study teams
to the United States; topics included industrial research financing, steel in-
dustry management, small business material purchasing, a foreman’s study
team, municipal government, small business construction, and yet another
top management team, all of which would stay for an average of one month.
Upon their return, study team members often took a leading role in
spreading the “gospel” of productivity, which the JPC encouraged through
a network of newsletters and published reports, speaking tours, seminars,
and even a productivity club for returned participants. One returnee from
a small and medium business management team proclaimed that he had
given eighteen speeches since returning from the United States a few months
before; “I am as busy as a political candidate on a stumping tour.” The JPC
also developed a network of affiliated associations to facilitate sharing in-
formation. In October 1957, for example, the JPC helped establish the Japan
Marketing Association to promote new research through conferences, semi-
nars, and lectures; this association’s membership was composed of three
hundred companies. The March 1959 creation of the Japan Institute of In-
dustrial Engineering sought to disseminate information on new techniques
through lecture meetings, seminars, plant visits, and consultations by U.S.
specialists. By the early 1960s, a wide array of Japanese companies—
including top executives at leading Japanese firms, such as Hitachi,
Toshiba, and Nissan—had come into contact with productivity program-
ming, through printed information, films, or visits to the United States.27
ICA funding also facilitated new programs in business education, dedi-
cated to raising productivity by developing institutional expertise, fostering
cooperation between universities and industry, and countering Marxist eco-
nomic thought. For example, Tokyo’s Waseda University worked with the
University of Michigan to expand Waseda’s programs in industrial engi-
neering and industrial management. Fifty faculty members from Waseda re-
ceived training in Michigan, while thirty-nine consultants from Michigan
provided guidance to Waseda in fields such as operations research, mar-
keting, human relations, industrial psychology, and computers. Working

with Michigan advisers, Waseda professors made more than 140 visits to
various plants, associations, and government offices throughout Japan. In
1958, Waseda created the Institute for Research and Productivity, which was
designed to provide technical assistance to Japanese industry; by the end of
1960, this institute had held twenty-six seminars, with seven thousand par-
ticipants from 470 companies and had undertaken sixteen research projects
for major Japanese companies such as Yawata Steel, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Oil,
and the Japan Ministry of Construction. Tokyo’s Keio University developed a
similar relationship with Harvard Business School, exchanging professors
with the goal of developing a business school at Keio that utilized American
methods of business education, especially the case study method. Business
school staffers had attended JPC programs in management and Keio also ran
seminars on management for Japanese executives.28
By 1960, the combined effect of this avalanche of seminars, publications,
speaking tours, and visits helped popularize productivity as a key site of
American–Japanese cooperation and an important mode of thinking among
Japan’s economic elites. What is more, the accelerating growth of Japan’s
economy over the second half of the 1950s allowed JPC publications to
celebrate a change in attitudes—the so-called spirit of productivity—as a
core component of Japan’s remarkable economic resurgence. In March 1962,
the seventh top management team visited the United States; members in-
cluded the president of Hitachi, the president of Sanwa Bank, and several
high-level executives from Nissan. They embarked on a three-week tour in-
cluding visits to Chrysler, United Auto Workers, IBM, Harvard University,
and RCA. These top management groups were the most visible participants
in the study team and exchange program, becoming influential advocates
of productivity programs and ideas. In their meeting with USAID adminis-
trator Fowler Hamilton, they presented him with a JPC pamphlet entitled
Growth of Japanese Economy and Productivity. This pamphlet depicted
Japan as technologically advanced, a center of innovation that had char-
acter, determination, and a “vigorous entrepreneurial spirit.” Japan’s recent
economic success, proclaimed the JPC, can “be regarded as a reflection of
the determination of business to attain higher productivity. Therefore, this
positive attitude for increased productivity can surely be called a driving
force in the rapid economic growth of Japan.”29 In essence, Japan’s economy
grew because the Japanese people wanted it to grow. Productivity, then,
emerged from the proper mental commitment. Replacing democratic dreams
premised on empowerment and equality, this economic vision suggested an
anticommunist political and economic order based on hierarchical, man-
aged, and cooperative economic relations.
Productivity and Japanese Labor

While managers and businessmen were the cornerstone of the productivity
program’s vision of leadership, they were far from its only focus. Produc-
tivity advocates also sought to transform Japanese labor; as Foreign Min-
ister Shigemitsu asserted in 1955, “This purpose of this program is to assist
in every way possible . . . the encouragement of a healthy labor move-
ment.” Officials sought to include labor in productivity programming not
only to neutralize the fierce and sustained strikes and vibrant shop-floor
activism that marked Japan’s postwar labor movement. They also hoped
that the productivity movement could tame workers’ intense anti–Cold War
advocacy, which had exploded in protests against occupation-era economic
rationalization, the peace treaty, rearmament, and U.S. military bases, cul-
minating in the Anpo demonstrations. Just as occupation authorities once
defined democratic practices and mentalities as willing mobilization behind
responsible leaders, productivity sought to convince workers to accept and
celebrate their loyalty to a responsible and technocratic manager. In this
paternalistic worldview, workers’ obedience would not be a surrender but
instead the realization of freedom and the foundation of a consensus-based
democracy.30
This outreach to Japanese labor unions was not new. It had begun during
the occupation and continued well into the 1950s. As one American offi-
cial put it in 1948, fostering responsible “democratic trade unionism” was
crucial to decreasing labor unions’ vulnerability to communist and author-
itarian “abuses.” As labor unions were often participants in activism
against the U.S.–Japanese alliance, U.S. officials also dedicated time and ef-
forts to increasing labor’s support of policies such as rearmament and the
San Francisco Peace Treaty. U.S. Embassy officials portrayed the United
States, and liberal democracy more broadly, as fundamentally friendly to
labor and worked with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to con-
duct outreach programs, promoting U.S. labor publications and films and
funding exchange programs that brought Japanese labor leaders to the
United States.31
Alongside this emphasis on anticommunist and pro-American sentiments,
the growth of the productivity movement increased the American focus on
fostering voluntary acceptance of capitalist relations, especially manage-
ment’s benevolent authority. As a 1955 Eisenhower administration state-
ment explained, the United States had to “encourage the strengthening in
foreign countries of free and democratic trade unions . . . in recognition of
the vital role of free enterprise in achieving rising levels of production and
standards of living essential to the economic progress and defensive strength

of the free world.” Democracy did not equal political activism or control
over the workplace; democratic trade unions contributed to the broader
successes of “free enterprise” and “functioned alongside free management
within a free economy.” Promoting such ideas seemed particularly urgent
in Japan, where militant labor unions defiantly rejected this vision of de-
mocracy and called for a direct and equal voice in workplace decisions such
as job assignments and wages. As one Japanese labor leader asserted in
1959, “the demands of the managerial organization of the company and
those of ourselves, the worker, are always opposed.” “Democratizing” the
mind of Japanese labor, then, required more than anticommunist vigilance.
In American eyes, workers had to accept the hierarchies of a “free economy”
and their obedience to employers as inherent to consensus-based politics.32
With American assistance, the JPC undertook extensive outreach to Japa-
nese labor. More so than programs designed for management, it was in
labor programming that the conceptual framework of democracy and citi-
zenship, and not just economic growth and living standards, was most ap-
parent. Productivity materials geared at Japanese management had relied
heavily on ideas that were core to mid-century understandings of democ-
racy, such as the importance of proper mentalities and the emphasis on
leadership and responsible individualism, but they rarely explicitly men-
tioned democracy. American and JPC programming for labor, on the other
hand, especially visits from American consultants, explicitly sought to mo-
bilize labor to join the productivity movement by invoking democratic
verbiage to legitimize the creation of a “productivity consciousness.” In
doing so, productivity programming cast democracy as the product of
apolitical and technocratic consensus; it explicitly called on workers to es-
chew “political” and “ideological” unionism, which it associated with pro-
tests against U.S. military bases and demands for shop-floor control. Only
by keeping their focus on peaceful bargaining with management, techno-
logical advancement, and economic benefit, including wealth creation and
the expansion of consumer options, could Japanese workers contribute to a
truly “healthy” society. As one 1959 JPC publication put it, the produc-
tivity movement helped “the Japanese, who are not well accustomed to de-
mocracy and liberal thinking, [to] became aware that technological mod-
ernization is inseparable with human modernization.”33
As with outreach to management, productivity programming heavily re-
lied on bringing American consultants to conduct seminars with labor
leaders. It particularly emphasized this effort after 1960, when the com-
bined impact of Anpo and a lengthy, violently crushed strike against the
closing of the Miike coal mine (in Kyushu) highlighted that American and
Japanese conservative political and economic visions still had limited ap-
peal to many Japanese. These consultants repeatedly emphasized that pro-
ductivity was the next step on the path of democratic progress. In 1961,
for example, USOM and the JPC brought labor consultant Edgar John
Fransway and management consultant John A. Stephens to teach the Japa-
nese about the U.S. system of collective bargaining and facilitate “agree-
ments which will stabilize labor relations and bring relative industrial peace
to Japan.” Fransway and Stephens, however, saw their task as reinforcing
the deep connection between democracy and economic growth. Both, they
claimed, were dependent on cooperation between labor and management.
The two appeared jointly at all their events to demonstrate American “so-
cial equality and acceptance.” They also made sure to express differences
of opinion “openly in a friendly fashion,” congratulating themselves on
demonstrating “the essence of American freedoms to express their views,
agree and disagree, and conclude with respect toward each other.”34
During their visit, Fransway and Stephens each gave a lecture on industrial
relations in the United States—which they equated with the future of indus-
trial relations in the modern world—in which they explained effective
labor–management relations through the broader trajectory of American de-
mocracy. Stephens, the management consultant, opened his talk by reading
the preamble of the U.S. Constitution to reinforce his point that “free men
shall always be striving for the perfections of their ambitions and society.”
Meanwhile, Fransway explained how labor’s interests were best served
through the electoral process and representative politics, describing “the role
of the union in collective bargaining and in the important area of politics, the
selection by the American people of political representatives and the sup-
port by labor of those sympathetic with the objectives of working men
and women.” Fransway’s discussion conveniently separated labor from
the political process. The proper role of labor was not to pursue its own
political agenda, but to offer support, through representative channels, to
political representatives. In Fransway and Stephens’s telling, American
labor–management relations occasionally meant disagreement and open
speech, but a shared commitment to economic growth would foster compro-
mise and consensus. For Fransway and Stephens, this was the essence of the
American model. As they put it in a joint report after a week-long seminar
held at Gotemba, at the base of Mount Fuji, with dozens of young Japanese
labor leaders, their mission was to “make labor and management a construc-
tive partnership in a free society dedicated to improving the living standards
of the entire Japanese society in which labor constituted but a part.”35
Fransway and Stephen’s message represented a larger JPC goal of insti-
tutionalizing amiable labor–management cooperation, especially in the
form of joint labor–management councils. Alongside collective bargaining,

which would ideally deal solely with economic issues such as wages, these
councils would foster increased collaboration over other issues, such as
worker safety and hygiene, employee welfare and, of course, improving pro-
ductivity. For example, in the 1959 joint JPC-ICA publication entitled
Labor-Management Cooperation in Japan, a returned management and in-
dustrial relations specialists study team heralded labor–management co-
operation as a requirement for Japan’s continued growth. To complete “the
Second Industrial Revolution,” the report declared, Japan must “establish
a progressive labor–management co-operation system in order to solve, in
peaceful and rational manners, the new problems of labor–management re-
lations which stem from the technical revolution.” As historian Andrew
Gordon notes, this call for cooperation sought to replace “bargaining over
demands generated from the workplace” with meetings between union
leaders and company executives. But the returned team argued that it would
in fact enhance labor’s representation in company decisions. By cooperating
with management in its plans about “ ‘the increase of pies’ and on ‘the dis-
tribution of pies,’ ” explained the report, consultation puts “labor and man-
agement on equal standing and in this sense it aims at labor’s participation
in management.”36
Alongside these educational endeavors in Japan, the JPC also facilitated
an active flow of labor trips to the United States; an estimated five thou-
sand labor leaders visited the United States under the auspices of the JPC
between the 1950s and the 1970s. In particular, these trips sought to rein-
force the possibilities of wealth creation through cooperative labor politics,
which may have seemed far removed from war-torn Japan. Reporting on a
meeting following the return of the first Japanese study team’s visit to the
United States in the summer of 1955, James Martin, the American consul
in Fukuoka, described the labor representative as particularly passionate.
He “waxed eloquent[ly],” Martin reported, “over how hard Americans
work, and how they share the wealth with management and live like
kings—or at least they live better than the average Japanese big company
section chiefs.” Martin did not specify whether this excitement was sincere
or fueled by politeness. Still, he highlighted it as evidence of the possibili-
ties of building a cooperative labor movement through the fulfillment of
economic dreams for a comfortable and stable daily life.37
Like Fransway and Stephens, the JPC seized on returned labor teams to
argue that the American labor movement presented a model of coopera-
tive unionism premised on the shared pursuit of economic growth and pros-
perity. American and Japanese officials argued that American labor unions
such as the AFL already subscribed to productivity’s main principles of
cooperation and increased production and could serve as a model for

“democratic unionism.” In a JPC-sponsored panel for twelve returned
labor participants from an industrial relations team in 1958, for example,
speakers drew an explicit connection between individualism, freedom, de-
mocracy, and cooperative industrial relations. In an article summarizing
the panel, the Japan Productivity Newspaper claimed that “Industrial re-
lations in American industry are a natural outcome of the economy that
has been developed by the American nation who traditionally loves
freedom—the spirit fostered by individualism, an ethical conception di-
recting the individual to make decisions at his responsibility.” The author
connected this individualism directly to the “freedom” offered to Amer-
ican trade unions to act according to their conscience, rather than po-
litical or ideological beliefs.
Major labor organizations, such as AFL and CIO, devote most of their ener-
gies in preparing authoritative data, performing counseling services and of-
fering training. They make no fighting plans for their member unions, as the
Japanese labor organizations do. They issue no fighting orders, either. The
American trade union does not like communism any more than fascism.
By emphasizing that American unions did not issue “fighting orders,” the
panelists proclaimed that American labor unions allowed their members
to work hard and pursue their own economic interest rather than the po-
litical or ideological goals of union leaders. This freedom could only come
from the proper goals, motivations, and mindsets; indeed, the motivating
force for American unions was not politics, but “free competition . . . em-
ployees all fear that there would be an end to their happiness, should their
business fall behind in the competition. So they are serious at work.” Amer-
ican unions thus liberated their members from the oppression of ideology
to pursue “freedom and democracy” by working hard for economic gain
in a capitalist society.38
Over the course of the 1950s, this message of productivity seemed to gain
traction with labor. Even as unions engaged in vocal opposition to Cold
War militarization, in antibase demonstrations and the Anpo protests, labor
leaders increasingly joined JPC-led projects. Upon its foundation in 1954
no labor union enlisted in the JPC, but the productivity movement gained
legitimacy when the moderate unions of Sōdōmei and Zenrō joined the
center the next year. In a joint statement issued in September 1955, the JPC
and Sōdōmei proclaimed “the increased productivity movement in Japan
bases its foundations on democratic relations between employers and
workers.” Meanwhile, Zenrō regularly printed unattributed United States
Agency material about productivity in its publications, celebrating it as a
“national good” and declaring that “labor’s participation” would enhance

the people’s welfare, the main goal of democracy. Yet these unions remained
a small minority, representing less than 10 percent of Japan’s workers; in
contrast, Japan’s largest labor organization, Sōhyō, repeatedly lambasted
productivity as a capitalist and imperialist scam to subjugate workers.39
Within a few years, however, things changed. As early as 1956, representa-
tives of labor unions affiliated with Sōhyō were joining in JPC trips to the
United States. By 1958, the JPC reported that 37 percent of unions engaged
in joint labor–management councils; even Sōhyō unions, such as the Elec-
trical Communication Workers Union and the Coal Mine Workers Union,
were taking preliminary steps toward establishing such consultation. In
1960, the JPC doubled down on its call for consultation, launching a series of
publications and discussion seminars promoting this system; by the 1970s,
almost all unionized companies utilized a union–management consultation
system alongside, or sometimes in place of, collective bargaining.40
If the JPC’s outreach to labor proved effective, it was in part because of
the major boost it received from Japan’s accelerating growth throughout
the late 1950s and early 1960s. The productivity movement’s narrative of
Japanese history as a story of technological progress and expanding pros-
perity, an “inexorable march of productivity” that had started in the Meiji
era, increasingly seemed to resonate with Japan’s reality. Many laborers did
receive higher wages, in part due to management’s desire to prevent a re-
turn to the struggles of the early 1950s. Such trends also drew from shifts
in national politics. After Kishi’s resignation, the LDP elected Ikeda Hayato
as party president, making him Japan’s new prime minister. A protégé of
Yoshida Shigeru, Ikeda had been finance minister in Yoshida’s cabinet, and
served as minister of trade and industry in the 1950s. Unsurprisingly, given
this background, Ikeda focused on economic growth as the kernel of a new
national mission. He took a so-called low profile on contested political is-
sues, believing that economic policy would be the key to regaining the public
trust and fostering widespread consensus after the upheaval sparked by
Kishi. Capitalizing on Japan’s spectacular economic performance, Ikeda an-
nounced his promise to double Japan’s per capita income by the end of the
decade. As Andrew Barshay notes, this economic shift helped change the
political conversation in Japan; Japanese discussions about the income-
doubling plan “pointed to a shift away from ‘national issue’ politics fo-
cusing on ‘foreign relations, defense and public order,’ and toward an
emerging—and engineered—‘national consensus for economic growth, dou-
bling the national income and monthly pay.’ ” This was not the natural or
the only possible outcome of things; rather, it was a consensus that joint
American and Japanese productivity efforts worked hard to create.41
As protests against military bases and the U.S.–Japan security treaty

threatened to derail the mission to instill Cold War democracy in Japan
through military and political institutions, economic productivity emerged
as an alternative path toward consensus, both within Japan and between
Japan and the United States. With its allegedly apolitical logic, economic
growth promised a productive future where all participants, whether man-
agement or labor, benefited from cooperation. Yet whether the sphere of
joint American–Japanese action was political or economic, its underlying
principles remained profoundly similar. Like diplomats and military leaders,
productivity officials envisioned a psychologically “healthy” society, in
which cooperation and consensus under enlightened leadership would pro-
duce responsible and mobilized individuals who accepted national goals
as their own. Especially in its outreach to labor, the JPC emphasized how
this framework, in which workers would voluntarily give up their fight for
shop-floor control or equal distribution, was in line with the democratic
ethos. Prosperity, not the people’s control over wealth, was the expression
of successful democracy; participation in economic hierarchies, not oppo-
sition to them, exemplified freedom. By the early 1960s, this economic
message had become ground zero for U.S.–Japanese cooperation, a new
base for the Pacific alliance.
Promoting the Japanese Model

As was the case with the peace treaty in the early 1950s, the productivity
movement was never merely a domestic project. Japan’s meteoric economic
growth also breathed new life into the country’s international role. As time
progressed, U.S. and Japanese policymakers came to believe that Japan
could be the model for Asian cooperation through anticommunist pros-
perity and growth. Beyond its geostrategic contributions to Asia’s defense,
it could guide Indians, Filipinos, Koreans, and others toward a stable future
of capitalist abundance. With this goal in mind, in the late 1950s and early
1960s, the United States and Japan launched training programs in Japan
for Asian nationals, funded area studies in Japan, and founded the Asian
Productivity Organization, a multilateral international organization that
sought to develop “productivity consciousness” across Asia. Through these
ambitious initiatives, Americans and Japanese hoped that Japan would
again become an Asian leader, a role that would facilitate pan-Asian coop-
eration with the United States and effectively foster anticommunist pros-
perity and stability. This vision proved especially appealing under President
John F. Kennedy, when the United States significantly expanded its com-
mitment to international development. American and Japanese leaders alike

hoped that Japan could mark the future of Cold War mobilization in Asia
through new models of growth, modernity, and mental and psychological
transformation.42
Like previous efforts to showcase Japan as a regional model, this en-
deavor was rife with ironies. As with Japan’s rearmament, it resurrected
ideas and people once central to Japan’s imperial expansion as crucial
participants in Japan’s Cold War mobilization at home and throughout
Asia. American efforts dovetailed with those of Japanese companies and
government agencies, which were eager to rebrand Japan as a “modern”
and altruistic Asian leader. Disseminating the Japanese model of produc-
tivity and development also maintained imperial hierarchies. As with ear-
lier democratization efforts, it assumed that the United States was the
most “developed” model to which all nations had to aspire and placed
Japan above other Asian nations on the technological-economic ladder.
But just as domestic productivity efforts gained increased participation
from labor unions, the elevation of Japan as a productivity model did find
support from some Asian participants, who joined these efforts with Amer-
ican funding. Japan’s growing participation in these projects therefore
demonstrates that American development efforts did not simply seek to
transplant American models. Rather, U.S. development policies funded a
growing effort to disseminate regional ideas and experiences in their eco-
nomic combat against poverty, despair, and collective economies.43
To be sure, the celebration of Japan as a model for the rest of Asia was
not new to U.S. officials in the 1960s. During the occupation, policymakers
such as John Foster Dulles and scholars such as Edwin Reischauer—now
the U.S. ambassador to Japan—talked openly about how Japan’s democ-
ratization could present a new anticommunist model for other Asian states.
With the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, U.S. policymakers
actively promoted Japan’s recovery as an example of American benevo-
lence, the possibilities of democracy, and the opportunities available in
the so-called free world. But the policies of the late 1950s and early 1960s
took on a different cast. First, Americans now elevated Japan not only for
its democracy but also for its economic wonders. They asserted that
Japan showed that it was possible to actively create growth through ap-
propriate policies and planning within a capitalist system, especially in
contrast to China. As the State Department asserted in 1960,
Japan plays [a] unique role in Asia. Under [the] system of private enterprise it
has become one of four great industrial complexes of the world and its rate of
economic growth is one of the highest in the world. In addition to being a
counterweight to growing power of Communist China in Asia, Japan provides

other Asian countries with [an] example of rapid economic growth under [a]
free system which is in clear contrast to [the] harsh methods Chinese Com-
munists [are] imposing on people to achieve quick economic development.
What is more, Japan served as a valuable example precisely because Amer-

ican policy, including technical assistance, had helped to spark this transfor-
mation. Testifying before Congress in hearings for the 1962 Foreign Assis-
tance Act, USAID’s Far East assistant administrator, Seymour Janow,
boasted that while Japan had thrived “within a democratic framework and
private enterprise system,” it was “our aid, our trading policies, our foreign
policy and our military strength and its deployment in Asia [that] made it
possible.”44
Second, and more broadly, Japan was useful for American policymakers
because it showed that nonwhite states could embrace the spiritual transfor-
mation advocated by Americans. If the protests that culminated with Anpo
cast doubts on Asian reception of American messaging, Japan’s embrace of
“productivity consciousness” offered a more encouraging example of Asian
capacities for mental transformation. Drawing on the increasingly popular
theory of modernization, American social scientists and government officials
emphasized that economic growth did not simply result from access to re-
sources, the use of technology, or the application of new techniques. Devel-
opment and industrialization also required the proper values, norms, and
attitudes. Political scientist and Japan specialist Robert Ward articulated this
belief forcefully in 1958, asserting that “Mechanical things can change easily
but political attitudes are about the last things to change. In Asia there are
few societies that have achieved modernity, [except] Japan.” Japan’s eco-
nomic growth therefore seemed to blaze a path for other Asians to follow in
embracing “modern values” such as individuality, rationality, universalism,
and a desire for achievement. Indeed, Japan was a driving force behind mod-
ernization theory’s surging popularity among scholars and political elites. As
historian Andrew Barshay notes: “In the modernization approach, Japan was
more than a ‘case’; it was with respect to Japan that the term modernization
first gained credibility in analyzing the process of historical change.”45
More broadly, Kennedy’s presidential administration placed economic de-
velopment at the center of its global vision. Kennedy and his team believed
in the ability of experts, especially social scientists, to usher in global eco-
nomic growth, which in turn would draw the world toward anticommu-
nism. As the president declared on March 22, 1961, the 1960s would be a
“decade of development,” in which a “major effort by the free industrial-
ized nations” would assist “less-developed nations” in “mak[ing] the tran-
sition into self-sustained growth—the period in which an enlarged commu-

nity of free, stable and self-reliant nations can reduce world tensions and
insecurity.” Expanding on the work of programs such as Point Four and
the International Cooperation Administration with the creation of USAID,
Kennedy declared that all free and industrialized states had the responsibility
to facilitate stable and sustained growth across the globe: “Our job, in its
largest sense, is to create a new partnership between the northern and
southern halves of the world, to which all free nations can contribute, in
which each free nation must assume a responsibility proportional to its
means.” Alongside military capacity, Kennedy heralded international de-
velopment as a sustained and routine component of international stability
and U.S. global power.46
As part of this larger strategy, Kennedy and his advisers emphasized eco-
nomic development as an increasingly central theme in the U.S.–Japanese
relationship and a core aspect of their approach to Asia. In essence, they
attempted to turn the U.S.–Japanese relationship outwards, to encourage
Japan to “share the burden” of global development and emphasize Japan’s
role in the Asia region as a model of industrial possibilities. Kennedy ad-
ministration officials commented favorably on Japanese participation in in-
ternational development schemes through which Japan sent technicians to
other Asian states, such as iron ore projects in India and Pakistan. Japan,
they argued, would be most valuable to U.S. policy if it found “an impor-
tant role in the Free World community as a whole.” Along with giving a
productive focus to the U.S.–Japanese alliance, U.S. policymakers hoped
that Japan’s participation, as a giver of aid, would broaden the geograph-
ical, political, and racial legitimacy of development assistance. They sup-
ported active Japanese membership in the Euro-American Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) Development As-
sistance Group, a policy coordination body that Japan joined in 1960, and
pressured Japan to contribute to stabilization and development efforts in
places such as Laos, Indonesia, and South Vietnam.47
Within the Kennedy administration, U.S. ambassador Edwin O. Reis-
chauer best embodied Americans’ view of Japan as a model of moderniza-
tion. Writing in Japanese journals, engaging in debates with prominent
Japanese intellectuals, and regularly speaking at universities, Reischauer
celebrated Japan’s market-based and technologically advanced economy
as a “healthy” model for all of Asia. For example, in his 1961 Chūō Kōron
exchange with Nakayama, Reischauer argued that there was little evi-
dence that socialism leads to progress and private enterprise to failure;
rather, he claimed, Japan was able to successfully transform into a democ-
racy in the late nineteenth century because of a balanced relationship
between government and private enterprise, in contrast to the failures of

government-controlled Communist China. In his many talks and articles,
Reischauer repeatedly asserted that the key to modernization was mental
transformation, specifically the adoption of a “value system” premised on
faith in progress and scientific methodologies. He actively and purpose-
fully utilized the legitimacy offered by his academic career to argue that
modernization was an appropriate description of Japan’s trajectory and to
frame U.S. policies, the U.S.–Japanese relationship, and Japanese economic
growth as a “natural” extension of Japan’s recent history. Describing his
approach to Japanese students and intellectuals in December 1961, Reis-
chauer offered that “I try to use a historical approach in my speeches to
them, and to get as close as possible to a political speech without making
one. It seems to be working out well.”48
While American efforts to encourage Japanese participation in a larger
quest for global stability and prosperity accelerated in the early 1960s, they
began in the mid-1950s when the U.S. government started funding indus-
trial and agricultural programs in Japan for trainees from other Asian coun-
tries. Viewing Asian cultures as largely similar to one another, U.S. officials
believed that Indonesians, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and others would be more
likely to accept “modern” ideas and models if they were transmitted through
the Japanese. As a U.S. aid official proclaimed in 1958, compared to training
in the United States, “Japan presents less of a cultural and psychological
shock to the participants from South East Asia. The small farms of Japan
offer a scale of operations comparable to the small farms of his own country.
Japan offers living proof that Asians too can adapt.” In American thinking,
Japan was valuable because it showed Asians how to overcome their alleged
adherence to tradition, a major roadblock on the path to modernization. As
Tokyo USOM asserted, “Since 1890 Japan has successfully overcome major
problems inherent in the transition from an agrarian to an industrial
economy. Japan’s position in the Far East as a major industrial country
shows that management has been able to adopt new methods and change
old attitudes.” The barriers to disseminating the Japanese model—such as
fresh memories of Japan’s violent expansion throughout Asia during the
war, language difficulties, or the vastly different circumstances of a postimpe-
rial Japan versus a postcolonial Asia—rarely entered their discussions.49
These lofty ideas received their practical implementation through the
Third Country Training program in Japan. Third Country Training began
in the mid-1950s and was a way for the United States to save money by
funding technical training within the trainee’s home region, rather than
bringing trainees to the United States. Selected by their own governments
and their home country USOM (later USAID mission) from the agricultural,
industrial, labor, and administrative sectors, candidates attended training

programs in Japan that were jointly administered by the Asia Kyokai (So-
ciety for Economic Cooperation in Asia), a private Japanese organization
mainly composed of large companies, and the Tokyo International Training
Center, which was a branch of USOM. While travel and meals were funded
by USOM, Japanese government agencies and private institutions provided
facilities for technical study, observation tours, and training. Throughout
the late 1950s and early 1960s, the program slowly picked up steam. Be-
tween 1954 and 1963, 2,553 participants came to Japan—the majority
from Taiwan, India, Korea, and Thailand. With a larger number of Japanese-
language speakers due to prolonged Japanese imperialism, Taiwan was an
especially active participant, sending 31 percent of total trainees between
1955 and 1960, with Thailand next with 13 percent and India sending
11 percent. Unique to Third Country Training programs in Asia, in
March 1960 the United States and Japan signed an agreement that granted
Japan formal administrative authority. That same year, the JPC moved to
take on a more formal role in the program as the coordinator and imple-
menter of all industrial training; the appropriate Japanese government
ministries carried out the other training programs.50
Third Country Training in Japan was varied and often related directly
to economic progress, from crop development and fisheries training to
highway construction, land reform, and government administration. A 1961
brochure that USAID distributed to other Asian posts to advertise training
in Japan listed a wide array of training opportunities, such as a seven-month
course in Rice Culture carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry
and Fisheries (MAFF); a seven-month course in Fisheries Operation, also
by MAFF; two-week to one-month-long agricultural observation tours; a
ten-week course in Small-Scale Industry Management carried out by the JPC
and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry; and an eight-month
course in Hospital Administration, carried out by the Ministry of Health
and Welfare. Japan also offered a more personalized twelve-month on-
the-job training program in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries that could
be designed for “younger participants who have promise as future leaders
in the particular field in their home country.” In contrast to other Third
Country Training programs where trainees largely took academic courses
(as in the Philippines), training in Japan was almost entirely site-based and
carried out by the Japanese.51
As was the case with the productivity program, U.S. officials believed that
Third Country Training was not simply about spreading technical expertise
or new techniques. Just as important, it sought to change attitudes and psy-
chologies to foster behavioral and mental transformation. William J. Parker,
a USAID training officer, explained this outlook in 1963, claiming that “the
learning and interchange of technical knowledge” was meant to “start an
internal chain reaction” between Japanese and other Asians. The goal was
“a change in behavior more suitable to the present and future technical and
social needs of the [trainee’s] country.” Like the JPC, Third Country Training
sought to expose Asian economic elites to a new psychological and social
order, rooted in prosperity, efficiency, and allegedly apolitical capital–labor
cooperation. It was premised on the convenient belief that after years of
extractive colonial dominance by Japan, Europe, and the United States, East
and Southeast Asian countries merely needed an attitude adjustment rather
than economic redress and postcolonial justice. Indeed, officials like Parker
seldom reflected on the historical power relations that stagnated the growth
of East and Southeast Asian economies, nor did they consider the reasons
that some Asians might not look favorably on capitalism. Like productivity
programming directed at labor, Third Country Training presented a market-
based system as “normal” and modern, with noncompliance seen as stem-
ming from a traditional and premodern mindset.52
Equally important, Third Country Training sought to push the Japanese
to participate more actively in overseas technical assistance, which Ameri-
cans hoped would spur Japan to embrace the responsibilities of free world
leadership and strengthen the U.S.–Japan alliance. As a 1963 description
of the Third Country Training program proclaimed, “this project encour-
ages the Japanese Government and private institutions, in a direct and pos-
itive manner, to participate more fully in economic development programs
and activities of the countries of the free world.” As the Japanese were
training other Asians, U.S. officials believed they were guiding the Japanese
in the ways of foreign assistance and regional leadership. By the early 1960s,
the government of Japan and American representatives of USAID held
weekly meetings to discuss operational and policy issues with Third Country
Training. USAID training officers also met regularly with Japanese officials
from the recently created Overseas Technical Cooperation Administration
(a branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and the JPC, both of which
coordinated and implemented training in Japan. This logic perpetuated ear-
lier efforts, such as military training, that sought to facilitate Japan’s inter-
nalization of American policy goals; by fostering a new sense of national
responsibility and actively combating the appeal of rival economic models
such as Communist China, the Japanese would fully embrace the United
States’ vision of regional leadership and take on new international com-
mitments under the umbrella of American Cold War hegemony.53
As the growing role of the JPC demonstrates, U.S. officials heavily relied
on veterans of the productivity program in their quest to transform both
Japan and Asia. U.S. technical assistance officers regularly met with Japa-
nese business leaders and government officials to encourage their partici-
pation in Third Country Training. In 1963, for example, Parker took a tour
of Hiroshima, Sendai, and Osaka, three of Japan’s larger industrial cities,
to survey opportunities for Third Country Training. He and his team visited
companies that had also been involved with JPC programming. In Hiro-
shima, Parker spoke with the Kumahira Safe Company, which had already
hosted a small business team from Taiwan and expressed its eagerness to
participate in Third Country Training in the future. As Parker noted with
satisfaction, this eagerness came, in part, from the company’s experience
with JPC programming. “The president . . . was a participant with an in-
dustrial team of JPC financed by ICA. This resulted in commercial benefit
for the company and is one reason for the cooperative attitude of its offi-
cials towards our training.” Parker noted that Kumahira manufactured safes
for domestic and international use and that company executives “desired
to know more about the Third Country economic situation from the partici-
pants to coordinate and expand their business.” Japan, concluded Parker, had
learned how to carry out technical training from the United States; Third
Country Training now seemed a logical way to expand the impact of the
productivity program while also fostering economic connections between
Japan and the rest of Asia.54
Like American attempts to rebuild the Japanese military in the 1950s, this
emphasis on spreading Japanese knowledge, technological know-how, and
production techniques was not just an imposition of American ideas, nor
was it new. For both the Japanese government and private industry, it
served as the crucial rationale for Japan’s attempt to rebuild its leadership
in Asia, in part by resurrecting earlier colonial visions. As historians such
as Aaron Stephen Moore have detailed, “techno-imperialism” was a cen-
tral component of Japan’s wartime imaginary. During the 1930s and early
1940s, Japanese architects, business leaders, and scientists sought to imple-
ment visions of Asian development through urban reform, hygiene im-
provement, and large-scale dam projects, especially in China; they justified
these projects—and Japanese imperial expansion—through Japan’s alleg-
edly superior industrial, technological, and scientific prowess. With American
financial assistance, this ideology was “adapted to Japan’s postwar context
of building a prosperous nation at home and exercising soft power abroad
through developmental assistance.” For Japanese officials and business ex-
ecutives, policies such as technical assistance, foreign loans, and repara-
tions programs would not only bolster Japan’s international standing but
also provide access to the natural resources and international markets nec-
essary for postwar prosperity. Indeed, these goals were inseparable from
Sony president and co-founder Ibuka Masaru holds Sony’s smallest transistor radio
on January 2, 1958. Hoping to expand to new markets, Sony recently had sent the
first shipments of this radio to Southeast Asia. AP Photo / MC.
one another; Japanese officials and business executives, along with Amer-
ican diplomats, repeatedly cited the need to rebuild foreign trade, expand
access to natural resources, and expand Japanese export markets as a
key rationale for technical aid. A 1959 Japanese embassy publication as-
serted that Japan’s participation in the exchange of trainees, experts, and
equipment both “increases the understanding and friendship between
Japan and the recipient countries” and offers “more trade benefits for
each side.”55
It was therefore no accident that postwar international development ef-
forts utilized people and companies who had played important roles in
Japanese imperialism, both as private businessmen and government offi-
cials. Kubota Yutaka, the wartime president of Yalu Hydropower, which
built hydroelectric dams (with turbines supplied by Toshiba) and railways
in occupied Korea and China during World War II, started a development
consultancy called Nippon Kōei after the war. Since Japanese reparations
often took the form of large-scale development projects, for which Kubota
had actively advocated, Nippon Kōei also played an important role in Japa-
nese reparations programs, constructing dams in Burma, South Vietnam, and
Indonesia. By the 1960s, Kubota was dubbed the “Shogun of the Mekong”
for his role in Southeast Asia’s Mekong River Development Project. Postwar
assistance efforts also relied on members of the imperial state. For example,
government bureaucrat Tōbata Seiichi had taught colonial development
policy during the war; in 1943, he traveled to the Japanese-occupied Philip-
pines to produce a report on social and economic conditions. Ten years later
he returned to Manila, this time as the member of a committee studying
Japanese reparations. Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, who had guided
Japan’s extractive and forced-labor–based colonial development policy
in Manchukuo in the 1930s, was a vocal proponent of expanding Japanese
overseas assistance in the late 1950s. Touring Southeast Asian countries as
part of a larger goal of launching a “more Asia-centered diplomacy,” he
even suggested a joint Asian Development Bank to American policymakers, a
suggestion that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused, in part because
Kishi hoped that a large portion of the funding would be American.56
Not surprisingly, Asian states were wary of Japan’s forays into interna-
tional assistance, even when they were cloaked in the language of friendship.
Upon Kishi’s visit, for example, newspapers in Indonesia and the Philippines
raised the alarm that Japan’s call for deeper economic cooperation and
trade was an effort to revive the wartime co-prosperity sphere, when
poorer countries provided labor and resources. Japanese officials hoped that
the banner of reparations and development assistance would soothe Asian
resistance, which they dismissed as childish and antimodern. As Tanishiki
Hiroshi, who headed MITI’s reparations office, wrote in 1957, “The newly
emerging countries of Southeast Asia are extremely attractive virgin
lands . . . Raging over these virgin lands at present, however, are stormy
winds of xenophobic nationalism and apprehension about a Japanese in-
vasion. Can there be a better way for businesses to ride safely into the storm
then to justify their advance there in the name of reparations payments?”
U.S. officials, too, occasionally worried that the legacies of Japan’s wartime
aggression would hamper Japanese aid efforts, trade relationships, and
Japan’s attempt to serve as regional leader. A 1955 memorandum by Lew B.
Clark, commercial attaché to the U.S. Embassy, noted that Southeast Asian
countries were taking a “very cautious view” to early Japanese develop-
mental overtures. Yet the historical contradictions of elevating Japanese
technological leadership as a path forward for Asia were largely lost on
Americans. The allure of liberation and mobilization through economic de-
velopment was so strong that they rarely commented on or realized the
continuities with prewar and wartime visions and people.57
As with productivity programming, Japanese businesses were a primary
force behind Japan’s growing commitment to international assistance. Just
as managers propagated technocratic cooperation at home, high-ranking
executives were enthusiastic about the prospect of using international aid
to revive trade and export markets, and gain access to raw materials lost
with the demise of Japan’s empire. This was reflected in the central role
played by Asia Kyokai, a quasi-private organization composed of Japanese
businesses and private groups. Established by the Yoshida cabinet in 1954,
Asia Kyokai was chaired by Fujiyama Aiichirō, president of the Tokyo
Chamber of Commerce and Industry (he later served as foreign minister
under Kishi). Asia Kyokai described itself as a “private, non-commercial
and non-political organization for the purpose of promoting friendly ties
with other Asian nations and cooperating with them in social, culture, eco-
nomic and technical fields.” Funded by government subsidies and private
contributions, its board of directors was largely composed of business ex-
ecutives, including the president of the Toyo Spinning Company, president
of Onoda Cement Company, president of Mitsui Bank, a number of repre-
sentatives from the Japan Chamber of Commerce, and Kubota of Nippon
Kōei. Asia Kyokai spearheaded international training in Japan. It sponsored
and organized seminars and lectures, launched newsletters in Japanese and
English, and funded a publication series. During its first years of existence,
its operation was fairly small, bringing about three hundred trainees from
Southeast Asia to Japan under the guise of the Colombo Plan, which pro-
moted cooperation and international assistance between the Common-
wealth nations. But by the late 1950s and early 1960s, as Japan increased
its participation in international aid programming, Asia Kyokai expanded
its efforts and became the main partner in coordinating Third Country
Training with U.S. officials.58
Asia Kyokai articulated a clear ideological framework for international
training, especially the belief that private businesses could play a techno-
cratic and apolitical role in fostering prosperity and international under-
standing. One of its many publications, the English-language newsletter Asia

Kyokai News, was filled with articles about training experiences in Japan
next to advertisements for companies and products associated with technical
assistance and industrial and agricultural development. Indeed, some of Asia
Kyokai’s sponsoring companies also offered their own international training
programs. Advertisements from Kubota Iron and Machinery Works, for
example, celebrated its commitment to technical training through the con-
struction of housing for trainees. “Part of our service to world agriculture:
Kubota’s new international house, a residence for foreign technical trainees.”
This “modern and attractive” building would house trainees who came
not for Third Country Training, but for Kubota’s own two-month training
courses. “Because Kubota believes that mechanization of agriculture can
raise living standards everywhere, we are happy to provide courses, room
and meals free of charge.” These trainees would conveniently possess the
skills to use Kubota machinery when they returned home.59
The Asia Kyokai News celebrated how the initiative of private compa-
nies was key to rebuilding Japanese leadership and legitimacy in Asia. In
its narratives, Japanese companies benevolently fulfilled Asian desires for
access to superior Japanese technology, knowledge, and even lifestyles. A
1960 issue reported on a Laotian trainee who had taken Kubota’s training
course in diesel engines. “During 50 days of training at Kubota Iron and
Machinery Worlds, I could obtain gratifying results in studies on large and
small-sized diesel engines. I gratefully thank the Japanese trainers who pa-
tiently have guided and taught me by theorizing all that I must learn.” Nor
was his visit just a chance to learn about diesel engines; it also allowed him
to experience, and aspire to, advanced consumer society. “Also unforget-
table were very pleasant motion pictures and cinemas. Huge and beautiful
department stores also impressed me with splendid arrays of merchandise.
I enjoyed viewing television after every supper.” American technical assis-
tance officials took care to keep companies such as Kubota in the develop-
ment fold. In his 1963 tour of Japanese training facilities, Parker visited
Kubota in Osaka, where he was met by the manager of the sales promo-
tion department who had been to the United States on a JPC study team
for distribution cost analysis. Not surprisingly, given that their host was
the sales promotion officer, Kubota told Parker that they were especially
interested in top-level agricultural trainees because the company produced
agricultural equipment. Parker further noted that several Third Country
Training teams had visited the plant for observation, along with individual
participants who had used their housing facilities.60
But Asia Kyokai’s efforts did not seek merely to expand Japanese busi-
ness and commercial connections. Its material regularly proclaimed that
international training could restore Japan to regional leadership through a

new image of friendship and technical assistance. As an Asia Kyokai script
for a film promoting training in Japan declared, “A hearty welcome to
Japan! These trainees have come from all over Asia.” Throughout the film,
trainees expressed their appreciation to Japan and the Japanese, extolling
their helpfulness and friendship. As an Indian trainee at Kubota ironworks
proclaimed, “The factories and institutions at which training programs are
arranged are always enthusiastic to help and cooperate. My experiences of
the two big companies where I worked have also shown that the industries
exchange their utmost cooperation, depute special staff and render all fa-
cilities to make the training a success . . . I am much grateful to the govern-
ment of Japan for according me this opportunity.” Japan, in the form of
government, commerce, industry, and its people, was portrayed as eager to
help Asians help themselves. As the film’s closing narration claimed, “A
farewell party for the trainees is held at the Asia Center. ‘Sayonara.’ But
this does not mean farewell. To them, it is a greeting of hope for tomorrow.
It is an expression of well-wishing upon the start towards a better life for
the countries of Asia, hand and hand with one another.” Such sentiments
strongly echoed Japanese imperial and wartime propaganda that showed,
for example, children from Asian countries standing together and even
running hand in hand with those from Japan.61
In return for Japan’s friendship, trainees were depicted as eager to come
to Japan to benefit from its technological expertise. Due to Japan’s supe-
rior industrial and technological development, claimed the film, Japan could
offer advanced industrial training at cutting-edge companies making the
newest consumer products. As one trainee claimed, “Years back I had heard
the name of famous TOSHIBA COMPANY where numerous electrical ap-
pliances are being manufactured. I had the chance to visit Television fac-
tory during my stay in Japan. I am very much impressed to have seen the
skill and efficiency of manufacturing, in this one of the most equipped fac-
tories in Japan.” In this self-serving depiction, Japan’s efficient training was
not just the product of its friendliness, but also its technological superiority.
As a trainee asserted in the script’s closing scene, “It’s my great pleasure to
say that I have completed my training successfully during my stay in this
country. I wish that many more people of many other countries will have
a chance to visit this enterprising country and acquire knowledge which
will be helpful in the development of their own countries.”62
Such messaging was remarkably heavy-handed given that Japanese im-
perialism had violently and forcefully transferred wealth from countries in
East and Southeast Asia. But it resonated with U.S. officials, who gave the
Asia Kyokai an increasingly active role in Third Country Training by the
end of the 1950s. Its formal responsibilities included selecting training fa-
cilities, contacting local government officials, and preparing the schedule
for trainees. By the end of the decade, it also conducted the training orien-
tation for Third Country Training groups, especially those from Taiwan that
were likely to know Japanese. This orientation course included lectures on
Japanese technical cooperation in Asia, the present status of Japan’s
economy, and traveling and sightseeing in Japan; it was followed by a sight-
seeing trip through Tokyo by bus. In a letter inviting American assistance
officials to attend the future orientations, the Asia Kyokai proclaimed that
the orientation courses giving the “real picture of Japan in its economic,
social, agricultural and industrial fields were successful and of much help
for [trainees’] extensive studies in Japan. It is our belief that these lectures
will make the understanding of the participants deeper and finally promote
more friendly and mutual understandings among the host and guest coun-
tries.” In Asia Kyokai’s telling, the “real” story was one that overwrote
Japan’s history of imperial conquest with a sanitized and propagandistic
narrative of technocratic benevolence and “miraculous” growth.63
With international development becoming an important site of American–
Japanese cooperation, it is not surprising that the JPC also became a
significant participant. Along with its contributions to Third Country
Training, the JPC also spread its “gospel of productivity” by establishing its
own programming. In the fall of 1957, JPC director Gōshi Kōhei reached
out to several Asian countries, proposing that they attend a planning con-
ference in Japan to coordinate a regional productivity movement. Thanks
to favorable responses, especially from India, the JPC secured funding
from the United States to host a pan-Asian productivity conference to
share productivity techniques and discuss the possibility of a regional pro-
ductivity agency on the model of the European Productivity Agency. In
March 1959, the Asian Productivity Roundtable Conference gathered in
Tokyo; delegates included representatives from India, the Philippines,
Thailand, and Taiwan. The JPC’s report hyperbolically declared the con-
ference “epoch-making” and a milestone in “Asian solidarity.” Delegates
“showed excellent cooperation,” enthused the author, “regardless of their
political and ideological backgrounds, for paving the way for realization
of the unified Pan Asian productivity organization.”64
In parallel with the JPC’s domestic efforts, the conference presented pro-
ductivity as an apolitical concept, though it was clearly an attempt to
counter communist developmental assistance, techniques, and planning. As
Gōshi asserted, the productivity movement was “politically and commer-
cially independent and neutral” and could serve as “powerful bondage to
unite Asia.” U.S. officials concurred with this claim that the proposed
regional organization would create a new institutional home for anticom-

munist Asian cooperation, again on the model of the European Produc-
tivity Agency, which included former enemies France and Germany. By
unifying Asia around a private enterprise model of productivity, they hoped
that this regional organization would increase trust and cooperation, sta-
bilize the region against communist incursion and ultimately, legitimize
American ideas, power, and influence.65
Not surprisingly, when American and Japanese efforts culminated in
April 1961 with the founding of the Asian Productivity Organization [APO],
the new organization’s eight members—Taiwan, India, Japan, South Korea,
Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand—were all noncommunist.
The APO set out to develop a program similar to the JPC, issuing and trans-
lating publications and reports about productivity (its first translation was
Nakayama’s An Introduction to Productivity); sponsoring seminars and
workshops on subjects such as training for industrial managers and assis-
tance to small business; and sending multinational study teams to member
countries, the United States, and Europe on topics such as industrial devel-
opment, standardization, and quality control. By 1962, the APO had sent a
professor of material science from the Tokyo Institute of Technology to
Taiwan to consult on glassware manufacturing, including plant surveys, lec-
tures, and demonstrations to improve technique and quality. It also held
different training courses for Asian trainees, such as a three-country mar-
keting and training course implemented by the Japan Marketing Associa-
tion in Tokyo, the Thailand Management Development and Productivity
Center in Bangkok, and the China Productivity and Trade Center in Taipei.
The APO inaugurated a three-month course on leather tanning and finishing
in Madras, India, which included group and individual training, and field
trips to leading factories in India. Finally, it started a fellowship program
that allowed countries to select individual training programs for nominees;
all three nominees, from the Philippines, South Korea, and Nepal, were en-
tering training programs in Japan run by the JPC.66
The APO’s heavy indebtedness to the Japanese productivity program—
it was headquartered in Tokyo and largely administered by the JPC—meant
that its architects conceived of it in similar psychological and spiritual terms.
Drawing on both American and Japanese fixation with the proper “state
of mind” as the source of a healthy and mobilized society, many in the JPC
envisioned the APO as promoting a “productive” psychology throughout
Asia. Discussing its plans for the first Asian productivity conference in 1959,
the JPC hoped it would deepen mutual understanding through informational
exchange. “The participants,” wrote the author of one document, “will
discuss these objectives so that the Asian countries, akin to one another
culturally and economically can pull out of the state of destitution and
backwardness with the consciousness that ‘we, too, can prosper.’ ” The JPC
noted that the European Productivity Agency offered a useful model on
this front, for it had adopted a resolution at its recent Rome meeting that
emphasized “the moral implication of the term productivity, saying that
‘productivity, above all, means a frame of mind for progress or incessant
improvement.’ . . . Asian countries must be in this ‘frame of mind.”
Rather than exploring communist or socialist development models, calling
for neutralism, seeking imperial redress, or criticizing the importation (and
imposition) of foreign knowledge and developmental models, the JPC im-
plicitly claimed that Asian countries simply needed to foster a more coop-
erative pattern of thought.67
Given its ideological contours, it is not surprising that both American
policymakers and Japanese officials viewed the APO not so much as a mul-
tidirectional project, but largely as a vehicle to transfer Japanese knowledge,
skills, and techniques to other countries in Asia. Japanese foreign minister
Kosaka Zentarō utilized the first plenary session at the formal launch of
the APO in Tokyo in May 1961 to celebrate Japan as an appropriate
model for APO member states. “When duly applied in according with the
economic demands and circumstances of respective member countries,” he
claimed, “Japan’s experiences with its own industrialization would no doubt
serve for economic development of your esteemed countries.” Americans,
too, shared this belief, and encouraged countries to come and learn from
Japan’s valuable knowledge and experience. In 1962, for example, Ambas-
sador Reischauer forwarded a lengthy JPC pamphlet to eighty-five USAID
offices at embassies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, noting that the JPC
was “eager and willing” to share its knowledge with the developing world.
In particular, American policymakers believed that Japanese leadership
could serve as a vehicle for the transfer of “Western” ideas that might
otherwise seem suspect or even irrelevant to Asian experiences. As one re-
port mused, the APO “would enhance the prestige of the West through the
reliance placed by such a large group of Asian nations on the unique pro-
ductivity contribution of Western manufacturing technology . . . [T]he less
advanced countries in Asia can learn both from more advanced Asian
countries and the West. The more advanced Asian countries [such as Japan]
will learn primarily from the West.” Through the APO, American policy-
makers equated Japanese regional leadership with American prestige.
Japan’s success in educating other Asians was to prove the universal ap-
plicability and superiority of “Western” ideas and techniques.68
As with the JPC and Third Country Training, the United States dedicated
its own financial resources to funding the APO. In the late 1950s, USOM
openly worried about supporting the APO because it could destroy the
organization’s “Asian character” and thus its legitimacy as a genuine Asian
effort rather than American propaganda. For example, USOM only funded
travel for Asian delegates to the 1959 Tokyo conference and not the con-
ference itself. However, U.S. officials increasingly shed their qualms about
bankrolling the APO and soon provided nearly half the new organization’s
budget. For example, in 1961, USAID contributed $165,000 to the APO,
while membership fees from other Asian countries (largely Japan and India)
totaled $108,000, and a special grant from the Japanese government
amounted to $39,000. In 1962 and 1963, U.S. assistance increased to
$211,000 and $239,500 respectively, while support from the Japanese gov-
ernment totaled $43,000 in 1962 and $134,000 in 1963. While these sums
were not exceptionally large, they belied the APO’s claim to be a solely
Asian organization founded through Asian initiative. In the financial sense,
the APO was largely a joint project of the U.S. and Japanese governments,
which sought to promote a vision of regional integration, cooperation, and
mental transformation achieved via Japan’s leadership in the spread of
“healthy” economic technologies and attitudes.69
The belief that productivity would place Japan and Asia on the path to
the “right” mentalities helped the APO garner support beyond the Amer-
ican government; private American philanthropists were also willing to pick
up the bill. In the early 1960s, the Ford Foundation, the world’s largest and
most influential philanthropic organization, decided to expand its program
in Japan. Throughout the 1950s, Ford had given support to American and
Japanese scholars; perhaps the most famous Japan-related grant went to
the Association for Asian Studies in 1960, which funded a series of confer-
ences and volumes by prominent American and Japanese scholars on mod-
ernization in Japan. In 1962, the Ford Foundation expanded its program
in Japan, allocating 1.5 million dollars for grants to Japan and Australia in
Ford’s International Affairs Division, with the possibility of an additional
2.2 million dollars in 1964 and 1965. These grants would go directly to
Japanese organizations, not just scholars, and offered new funding possi-
bilities for the Asian productivity movement.70
In making their funding decisions for Japan, Ford officials explicitly con-
ceived of economic growth as a tool for mental democratization that could
overcome the crisis signaled by the Anpo protests. Like U.S. government
officials, Ford Foundation leaders had come to worry about Japan’s com-
mitment to democracy. “The sharp polarization of Japanese politics,” stated
one report, “is potentially dangerous for the development of Japan as a
democratic country.” One cure was continued investment in economic pro-
ductivity and growth, which was already transforming the Japanese mind
in the right direction. “The sustained high rate of economic development,”

Ford officials believed, “has been radically transforming the atmosphere of
the country,” liberating it from “the involuted [sic] psychological torments
of the immediate postwar and occupation generation.” Equally important,
the confidence that came with economic success was fostering the “healthy
tendency to seek membership in the Atlantic ‘club,’ ” which included par-
ticipation in international development initiatives. Further investment in
Japan would help create “a common denominator—the application of
modern and effective thought to central problems confronting Japan, in-
cluding her participation in the world community.”71
This belief that economic growth, productivity, and a commitment to in-
ternational development could foster a new sense of purpose in Japan was
especially clear in discussions by Ford consultant Herbert Passin, a Co-
lombia University sociologist and Japan specialist who took a leading role
in developing the foundation’s Japan program. In this role, Passin traveled
to Japan regularly, took meetings with various scholars and groups, and
evaluated funding proposals. In 1961, writing to Shepard Stone, head of
Ford’s International Affairs Division, Passin argued that Ford’s assistance
to Japan was in part designed to channel Japanese idealism and energy
toward a new and productive purpose. “One of the attractions of the Em-
pire,” he explained, “was the outlet it provided for ambitious and idealistic
young men. With its end, there has been no place for this idealism to go,
except into the leftist, Marxist, and protest movements. Serious people are
not unaware that a ‘Peace Corps’ in Japan might very well outdraw in en-
thusiastic response that of American youth.” Encouraging Japanese engage-
ment in development work, claimed Passin, might also foster new sites of
political cooperation at home. “Overseas aid might offer the beginning of
some kind of platform for left and right to work together a bit more rather
than continue the all-out civil war that goes on today.” In this framework,
activism was not premised on specific political demands that had to be ad-
dressed; rather, it was a malleable force that could be directed by enlight-
ened leaders. Like the architects of Japanese rearmament and the National
Police Reserve, Passin nostalgically invoked Japan’s imperial past as a source
of spiritual strength and rigor. Only now, this imperial history served to
highlight the benefits of overseas development activities, which Ford offi-
cials explicitly hoped would chart new directions in the aftermath of the
Anpo protests.72
Like the U.S. government, the Ford Foundation poured its resources into
veterans of productivity programs. For example, in 1963, Ford gave a grant
of $50,000 to KD, now called the Japan Committee on Economic Develop-
ment, to foster closer associations with American and European economic
research, development aid, and trade programs. Ford money would fund
research projects on “Japan’s economic relations, the Pacific region, Eu-
rope and the United States.” Similarly, the foundation granted $350,000 to
Kyoto University to fund a new center for Southeast Asian studies. Working
on an American area studies model—Kyoto faculty members visited Cornell
University’s Center for Southeast Asian studies—its goal was to produce
the knowledge required for Japan’s growing commitment to overseas de-
velopment. Much like American technical assistance funding for a produc-
tivity center at Waseda University or a business school at Keio University,
Ford envisioned Kyoto University as the intellectual arm of its mission to
remake Japan and Asia. These research endeavors, explained one official,
would assist “Japanese contributions to free world economic growth,
trade, and development aid programs” and thus “stimulate more outward-
looking Japanese public policy in these fields.”73
The closest connection between U.S. technical assistance and Ford Foun-
dation activities came in Ford’s 1963 grant to the APO, to bolster its mis-
sion to spread “productivity consciousness” to other countries in Asia. The
process for this APO grant began with a 1961 request by the JPC to fund
a regional training program in small business management. Essentially, the
JPC sought to rebrand itself as a development organization, “to contribute
positively, in line with the international economic cooperation, for the pros-
perity and welfare of the Asian countries and others who are on the way of
developing” by exporting the achievements of the productivity program.
With the founding of the APO that same year, the JPC’s proposal became
a joint project between the JPC and the APO. A follow-up proposal sent in
1962 claimed that disseminating Japanese techniques and knowledge
“would facilitate a better exchange of ideas and experience and would
develop a unified outlook for Asia.” Even as it claimed that increasing pro-
ductivity through small-scale management was an apolitical attempt to ex-
pand welfare and prosperity in Asia, the JPC / APO also proclaimed that a
shared commitment to modern management techniques could be a new
source of anticommunist pan-Asian unity.74
In examining the JPC and APO proposals, Ford Foundation officials were
most responsive to Japan’s promise to inspire small business production and
effective management across Asia. “As you can see,” reported Ford staffer
David Heaps after meeting APO representatives in 1962, “the target is Asian
rather than Japanese, underdeveloped rather than developed,” which was
in keeping with the foundation’s ongoing investments in places such as India
and Pakistan. Other Ford staffers reported that Japanese small business had
fundamentally transformed itself over the 1950s by using America knowl-
edge and techniques; Japan could therefore play a similar role for the rest
of Asia. Ford staffer Mogens Host, for example, traveled to Tokyo in 1962,
where he visited small industries and met with APO secretary general
Oshikawa Ichirō, himself a veteran of Japanese imperial development who
had worked as a researcher for the South Manchuria Railway Company
crafting development plans for Manchukuo in the 1930s. Reporting favor-
ably on his visit, Host proclaimed, “What I observed during my visits to
the factories was most impressive and encouraging. For the first time I saw
an Asian country where the smaller industries were well-equipped and ef-
ficiently operated.” Brushing off concerns that language barriers, Japan’s
history, or the Japan-dominated structure of the APO might undercut its
effectiveness, Host parroted earlier convictions about Japan’s unique con-
tributions to the transfer of Western knowledge to Asians. “The idea of
having a course on small industry management in Japan for the people from
countries in South and Southeast Asia seems excellent since the environ-
ment Japan provides,” he enthused, “will be much more similar to what
these people are used to than what can be provided in the U.S. or in
Europe.”75
In December 1963, Ford trustees approved a grant for $320,000 to the
APO for an experimental training program in small business management.
This grant would fund two programs, to be held at the newly constructed
JPC headquarters in Tokyo. The first was a six-month course for twenty
trainees and advisers who ran training programs in factories and served as
consultants for small business. This program, which would run twice,
emphasized management and covered topics such as fundamental man-
agement; specialized management through production control, quality
control, financial control, marketing, and labor–management relations;
and training trainers. The second course, which ran for two months, em-
phasized small business organization and promotion for participants from
business and industry. Topics covered included productivity improvement,
small business productivity problems, industrial development, and advisory
services. All topics covered in these seminars had been integral to JPC- and
ICA-funded productivity programming in Japan.76
In making this grant, Ford was explicit in its belief that the APO would
export Japan’s experiences, and that the APO offered a vision for the re-
gion premised on Japanese leadership. “The relevance of the Japanese ex-
perience in modernization and the extent of the support by the JPC give
the APO a solid and practical basis for international cooperation which is
lacking in many other regional organizations in Asia.” Indeed, Japan’s “ex-
perience of successful modernization offers important lessons” about how
to achieve rapid yet balanced growth, relevant to the “overwhelming bulk

of Asian industry and the majority of employed workers.” Ford also accepted
the APO’s own argument that its proposed training programs were not
just about modernizing industries but about modernizing humans, an up-
date of the logic that had driven productivity efforts in Japan. Responding
to a series of questions about the proposed institute in 1963, Oshikawa ar-
gued that in an Asian context, productivity had to be about more than
technological advancement or modern production techniques. “In Asia most
of the countries are still in the stage of economic development where pro-
ductivity ideas have to concentrate on the development of man and the
better utilization of the existing resources. It is the stage where adequate
and effective use of the talent is the concern.” The introduction of modern
management techniques, which Japan had now mastered, could therefore
teach Asian countries how to use human talent effectively, and effective
training would foster “the development of the right type of men.” Both the
APO and Ford officials therefore conceived of economic growth as a con-
sequence of mental and psychological change; restored to the top of the
Asian hierarchy, it was Japan that had the experience and know-how to
facilitate this transformation.77
By the early 1960s, productivity had become a hallmark of both govern-
ment and private investment in Japan. The country’s experience with
American-funded productivity programming in the 1950s served as an
important foundation for joint American–Japanese programs such as Third
Country Training, and Japanese contributions to regional development
through programs such as the APO. Like the domestic productivity pro-
gram, the APO argued that economic growth stemmed from determination
and a proper state of mind, rather than reconstructing or overturning struc-
tural and economic inequalities, including the legacies of American and
Japanese colonialism in Asia. The dissemination of “productivity conscious-
ness,” claimed both Americans and Japanese, would not only facilitate ma-
terial development but also a new commitment to cooperation and unity
throughout Asia. U.S. policymakers had once sought to build a “free Asia”
around a militarized and democratic Japan; now it was a prosperous, ef-
ficient, and technologically advanced Japan that seemed poised to play this
unifying role. Born in the productivity programming of the 1950s, this vi-
sion of Japanese regional leadership sought to offer a new model for po-
litical, economic, and spiritual anticommunist mobilization. By resurrecting
imperial ideas from the past, it aimed to reframe Japanese regional hege-
mony as a benevolent, technocratic, and modern future.
Conclusion
The growing emphasis on economic productivity by U.S. and Japanese pol-
icymakers in the late 1950s and early 1960s initially paralleled American
efforts to mobilize Japan through political and military means. In the
aftermath of the Anpo protests, however, this economic outreach gained
new energy, especially as the Kennedy administration elevated development
assistance as a central focal point of its own foreign policy and the U.S.–
Japanese relationship. For both American and Japanese leaders, increasing
Japan’s commitment to economic development and building on the success
of the productivity program became an important site of transpacific co-
operation that seemed to promise anticommunism, political stability, na-
tional mobilization, and social peace in Japan and beyond.
Rather than a retreat, this focus on productivity and development was
in many ways an adaption of earlier visions of Cold War democracy. De-
spite claims that productivity was apolitical and neutral, U.S. understand-
ings and rationales for productivity programming upheld and perpetuated
these earlier ideas. Like previous efforts at reform, productivity emphasized
mental transformation as the engine of change, celebrated effective leader-
ship, and called for cooperation and consensus behind national goals. This
profound overlap was most apparent in outreach efforts to labor unions,
which openly proclaimed that a healthy, nonideological, economically
focused labor movement would strengthen Japanese democracy. The pro-
ductivity program therefore drew from ideas and visions once believed
central to Japan’s democratization to argue for popular mobilization
behind a new sense of national purpose and corporate leadership. In com-
parison to earlier efforts to remake the Japanese mind, the key difference
was in how Japan’s democracy would be exemplified, namely through
consumer wealth, national growth, and corporate hegemony. This new
emphasis was particularly appealing to American and Japanese leaders
because in sharp contrast to earlier mobilization efforts, such as the cre-
ation of the NPR, productivity seemed to resonate with opposition forces
that had so long challenged the U.S.–Japan alliance and Japan’s participa-
tion in the Cold War. Labor unionists that had fiercely mobilized against
military bases and the U.S.–Japan alliance came to participate in produc-
tivity programming, softening their opposition to what they once de-
scribed as “capitalist imperialism.”
Equally important, the productivity program served as an important
foundation for Japanese participation in the quest for global development.
Japan, of course, had its own development programming in the 1950s and
1960s, which was implemented separately from the U.S.–Japanese relation-

ship. But especially after Anpo, policymakers and private officials on both
sides of the Pacific turned to economic development as an increasingly
important site of cooperation and as a tool to foster political and social
stability. Far beyond its material benefits, development promised to pro-
vide the mental transformation necessary to combat communism in Japan
and Asia and revitalize Japan with a new sense of purpose. As with rear-
mament in the early 1950s, this emphasis on development resurrected fan-
tasies and careers that had been central to Japanese empire, war, and mass
cruelty. These were now repurposed in the service of Cold War mobiliza-
tion and perversely, democratic stability.
Indeed, development was appealing to both Japanese and American of-
ficials because it did not entail substantial challenges to their core assump-
tions and hierarchies. Just as growth promised to tame workers’ radicalism
and solidify the supremacy of management, endeavors such as Third
Country Training and the APO were to secure the two countries’ regional
and global dominance. Development, after all, did not require economic
redistribution, colonial redress, or apologies for Japan’s wartime aggression.
Instead, it sought to revitalize Japan’s role as the center of East Asia’s
economy, production, knowledge, and trade, subordinate only to American
dominance. Perhaps for this reason, the United States and Japan shared a
mutual commitment to international assistance and development for the
rest of the twentieth century. Despite visible clashes over trade policies, most
notably in the 1970s and 1980s, their commitments in this sphere remained.
In fact, Japan became the globe’s second-largest foreign aid power; in 1989,
Japan’s foreign aid budget was larger than that of the United States. This
emphasis on American–Japanese economic cooperation, productivity, and
development, for the good of the region and even the globe, helped this Pa-
cific alliance to overcome its most serious tests in the late 1950s and early
1960s. It channeled a long-standing discourse of psychological mobiliza-
tion into the shared pursuit of capitalist dreams.78
Conclusion
O n May 27, 2016, U.S. president Barack Obama visited the U.S. Marines
Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, Japan. Surveying the crowd of American
and Japanese politicians and military personnel, he declared that his visit
was “reaffirming one of the greatest alliances in the world between the
United States and Japan.” This close relationship, proclaimed Obama,
embodied the spirit of cooperation and historical reconciliation. It was a
“testament to how even the most painful divides can be bridged; how our
two nations—former adversaries—cannot just become partners, but be-
come the best of friends and the strongest of allies.” At the center of the
president’s address was the notion that the United States and Japan were
not simply close because of shared security concerns or economic interests.
Rather, the two countries were the “best of friends”—their alliance drew
from a deep emotional and even spiritual intimacy. To his military audi-
ence, Obama articulated this belief in unambiguous terms: “Your service,
right here, is rooted in the shared values of today’s Japan and today’s United
States: the values of freedom, the values of democracy, the values of human
rights, the values of rule of law. And as a result,” he explained, “our alli-
ance hasn’t just been essential to the security of our two countries. It’s an
indispensable source of stability and a foundation for prosperity in this
region and around the world.”1
Despite its aspirational rhetoric, this speech was not the one that received
the most attention during Obama’s Japanese sojourn. Journalists, scholars,
and American and Japanese observers were far more curious about Obama’s
unprecedented visit to Hiroshima only a few hours later, where he elo-
quently reflected on the human consequences of war and technological
destruction. Yet it was the speech at Iwakuni, with its equation of stability
and prosperity with the spread of values, that best reflects the ideological
contours of the U.S.–Japanese alliance since World War II. Embedded in
Obama’s language of friendship was the claim that American power is in-
herently liberatory and universal. It was not the United States’ military
might or atomic victory that transformed Japan into an ally, but its lofty
political ideals, rooted in democratic politics and human rights. In Obama’s
narrative, the successful spread of these ideals across the Pacific brought
stability and prosperity not only to Japan but also to the entire Asia-Pacific
region, advancing the cause of humanity itself.
Obama’s description of an alliance based on shared values, language that
first appeared in the 1990s, is now commonplace. A 2014 report by the
congressional study group on Japan, which included pieces by U.S. sena-
tors Mazie Hirono and Lisa Murkowski, as well as Japanese ambassador
Sasae Kenichirō, was entitled Common Interests, Shared Values. An-
nouncing Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzō’s equally unprecedented
visit to Pearl Harbor in December 2016, the White House released a statement
declaring that “The two leaders’ visit will showcase the power of reconcili-
ation that has turned former adversaries into the closest of allies, united by
common interests and shared values.” This talk of shared values has be-
come so pedestrian that it hardly draws attention. In many ways, it has
become the default framing for diplomats and politicians.2
At first glance, the banality of this rhetoric, and its prevalence on both
sides of the Pacific, seem like a testament to the success of the American
project of postwar reconstruction. After all, to an observer in 1945, the idea
that the United States and Japan had shared values was unthinkable. After
the mass death and destruction of World War II, the central goal of the oc-
cupation was to transform Japanese political, economic, cultural, and even
familial values to prevent another catastrophic war. This project continued
into the Cold War, when Americans firmly believed that fostering “demo-
cratic” mentalities and psychologies could build a rigorous, anticommunist
alliance with Japan that would resist communist propaganda, foreign ag-
gression, and domestic subversion. The audience for Obama’s speech, com-
posed of American and Japanese military personnel, highlights the central
role the military played in this vision of democracy as the source of do-
mestic mobilization, confidence, and “spirit.” Equally important, Obama’s
phrasing—citing democratic values as the source not only of freedom, sta-
bility, and peace, but also prosperity—reflects the evolution of this alliance
Conclusion 275
over the course of the 1950s. By the early 1960s, both American and Japa-
nese leaders believed that the strength of the transpacific bond, and peace
and stability in Japan and Asia as a whole, stemmed from economic growth
and the success of free enterprise. The celebration of “shared values,” then,
seems to confirm the triumph of MacArthur, Dulles, Kishi, and their
contemporaries. Their undertaking, so revolutionary in the middle of the
twentieth century, now appears profoundly unremarkable.
Yet like the early Cold War, these rhetorical and ideological visions have
also fueled militarization and violence. Indeed, in the early twenty-first
century, American policymakers utilized this seamless equation of Amer-
ican power, democratic transformation, and universal values in Japan to
argue that democracy could be imposed easily through military fiat; yet
again, Japan became a crucial model for other nonwhite states. While
Obama’s statements hint at this sentiment, it was best embodied by his
predecessor, President George W. Bush, who routinely invoked Japan, along-
side Germany, as proof for the United States’ right, ability, and duty to de-
mocratize the Middle East. In spring of 2003, as U.S. troops prepared to in-
vade Iraq, Bush pointed to the strength of Japan’s democracy as a crucial
precedent. As he forcefully declared in March 2003, “There was a time when
many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sus-
taining democratic values. They were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today.
They, too, are mistaken.” For the president and many others in his administra-
tion, the aftermath of World War II offered potent evidence for their case. It
demonstrated that the American conception of democracy was universal; it
could transcend not only cultural and historical differences but also time and
place. Successfully imposed once, democracy could be imposed again.3
Bush’s invocation of Japan not only sought to establish historical ante-
cedents for a controversial crusade. Like Obama’s speech, it reflected
significant ideological continuities in democratic visions and ideologies
between the Cold War and the so-called war on terror. The president and
his advisers routinely defined the foundations of democracy in Iraq in
strikingly similar terms to the ones used by American policymakers in
1945. Democracy, they claimed, stemmed not simply from institutions or
practices. Rather, it required the proper values, the right attitudes, and a
democratic state of mind. Like James Byrnes in 1945, Bush defined an
American military occupation as a spiritual revolution, an unleashing of
the natural aspirations of the human soul. As he noted in his 2004 speech
at the Republican National Convention,
We were honored to aid the rise of democracy in Germany and Japan . . . and
that noble story goes on. I believe that America is called to lead the cause of
freedom in a new century. I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in
silence for their liberty. I believe that given the chance, they will embrace the
most honorable form of government ever devised by man. I believe all these
things because freedom is not America’s gift to the world; it is the Almighty
God’s gift to every man and woman in this world.
Just as U.S. bombs dropped on Hiroshima and other cities opened the road
to a “healthy” and peaceful democracy in Japan, so would U.S. tanks in
Baghdad bring “God’s gift” of freedom to Iraq.4
It was not just the U.S. occupation that conferred such potent symbolism
on Japan in the early twenty-first century. Equally important was the long-
standing alliance and “friendship” that followed. Bush offered it as evidence
of the United States’ ability to tame and domesticate “rogue” states that
once dared to challenge an American-led global order. As he noted in 2004,
“our confidence comes from one unshakable belief: We believe, in Ronald
Reagan’s words, that ‘the future belongs to the free.’ And we’ve seen the
appeal of liberty with our own eyes. We have seen freedom firmly estab-
lished in former enemies like Japan and Germany.” The lasting transforma-
tion of Japan, Bush even claimed, should offer hope to other seemingly
intractable conflicts, such as that between Israel and Palestine. As he de-
clared in March 2004, “we know [peace] is possible, because in our life-
times we have seen an end to conflicts that no one thought could end. We’ve
seen fierce enemies let go of long histories of strife and anger. America it-
self counts former adversaries as trusted friends: Germany and Japan.”
Alongside Germany, the long relationship with Japan was therefore offered
as potent evidence that American power was—and still is—benevolent and
anti-imperial.5
For all the differences in their thinking about American power, both
Obama and Bush continued to operate under similar ideological assump-
tions about democracy and U.S. diplomacy, especially a conception of
democratization as a process of spreading values, of facilitating mental and
spiritual liberation. In doing so, they parroted ideas and concepts that de-
fined the formation and evolution of the postwar U.S.–Japanese relation-
ship. This alliance, of course, was not purely ideological. U.S. policymakers
and Japanese leaders pursued and built this alliance for its economic ben-
efits; it played a significant role in reintegrating Japan into the global
economy and supporting America’s pursuit of a liberal-capitalist global
order. It also had enormous geostrategic value, which included a defense
umbrella for Japan and crucial military bases for the United States. But such
goals were always entangled with American conceptions of democracy and
the belief that these economic and security benefits required Japanese par-
Conclusion 277
ticipation, mobilization, and a commitment to the democratic “spirit” under

strong and vigilant leaders. While American policymakers constantly wor-
ried about the Japanese people’s ability to achieve this “healthy” mindset,
they also remained committed to this project of Cold War democracy as
the best way to defeat communism and safeguard American prosperity and
security. Indeed, it was because the U.S.–Japanese alliance was soaked in
these beliefs that its perceived success helped perpetuate its logic well after
the Cold War ended. Just as its economic and security arrangements re-
mained in place—Japan is still part of the economic capitalist order led by
the United States, and U.S. troops are still stationed across Japan—so did
its ideological assumptions continue to inform both Obama’s and Bush’s
diplomacy.
Nor are these legacies limited to the United States. Just as profoundly,
the ideological narratives of this alliance have continued to deeply shape
Japanese politics, especially the leadership and goals of Japanese conserva-
tives. Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, for example, has prioritized revision of
the Japanese constitution’s Article 9 to expand Japan’s military capabilities.
In part, he has argued that Japan lives in a dangerous world that requires
enhanced capabilities for its own defense. Expanded military capabilities
would bolster Japanese autonomy by freeing Japan from its American-
imposed constitution, while also fulfilling security pledges made to the
United States. As part of this goal, Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party
passed highly controversial security legislation that expanded the over-
seas capabilities of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces beginning in 2015.
For Abe, expanding the purview of Japan’s defense forces was not
simply about military potential. Rather, in familiar language he claimed
that constitutional revision would revitalize Japan, morally and spiritually,
with a new sense of unity and purpose. As he declared in 2008, “The deter-
mination to write a constitution of our own is a spirit that will open up a
new era.” Constitutional revision, Abe hoped, would also restore the state
to its rightful prominence in the life of the public. As one scholar noted, the
Liberal Democratic Party’s 2012 draft of a revised constitution “was a
nativized, domesticated version of the constitution, emphasizing tradition,
patriotism, and duties to the state,” replacing Article 9’s renunciation of
war with a commitment to building a new defense army. Abe is far from
alone in claiming that Japan’s future must be one of military power, nor
are his ideas new. In 1993, for example, veteran Japanese politician Ozawa
Ichirō published Blueprint for a New Japan, in which he famously claimed
that Japan needed to become a “normal nation” that “assume[s] appro-
priate responsibility” in helping to secure the international community, in-
cluding a reorganization of the Self-Defense Forces. In both their logic and
rhetoric, such statements offered a striking continuation of the historical

and psychological rationales that undergirded both Japanese conserva-
tive and American support of Japanese military power in the early 1950s.
They echoed the claims of Japanese prime minister Kishi Nobusuke, U.S.
secretary of state John Foster Dulles, and others who argued that Japanese
military forces would allow the revival of “national will,” “spirit,” and
“normal patriotism.”6
As was the case during the 1950s, these efforts to resurrect Japanese na-
tionalism and military power in the service of building “spirit” have devel-
oped in concert with a drive to rewrite Japanese history. Just as U.S. officials
like General Matthew Ridgway described the soldiers of Japan’s imperial
military as possessing “normal patriotism,” thus rendering them eligible for
service in the National Police Reserve, Japanese conservatives in the twenty-
first century offer new understandings of Japan’s violent history. Abe, for
example, has been a leading advocate of nationalist historical revisionism in
Japan, based in part on the argument that “a positive vision of Japanese his-
tory was necessary to boost children’s confidence in their country.” Japanese
history textbooks, in similar fashion, have deleted references to Japan’s use
of sexual enslavement during World War II and local museums have re-
moved exhibits about Japanese atrocities in China and elsewhere under the
pressure of historical revisionists. Thus despite Abe’s claims that he is seeking
to “leave behind the postwar regime” by reasserting Japanese nationalism,
this revisionism has been normalized, in part, by the historical trajectory
and ideological agenda of the U.S.–Japanese alliance.7
Not surprisingly, to Abe’s critics, his constitutional challenges and the his-
torical and rhetorical justifications that bolster them are steering Japan
down an eerily familiar path. Like the activists who lambasted his prede-
cessors, his opponents see a resurgence of the militarist wartime menace
and criticize Abe’s efforts to change Japan’s military status as a severe chal-
lenge to democracy in Japan. Kagoshima University historian Kimura
Akira spoke for many in 2016 when he decried that “Japan is already no
longer law-governed or democratic and is moving towards becoming a dark
society and a fascist state.” Such critiques accrue even more power due to
Abe’s personal history. As many observers like to remember, he is the
grandson of Kishi, the conservative prime minister whose actions sparked
the biggest protests in Japanese history. When scholars like historian
Herbert P. Bix comment on Abe’s quest to expand the Japanese military,
facilitate closer U.S.–Japanese cooperation, and deepen Japanese nation-
alism, they note that he has “resolved to follow Kishi’s lead.”8
As such statements show, this alliance’s ideological assumptions continue
to echo not only with American and Japanese leaders but also with its
Conclusion 279
fiercest critics, especially the Japanese Left. Like Reischauer’s talk of “equal
partnership,” the rhetoric of “shared values” elides the persistent resistance
to this relationship, which claims to model a more authentic and popular
vision of Japanese democracy. In the 1960s, for example, the U.S.–Japanese
alliance continued to be rocked by popular unrest. As U.S. planes and troops
left Okinawa for the battlefields of Vietnam, a vigorous antiwar movement
developed in Japan, led by Beheiren (The Citizen’s Alliance for Peace in
Vietnam). As scholars have noted, the Japanese antiwar movement differed
from the protest movements of the 1950s in important ways. Unlike the
antibase movement or the Anpo protests, which had drawn heavily from
formal and established leftist organizations like labor unions, Beheiren was
a more loosely organized coalition of groups—there were over three hun-
dred local chapters—that acted through “conscientious civic activism.” It
embraced a variety of strategies—from large and small demonstrations to
newsletters, letter writing campaigns, teach-ins, protests against Japanese
munitions corporations, and even safe houses for U.S. deserters.9
But Beheiren’s activism also built on key themes from the previous de-
cade. Like their predecessors, these antiwar activists claimed that Japan’s
security commitments to the United States resurrected the aggressive mili-
tarism of World War II, especially against other Asian states, and corrupted
Japanese politics and society. Japan’s complicity in American warfare there-
fore had to be replaced with a more authentic expression of Japanese
democracy that unleashed the Japanese conscience. Prominent antiwar
activists, such as novelist Oda Makoto, insisted that their movement was
not just about resisting the war, but also about fostering self-awareness
and democratic principles as part of a larger social transformation toward
a “society of democratic individualism.” While such activism did little to
slow the American war effort, it perpetuated a vital model of engaged
citizenry that spread far beyond antiwar and antialliance activism. These
conceptions of local and community democracy inspired movements that
sought to protect local land rights and challenge state and corporate hege-
mony by articulating the environmental costs of Japan’s rapid economic
growth. Moreover, activists have continued to viscerally highlight the
U.S.–Japanese alliance’s physical and moral price, such as the protests that
followed the 1995 rape of a twelve-year-old Japanese girl by three Amer-
ican servicemen stationed in Okinawa. Protestors argued that this inci-
dent demonstrates how this alliance continues to betray the Japanese
people; its provisions “designed more for the security goals of Washington
and Tokyo than the welfare of Okinawans.”10
These conceptual ties between democratic authenticity, mental vigilance,
antimilitarism, and antialliance activity continue to shape Japanese activism
in the twenty-first century. As Japanese leaders have discussed revising Ar-

ticle 9 of the Japanese constitution, Japanese peace activists founded groups
such as the Japanese People Who Conserve Article 9 and the Article 9 As-
sociation, which have mobilized against the domestic and international con-
sequences of constitutional revision. For Japanese activists, Article 9 not
only protected the country from misguided wars; the government’s push
for constitutional revision was also a glaring example of how the Japanese
government remained beholden to the U.S.–Japanese alliance over the well-
being of the Japanese people. As declared in a 2004 statement by the Article
9 Association, which included Nobel literature laureate Ōe Kenzaburō, the
quest to revise Japan’s laws “essentially alters the state of the nation that
the Japanese constitution has aimed to achieve, threatening to convert
Japan from a country that strives to resolve conflicts without military force
to a nation that prioritizes military action above all else.” The authors called
for a vigilant and committed expression of democratic personal responsi-
bility: “Each and every citizen, as sovereign members of this country, needs
to personally adopt the Japanese constitution, with its Article Nine, and
reaffirm their belief in it through their daily actions” in order to challenge
a “stance that only prioritizes a military alliance with the United States.”11
For these activists, the war in Iraq only underscored the need for Japan
to offer an alternative model of international engagement. In the words of
Yoshioka Tatsuya, this violent catastrophe “tells us that peace cannot be
achieved through aggression. The 21st century requires a new system of
values, and Article 9 can be Japan’s contribution to the world.” The 1976
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire similarly declared
in a keynote speech to a May 2008 conference that Japan was the shining
light of a global antiwar movement. “Article 9 continues to inspire many
people throughout the world,” she declared. “All peace-loving people must
unite to oppose such a backward step [constitutional revision].” Japanese
activists, then, and their supporters overseas, have continued to call for a
vigilant and authentic popular commitment to hold the Japanese govern-
ment accountable to the naturally peaceful interest of the Japanese people.
They have cited the U.S.–Japanese alliance as a threat to peace and democ-
racy in Japan and across the globe. The official language of “shared
values” therefore seeks to muzzle a vast assembly of divergent political,
economic, historical, and even cultural visions, both between and within
the United States and Japan. It not only works to bind the two countries
together but also to delegitimize alternative political visions. Yet just like
in the days of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Sunagawa protests, and
the mobilization against the 1960 security treaty revisions, the language of
Japanese democracy remains far beyond the control of American and Japa-
Conclusion 281
nese leaders. Observers from Japan and elsewhere continue to direct it

against the alliance itself.12
Finally, the legacies of this alliance are not limited to the diplomatic, geo-
strategic, political, or activist spheres. It has also continued to shape Amer-
ican thinking about economic growth and the United States’ role in shaping
global capitalism. Decades after Americans first mused about building
Japan’s “productivity consciousness,” Japan’s capitalist growth has remained
a crucial gauge against which the United States has measured its own power
and capabilities. This was especially apparent in the 1980s, when the
dynamics of trade and investment between the two countries began to
shift, and Japan became the symbol of American capitalism in crisis. In
this decade, Japan’s economic rise and industrial success produced a growing
trade deficit between the two states; Americans who once bought Ford and
Chevrolet were turning to Toyota, Honda, and Subaru. U.S. policymakers
declared that Japan was seeking to take over the world, and could domi-
nate the global economy by the year 2000.13
American observers posited that Japan’s rise symbolized America’s de-
cline; that it highlighted the deleterious nature of American individualism
and the declining potency of American power; that Japan’s success negated
America’s greatest victory in 1945 and represented a threat akin to Pearl
Harbor. These commentators did not simply critique Japanese industrial
policy and trade practices as protectionist and predatory. They also argued
that Japan was fundamentally anticapitalist and even antidemocratic. In
hearings, congressmen declared Japanese practices to be astonishing and
illegal. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige bemoaned Japan’s unwill-
ingness to play “Adam Smith,” while the writer Marvin J. Wolf declared
that Japan practiced “economic totalitarianism,” a “conspiracy” disguised
“in the convincing cloak of free enterprise.” Such ideas remain deeply rel-
evant in the twenty-first century. U.S. president Donald J. Trump, whose
2017 inaugural address described an America in “carnage,” decimated by
predatory foreign economic competition, first articulated these long-standing
beliefs in public remarks about Japan in the 1980s. Japan’s prosperity, he
thundered in numerous interviews, was glaring proof of American weak-
ness and an unfair global trading order rigged against the United States.14
Such sentiments stemmed in part from the economic transformations of
the 1970s, and especially the potent fear that Asian and nonwhite states
challenged U.S. economic hegemony. But they also demonstrate the extent
to which Japan had come to function as part of America’s sense of self, a
continuation of the dynamics and processes that started during the occu-
pation and extended into the 1950s and 1960s. Just as a democratic and
capitalist Japan was elevated as a showcase of American power, benevolence,
and possibilities, an emboldened and economically formidable Japan was

deemed symbolic of potential American weakness and America’s own de-
cline. Only a Japan that played its “proper” role as a supporting actor in
American hegemony could be capitalist and democratic; a Japan that chal-
lenged this hierarchy was inherently anticapitalist and totalitarian, resur-
recting 1930s-era dreams of global dominance. As Theodore White wrote
in the New York Times Magazine in 1985, “Today, 40 years after the end
of World War II, the Japanese are on the move again in one of history’s most
brilliant commercial offensives, as they go about dismantling American in-
dustry. Whether they are still only smart, or have finally learned to be wiser
than we, will be tested in the next 10 years. Only then will we know who
finally won the war 50 years before.” American conceptualizations of the
postwar U.S.–Japanese relationship—and its postwar hegemony—were
contingent on the question of a compliant Japanese democracy and capi-
talism, with a “totalitarian” Japan symbolizing a broader failure of America
itself.15
Ultimately, the ideology of the U.S.–Japanese alliance has remained sur-
prisingly potent over the past half century. American diplomats and mili-
tary officials, Japanese conservative leaders, and activists and protesters
who oppose this relationship all continue to operate within its foundational
contours. Whether they celebrate or decry this transpacific alliance, all draw
on a historical and ideological trajectory that preserves key assumptions
formed in the 1950s. For American presidents, like Obama and Bush, talk
of “shared values” preserves the visions, narratives, and hierarchies of this
alliance’s inception, in which the United States benevolently instills universal
values and spiritual transformation in its allies. For Japanese conservatives,
like Abe, this alliance necessitates national rebirth and global prominence;
expanded Japanese security capabilities, he claims, will bring confidence and
“spirit” to modern Japan. For protesters, this alliance remains a key ob-
stacle to forming a truly egalitarian and pacifist democratic order. What all
of these people and groups have in common, whether they recognize it or
not, is that their ideas were born in similar times and events. From the plan-
ning of the occupation to debates over Japanese rearmament, the Anpo
protests, and the growing emphasis on Japanese developmental assistance,
a clash over the content of democratic values has long stood at the core of
the U.S.–Japanese alliance. Indeed, the process of building and protesting
this relationship is far from over. Cold War democracy, it seems, has a sur-
prisingly long afterlife.
ABBREVIATIONS
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
ABBREVIATIONS
Archives
DAMOFA Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Tokyo, Japan
Eisenhower Library Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, KS
HUA Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, MA
Kennedy Library John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, MA
LOC Library of Congress, Washington, DC
NARA National Archives and Records Administration, College
Park, MD
NAUK National Archives, United Kingdom, Kew
RAC Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY
Truman Library Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, MO
Document Collections
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
NRUSS Nihon rōdō undo shiryō shūsei [Collected documents from
the postwar Japanese labor movement]
SNBMS Sengo nihon bōei mondai shiryōshū [Collected documents
about Japan’s postwar defense problems]
NOTES
Introduction
1. On civil rights, see Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Citizens of Asian America: Democracy
and Race during the Cold War (New York: New York University Press, 2013);
Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American De-
mocracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Ellen Wu, The
Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
2. “A Report to the National Security Council—NSC 68,” April 12, 1950, 7, Presi-
dent’s Secretary’s Files, Truman Papers, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop
/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/10-1.pdf. This reading of NSC 68
draws heavily from Andrea Friedman, Citizenship in Cold War America: The
National Security State and the Possibilities of Dissent (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2014), 16–47.
3. See, for example, William S. Borden, The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign
Economic Policy and Japanese Trade Recovery (Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press, 1984); Roger Buckley, U.S.–Japan Alliance Diplomacy, 1945–1990
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Aaron Forsberg, America and
the Japanese Miracle: The Cold War Context of Japan’s Postwar Economic Re-
vival, 1950–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000);
Walter LaFeber, The Clash: U.S.–Japanese Relations throughout History (New
York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997); Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, Keystone:
The American Occupation of Okinawa and U.S.–Japanese Relations (College
Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000); Michael Schaller, Altered States:
The United States and Japan since the Occupation (New York: Oxford University
288 Notes to Pages 9–12
Press, 1997); Sayuri Shimizu, Creating People of Plenty: The United States and
Japan’s Economic Alternatives, 1950–1960 (Kent, OH: Kent State University
Press, 2001); John Swenson-Wright, Unequal Allies? United States Security and
Alliance Policy towards Japan, 1945–1960 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2005); and John Welfield, An Empire in Eclipse: Japan in the Postwar
American Alliance System (London: Athlone Press, 1988).
4. On healthy mindsets, see Wendy L. Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The
Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to Civil Rights (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008), 166. For more on the relationship between democracy
and psychological strength, see Susan Carruthers, Cold War Captives: Impris-
onment, Escape, and Brainwashing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009);
Jamie Cohen-Cole, The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of
Human Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014); Friedman, Citizen-
ship in Cold War America; and Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psy-
chology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts, 1940–1970 (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1995). Theodor W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian
Personality: Studies in Prejudice (New York: Harper, 1950), 1.
5. NSC 68, April 12, 1950. Mumford quoted in Wall, Inventing the “American
Way,” 32. Telegram, George Kennan to George Marshall [“Long Telegram”],
February 22, 1946, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections
/coldwar/documents/pdf/6-6.pdf.
6. Jan-Werner Müller, Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century
Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 128. Arthur M.
Schlesinger Jr., “Not Left, Not Right, but a Vital Center,” New York Times Maga-
zine, April 4, 1948. Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 2011), 19.
7. On the concept of “normal” in Cold War America, see Anna G. Creadick, Per-
fectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (Amherst: Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Press, 2010). On the Cold War–era Red Scare, see Ellen
Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1998); and Landon R. Y. Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking
of the Liberal Left (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). On do-
mestic fears of communism before the Cold War, see Alex Goodall, Loyalty and
Liberty: American Countersubversion from World War I to the McCarthy Era
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); and Erica J. Ryan, Red War on the
Family: Sex, Gender, and Americanism in the First Red Scare (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2015). On the targeting of minorities, see Friedman,
Citizenship in Cold War America; and David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare:
The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). In a European context, con-
temporary political theorists called this need for democratic mobilization “mili-
tant democracy.” See Udi Greenberg, The Weimar Century: German Émigrés
and the Ideological Origins of the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2014), 181–198.
8. On elite-centered democratic visions, see Daniel Bessner, Democracy in Exile: Hans
Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Notes to Pages 13–17 289
Press, 2018); Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in

Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 47–
49; and Greenberg, The Weimar Century, 25–76. Bell quoted in Richard H.
Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the
1940s and 1950s (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 139. Schumpeter quoted
in Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 48. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Demo-
cratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).
9. See Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life
10. Max M. Ward, “The Problem of ‘Thought’: Crisis, National Essence, and the
Interwar Japanese State” (PhD diss., New York University, 2011), vii–viii.
11. In making the claim that the United States and Japan used similar logics in their
postwar governance, this book builds on the work of Takashi Fujitani and
Yukiko Koshiro, who assert that the United States and Japan functioned with
similar conceptions of total war, racism, and the management of racial hierar-
chies both during and after World War II. See Takashi Fujitani, Race for Em-
pire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); and Yukiko Koshiro, Trans-
Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1999). On U.S.–Japanese enmity during World War II, see John W.
Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Con-
tinuum, 1986). Naoko Shibusawa and Christina Klein have examined other ideo-
logical frameworks that facilitated reconciliation between the United States and
Japan, specifically hierarchies of race, gender, and maturity. See Christina Klein,
Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2003); and Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Re-
imagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
12. For an argument that American foreign policy is driven by democratization,
see Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide
Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1994). On liberalism and empire, see Jung-Sun Han, An Imperial
Path to Modernity: Yoshino Sakuzō and a New Liberal Order in East Asia,
1905–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012); Susan
Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire:
The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2005).
13. On the idea of “shared values,” see the Congressional Study Group on Japan,
Common Interests, Shared Values: Perspectives on the U.S.–Japan Relationship,
2014, http://usafmc.org/wp-content/uploads/CSGJ_EssayPublication_Oct2014
.pdf.
14. On the wartime state, see J. Victor Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in
Postwar Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 41. On the need
for a critical public, see Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics
in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006),
37; Simon Andrew Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and the
Myth of the Shimin in Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press,

2010), 1–6; and Oguma Eiji, Minshu to Aikoku: Sengo Nihon no Nashonari-
zumu to Kōkyōsei [Democracy and patriotism: Nationalism and community
in postwar Japan] (Tokyo: Shinōsha, 2002), 156. Part of this discussion also
took the form of intensive discussions over the concept of “subjectivity.” See
Andrew E. Barshay, The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and
Modernist Traditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); and Kosch-
mann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan. On distance between
society and the state, see Rikki Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan: Maruyama
Masao and the Search for Autonomy (London: Routledge, 1996), 2.
15. On the distinction between Japan and Asia, see, for example, David Ekbladh,
The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an Amer-
ican World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 8.
16. John Foster Dulles, War or Peace (New York: MacMillan, 1950), 230–231.
17. Christian Herter Circular, March 23, 1960, RG 286 Agency for International
Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P
368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 3, Folder: Development Assistance
Group. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
18. See, for example, Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War
Battle against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2010); Ekbaldh, The Great American Mission; and Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking
Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
19. On Japanese wartime ideologies, see Aaron Stephen Moore, Constructing East
Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931–1945
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 226–242. On modernization
as psychological transformation, see Gilman, Mandarins of the Future,
72–112.
1. Democracy as a State of Mind

1. Signing by Japan of Surrender Terms, Statement by the Secretary of State,
September 1, 1945, in Department of State Bulletin 13, no. 323 (September 2,
1945): 33.
2. The Political Advisor in Japan (Atcheson) to President Truman, January 5,
1947, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Volume VI, the Far East,
ed. S. Everett Gleason, Rogers P. Churchill, and John G. Reid (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office, 1972), 158 (hereafter FRUS 1947, vol. 6).
3. On Gorer, see John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific
War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 125–126. On the discourse of matu-
rity, see Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese
Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 54–95.
4. Quoted in Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Cul-
ture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 52.
5. Quoted in Rudolph V. A. Janssens, What Future for Japan: U.S. Wartime Plan-
ning for the Postwar Era, 1942–1945 (Amsterdam: Rodolpi, 1995), 9, 57.
6. Dayna Barnes, Armchair Occupation: American Wartime Planning for Postwar

Japan, 1937–1945 (PhD diss., London School of Economics, 2013), 51–65;
Masami Kimura, “American Asia Experts, Liberal Internationalism and the Oc-
cupation of Japan: Transcending Cold War Politics and Historiography,” Journal
of American–East Asian Relations 21 (2014): 247–251. See also Dayna L.
Barnes, Architects of Occupation: American Experts and the Planning for
Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017). A missionary back-
ground was especially common among policymakers, scholars, journalists,
and public intellectuals who worked on East Asia. See David Hollinger, Prot-
estants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed
America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
7. Harold D. Lasswell, “Sino-Japanese Crisis: The Garrison State versus the Civilian
State,” China Quarterly 2 (Fall 1937): 643. Hugh Byas, The Japanese Enemy:
His Power and Vulnerability (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), 19. Though
Byas was not a policymaker, his work was cited and recommended by key war-
time planners such as Stanley Hornbeck [Janssens, What Future for Japan,
83]. Hillis Lory, Japan’s Military Masters: The Army in Japanese Life (New
York: Viking Press, 1943), 15. Former U.S. ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew
recommended Lory’s book, writing a foreword calling on the American people
to commit themselves to destroying Japan’s “fanatical military machine.” Spe-
cial Research Division Territorial Subcommittee, “Japan: Postwar Political
Problems,” October 6, 1943, in The Occupation of Japan: U.S. Planning Doc-
uments, 1942–1945, ed. Makoto Iokibe (Bethesda, MD: Congressional Infor-
mation Service, 1987), 1-B-28.
8. Byas, The Japanese Enemy, 38. Hugh Borton, Japan since 1931: Its Political
and Social Developments (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940), 11–
12. Special Research Division Territorial Subcommittee, “Administration and
Structure of the Japanese Government,” May 22, 1943, in Iokibe, The Occu-
pation of Japan: U.S. Planning Documents, 1-B-5.
9. Emphasis in original. E. H. Norman, Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State:
Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period (New York: Institute of
Pacific Relations, 1940), 6, 8.
10. Norman, Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State, 9. On the use of feudalism, see
Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally, 59–73. Lory, Japan’s Military Masters, 19.
11. Office of Strategic Services, Research and Intelligence Branch Report no. 259,
“Social Relations in Japan,” March 19, 1942, in Iokibe, The Occupation of
Japan: U.S. Planning Documents, 3-A-18. Headquarters, U.S. Army Service
Forces, Civil Affairs Handbook, Japan, Section 2: Government and Adminis-
tration (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1945), 68. Byas, The
Japanese Enemy, 36–37.
12. Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Cul-
ture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946), 13, 224–225.
13. Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, 224–225. Shibusawa, America’s
Geisha Ally, 60. U.S. Army Service Forces, Civil Affairs Handbook, Japan, 78.
Department of State, Division of Political Studies, “T Minutes 58,” December 3,
1943, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan: U.S. Planning Documents, 1-C-8. As
the Inter-Divisional Area Committee on the Far East wrote in May 1944, “[t]he
complete defeat of Japan and the destruction of the military machine will doubt-
less have a profound psychological effect upon the Japanese people . . . they
may be jolted into a realization that their military leaders had led them to de-
struction and national disgrace and hence they may well turn to a new group of
leaders.” Inter-divisional Area Committee on the Far East, “Japan: Abolition of
Militarism and the Strengthening of Democratic Processes,” May 9, 1944, in
Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan: U.S. Planning Documents, 2-A-52.
14. Special Research Division Territorial Subcommittee, “Japan: Postwar Political
Problems,” October 6, 1943. Inter-Divisional Area Committee on the Far East,
“Decentralization of Japanese Administration,” May 1, 1944, in Iokibe, The
Occupation of Japan: U.S. Planning Documents, 2-C-10. Inter-Divisional Area
Committee on the Far East, “Japan: Abolition of Militarism and Strengthening
of Democratic Processes,” May 9, 1944. U.S. Army Service Forces, Civil Affairs
Handbook, Japan, 34.
15. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Winston Churchill, “Press Com-
muniqué” [The Cairo Declaration], November 26, 1943, in Foreign Relations
of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran,
1943, ed. William M. Franklin and William Gerber (Washington, DC: United
States Government Printing Office, 1961), 448–449. Inter-Divisional Area
Committee on the Far East, “Decentralization of Japanese Administration,”
May 1, 1944.
16. Artemus Gates, SWNCC 162 / D, “Positive Policy for Reorientation of the Japa-
nese,” Appendix A, July 19, 1945, in State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee
Policy Files, 1944–1947, ed. Martin P. Claussen (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, 1977), Reel 14.
17. Inter-Divisional Area Committee on the Far East, “Japan: Freedom of Wor-
ship,” March 13, 1944, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan: U.S. Planning Doc-
uments, 2-A-37. On American thinking about religion in postwar Japan, see
Sarah Miller-Davenport, “ ‘Their Blood Shall Not Be Shed in Vain’: Evangelical
Missionaries and the Search for God and Country in Post–World War II Asia,”
Journal of American History 99, no. 4 (March 2013): 1109–1132; and Anna
Su, Exporting Freedom: Religious Liberty and American Power (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press 2016), 95–96.
18. Joseph Grew, Address at the Annual Banquet Celebrating the 90th Anniversary
of the Illinois Education Association, December 29, 1943, http://www.ndl.go
.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/01/003/003tx.html. Special Research Division Territo-
rial Subcommittee, “Japan: Postwar Political Problems,” October 6, 1943.
19. Cabot Coville, “Status of the Japanese Emperor,” April 1943, in Iokibe, The
Occupation of Japan: U.S. Planning Documents, 1-B-2. See also T. Fujitani,
“The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, Hirohito, and Japanese American Soldiers,”
in Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 3 (2001): 381–383. On Truman, see Takamae
Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy, trans. Robert
Ricketts and Sebastian Swann (New York: Continuum, 2002), 217.
20. Harry Truman, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Winston Churchill, “Proclamation De-
fining the Terms for Japan’s Surrender,” July 26, 1945, http://www.ndl.go.jp
/constitution/e/etc/c06.html. On freedom of religion, see Su, Exporting Freedom,

90–91.
21. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Basic Directive for Post-Surrender Military Government
in Japan Proper” (JCS 1380 / 15), November 3, 1945, http://www.ndl.go.jp
/constitution/e/shiryo/01/036/036tx.html.
22. General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, “General
Order No. 8, Extract, Government Section,” October 2, 1945, in The Occupa-
tion of Japan, Part 3: Reform, Recovery and Peace, ed. Makoto Iokibe (Bethesda,
MD: University Publications of America, 1991), 3-A-31. The vast majority of
the occupation troops were American, though a limited number of British, Aus-
tralian, Indian, and New Zealand troops also participated as the British Com-
monwealth Occupation forces.
23. On the number of troops demobilized, see Masuda Hiroshi, MacArthur in Asia:
The General and His Staff in the Philippines, Japan, and Korea, trans. Reiko
Yamamoto (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 201–202. Office of the
Supreme Commander for Allied Powers to the Imperial Japanese government,
“Subject: Flying of the Japanese Flag,” September 23, 1945, in Iokibe, The Oc-
cupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-20. On the Tokyo Trial, see Yuma Totani, The
Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 1.
24. General Headquarters, Supreme Commander Allied Forces, “Removal and Ex-
clusion of Undesirable Personnel from Public Office,” SCAPIN-550, January 4,
1946, and General Headquarters, Supreme Commander Allied Forces, “Re-
moval of Ultranationalists,” SCAPIN-548, January 4, 1946, in Government
Section, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Political Reorientation of
Japan: September 1945–September 1948, Appendices (Washington, DC: Gov-
ernment Printing Office, 1949), 479–488. On the number of purgees, see
Takamae, Inside GHQ, 269. On the political consequences and rationales
behind the purge, see Masuda Hiroshi, Kōshoku tsuihō: sandai seiji pāji no
kenkyū [The purge: A study of the three important political purge cases] (Tokyo:
Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1996); and Juha Saunavaara, “The Unforeseen Ef-
fects of American Intervention: The Political Purge Program and the Making
of Japan’s Postwar Leadership,” in Japan Viewed from Interdisciplinary Per-
spectives: History and Prospects, ed. Yoneyuki Sugita (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2015), 193–210.
25. General Headquarters, Supreme Commander Allied Forces, “Memorandum
to the Japanese Government Concerning Freedom of Speech,” SCAPIN 16,
September 10, 1945; and General Headquarters, Supreme Commander Allied
Forces, “Removal of Restrictions on Political, Civil, and Religious Liberties,”
SCAPIN 93, October 4, 1945, in Government Section, Political Reorientation
of Japan, 460–465.
26. Guy J. Swope, Memorandum to Chief, Government Section, “Field Trip,
March 27–April 1, Concerning Elections,” April 3, 1947, in Iokibe, The
Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-515.
27. Guy J. Swope to Chief, Government Section, “The Election,” January 14, 1946,
in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-131.
28. Masuda, MacArthur in Asia, 222–223; Dale Hellegers, We the Japanese People:
World War II and the Origins of the Japanese Constitution (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 2001), 536.
29. Scholars have cited multiple reasons for Hatoyama’s purge, including
GHQ / SCAP’s desire to remove old political leadership; concern about the slow
pace of the coalition negotiations, which had deadlocked over Hatoyama him-
self; GHQ / SCAP’s dislike of political parties; and Hatoyama’s own attitude
toward political leadership. See, for example, Hans H. Baerwald, The Purge of
Japanese Leaders under the Occupation (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1959), 23–24; Mayumi Itoh, The Hatoyama Dynasty: Japanese Political
Leadership through the Generations (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003),
75–102; Masuda Hiroshi, Seijika Tsuihō [The purge of politicians] (Tokyo:
Chūō Kōron shinsha, 2001); Juha Saunavaara, “Occupation Authorities, the
Hatoyama Purge and the Making of Japan’s Postwar Political Order,” in Asia-
Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 7, issue 39, no. 2 (September 28, 2009), https://apjjf
.org/-Juha-Saunavaara/3229/article.html. On Japanese complaints to GHQ /
SCAP, see P. K. Roest to Chief, Government Section, “Visit of Socialist Leaders,”
May 27, 1946, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-259; P. K. Roest
to Chief, Government Section, “Activity of the Political Parties Branch during
February 1946,” February 25, 1946, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part 3,
3-A-166; P. K. Roest to Chief, Government Section, “Report of Conference,”
April 27, 1946, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-231.
30. SWNCC 228, “Reform of the Japanese Governmental System,” Appendix B,
“Facts Bearing on the Problem,” November 27, 1945, 7, 12, in Claussen, State-
War-Navy Coordinating Committee Policy Files, Reel 20.
31. Appendix J, the MacArthur and Japanese Government Drafts in Hellegers, We,
the Japanese People, 673, 675. For a detailed exploration of the postwar con-
stitution, see also Koseki Shōichi, The Birth of Japan’s Postwar Constitution,
ed. and trans. Ray A. Moore (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). On freedom
of thought, see Hellegers, We, the Japanese People, 681.
32. Italics mine. This emphasis on democratic vigilance was also prominent during
the occupation of Germany, especially in the concept of militant democracy,
which argued that democratic regimes had to aggressively mobilize against
antidemocratic forces by curbing rights at home and / or invading foreign re-
gimes. See Udi Greenberg, The Weimar Century: German Émigrés and the Ide-
ological Foundations of the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2015), 169–210. Articles 10 and 11 quoted in Appendix J in Hellegers,
We, the Japanese People, 678.
33. Osborne Hague, Memorandum for the Chief, Government Section, “Discus-
sion of Draft Constitution in Diet to 8 July,” July 9, 1946, in Iokibe, The Oc-
cupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-304. Milton J. Esman, Memorandum for the
Chief, Government Section, “Japanese Constitution,” July 14, 1946, in Iokibe,
The Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-312. For a detailed discussion on the pro-
cess of translating the new constitution into Japanese, see John W. Dower,
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2000), 374–404.
34. SWNCC 108 / 1, “Policy for the Revision of the Japanese Educational System,”
September 5, 1946, in Claussen, State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee
Policy Files, Reel 11. On the size of the Japanese school system, see Takamae,
Inside GHQ, 349. See also Toshio Nishi, Unconditional Democracy: Educa-
tion and Politics in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Insti-
tution Press, 1982).
35. Takamae, Inside GHQ, 350–352, 362, 368–370. “The Imperial Rescript on
Education,” October 30, 1890, http://www.japanpitt.pitt.edu/glossary/imperial
-rescript-education.
36. Takamae, Inside GHQ, 181, 395, 363. Ministry of Education, “Foreword” in
Primer of Democracy, October 30, 1948. This textbook was authored by the
Japanese Ministry of Education; however, all textbooks were overseen and cen-
sored by GHQ / SCAP.
37. On the purge numbers, see Takamae, Inside GHQ, 351–352. On film censor-
ship, see Kyoko Hirano, Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema under the
American Occupation (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).
38. Robert Fearey, “The Japanese Agricultural Problem,” in Agrarian Reform as
Unfinished Business: The Selected Papers of Wolf Ladejinsky, ed. Louis J.
Walinsky (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 574.
39. Takamae, Inside GHQ, 242; J. Victor Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity
in Postwar Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 21. F. E. Hayes,
Memorandum for the Chief, Government Section, “Invalid Ballots in Election
for Governor of Tokyo,” April 10, 1947, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan,
Part 3, 3-A-521. “Report by Dr. George Blakeslee on the Far Eastern Commis-
sion’s Trip to Japan, December 23, 1945–February 13, 1946,” in Foreign Rela-
tions of the United States, 1946, Volume VIII, the Far East, ed. S. Everett
Gleason, Rogers P. Churchill, and John G. Reid (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1971), 167 (hereafter FRUS 1946, vol. 8).
40. Takamae, Inside GHQ, 341, 344. As with educational reform, much of the con-
tent of land reform actually drew from Japanese progressives and reformers.
Their ideas were mediated through reports and suggestions of occupation of-
ficials, especially Wolf Ladejinsky, who had first written about Japanese ten-
ancy practices in the 1930s and now spearheaded land reform in the occupa-
tion’s Natural Resources Section. Susan Deborah Chira, Cautious Revolutionaries:
Occupation Planners and Japan’s Postwar Land Reform (Tokyo: Agricultural
Policy Research Center, 1982), 1–2.
41. Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Pov-
erty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 98. On land
reform commissions, see Takamae, Inside GHQ, 344; Kerry Smith, A Time of
Crisis: Japan, the Great Depression, and Rural Revitalization (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), 356. MacArthur quoted in Chira, Cau-
tious Revolutionaries, 66.
42. On unions as a political force, see Takamae, Inside GHQ, 311. On the size of the
Japanese labor movement, see Masuda Hajimu, Cold War Crucible: The Korean
Conflict and the Postwar World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2015), 26; Andrew Gordon, The Wages of Affluence: Labor and Management in
Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 4–40. On

democratic imaginary, see Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar
Japan, 22.
43. “General MacArthur’s Statement on the Third Anniversary of the Japanese Con-
stitution,” April 29, 1950, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-1029.
44. On the Cold War as mental and psychological struggle, see Jaime Cohen-Cole,
The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2014); and Andrea Friedman, Citizenship
in Cold War America: The National Security State and the Possibilities of Dis-
sent (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014).
45. On HUAC, see Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in Amer-
ica (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), 98. “President Harry S. Truman’s Address
before a Joint Session of Congress,” March 12, 1947, http://avalon.law.yale.edu
/20th_century/trudoc.asp.
46. David Milne, Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 274, 281. “A Report to the National
Security Council—NSC 68,” April 12, 1950, 7, President’s Secretary’s Files,
Truman Papers, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections
/coldwar/documents/pdf/10-1.pdf.
47. Milne, Worldmaking, 279. NSC 68, 7–8. This reading of NSC 68 owes much
to Friedman, Citizenship in Cold War America, 16–47.
48. NSC 68, 22–23.
49. NSC 68, 24, 57.
50. Friedman, Citizenship in Cold War America, 27–32. Telegram, George Kennan
to George Marshall [“Long Telegram”], February 22, 1946, Harry S. Truman
Administration Files, Elsey Papers, Truman Library, https://www.trumanlibrary
.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/6-6.pdf. “President
Harry S. Truman’s Address before a Joint Session of Congress,” March 12, 1947.
51. Italics mine. Executive Order 9836, “Prescribing Procedures for the Adminis-
tration of an Employees Loyalty Program in the Executive Branch of the Gov-
ernment,” March 21, 1947, https://trumanlibrary.org/executiveorders/index
.php?pid=502. On the Lavender Scare, see Robert Dean, Imperial Brotherhood:
Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2003); and David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The
Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). On the targeting of other groups, such
as labor and leftist activists, racial minorities, immigrants, and women, see, for
example, John Fousek, To Lead the Free World: American Nationalism and the
Cultural Roots of the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000); Friedman, Citizenship in Cold War America, 80–118; Landon R. Y.
Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left
52. The Acting Political Advisor (Atcheson) to President Truman, January 4, 1946,
in FRUS 1946, vol. 8, 88–89.
53. Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan, 35. P. K. Roest,
“Memorandum on Interview with Nosaka,” March 10, 1947, in Iokibe, The
Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-488. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 256.
54. “Department of State Comments on Current Strategic Evaluation of U.S.

Security Needs in Japan (NSC 49),” September 30, 1949, in Rearmament of
Japan, Part 1, 1947–1952, ed. Hiroshi Masuda (Bethesda, MD: Congressional
Information Service, 1988), 1-A-119. Special Investigation Bureau, Attorney
General’s Office, “The Status of the Communist Movement,” September 21,
1950, 59. The Papers of Colonel Jack Napier, Series 1, Subseries E, Japanese
Government, Attorney General’s Office, Special Investigation Bureau, Folder
11, “Status of the Communist Movement,” September 21, 1950, Box 1, Reel
1082. MacArthur Memorial, Norfolk VA (hereafter MacArthur Memorial).
55. Mr. Max W. Bishop, of the Office of the Political Advisor in Japan, to the Sec-
retary of State, April 10, 1946, in FRUS 1946, vol. 8, 191–194.
56. Informal Memorandum by the Secretary of State to the British Ambassador
(Franks), December 24, 1949, in Foreign Relations of the United States 1949,
Volume VII, the Far East and Australasia, Part 2, ed. S. Everett Gleason and
Frederick Aandahl (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976), 928
(hereafter FRUS 1949, vol. 7). Special Investigation Bureau, Attorney General’s
Office, “Two Political Extremities in Japan,” February 15, 1950, 165. The Pa-
pers of Colonel Jack Napier, Series 1, Subseries E, Japanese Government, At-
torney General’s Office, Special Investigation Bureau, Folder 1, “Two Political
Extremities in Japan,” Box 2, Reel 1082. MacArthur Memorial.
57. “General MacArthur’s Statement on the Third Anniversary of the Japanese
Constitution,” April 29, 1950.
58. Douglas MacArthur, “Statement Calling off General Strike,” January 31, 1947,
in Government Section, Political Reorientation of Japan, 762. Dower, Em-
bracing Defeat, 270.
59. Carlos P. Marcum, Memorandum for General Whitney, “Japanese Government’s
Request for SCAP Opinion Concerning Right of Government Employees to
Organize, Negotiate, and Strike,” August 7, 1947, in Iokibe, The Occupation of
Japan, Part 3, 3-A-639. Douglas MacArthur to Prime Minister Ashida Hi-
toshi, “Amendment of the National Public Service Law,” July 22, 1948, in
Government Section, Political Reorientation of Japan, 581–583. Takamae,
Inside GHQ, 465–466.
60. Misao Kumaya, Memorandum for the Record, “Introduction of a Bill to Pre-
vent Unreasonable Disturbances,” December 18, 1946, in Iokibe, The Occu-
pation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-435. Takamae, Inside GHQ, 468. Masuda, Cold
War Crucible, 37.
61. Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold
War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 89–93.
62. This telegram was sent through William Sebald, Political Advisor to GHQ / SCAP.
The Acting Political Advisor in Japan (Sebald) to the Secretary of State,
March 23, 1948, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Volume VI,
The Far East and Australasia, ed. S. Everett Gleason and Frederick Aandahl
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1974), 690 (hereafter FRUS
1948, vol. 6). Memorandum of Conversation, Prepared in the Canadian De-
partment for External Affairs, “United States Policy on Japan: Memorandum
of an Interview with Mr. G. F. Kennan, United States Department of State,
June 1, 1948,” June 3, 1948, in FRUS 1948, vol. 6, 804–805.
63. “Conversation between General of the Army MacArthur and Mr. George
Kennan, March 5, 1948,” in FRUS 1948, vol. 6, 712.
64. “Report by the National Security Council on Recommendations with Respect
to United States Policy Toward Japan” (NSC 13 / 2), October 7, 1948, in FRUS
1948, vol. 6, 858–862. On the impact of the Dodge plan, see Mark Metzler,
Capital as Will and Imagination: Schumpeter’s Guide to the Postwar Japanese
Miracle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 119.
65. Takamae, Inside GHQ, 470–473. Masuda, MacArthur in Asia, 246. Metzler,
Capital as Will and Imagination, 129. See also Chalmers Johnson, Conspiracy
at Matsukawa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).
66. Quoted in Justin Williams, Memorandum for the Chief, Government Section,
“Resolution for Establishing a Special Examination Committee in the House
of Representatives,” March 25, 1949, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part
3, 3-A-896.
67. On actions at Yokosuka, see Takamae, Inside GHQ, 480–481. On the actions
of the labor ministry, see Masuda, Cold War Crucible, 236. On public sector
retrenchment, see Hans Martin Krämer, “Just Who Reversed the Course: The
Red Purge in Higher Education during the Occupation of Japan,” Social
Science Japan Journal 8, no. 1 (2005): 1. “The Secretary of State to the Active
Political Advisor in Japan (Sebald),” October 31, 1949, in FRUS 1949, vol. 7,
888.
68. Quoted in Richard B. Finn, Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar
Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 233. M. Uchiyama,
Memorandum for the Chief, Government Section, “Possible Action against the
Provisional Central Guidance Organization of the Japan Communist Party,”
August 27, 1951, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-1253.
Takamae, Inside GHQ, 482.
69. On Nugent, see Krämer, “Just Who Reversed the Course,” 6. Quoted in
Takamae, Inside GHQ, 480.
70. Krämer, “Just Who Reversed the Course?” 1, 5.
71. M. Matsukata, Memorandum for Chief, Government Section, “Conference
with the Attorney General at 1600 hours, 5 September 1951,” September 6,
1951, in Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-1270.
72. “Problems Confronting SCAP in the Period between the Signing of the Peace
Treaty and the End of the Occupation,” September 9, 1951, in Iokibe, The
Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-1276. Government Statement on the Subver-
sive Activities Prevention Law, July 21, 1952, quoted in John M. Maki, “Japan’s
Subversive Activities Prevention Law,” The Western Political Quarterly 6, no. 3
(1953): 489. See also Cecil H. Uyehara, The Subversive Activities Prevention
Law of Japan—Its Creation, 1951–52 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). M. Matsukata,
Memorandum for the Record, “Attorney General Kimura,” March 8, 1952, in
Iokibe, The Occupation of Japan, Part 3, 3-A-1625.
2. Militarizing Democracy
1. National Security Council, Annex to NSC 125 / 1 (United States Objectives and
Courses of Action with Respect to Japan), July 23, 1952, 7, RG 218 Records
of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic File, 1951–1953, Box 25, Folder:
CCS 092 Japan (12-12-50) Sec. 14. National Archives and Records Adminis-
tration, College Park, MD (hereafter NARA). Commander in Chief Far East
(Ridgway) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, December 21, 1951, RG 218 Records
CCS 383.21 Japan (3-13-45) Sec. 27. NARA.
2. On the motivations behind the creation of the National Police Reserve, see
Thomas French, National Police Reserve: The Origin of Japan’s Self-Defense
Forces (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Ayako Kusunoki, “The Early Years of the Ground
Self-Defense Forces,” in The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force: Search for
Legitimacy, ed. Robert D. Eldridge and Paul Midford (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2017), 59–132; Masuda Hiroshi, Jieitai no Tanjō: Nihon no Sai-
gunbi to Amerika [The birth of the SDF: Japanese rearmament and the United
States] (Tokyo: Chuokoron-shinsa inc., 2004); Shibayama Futoshi, Nihon Sai-
gunbi e no Michi, 1945–1954 [The path toward Japanese rearmament, 1945–
1954] (Kyoto: Miveruva shobō, 2010).
3. On social integration in the postwar U.S. military, see Brian McAllister Linn,
Elvis’ Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 2016), 3.
4. On France, see David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the
Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Notes on
the Debates in the Federal Convention, Madison Debates, June 29, 1787, http://
avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_629.asp. On Mahan, see David
Milne, Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 46. On post–World War I demobilization,
see Lori Lyn Bogle, The Pentagon’s Battle for the American Mind: The Early
Cold War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 23–26.
5. James Sparrow, Warfare State: Americans and the Age of Big Government (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5, 202, 211. On the GI’s symbolic power,
see Takashi Fujitani, Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as
Americans during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011),
83; and Sparrow, Warfare State, 240–241. On integration in the military during
and after World War II, see Fujitani, Race for Empire, 125–238; Deborah Dash
Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press, 2004); Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 52–91; and Douglas Walter Bristol Jr.
and Heather Marie Stur, eds., Integrating the U.S. Military: Race, Gender, and
Sexual Orientation since World War II (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2017).
6. William A. Taylor, Every Citizen a Soldier: The U.S. Army’s Campaign for Uni-
versal Military Training Following World War II (PhD diss., George Wash-
ington University, 2010), xii. Linn, Elvis’ Army, 10.
7. Quoted in Taylor, Every Citizen a Soldier, xxvi, 48–49. On duty, see Bogle, The
Pentagon’s Battle for the American Mind, 41.
8. On Truman, see Bogle, The Pentagon’s Battle for the American Mind, 65–66;
and Linn, Elvis’ Army, 22. Truman quoted in Taylor, Every Citizen a Soldier,
149; Michael Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the
National Security State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 135;
and Bogle, The Pentagon’s Battle for the American Mind, 66.
9. Susan L. Carruthers, The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards
of Peace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 191–200. Linn,
Elvis’ Army, 20–21. Jonathan P. Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex:
America’s Religious Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 112. Hogan, A Cross of Iron, 134.
10. On the Fort Knox program, see Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex,
114–117; and Bogle, The Pentagon’s Battle for the American Mind, 66–69.
Quoted in Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex, 116.
11. Many politicians, both conservative Republicans and some Democrats, con-
tinued their New Deal–era critique of the dangers of expansive federal power
into the early Cold War. For a detailed exploration of political continuities be-
tween the New Deal and the early Cold War, see Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself:
The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013). Taft
quoted in Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex, 116. Charles E. Merriam,
“Security without Militarism: Preserving Civilian Control in American Political
Institutions,” in Civil-Military Relationships in American Life, ed. Jerome G.
Kerwin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 157. “Military dictator-
ship,” quoted in Hogan, A Cross of Iron, 44.
12. Harold D. Lasswell, “Sino-Japanese Crisis: The Garrison State versus the Civilian
State,” The China Quarterly 2 (1937): 461, 463. Hogan, A Cross of Iron, 155.
13. Louis Smith, American Democracy and Military Power: A Study of Civil Con-
trol of the Military Power in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1951), 327. Other early texts exploring civil-military relations include
Arthur J. Ekirch Jr., The Civilian and the Military (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1956); Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory
and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1957);
Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait
(Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960); Jerome G. Kerwin, ed., Civil-Military Relations
in American Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948); Silas Bent
McKinley, Democracy and Military Power (New York: Vanguard Press, 1934);
Burton N. Sapin and Richard C. Snyder, The Role of the Military in American
Foreign Policy (New York: Doubleday, 1954). For an early history of milita-
rism, see Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: Romance and Realities of a
Profession (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1937). For a short review
of the postwar development of civil-military relations and military studies, fo-
cused in particular on Huntington’s influential work, see Peter D. Feaver and
Erika Seeler, “Before and After Huntington: The Methodological Maturing of
Civil-Military Studies,” in American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and
the State in a New Era, ed. Suzanne C. Nielson and Don M. Snider (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 72–90.
14. Bogle, The Pentagon’s Battle for the American Mind, 72. Herzog, The Spiritual-
Industrial Complex, 118.
15. “President Harry S Truman’s Address before a Joint Session of Congress,”
March 12, 1947, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp.
16. Harry S. Truman, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1949, https://www

.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/50yr_archive/inagural20jan1949.htm.
17. Quoted in Chester J. Pach, Arming the Free World: The Origins of the United
States Military Assistance Program, 1945–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1991), 202, 121–122. On the centrality of psychology
and morale to American thinking about this program, see Pach, Arming the
Free World, 5, 198–226.
18. “Military Assistance Program, Joint Hearings before the Committee on For-
eign Relations and the Committee on Armed Services,” United States Senate,
Eighty-First Congress, August 1949 (Washington, DC: Government Printing
Office, 1949), 6, 13, 91.
19. Harry S. Truman, “Statement by the President upon Issuing Order Providing
for the Administration of the Mutual Defense Assistance Act,” January 27,
1950, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13590. On U.S. spending and
international participation in military assistance, see Zoltan Barany, The Soldier
and the Changing State: Building Democratic Armies in Africa, Asia, Europe,
and the Americas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 52. On
the Mutual Security Act, see John Swenson-Wright, Unequal Allies? United
States Security and Alliance Policy toward Japan, 1945–1960 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2005), 191.
20. Quoted in Pach, Arming the Free World, 170.
21. National Security Council, “The Position of the United States with Respect to
Asia (NSC 48 / 2),” December 30, 1949, in Foreign Relations of the United
States 1949, Volume VII, The Far East and Australasia, Part 2, ed. S. Everett
Gleason and Frederick Aandahl (Washington, DC: Government Printing
Office, 1976), 1215 (hereafter FRUS 1949, vol. 7).
22. See, for example, Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War
Battle against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2013); David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the
Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2011); Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking Small: The United States and
the Lure of Community Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2014). Bradley R. Simpson, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian De-
velopment and U.S.–Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968 (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2010), 32–33.
23. General Charles A. Willoughby, Memorandum to the Chief of Staff and Com-
mander in Chief, “Personnel for the National Police Reserve,” August 10, 1950,
RG 331, Allied Operational and Occupational Headquarters World War II,
SCAP, Government Section Administrative Division, Misc. Subject File,
1945–1952, Box 1, Folder: Untitled. NARA.
24. The Constitution of Japan, November 3, 1946, http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign
/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html. See also Akio
Watanabe, “Japan’s Postwar Constitution and its Implications for Defense
Policy: A Fresh Interpretation,” in Japan’s Military Renaissance?, ed. Ron
Matthews and Keisuke Matsuyama (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 40;
Robert D. Eldridge, “Organization and Structure of the Contemporary Ground
Self-Defense Force,” in The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force: Search for

Legitimacy, ed. Robert D. Eldridge and Paul Midford (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2017), 20; Frank Kowalski, An Inoffensive Rearmament: The
Making of the Postwar Japanese Army, ed. Robert D. Eldridge (Annapolis,
MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 42.
25. On Eichelberger, see French, National Police Reserve, 68. Conversation between
General of the Army MacArthur and Mr. George Kennan, “Explanatory Note
by Mr. George F. Kennan, March 25, 1948,” in Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1948, Volume VI, The Far East and Australasia, ed. S. Everett Gleason
and Frederick Aandahl (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1974),
712 (hereafter FRUS 1948, vol. 6). Yoshida Shigeru to Douglas MacArthur,
August 6, 1949, in The Occupation of Japan, Part 3: Reform, Recovery and
Peace, ed. Makoto Iokibe (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America,
1991), 3-A-939.
26. “Department of State Comments on Current Strategic Evaluation of U.S. Se-
curity Needs in Japan (NSC 49),” September 30, 1949, in Rearmament of Japan,
Part 1, 1947–1952, ed. Hiroshi Masuda (Bethesda, MD: Congressional Infor-
mation Service, 1988), 1-A-119. A Report by the Joint Strategic Survey Com-
mittee to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “The Impact of an Early Peace Treaty with
Japan on United States Strategic Requirements,” November 30, 1949, in
Masuda, Rearmament of Japan, Part 1, 1-A-114. Quoted in Yoneyuki Sugita,
Pitfall or Panacea: The Irony of U.S. Power in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952
(New York: Routledge, 2003), 92.
27. “Views of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur on Rearmament of Japan,”
April 16, 1948, in Masuda, Rearmament of Japan, Part 1, 1-A-46. Conversation
between General of the Army MacArthur and Mr. George F. Kennan,
March 5, 1948, in FRUS 1948, vol. 6, 702.
28. Department of the Army, Plans and Operations Division, “Limited Military Ar-
mament for Japan,” 1948, in Masuda, Rearmament of Japan, Part 1, 1-A-46.
29. Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Rusk)
to the Acting Secretary of State, February 22, 1951, in Foreign Relations of the
United States 1951, Volume VI, Asia and the Pacific, Part 1, ed. Frederick Aan-
dahl et al. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1977), 891 (here-
after FRUS 1951, vol. 6).
30. Memorandum by the Consultant to the Secretary (Dulles) to the Director of
the Policy Planning Staff (Nitze), July 20, 1950, in Foreign Relations of the
United States 1950, Volume VI, Asia and the Pacific, ed. S. Everett Gleason
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976), 1247 (hereafter FRUS
1950, vol. 6). William J. Sebald to the Department of State, “The Problem of
Japan’s Rearmament,” August 25, 1950, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service
Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of the U.S. Political Ad-
visor, Classified General Records, 1945–1952 (Entry UD 2828), Box 60,
Folder: 320.1 Peace Treaty 1950. NARA. Unsigned Memorandum by the Policy
Planning Staff, “Assumption by Japan of a Greater Measure of Responsibility
for Its Own Security, Both Internal and External,” July 26, 1950, in FRUS 1950,
vol. 6, 1256.
31. Letter from General Douglas MacArthur to Yoshida Shigeru, July 8, 1950, in
Masuda, Rearmament of Japan, Part 1, 1-B-126.
32. Kowalski, An Inoffensive Rearmament, 31. Courtney Whitney, “Memorandum
Concerning Legal Aspects of the Implementation of the Supreme Commander’s
Letter of 8 July 1950,” July 14, 1950, in Masuda, Rearmament of Japan, Part
1, 1-B-126.
33. State Department Position Paper, Received by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on
December 3, 1950, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic
File 1948–190, Box 35, Folder: CCS 338.1 Japan (9-1-47) Sec. 3. NARA.
34. Masuda Hajimu, “Fear of World War III: Social Politics of Japan’s Rearmament
and Peace Movements, 1950–3,” Journal of Contemporary History 47 (2012):
558. Ōtake Hideo, “Rearmament Controversies and Cultural Conflicts in Japan:
The Case of the Conservatives and the Socialists,” in Creating Single Party
Democracy: Japan’s Postwar Political System, ed. Tetsuya Kataoka (Stanford, CA:
Hoover Institution Press, 1992), 60–61. On popular mobilization around the mili-
tary, see Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of War-
time Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 55–182.
35. Masumi Junnosuke, Postwar Politics in Japan, 1945–1955, trans. Lonny E. Car-
lile (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1985),
280. Asahi Shimbun (evening edition), “Saugunbi to watashi—tōsensha to
kararu” [Rearmament and me—speaking with successful candidates], October 2,
1952, in Sengo nihon bōei mondai shiryōshū, dai san kai, jietai no sōtsetsu
[Collected documents about Japan’s postwar defense problems, 3rd volume:
The establishment of the Self-Defense Forces], ed. Ōtake Hideo (Tokyo:
Sanichishobō, 1993), 37 (hereafter SNBMS, vol. 3). See also “Buntōha
(Hatoyama) jiyūtō “seikō seisaku shian” [Liberal Party, Hatoyama faction,
“Draft Policy Platform”], July 10, 1952, in SNBMS, vol. 3, 31. “Kaishinto kettō
sengen ta” [Kaishinto Founding Declaration], February 11, 1952, in SNBMS,
vol. 3, 27. Sandra Wilson, “War, Soldier and Nation in 1950s Japan,” Interna-
tional Journal of Asian Studies 5, no. 2 (2008): 195.
36. Wilson, “War, Soldier and Nation in 1950s Japan,” 188–196. In a January 1951
conversation with Alvary Gascoigne, the British Ambassador to Japan, Yoshida
described Tsuji as “leader of an underground movement” to insert militarists
into the NPR. Sir A. Gascoigne to Mr. Bevin, “Conversation between His
Majesty’s Ambassador and the Japanese Prime Minister,” January 22, 1951
(FJ 1019 / 4), FO 371 Foreign Office, Political Departments, General Corre-
spondence from 1906–1966, Far Eastern: Japan, Folder: FO 371 / 92521.
National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom (hereafter NAUK).
37. Dai kyū kai zenkoku tōtaikai, “Dai kyū kai tōtaikai sengen: surogan” [9th Party
Congress Declaration: Slogans], January 30, 1952, in Shiryō nihon shakaitō
shinjyū nenshi [A 40-year history of the Japan Socialist Party in documents]
(Tokyo: Nihon shakaitō chūū honbu, 1986), 244. Asahi Shimbun, “Saigunbi
to watashi,” in SNBMS, vol. 3, 37–38.
38. Quoted in Masuda, “Fear of World War III,” 560, 566. Maruyama quoted in
Glenn D. Hook, Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan
(New York: Routledge, 1996), 40–41.
39. Takakuwa Sumio, “Kenpō kaihan no jyosei ni koshite: tokuni saigunbi mondai
o chūshin ni” [Opposition to constitutional revision: The problem of rearma-
ment] (Tokyo: Kenpō yōgo kokumin rengō, 1954), 6, 16.
40. Laura Hein, Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Exper-
tise in Twentieth-Century Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004),
126–128.
41. Frank Kowalski, “A Dove with Lead in Its Wings,” 10, Frank Kowalski Papers,
Speeches and Writings, Box 18, Folder: Speeches, undated, Japan. Library of
Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter LOC). “Asahi shimbun seron chōsa”
[Asahi shimbun public opinion survey], September 21, 1952, in SNBMS, vol.
3, 98. Asahi shimbun, “Arasowareru mondai·saigunbi” [The problem being
disputed: Rearmament], April 16, 1953, in SNBMS, vol. 3, 48. The Japanese
public remained divided into 1954; in response to a survey question over
whether it was necessary for Japan to build a military, 37 percent believed it
necessary, 30 percent believed it unnecessary, 15 percent felt it depended on
the situation, and 18 percent had no opinion. “Asahi shimbun seron chōsa”
[Asahi shimbun public opinion survey], May 16, 1954, in SNBMS, vol. 3, 104.
42. French, National Police Reserve, 85. John M. Hightower, “Acheson Hails Bi-
lateral Accord as ‘Bulwark for Freedom’—Ceremony Takes Place at Presidio
in S.F.,” Nippon Times, September 10, 1951, 1.
43. Kusunoki, “The Early Years of the Ground Self-Defense Forces,” 69.
44. Quoted in telegram from Supreme Commander Allied Powers, Tokyo, Japan
to Washington, DC, October 4, 1951, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Geographic Files, 1951–53, Box 27, Folder: CCS 383.21 (3-13-45)
Japan Sec. 26. NARA.
45. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 547. Kowalski, An Inoffensive Rearmament, 73.
See also Memorandum by Douglas W. Overton of the Office of Northeast Asian
Affairs to the Acting Director of that Office (Johnson), “National Police Reserve,”
January 19, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 808. “Organization of the National
Police Reserve,” Frank Kowalski Papers, Military Files: Subject Files, Box 9,
Folder: Japan: Reports, Misc. Reports N.D., National Police Reserve N.D.
LOC. Colonel J. W. Donnell to Commanding General, Northern Command,
“Relationship with NPR,” May 4, 1951, RG 331, Allied Operational and
Occupation Headquarters, World War II, SCAP, Civil Affairs Section, Admin-
istrative Division, Classified Subject Files, 1950–1951, Box 2415, Folder:
Untitled. NARA.
46. “Public Safety Highlights, PSD-11,” Frank Kowalski Papers, Military Files: Sub-
ject Files, Japan: Reports, Box 9, Folder: Misc. Reports, N.D., National Police
Reserve, N.D. LOC. Posters, Frank Kowalski papers, Speeches and Writings,
Box 19, Folder: Speeches, undated, Japan: National Police Reserve. LOC.
47. The NPR offered a monthly salary of 5,000 yen, 1,000 yen higher that the
average starting salary of a college graduate, along with a 60,000-yen retirement
benefit. Tomoyuki Sasaki, “An Army for the People: The Self-Defense Forces
and Society in Postwar Japan” (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego,
2009), 66–67. It also offered accommodations, meals, and free medical and
dental care. French, National Police Reserve, 178. U.S. military adviser quoted
in French, National Police Reserve, 165.
48. “Japan Drills an ‘Army of Sergeants,’ ” Life, February 5, 1951. Sabine Früh-
stück, Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory and Popular Culture in the Japanese
Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 66. William Jorden,
“Future of Japan’s Police Reserve,” Nippon Times, March 31, 1951. “Letter of
Oath,” Frank Kowalski Papers, Military Files: Subject Files, Japan: Reports, Box
9, Folder: Misc. Reports, N.D., National Police Reserve, N.D. LOC. French,
National Police Reserve, 193.
49. Hayashi quoted in Kusunoki, “The Early Years of the Ground Self Defense
Forces,” 59. See also Kuzuhara Kazumi, “The Korean War and the National
Police Reserve of Japan: Impact of the US Army’s Far East Command on
Japan’s Defense Capability,” NIDS Security Reports, no. 7 (December 2006):
109. On Hayashi’s emphasis on moral improvement, see Tomoyuki Sasaki,
Japan’s Postwar Military and Civil Society: Contesting a Better Life (London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 55.
50. Katsuhiro Musashi, “The Ground Self-Defense Force and Civilian Control,” in
The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force: Search for Legitimacy, ed. Robert D.
Eldridge and Paul Midford (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 235–239.
Conference, General Watson and Mr. Ohashi, April 1952; Headquarters, Far
East Command, “Facilities for Advisors,” June 1952, RG 554, Records of Gen-
eral HQ, Far East Command, Supreme Commander Allied Powers, and United
States Command, Security Advisory Section, Japan, General Correspondence,
1952, Box 4, Folder: 337 1952. NARA.
51. Quoted in John M. Steeves, “Thoughts on Japan’s Rearmament,” January 7,
1952, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State,
Japan, Tokyo, Office of the U.S. Political Advisor, Classified General Records,
1945–1952 (Entry UD 2828), Box 66, Folder: 350 Japan 1952. NARA. Ameri-
cans were aware of these activities; indeed, it was GHQ / SCAP’s head of intel-
ligence, the rabidly anticommunist major general Charles A. Willoughby, who
had first attempted to install Hattori in the NPR in the summer of 1950. Wil-
loughby’s plan was thwarted by the combined opposition of other members of
GHQ / SCAP and the Yoshida government. For more details, see Kowalski, An
Inoffensive Rearmament, 57–60; and J. L. Weste, “Staging a Comeback: Rear-
mament Planning and Kyūgunjin in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952,” Japan Forum
22, no. 2 (1999): 165–178. On Yoshida’s interest in the Defense Academy, see
Sasaki, Japan’s Postwar Military and Civil Society, 55–56; and Sasaki, “An Army
for the People,” 48. CINCFE General Matthew Ridgway to Joint Chiefs of Staff,
August 25, 1951, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic
File 1951–1953, 092 Japan Sec. 2–7, Box 23, Folder: CCS 092 Japan (12-12-
50) Sec. 6. NARA.
52. Conference, General Watson and Mr. Ohashi, April 1952; Headquarters, Far
East Command, “Facilities for Advisors,” June 1952, RG 554, Records of Gen-
eral HQ, Far East Command, Supreme Commander Allied Powers, and United
States Command, Security Advisory Section, Japan, General Correspondence,
1952, Box 4, Folder: 337 1952. NARA.
53. Emphasis in original. Charles A. Willoughby, Memorandum for General

Whitney, August 7, 1950, RG 331, Allied Operational and Occupation Head-
quarters, World War II, SCAP, Government Section, Administrative Division,
Misc. Subject Files, 1945–April 1952, Box 1, Folder: Untitled. NARA. See also
Kowalski, An Inoffensive Rearmament, 59–60.
54. Numbers and demographic profile of applicants from Sasaki, “An Army for the
People,” 66; and Sasaki, Japan’s Postwar Military and Civil Society, 20–21.
Mori Shigehiro Oral History in National Institute for Defense Studies ed.,
Oraru hisutori, reisenki no bōeiryoku seibi to domei seisaku 2 [Oral histories:
The establishment of defensive power and alliance policy during the Cold War
2) (Tokyo: Bōeishō bōei kinkyūjo, 2013), 39.
55. Lt. Col. Eugene J. White (Zentsuji Detachment), “Comments and Recommen-
dations on Advisory Policy,” April 23, 1952, RG 554, Records of the General
HQ, Far East Command, Supreme Commander Allied Powers and United Na-
tions Command, Security Advisory Section, Japan, General Correspondence,
1952, Box 1, Folder: 014.3 Records File to be Retired 1952. NARA. Mori
Shigehiro Oral History, 39. Lt. Col. Albert C. Dove (Camp Toyokawa), “Com-
ments of Senior Advisors,” June 10, 1952, RG 554, Records of the General HQ,
Far East Command, Supreme Commander Allied Powers and United Nations
Command, Security Advisory Section, Japan, General Correspondence, 1952,
Box 1, Folder: 014.3 Records File to be Retired 1952. NARA.
56. Department of the Army Field Manual FM 100–5, Field Service Regulations—
Operations, August 1949 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing
Office, 1949), 19. Kazuhara, “The Korean War and the National Police Reserve
of Japan,” 109. Memorandum for General Willoughby, “Personnel for the Na-
tional Police Reserve,” August 9, 1950, RG 331, Allied Operational and Occu-
pation Headquarters, World War II, SCAP, Government Section, Administrative
Division, Misc. Subject File, 1945–April 1952, Box 1, Folder: Untitled. NARA.
57. French, National Police Reserve, 126. Memorandum for General Willoughby,
“Personnel for the National Police Reserve,” August 9, 1950, RG 331, Allied
Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, SCAP, Government
Section, Administrative Division, Misc. Subject File, 1945–April 1952, Box 1,
Folder: Untitled. NARA. Kowalski, An Inoffensive Rearmament, 110. Kusu-
noki, “The Early Years of the Ground Self-Defense Forces,” 66–68.
58. Kowalski, An Inoffensive Rearmament, 106.
59. John P. Gardiner, Memorandum of Conversation, December 11, 1951, RG 84,
Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo,
Office of the U.S. Political Advisor, Classified General Records, 1945–1952
(Entry UD 2828), Box 66, Folder: 350 Japan 1952. NARA.
60. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, imperial army doctrine had emphasized that
“spiritual or intangible values” conferred significant benefits on the battlefield.
Edward J. Drea, Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853–1945 (Law-
rence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 157–158, 173–176. Watanabe
Economic Research Institute Committee on National Defense Program, “Ob-
servations Relating to the Establishment and Organization of Japan’s Mili-
tary Forces,” December 25, 1951, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts
of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of the U.S. Political Advisor,
Classified General Records, 1945–1952 (Entry UD 2828), Box 66, Folder: 350
Japan 1952. NARA. Hashimoto Tetsuma, “Japan’s Rearmament Problem,”
December 16, 1951, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Depart-
ment of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of the U.S. Political Advisor, Classified Gen-
eral Records, 1945–1952 (Entry UD 2828), Box 66, Folder: 350 Japan 1952.
NARA. Kowalski, An Inoffensive Rearmament, 109. J. Owen Zurhellen Jr. to
U.S. POLAD Tokyo, “The National Police Reserve and Japanese Opinion Con-
cerning Rearmament,” January 24, 1951, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service
Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of the U.S. Political Ad-
visor, Classified General Records, 1945–1952 (Entry UD 2828), Box 68, Folder:
370.1 Police Organization and Regulations 1950-51-52. NARA.
61. General Headquarters, Civil Affairs Section, “Appointment of NPR Officers,”
July 26, 1951, RG 554 Records of the General HQ, Far East Command,
Supreme Commander Allied Powers, and United Nations Command, Security
Advisory Section, Japan, General Correspondence 1952, Box 1, Folder: Staff
Study Appointment of Ex-Purgees. NARA.
62. Telegram from Ridgway to Washington, DC, June 14, 1951, RG 218 Records
CCS 383.21 Japan (3-13-45) Sec. 25. NARA. On heavy equipment and the pro-
jected size of the NPR, see French, National Police Reserve, 231–232. This
plan for a 300,000-man force would remain at the center of U.S. military plan-
ning for the NPR for the next several years. General Headquarters, Civil Af-
fairs Section, “Appointment of NPR Officers,” July 26, 1951, RG 554 Records
of the General HQ, Far East Command, Supreme Commander Allied Powers,
and United Nations Command, Security Advisory Section, Japan, General
Correspondence 1952, Box 1, Folder: Staff Study Appointment of Ex-Purgees.
NARA. On the number of purgees inducted into the NPR, see Kusunoki, “The
Early Years of the Ground Self-Defense Forces,” 68.
63. Telegram from Ridgway to Washington, DC, June 14, 1951, RG 218 Records
CCS 383.21 Japan (3-13-45) Sec. 25. NARA.
64. Masuhara Keikichi, “Proposed Plan for the Employment of Ex-Soldiers,”
July 19, 1951, RG 554 Records of the General HQ, Far East Command,
Supreme Commander Allied Powers, and United Nations Command, Security
Advisory Section, Japan, General Correspondence 1952, Box 1, Folder: Staff
Study Appointment of Ex-Purgees. NARA. “Conference—Colonel Kowalski–
Mr. Masuhara,” April 1952, RG 554 Records of the General HQ, Far East
Command, Supreme Commander Allied Powers, and United Nations Com-
mand, Security Advisory Section, Japan, General Correspondence 1952, Box
1, Folder: Staff Study Appointment of Ex-Purgees. NARA.
65. In fiscal years 1951 and 1952, these appropriations totaled $226.5 million. The
Chief of Staff, United States Army (Collins) to the Commander in Chief, Far
East (Ridgway), December 17, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 1441. Memorandum
of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs
(Young), August 13, 1953, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954,
308 Notes to Page 110
Volume XIV, China and Japan, Part 2, ed. John P. Glennon (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1985), 1481 (hereafter FRUS 1952–1954, vol.
14). Memorandum by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of Defense
(Lovett), “High Level State-Defense Mission on Japanese Defense Forces,”
December 12, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 1434–1436. See also John Foster
Dulles, “The Importance of the Mutual Security Program to Our National
Security,” July 9, 1953, in Department of State Bulletin 88 (July 29, 1953):
90–91.
66. Gaimushō [Foreign Ministry], MSA no kyōtei no shomei ni taisuru naigai no
hankyō [Domestic and foreign responses on the signing of the MSA agreement],
Nichibei Sōgo Bōei Enjyo Kyōtei Kankei Ikken (MDAA) [Matters related to
the U.S.–Japanese Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement], Yoron, shimbun
chōsa, naigai hōdōburi, kokunai kasha iken, naigai hankyō nado [Items such
as public opinion, newspaper surveys, domestic and foreign news, domestic
reporter’s opinions, domestic and foreign responses], 0120-2001-10422
(B5.1.0.J / U7-8), 18th Disclosure of Diplomatic Records, CD-Rom B’-191,
180783. Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tokyo, Japan.
Yomiuri Shimbun, “On Signing of MSA Treaty,” March 9, 1954. Tokyo
Embassy to the Department of State, “Signing of the Japan-MSA Agreement:
News Summary,” March 22, 1951, RG 59, State Department Central Decimal
Files, Japan, 1950–1954, 794.5 MSP / 1-2154. NARA. John Welfield, Empire
in Eclipse: Japan in the Postwar American Alliance System (London: Athlone
Press, 1988), 107. Gaimushō jyōbō bunkakyoku [Public Information and Cul-
tural Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs], MSA kyōtei no kaisetsu [An
explanation of the MSA agreement] (Tokyo: Gaimushō jyōbō bunkakyoku,
March 1954).
67. Memorandum for Mr. Parsons from Jules Bassin, “Material Requested by the
Van Fleet Mission,” May 13, 1954, RG 334 Interservice Agencies, Military As-
sistance Advisory Group Japan, Adjutant General Section, Mail and Records
Unit, Decimal File 1954, Box 6, Folder: 322. NARA. The Japanese government
had also requested that Japanese officers be trained in the United States.
Frank C. Nash (Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, International Security
Affairs) to the Secretary of Defense, “Training of Japanese Nationals in U.S. Ser-
vice Schools,” October 13, 1952, RG 330 Secretary of Defense, Assistant Secre-
tary of Defense (International Security Affairs), Office of Military Assistance,
Project Decimal File, Apr 1949–May 1953, Box 67, Folder: 353 Japan 1952.
NARA. Foreign Nationals Trained in United States under MAP (FY50–60). U.S.
President’s Committee on Information Activities Abroad (Sprague Committee):
Records, 1959–1961, Box 10, Folder: Exchanges—Technical & Military #40
(2). Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, KS (hereafter Eisen-
hower Library). “Roster of Selected MDAP Trainees,” October 21, 1954, and
“Report of Proceedings of Board of Officers to Review Qualifications of Pro-
spective Japanese MDAP Trainees,” Camp Fukuoka, November 16, 1954, RG
334 Interservice Agencies, Military Assistance Advisory Group Japan, Adju-
tant General Section, Mail and Records Unit, Decimal File 1954, Box 4, Folder:
300.4 (Orders). NARA. “Report of Proceedings of Board of Officers to Review
Qualifications of Prospective Japanese MDAP Trainees,” Camp Hardy, De-
cember 3, 1954, RG 334 Interservice Agencies, Military Assistance Advisory

Group Japan, Adjutant General Section, Mail and Records Unit, Decimal File
1954, Box 8, Folder: 334 (Boards). NARA.
68. U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
Subject: Allied Officer Sponsor Program, July 7, 1959. U.S. President’s Com-
mittee on Information Activities Abroad (Sprague Committee): Records,
1959–1961, Box 10, Folder: Exchanges—Technical & Military #40 (3). Eisen-
hower Library. “Report on the Visit of General Keizo Hayashi, Chairman,
Japanese Joint Staff Council,” December 13, 1954, RG 334 Interservice Agen-
cies, Military Assistance Advisory Group Japan, Adjutant General Section, Mail
and Records Unit, Decimal File 1954, Box 7, Folder: Tour Report. NARA.
69. Emphasis in original. William J. Sebald, “Memorandum on Japan’s Rearma-
ment,” January 7, 1952, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the De-
partment of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of the U.S. Political Advisor, Classified
General Records, 1945–1952, Box 66, Folder: 350 Japan 1952. NARA.
70. The President’s Committee on Information Activities Abroad, “The Collateral
Benefits of Training Foreign Military Personnel,” May 16, 1960. U.S. President’s
Committee on Information Activities Abroad (Sprague Committee): Records,
1959–1961, Box 20, Folder: PCIAA #10. Eisenhower Library.
3. The San Francisco Peace Treaty

1. Department of State Comments on NSC 49 (June 15, 1949), September 30,
1949, in Foreign Relations of the United States 1949, Volume VII, The Far East
and Australasia, Part 2, ed. S. Everett Gleason and Frederick Aandahl (Wash-
ington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976), 872 (hereafter FRUS 1949,
vol. 7). Report by the Joint Strategic Survey Committee to the Joint Chiefs, “The
Impact of an Early Peace Treaty with Japan on United States Strategic Require-
ments,” November 30, 1949, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Geographic File 1951–1953, Box 26, Folder: CCS 383.21 Japan Sec. 23.
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter
NARA).
2. Report by the Joint Strategic Survey Committee to the Joint Chiefs, “The Im-
pact of an Early Peace Treaty with Japan on United States Strategic Require-
ments,” November 30, 1949. H. Alexander Smith, “Far Eastern Problems
Facing the United States: Report of Visit to the Far East, September and Oc-
tober 1949,” November 1949, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Chairman’s File, General Bradley, 1949–1953, Box 1, Folder: CJCS 032.3
Smith, H. Alexander. NARA.
3. Edwin O. Reischauer, The United States and Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1950), 37, 40.
4. Department of State Comments on NSC 49 (June 15, 1949), September 30,
1949, in FRUS 1949, vol. 7, 872–873. National Security Council, “Report by the
National Security Council on Recommendations with Respect to United States
Policy toward Japan” (NSC 13 / 3), May 6, 1949, in FRUS 1949, vol. 7, 730.
5. Notes on the President’s Meeting with Under Secretary of State James Webb,
March 26, 1950, Papers of Harry S Truman PSF: Subject File 1940–1953,
Cabinet File, Box 146, Folder: State—Miscellaneous [1945–1952]. Harry S.

Truman Presidential Library, Independence, MO (hereafter Truman Library).
See also Joyce Mao, Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American
Conservatism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Arthur Vanden-
berg to Dean Acheson, March 31, 1950, Dean Acheson Papers, Secretary of
State File 1945–1972, Memoranda of Conversations File 1949–1953, Box 66,
Folder: March 1950. Truman Library. See also Ronald W. Pruessen, John Foster
Dulles: The Road to Power (New York: Free Press, 1982), 436.
6. Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War
and Diplomacy (New York: Anchor Books, 2012), 384–410.
7. John Foster Dulles, War or Peace (New York: MacMillan, 1950), 4, 248.
8. Memorandum by the Consultant to the Secretary (Dulles) to the Secretary of
State, June 7, 1950, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Volume
VI, East Asia and the Pacific, ed. S. Everett Gleason (Washington, DC: Gov-
ernment Printing Office, 1976), 1207 (hereafter FRUS 1950, vol. 6). Yukiko
Koshiro, Transpacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999), 41–42.
9. John W. Dower, Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Ex-
perience, 1878–1954 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 313.
See also Nakajima Shingo, Sengo Nihon no Bōei Seisaka: Yoshida Rosen o
Meguru Seiji Gaikō Gunji [Postwar Japan’s defense policy: Politics, diplomacy
and military affairs from the perspective of the Yoshida line] (Tokyo:
Keiōgijukudaigaku Shuppankai, 2006). Ōtake Hideo, Explanation, in Sengo
nihon bōei mondai shiryōshū, dai ikkai, higunjika kara saigunbi e [Collected
documents about Japan’s postwar defense problems, vol. 1: From nonmilitariza-
tion to remilitarization], ed. Ōtake Hideo (Tokyo: Sanichishobō, 1991), 279
(hereafter SNBMS, vol. 1). Gaimushō Jōyakukyoku Houkika [Foreign Ministry
Treaty Bureau Legal Section], “Nihon no Anzen wo Kakuhosuru tame no
Shohōhō ni kansuru Kōsatsu” [A consideration of various methods for guar-
anteeing Japan’s security], May 1949, in Nihon Gaikō Bunsho: San Furan-
shisuko Heiwa Jōyaku Junbi Taisaku [Documents on Japanese foreign policy:
The San Francisco Peace Treaty, preparatory work], ed. Gaimushō (Tokyo:
Gaimushō, 2006), 396–398.
10. The Japanese government consistently examined the issue of a peace treaty
throughout the occupation period, creating a treaty study group almost imme-
diately after Japan’s surrender. Watanabe Akio, “Kōwa Mondai to Nihon no
Sentaku” [The peace problem and Japan’s options], in San Furanshisuko Kōwa
[The San Francisco peace], ed. Watanabe Akio and Miyasato Seigen (Tokyo:
Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1986), 20. Miyazawa Kiichi, Secret Talks between
Tokyo and Washington: The Memoirs of Miyazawa Kiichi, 1949–1954, trans.
Robert D. Eldridge (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 16–17. Joseph M.
Dodge, Discussion of the Peace Treaty with Mr. Ikeda, Finance Minister of
Japan, May 2, 1950, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Of-
fice of Northeast Asian Affairs, Records Relating to the Treaty of Peace with
Japan-Subject Files, 1945–51 [Lot 56D527], Box 1, Folder: Defense
Department—correspondence with. NARA.
11. Thomas J. McCormick, America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy

in the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 115.
12. Pruessen, John Foster Dulles, 459. John Foster Dulles to Dean Acheson, July 19,
1950, in Confidential U.S. State Department Special Files, Japan, 1947–1956,
ed. Gregory Murphy (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1990),
Reel 1. On Japanese anticommunism, see, for example, Yukiko Koshiro, Impe-
rial Eclipse: Japan’s Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia before 1945
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); Richard Mitchell, Thought Control
in Prewar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976); S. C. M. Paine,
The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2012); Max M. Ward, “The Problem of ‘Thought’: Crisis, National Essence,
and the Interwar Japanese State” (PhD diss., New York University, 2011).
13. Department of State, “Japan,” December 1950, RG 218 Records of the U.S.
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic File 1948–1950, Box 35, Folder: CCS 388.1
Japan (9-1-47) Sec. 3. NARA.
14. Major General Carter B. Magruder, Memorandum for Admiral Robbins,
“United States Policy toward Japan,” December 27, 1950, RG 218 Records of
the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic File 1948–1950, Box 35, Folder: CCS
092 Japan (12-12-50) Sec. 1. NARA. Dean Acheson, Memorandum for the
President, September 7, 1950, in FRUS 1950, vol. 6, 1293–1294.
15. Gaimushō, “Chosen no dōran to wareware no tachiba” [The upheaval in Korea
and our position], August 19, 1950, in SNBMS, vol. 1, 345, 346, 350.
16. Gaimushō, “Chosen no dōran to wareware no tachiba,” 349.
17. Memorandum by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, March 21, 1947,
in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Volume VI, the Far East, ed. S.
Everett Gleason, Rogers P. Churchill, and John G. Reid (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office, 1972), 454–456 (hereafter FRUS 1947, vol. 6).
Analysis of the Japanese Peace Treaty Draft of January 8, 1948, in Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1948, Volume VI, The Far East and Australasia,
ed. S. Everett Gleason and Frederick Aandahl (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1974), 656–661 (hereafter FRUS 1948, vol. 6). The Secretary
of State to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, at Tokyo, June 26, 1947,
in FRUS 1947, vol. 6, 464–466. Memo by Mr. John P. Davies Jr. of the Policy
Planning Staff to Director of the Staff Kennan, August 11, 1947, in FRUS 1947,
vol. 6, 485–476. The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Smith) to the Secretary
of State, February 21, 1948, in FRUS 1948, vol. 6, 665. Report by the Director
of the Policy Planning Staff (Kennan), March 25, 1948, in FRUS 1948, vol. 6,
776–781.
18. Gaimushō, “D sagyō saiteiban” [D working group revised version], January 19,
1951, in Nihon gaikō bunsho: San Furanshisuko heiwa jōyaku, taibei kōshō
[Documents on Japanese diplomacy: San Francisco Peace Treaty, negotiations
with the United States], ed. Gaimushō (Tokyo: Gaimushō, 2007), 138. Yoshida
Shigeru, “Wagakata iken” [My opinion], January 30, 1951, in Nihon gaikō
bunsho: San Furanshisuko heiwa jōyaku, taibei kōshō, 177.
19. John Foster Dulles, “Peace May Be Won,” February 2, 1951, in Department of
State Bulletin 24, no. 606 (February 12, 1951): 252–253, 255.
20. John D. Rockefeller III, Report to Ambassador Dulles, April 6, 1951, 58, RG
59 State Department Central Files, 511.94 Educational and Cultural Relations,
1950–1954, Box 2534 [511.94 / 2-2750-511.94 / 12–2452]. NARA. For a detailed
discussion of Rockefeller’s activities and his final report, see Takeshi Matsuda,
Soft Power and Its Perils: U.S. Cultural Policy in Early Postwar Japan and Per-
manent Dependency (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 95–112.
Memorandum by Saxton Bradford to John D. Rockefeller III, “Relations of
Governmental and Private Endeavors in the Field of Japanese-American Cul-
tural Relations,” October 17, 1951, RG 5 Rockefeller Family Archives,
John D. Rockefeller 3rd Papers, Series 1 Office of Messrs. Rockefeller, Subseries
3 Asian Interests, Box 51, Folder: 461 [International House of Japan, Inc. 1951].
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY (hereafter RAC).
21. Emphasis in the original. Arundel Del Re, “Educational Reorientation in the
Post-Treaty Period,” February 1951, RG 2 Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller,
Series D Civic Interests, Box 48, Folder: 369 [Dulles Mission—Japanese Peace
Mission, 1951–1959]. RAC.
22. Report of the Education Exchange Survey for the Supreme Commander Allied
Powers, September 17, 1949, RG 5 Rockefeller Family Archives, John D. Rocke-
feller 3rd Papers, Series 1 Office of Messrs. Rockefeller, Subseries 3 Asian
Interests, Box 49, Folder: 444 [Cultural and Educational Material, 1947–1950].
RAC. Andrew Jewett, Science, Democracy, and the American University: From
Civil War to Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012),
3–10, 359. Keynes quoted in Jan-Werner Müller, Contesting Democracy: Po-
litical Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2011), 144.
23. Jewett, Science, Democracy, and the American University, 359. For a discus-
sion of the Cold War University in the United States, see David Engerman, “Re-
thinking Cold War Universities: Some Recent Histories,” Journal of Cold War
Studies 5, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 80–95; Joy Rhode, Armed with Expertise:
The Militarization of American Social Research during the Cold War (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); and Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the
American Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 92–137. James
Conant, My Several Lives (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 368.
24. U.S. government–funded educational exchange programs, such as Government
and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA) and the Fulbright exchange program,
also began in Japan in 1949 and 1952 respectively. For an exploration of the
Cold War University in Germany, see Udi Greenberg, The Weimar Century:
German Émigrés and the Ideological Foundations of the Cold War (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). Claude A. Buss to Raymond Fosdick,
November 30, 1949, Rockefeller Foundation Archives RG 1.2 Projects, Series
205 California, Box 1, Folder: 4 [Stanford U—American Studies (Japanese
Program) 1949–July 1950]. RAC. Claude A. Buss to Charles Burton Fahs,
February 6, 1950, Rockefeller Foundation Archives RG 1.2 Projects, Series
205 California, Box 1, Folder: 4 [Stanford U—American Studies (Japanese
Program) 1949–July 1950]. RAC.
25. Claude A. Buss, Memorandum Report for President Sterling, August 23, 1950,
Rockefeller Foundation Archives RG 1.2 Projects, Series 205 California, Box 1,
Folder: 5 [Stanford U—American Studies (Japanese Program), August–

December 1950]. RAC. Seminars in American Studies in Japan: 1950, Report
of the Stanford Professors: Joseph S. Davis, Claude A. Buss, John D. Goheen,
George H. Knoles, and James T. Watkins, October 16, 1950, 11–12, Rockefeller
Foundation Archives RG 1.2 Projects, Series 205 California, Box 1, Folder: 5
[Stanford U—American Studies (Japanese Program), August–December 1950].
RAC.
26. Saxton Bradford to John D. Rockefeller III, October 17, 1951, RG 5 Rocke-
feller Family Archives, John D. Rockefeller 3rd Papers, Series 1 Office of Messrs.
Rockefeller, Subseries 3 Asian Interests, Box 51, Folder: 461 [International
House of Japan, Inc., 1951]. RAC.
27. John D. Rockefeller III to John M. Allison, September 23, 1952, RG 5 Rockefeller
Family Archives, John D. Rockefeller 3rd Papers, Series 1 Office of Messrs.
Rockefeller, Subseries 3 Asian Interests, Box 46, Folder: 422 [Japan—General,
1952]. RAC.
28. Andrew Barshay, The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Mod-
ernist Traditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), ix. Report of
the United States Cultural Sciences Mission to Japan, January 1949, RG 5
Rockefeller Family Archives, John D. Rockefeller 3rd Papers, Series 1 Office of
Messrs. Rockefeller, Subseries 3 Asian Interests, Box 49, Folder: 444 [Cultural
and Educational Material, 1947–1950]. RAC. Maruyama quoted in Barshay,
The Social Sciences in Modern Japan, 198–199. Ōtsuka quoted in J. Victor
Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1996), 160–161.
29. Shigeru Nanbara and Yasaka Takagi, Memorandum on Peace Treaty, January 30,
1951, RG 2 Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller, Series D Civic Interests, Box 49,
Folder: 375. RAC.
30. Rikki Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan: Maruyama Masao and the Search
for Autonomy (New York: Routledge, 1996), 183. According to J. Victor Kosch-
mann, “the [third] statement attracted so much attention it is said to have
been responsible for doubling the circulation of the journal Sekai.” J. Victor
Koschmann, “Intellectuals and Politics,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed.
Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 402. Peace
Problems Discussion Circle, “On Peace: Our Third Statement,” Journal of
Social and Political Ideas in Japan 1, no. 1 (April 1963): 19.
31. Zennihon gakusei jichikai sōrengō [All-Japan Federation of Student Self-
Government Association], “Daresu, Buraddoree, Jonson e no seiganbun”
[Petition to Dulles, Bradley and Johnson], June 22, 1950, in Heiwa undō 20
nen shiryōshū [Collected documents from twenty years of the peace move-
ment], ed. Nihon heiwa iinkai (Tokyo: Otsuki shoten, 1969), 477–478. Nihon
shakaitō [Japan Socialist Party], “Daresu ate seishiki bunshō” [Formal letter
to Dulles], June 24, 1950, in SNBMS, vol. 1, 367–368.
32. Sanbestu, “Tainichi kōwa jōyaku sōan ni tsuite” [On the draft of the Japanese
peace treaty], July 26, 1951, in Heiwa undō 20 nen shiryōshū [Collected docu-
ments from twenty years of the peace movement], 480–481.
33. Lonny E. Carlisle, Divisions of Labor: Globality, Ideology, and War in the
Shaping of the Japanese Labor Movement (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press, 2005), 169, 171, 181. Sōhyō, “Tainichi kōwa jōykau sōan ni taisuru
seimei [Statement on the Japanese peace treaty draft], July 11, 1951, in Heiwa
undō 20 nen shiryōshū [Collected documents from twenty years of the peace
movement], 479–480. Sōhyō wanted the treaty to guarantee Article 9 of the
Japanese constitution, allow trade with communist countries, and guarantee
labor representation in Japan, such as a National Congress.
34. Charles N. Spinks, “Japan Communist Party Overall Peace Campaign,” April 2,
Japan, Tokyo, Office of the Political Advisor, Classified General Records,
1945–1952, Box 67, Folder: 350.21 Communism, July–Dec. 1950. NARA.
35. Robert Hoppens, The China Problem in Postwar Japan: Japanese National
Identity and Sino-Japanese Relations (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 46, 52–54.
36. W. J. Sebald to the Department of State, “Attitude of Japanese Intellectuals
toward the Peace and Security Treaties,” October 25, 1951, RG 84 Records of
the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of
the Political Advisor, Classified General Records, 1945–1952, Box 62, Folder:
320.1 Peace Treaty, Oct.–Dec. 1951. NARA.
37. Memorandum by John Foster Dulles to the Secretary of State for Far Eastern
Affairs (Rusk), October 22, 1951, in Foreign Relations of the United States,
1951, Volume VI, Asia and the Pacific, ed. Frederick Aandahl et al. (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1977), 1381 (hereafter FRUS 1951, vol. 6).
National Security Council, “The Position of the United States with Respect to
Asia” (NSC 48 / 2), December 30, 1949, in FRUS 1949, vol. 7, 1214–1215.
38. Draft of a Possible Pacific Ocean Pact, January 8, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6,
133–134. Memorandum by the Consultant to the Secretary (Dulles) to the
Secretary of State, December 8, 1950, in FRUS 1950, vol. 6, 1360. See also Mem-
orandum of Conversation by Colonel Stanton Babcock of the Department of
Defense [with the Philippines], September 27, 1950, in FRUS 1950, vol. 6,
1308–1311. Memorandum of Conversation by Colonel Stanton Babcock of the
Department of Defense [with the New Zealand], October 19, 1950, in FRUS
1950, vol. 6, 1322–1323. Undated Memorandum by Mr. Robert A. Fearey of
the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs, “Answers to Questions Submitted by the
Australian Government out of the Statement of Principles Regarding a Japanese
Peace Treaty Prepared by the United States Government,” in FRUS 1950, vol. 6,
1327–1331. The Secretary of State to the Embassy in Australia, March 21,
1950, in FRUS 1950, vol. 6, 63–64; Memorandum by the Consultant to the
Secretary (Dulles) to the Secretary of State, December 8, 1950, in FRUS 1950,
vol. 6, 1360. Dean Acheson and George C. Marshall, Memorandum to the
President, January 9, 1951, in FRUS 1950, vol. 6, 789. Emphasis in the orig-
inal. John Foster Dulles, Comment on Draft (1/3/51) of Pacific Ocean Pact,
January 4, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 135.
39. U.S. policymakers also worried that if Great Britain was part of the pact, they
would have to include Hong Kong, which the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to
avoid. Memorandum by John Foster Dulles to the Ambassador at Large
(Jessup), January 4, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 135.
40. Telegram no. 169 from Foreign Office to Tokyo, January 30, 1951, FO 371
Foreign Office, Political Departments, General Correspondence from 1906–
1966, Far Eastern: Japan, Folder: FO 371 / 92529. National Archives, United
Kingdom, Kew (hereafter NAUK). Draft Telegram to U.K. High Commissioners
in Canberra and Wellington, February 1951 (FJ1022 / 44), FO 371 Foreign Of-
fice, Political Departments, General Correspondence from 1906–1966, Far
Eastern: Japan, Folder: FO 371 / 92530. NAUK.
41. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New
York: Norton, 1969), 688. See also Division of Historical Research, “References
in the Negotiation of the ANZUS Treaty to Broader Security Arrangements Af-
fecting the Pacific Area,” July 24, 1952, Dean Acheson Papers, Secretary of
State File, 1945–1972, Memoranda of Conversations File, 1949–1953, Box 70,
Folder: July 1952. Truman Library.
42. Sayuri Shimizu, Creating a People of Plenty: The United States and Japan’s
Economic Alternatives (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001), 82, 182.
Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy,
trans. Robert Ricketts and Sebastian Swann (New York: Continuum, 2002),
109.
43. The Ambassador in the Philippines (Cowen) to the Secretary of State, March 15,
1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 179–180. Mr. John Foster Dulles, the Consultant
to the Secretary, to the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (MacArthur),
March 2, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 900–901. Aaron Forsberg, America and
the Japanese Miracle: The Cold War Context of Japan’s Postwar Economic
Revival, 1950–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000), 71–72.
John Price, “Cold War Relic: The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and the
Politics of Memory,” Asian Perspective 25, no. 3 (2001): 32, 48. Price notes
that the language of the San Francisco Peace Treaty has been cited to reject
legal claims for reparations by former prisoners of war and forced laborers
against Japanese companies. See also the Secretary of State to the Embassy in
the Philippines, July 12, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 1191–1192.
44. Department of State Information Circular Airgram, “Preliminary Indian Views
on Japanese Peace Treaty,” December 28, 1950, RG 84 Records of the Foreign
Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of the Political
Advisor, Classified General Records, 1945–1952, Box 61, Folder: 320.1 Peace
Treaty. NARA. Indian Chargé (M. K. Kirplani) to John Foster Dulles, Au-
gust 23, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 1290. Telegram from the Secretary of
State, Circular 243, September 10, 1951, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Ser-
vice Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of the Political Ad-
visor, Classified General Records, 1945–1952, Box 62, Folder: 320.1 Peace
Treaty June–July 1951. NARA. James Webb to the American Embassy in India,
August 31, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 1312.
45. Chou En-Lai’s Statement on Japanese Peace Treaty, December 6, 1950, FO 371
Foreign Office, Political Departments, General Correspondence from 1906–
1966, Far Eastern: Japan, Folder: FO 371 / 92530. NAUK.
46. Memorandum by John Foster Dulles to Secretary of State for Far Eastern Af-
fairs (Rusk), October 22, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 1381. Hoppens, The
China Problem in Postwar Japan, 24.
47. On the China Lobby, see Robert E. Herzstein, Henry R. Luce, Time, and the
American Crusade in Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 79–13;
and Mao, Asia First, 44–77. Howard B. Schonberger, Aftermath of War:

Americans and the Remaking of Japan (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press,
1989), 271. C. H. Johnson to H. A. Graves, February 8, 1952 (FJ1022 / 44G),
FO 371 Foreign Office, Political Departments, General Correspondence from
1906–1966, Far Eastern: Japan, Folder: FO 371 / 92530. NAUK.
48. On Yoshida’s insistence on the “long-term necessity” of trade with China, see
Memorandum of Conversation, by Deputy to the Consultant (Allison), Jan-
uary 29, 1951, in FRUS 1951, vol. 6, 828; and Hoppens, The China Problem
in Postwar Japan, 25–26. Gaimushō, “Chūgoku daihyō mondai ni kansuru
wagakata ikō no taibei kaiji ni tsuite” [Concerning what to disclose to the
United States about our intentions regarding the problems of Chinese repre-
sentation], May (19), 1950, in Nihon gaikō bunsho: San Furanshisuko heiwa
jōyaku, taibei kōshō [Documents on Japanese diplomacy: San Francisco Peace
Treaty, negotiations with the United States], 431.
49. Price, “Cold War Relic,” 43, 45. Takamae, Inside GHQ, 462–467, 510. On
Koreans in Japan during the U.S. occupation, see Deokhyo Choi, “Crucible of
Post-Empire: Decolonization, Race, and Cold War Politics in U.S.–Japan–Korea
Relations, 1945–1952” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2013). On Japanese
postwar immigration policies, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Borderline Japan:
Frontier Controls, Foreigners, and the Nation in the Postwar Era (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010).
50. Conference for the Conclusion and Signature of the Treaty of Peace with Japan,
September 4–8, 1951 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1951), 32, 301.
51. Telegram from Sebald to the Secretary of State [For Dulles and Allison],
no. 202, July 28, 1951, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the
Department of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of the Political Advisor, Classified
General Records, 1945–1952, Box 62, Folder: 320.1 Peace Treaty (Oct.–Dec.
1951). NARA. Thurman L. Bernard, Memorandum—Coverage of the Japa-
nese treaty signature: Operation Plan no. 2, August 17, 1951, RG 43 Records of
International Conference, Commissions and Expositions, Records of the
U.S. Delegation to the Japanese Peace Conference, Administrative Subject
Files 1951, Box 9, Folder: Status Report. NARA. Special Guidance on Japan,
June 1951, RG 59 Department of State, Decimal File 511.94, Box 2535,
Document no. 511.9421 / 6–2951. NARA.
52. Treaty of Peace with Japan, Conference for the Conclusion and Signature of
the Treaty of Peace with Japan, September 4–8, 1951, 313, 315–316. For a
detailed discussion of the territorial provisions and legacies of the treaty, see
Kimie Hara, Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the
San Francisco System (London: Routledge, 2007).
53. Princeton Seminar Transcript [2 of 2], March 14, 1954, 16–19, Dean Acheson
Papers, Princeton Seminars File, Box 81, Folder: March 14, 1954 [1 of 2].
Truman Library. R. H. Scott to Esler Dening, September 26, 1951 (FJ 1027 / 5),
FO 371 Foreign Office, Political Departments, General Correspondence from
1906–1966, Far Eastern: Japan, Folder: FO 371 / 92603. NAUK.
54. Security Treaty between the United States and Japan, September 8, 1951, http://
avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/japan001.asp. John Foster Dulles to James
Reston, December 13, 1954, John Foster Dulles Papers, Series 1: Selected Cor-
respondence 1891–1960, Box 82, Folder: Japan, 1954. Seeley G. Mudd Man-
uscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
55. Security Treaty between the United States and Japan. Franziska Seraphim, War
Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Asia Center, 2008), 53.
56. Special Guidance on Japan, June 1951, RG 59 Department of State, Decimal
File 511.94, Box 2535, Document no. 511.9421 / 6-2951. NARA. George
Clutton to C. H. Johnston, September 12, 1951 (RJ 10345 / 8), FO 371 For-
eign Office, Political Departments, General Correspondence from 1906–1966,
Far Eastern: Japan, Folder: FO 371 / 92611. NAUK.
57. Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan, 170. “Happiness Mixed with Foreboding
as New Era Opens,” Nippon Times, September 10, 1951, 1. “How the People
Regard the Treaties,” Nippon Times, September 10, 1951, 3.
58. Heiwa suishin kokumin kaigi, “Nihon heiwa suishin kokumin kaigi no
kessei takai: seimei” [Founding conference of the National Congress for the
Promotion of Peace], July 28, 1951, in Nihon rōdō undo shiryō shūsei: dai san
kan, 1950–1954 [Collected documents from the postwar Japanese labor
movement: Vol. 3, 1950–1954], ed. Hōsei daigaku ōhara shakai mondai
kenkyūjo [Hosei University, Ōhara Social Problems Research Institute] (Tokyo:
Junposha, 2005), 245 (hereafter NRUSS, vol. 3). Sponsored by Heiwa suishin
kokumin kaigi, tandoku kōwa hantai heiwa kokumin taikai [The People’s
Peace Convention Opposed to a Separate Peace Treaty], Tandoku kōwa hijūn
ni hantai (taikai kestugi) [Our opposition to the ratification of a separate
peace treaty (resolution)], September 1, 1951, in Heiwa undō 20 nen shiryōshū
[Collected documents from twenty years of the peace movement], 482.
59. Kenji Hasegawa, “Waging Cold War in 1950s Japan: Zengakuren’s Postwar
Protests” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2007), 38.
60. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 554.
61. Niles Bond to the Secretary of State, no. 2160, April 9, 1952, RG 84 Records
of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo, Office of
the Political Advisor, Classified General Records, 1945–1952, Box 59, Folder:
320 United States-Japan 1950–51-52. NARA.
62. Psychological Strategy Board, “Psychological Strategy Program for Japan” (PSB
D-27), January 10, 1953, 3–4, 21, RG 59 General Records of the Department
of State, Lot File no. 62 D 333, Executive Secretariat, Psychological Strategy
Board Working File, 1951–1953, Box 4, Folder: PSB D-27. NARA.
63. There have been several detailed explorations of the treaty itself. See, for ex-
ample, Hosoya Chihiro, San Furanshisuko Kōwa e no michi [The road to the
Stan Francisco Peace Treaty] (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1984); Igarashi Takeshi,
Tainichi Kōwa to Reisen: sengo nichibei kankei no kaisei [The Japanese peace
treaty and the Cold War: The formation of the postwar U.S.–Japan Relation-
ship] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1986); Watanabe Akio and Miyasato
Seigen eds., San Furanshisuko Kōwa [The San Francisco Peace] (Tokyo: Tokyo
Daigaku Shuppankai, 1986); Michael M. Yoshitsu, Japan and the San Francisco
Peace Settlement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
4. Bloody Sunagawa
1. Andrew H. Malcolm, “U.S. Handing Back to Japan Vast Air Base That Was Key
to Military Operations in Asia,” New York Times, November 30, 1977, 8.
2. Bill Casey, http://boards.ancestry.com/thread.aspx?mv=flat&m=75&p=topics
.Military.united-20-states.airforce, accessed August 14, 2015. “Old Shakey”
was a nickname for the Douglas C-124 Globemaster II, a cargo plane that could
transfer heavy equipment and large loads.
3. The most extensive English-language work on the Sunagawa antibase protests
is Dustin Wright, “The Sunagawa Struggle: A Century of Anti-Base Protest in a
Tokyo Suburb” (PhD diss., University of California–Santa Cruz, 2015).
4. On the repurposing of existing facilitates and the number of troops, see Office
of the Chief Engineer, General Headquarters, Army Forces, Pacific, Airfield and
Base Development: Reports of Operations (United States Army Forces in the
Far East, Southwest Pacific Area, Army Forces, Pacific, 1951), 400, 406; Wil-
liam R. Evinger, Directory of U.S. Military Bases Worldwide (Phoenix: Oryx
Press, 1995), 261; Anni P. Baker, American Soldiers Overseas: The Global Mili-
tary Presence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 42. Armed Forces Information and
Education Division, A Pocket Guide to Japan (Washington, DC: U.S. Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1950), 58.
5. On the behavior of American forces, see Susan Carruthers, The Good Occupa-
tion: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2015), 88; Sarah Kovner, Occupying Power: Sex Workers and
Servicemen in Postwar Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2012);
Hayashi Hirofumi, Beigun kichi no rekishi: sekai nettowāku no keisei to tenkai
[The history of American bases: The formation and expansion of a global net-
work] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2012). On family policy, see Donna
Avlah, Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the
Cold War (New York: New York University Press, 2000); and Carson Hele,
“The Family-Friendly Occupation: Military Dependents and American Power
in Postwar Japan, 1945–1952” (Honors thesis, Dartmouth College, 2016).
Quoted in John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World
War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 136, 209.
6. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense,” May 9, 1951,
RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic File 1951–1953,
092 Japan Sec. 2–7, Box 23, Folder: CCS 092 Japan (12-12-50) Sec. 3. National
Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter NARA).
7. Andrew Yeo, Activists, Alliances, and Anti-U.S. Base Protests (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2011), 6. Telegram from Commander in Chief, Far East
(Ridgway) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 13, 1951, RG 218 Records of
the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic File 1951–1953, 092 Japan Sec. 2–7,
Box 23, Folder: CCS 092 Japan (12-12-50) Sec. 7. NARA.
8. Security Treaty between the United States and Japan, September 8, 1951, http://
avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/japan001.asp.
9. The United States Political Adviser to SCAP (Sebald) to the Department of State,
February 27 1952, in Foreign Relations of the United States 1952–1954, Volume
XIV, China and Japan, ed. John P. Glennon, David W. Mabon, and Harriet B.
Schwar (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988), 1195 (hereafter
FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14). U.S. Embassy Tokyo to the Department of State,
“The Public Opinion Climate of Japan,” June 1, 1953 (Despatch 2559), 3, RG
59 Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal File, 1950–1954, Doc-
ument no. 511.94 / 6-153. NARA. U.S. Embassy Tokyo to the Department of
State, “Japanese Attitudes Adversely Affecting the United States,” May 9, 1952,
RG 84 Records of the Foreign Services Posts of the Department of State, Japan,
Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records 1952, Box 1, Folder: 320 Japan–
United States. NARA.
10. Memorandum by the Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs
(Johnson), “Principles to be Applied in the Stationing of U.S. Forces in Japan,”
August 29, 1951, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Volume VI,
Asia and the Pacific, ed. Frederick Aandahl et al. (Washington, DC: Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1977), 1307–1308 (hereafter FRUS 1951, vol. 6).
11. Yoshida Shigeru to William J. Sebald, October 7, 1951, in Nihon gaikō bunsho:
heiwa jōyaku no teiketsu ni kansuru chōsho 5 [Documents on Japanese foreign
policy: Records related to the conclusion of treaty of peace with Japan, vol. 5],
ed. Gaimushō [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] (Tokyo: Gaimushō, 2002), 427.
Special Procurement Agency, “List of those buildings for the release of which
repeated petitions have been submitted to the Japanese Government authori-
ties concerned,” October 1, 1951; and Special Procurement Agency, “School
buildings under requisition by the Occupation Forces,” March 31, 1951, in
Gaimushō, Nihon gaikō bunsho: heiwa jōyaku no teiketsu ni kansuru chōsho
5 [Documents on Japanese foreign policy: Records related to the conclusion of
treaty of peace with Japan, vol. 5], 429–469. Susan Carruthers provides an
effective description of this land seizure process in Okinawa. See Carruthers,
The Good Occupation, 87–100, 227–262. On the Procurement Agency, see
Christopher Gerteis, Gender Struggles: Wage-Earning Women and Male-
Domination Unions in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2009), 67; and Kent E. Calder, Embattled Garrisons: Comparative Base
Politics and American Globalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2007), 134. For more on the role of these “compensation politics” in Japanese
public policy, see Kent E. Calder, Crisis and Compensation: Public Policy and
Political Stability in Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
12. U.S. Consulate in Sapporo to the Department of State, “Participation of Amer-
ican Security Forces in the U.S.I.S. Program in Sapporo,” December 12, 1952,
RG 59 Department of State, Central Decimal File, 1950–1954, Document
no. 511.94 / 12-1252. NARA. For similar information about U.S. base out-
reach in Yokohama, see American Consulate in Yokohama to the Depart-
ment of State, “Semi-Annual U.S.I.S. Evaluation Report,” December 16, 1952,
RG 59 Department of State, Central Decimal File, 1950–1954, Document
no. 511.94 / 12–1652. NARA. See also Avlah, Unofficial Ambassadors; and
Mire Koikari, Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa: Women, Mili-
tarized Domesticity, and Transnationalism in East Asia (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2015), especially pages 22–64. U.S. Consulate in Yokohama
to the Department of State, “Semi-Annual U.S.I.S. Evaluation Report,” De-

cember 16, 1952, 15, RG 59 Department of State, Central Decimal File,
1950–1954, Document no. 511.94 / 12-1652. NARA. U.S. Embassy Tokyo,
“Operations Memorandum: Strengthening Japanese Acceptance of United
States Security Forces,” January 9, 1953, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Ser-
vice Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified Gen-
eral Records, 1953–1955, Box 14, Folder: 320 Japan–United States. NARA.
Department of State, Draft of POC D-38, “Information Operational Plan
Concerning U.S. Personnel in Japan,” November 19, 1952, RG 84 Records of
the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy,
Classified General Records, 1953–1955, Box 1, Folder: 320 Japan–United
States. NARA.
13. U.S. military use of the land continued until the end of 1956 and the Japanese
government officially returned the land to the town of Uchinada on March 30,
1957. “Nikki” [Diary], in Nihon rōdō undo shiryō shūsei: dai san kan, 1950–1954
[Collected documents from the postwar Japanese labor movement, vol. 3,
1950–1954], ed. Hōsei daigaku ōhara shakai mondai kenkyūjo [Hosei Univer-
sity, Ōhara Social Problems Research Institute] (Tokyo: Junposha, 2005), 505
(hereafter NRUSS, vol. 3). For details about the negotiations between the
Japanese government and the residents of Uchinada, see Asahi Shimbun (Asahi
newspaper), “Uchinada mondai kaiketsu e” [Toward a settlement of the Uchi-
nada problem], September 9, 1953, in Sengo nihon bōei mondai shiryōshū,
daisankai, jieitai no sōsetsu [Collected documents about Japan’s postwar de-
fense problems, vol. 3: The establishment of the Self-Defense Forces], ed. Ōtake
Hideo (Tokyo: Sanichishobō, 1993), 792 (hereafter SNBMS, vol. 3). U.S. Em-
bassy Tokyo, “Weekly Political Notes from Japan, June 12–19, 1953,” June 19,
Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1953–1955, Box 28, Folder:
350 Political Affairs—Japan, Weekly Political Notes, April–June 1953. NARA.
Hokuriku tesudō kumiai rōso [Hokuriku Railway Workers’ Union], “Uchinada
kyōsei sesshū hantai ni kansuru seimei” [Statement of opposition to the forced
requisitioning at Uchinada], in NRUSS, vol. 3, 508.
14. U.S. Embassy Tokyo to the Department of State, “Weekly Political Notes from
Japan, June 27–July 3, 1953,” July 3, 1953, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Ser-
vice Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified Gen-
eral Records, 1953–1955, Box 28, Folder: 350 Political Affairs, Japan Joint
Week, April–June 1955. NARA. U.S. Embassy Tokyo to the Department of
State, “Effect of Local Political Controversy on the USIS Program in Kanazawa,
Japan,” July 10, 1953, RG 59 Department of State, Central Decimal File, Doc-
ument no. 511.94 / 7-1053. NARA. Heiwa undō 20 nen shiryōshū [Collected
documents from twenty years of the peace movement], ed. Nihon heiwa iinkai
(Tokyo: Otsuki shoten, 1969), 187. Gunji kichi hantai zenkokumin taikai
[National Conference against Military Bases], “Taikai sengen” [Declaration],
September 19, 1953, in NRUSS, vol. 3, 512.
15. U.S. Consulate, Nagoya to U.S. Embassy, Tokyo, “Local Public Reaction to
Uchinada Proving Ground, Ishikawa Prefecture,” May 22, 1953, RG 84 Rec-
ords of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo
Embassy, Classified General Records, 1953–1955, Box 33, Folder: 510.1
Japan–United States, Jan–Dec 1953. NARA.
16. Shimizu Ikutarō, “Uchinada,” Sekai 93 (September 1953): 65–80; Kenji
Hasegawa, “Waging Cold War in 1950s Japan: Zengakuren’s Postwar Pro-
tests” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2007), 148–151. Ōtake Hideo, “Expla-
nation” in SNBMS, vol. 3, 712. Other writing about base issues considered
their meaning for Japanese independence; for example, in the summer of 1953,
the influential magazine Chuō Kōron published a series of articles exploring the
question of whether Japan was a U.S. colony. Yukiko Koshiro, Transpacific
Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1999), 86. Abe Mark Nornes, Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and
Postwar Japanese Documentary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2007), 12–13.
17. Kovner, Occupying Power, 99–138. Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally:
Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 38. Quoted in Yoshimi Shun’ya, “Amerika·senryō·hoomu dorama”
[America, occupation, home dramas] in Sengo nihon sutadīzu 40–50 nedai
[Postwar Japanese studies: The 1940s–1950s], ed. Iwasaki Minoru (Tokyo: Ki-
nokuniya shoten, 2009), 203. Report of the United States Trial Observer for
the Trial of Specialist Four Gregory J. Kupski Jr., RG 59 General Records of
the Department of State, Miscellaneous Lot Files, Lot File no. 61 D 68, Subject
Files Relating to Japan, 1954–1959, Box 11, Folder: 19–C.4, Gregory J. Kupski
Case. NARA.
18. Wright, “The Sunagawa Struggle,” 71–72. Fred Saito, “Sin City of Tachikawa
Passes with U.S. Air Force Crackdown,” Hartford Courant, April 24, 1955, D1.
Nishida quoted in “The Sunagawa Struggle,” 72. See also Dustin Wright, “Su-
nagawa Struggle Ignited Anti-U.S. Base Resistance across Japan,” The Japan
Times, May 3, 2015, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/05/03
/issues /sunagawa -struggle -ignited -anti -u -s -base -resistance -across -japan /#
.VdYraXvCrbw.
19. In the course of his research, Michael Molasky discovered that The Chastity
of Japan was actually ghostwritten by a man. See Michael Molasky, The Amer-
ican Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory (London:
Routledge, 1999), 115, 127–128.
20. Kristin Roebuck, “Orphans by Design: ‘Mixed-Blood’ Children, Child Welfare,
and Racial Nationalism in Postwar Japan,” Japanese Studies, 2016, 1, 2, 6, 12.
21. Roebuck, “Orphans by Design,” 6. Kevin M. Doak, “What Is a Nation and Who
Belongs? National Narratives and the Ethnic Imagination in Twentieth-Century
Japan,” American Historical Review 102, no. 2 (April 1997): 301, 304–308.
22. James J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in
Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 47.
23. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, April 8, 1955,
in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Volume XXIII, Japan,
ed. John P. Glennon and David W. Mabon (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1991), 49 (hereafter FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23). Memorandum
from the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Robertson) to the
Secretary of State, “Japanese Proposal Reported in Tokyo’s Telegram 201 for a
Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States to Replace the Present Security
Treaty,” July 28, 1955, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 78–79. Telegram from
the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, April 26, 1955, in FRUS
1955–1957, vol. 23, 69. U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to the Department of State,
“Progress Report of Joint Committee Meeting,” June 23, 1954 (Despatch 1709),
RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Records Relating to the
Mutual Security Assistance program, East Asian Country Files 1953–1956,
Japan–Laos, Box 2, Folder: MAP-Japan, FY 1956. NARA.
24. Quoted in Andrew H. Malcolm, “U.S. Handing Back to Japan Vast Air Base
That Was Key to Military Operations in Asia,” New York Times, November 30,
1977, 8. On pollution, see Wright, “The Sunagawa Struggle,” 92.
25. On the impact of the expansions on the town of Sunagawa, see Hasegawa,
“Waging Cold War in 1950s Japan,” 166; and Wright, “The Sunagawa Struggle,”
96–97, 100. On the 1950s-era expansions of the base, see Stars and Stripes,
June 25, 1973, 8.
26. Wright, “The Sunagawa Struggle,” 105. Sunagawachō kichi kakuchō zettai
hantai chōmin sōkeki taikai [Townspeople’s Solidarity Rally in Absolute Op-
position to the Expansion of the Base in Sunagawa], “Keggibun” [Resolu-
tion], June 18, 1955, in Nihon rōdō undo shiryō shūsei: dai yon kan, 1955–
1959 [Collected documents from the postwar Japanese labor movement, vol.
4, 1955–1959], ed. Hōsei daigaku ōhara shakai mondai kenkyūjo [Hosei Uni-
versity, Ōhara Social Problems Research Institute] (Tokyo: Junposha, 2005),
61 (hereafter NRUSS, vol. 4). U.S. Embassy Tokyo to the Department of
State, “Progress Report of Joint Committee Meeting,” May 31, 1955 (Despatch
1420), RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State,
320.1 Joint Committee 1955. NARA.
27. Nihon seifu [Japanese government], “Kichi kakuchō ni kansuru seiu seimei”
[Government statement on the expansion of bases], August 8, 1955, in NRUSS,
vol. 4, 62. Antibase alliance quoted in Wright, “The Sunagawa Struggle,” 109.
28. Commander in Chief, Far East to General Maxwell Taylor, August 27, 1955, RG
218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic File 1954–1956, 092
Japan, Box 26, Folder: CCS 092 Japan (12-12-50) Sec. 20 (Envelope). NARA.
“Japan Needs Larger Bases, Premier Says,” Nippon Times, August 27, 1955, 1.
29. Kyōtō kaigi [Joint conference], Kichi kakuchō hantai tōsō sōkeki taikai [Uni-
fied conference for the struggle opposing base expansion], August 20, 1955, in
NRUSS, vol. 4, 63. Miyazaki quoted in Wright, “The Sunagawa Struggle,” 123.
30. The Constitution of Japan, May 3, 1947, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution
_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html. General Headquarters, Su-
preme Commander for the Allied Power, History of the Nonmilitary Activities
of the Occupation of Japan: The Rural Land Reform (Washington, DC: Na-
tional Archives, World War II Records Division, 1952), 24–26.
31. U.S. Embassy Tokyo, “Political Notes from Japan August 15–August 22, 1955,”
August 24, 1955, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Depart-
ment of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1953–1955,

Box 29, Folder: 350 Political Notes, July–December 1955. NARA. “Surveyors
Lose Round in Sunakawa,” Nippon Times, August 25, 1955. Sunagawachō
kichi kakuchō hantai dōmei [Sunagawa Antibase Expansion Alliance]
Sunagawachō kichi kankuchō hantai shien rōso kyōgikai [Labor council against
the Sunagawa base expansion], “ ‘tochi ni kui wa utaretemo kokoro ni kui wa
utarenai’ seimeisho” [‘You can stake our land but you can’t stake our spirits,’
declaration], September 14, 1955, in NRUSS, vol. 4, 66. U.S. Embassy Tokyo,
“Political Notes from Japan, September 12–September 19, 1955,” September 21,
350 Political Notes, July–December 1955. NARA.
32. U.S. Embassy Tokyo, “Political Notes from Japan, May 7–14, 1956,” May 15,
Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1956–1958, Box 51,
Folder: 350 Political Notes to Department January–June 1956. NARA. On
Sōhyō’s role in 1950s and 1960s politics, see Gerteis, Gender Struggles, 1–2.
Oyama quoted in Wright, “The Sunagawa Struggle,” 185. On artistic depic-
tions of Sunagawa, see Thomas R. H. Havens, Radicals and Realists in the
Japanese Non-Verbal Arts (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 31,
128–129.
33. Sunagawachō kichi kakuchō hantai dōmei [Sunagawa Antibase Expansion Al-
liance], “Dainiji kyōsei sokuryō wo mae ni shite Sunagawa chōmin wa
utaeru!!” [Prior to the second coerced surveying, the people of Sunagawa ap-
peal!!], September 1956, in NRUSS, vol. 4, 194. Woman quoted in Wright,
“The Sunagawa Struggle,” 142.
34. Hasegawa, “Waging Cold War in 1950s Japan,” 167–168.
35. Sunagawachō bōryoku sokuryō haitai sōkeki taikai [Unified Conference Op-
posing Violent Surveying at Sunagawa], “Ketsugi” [Resolution], October 3,
1956, in NRUSS, vol. 4, 196–197. Ishino Noboru, “Oral History,” in Sunagawa
tōsō gojūnen sorezore no omoi [Memories of the Sunagawa struggle after fifty
years], ed. Hoshi Kiichi (Tachikawa: Keyakishuppan, 2005), 17.
36. U.S. Embassy Tokyo, “Political Notes from Japan October 8–15, 1956,” Oc-
tober 16, 1956, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department
of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1956–1958, Box
52, Folder: 350 Political Notes to Department July–Dec 1956. NARA.
37. U.S. Embassy Tokyo, “Political Notes from Japan October 8–15, 1956.”
38. Commander in Chief, Far East to General Maxwell Taylor, August 9, 1955, RG
218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geographic File 1954–1956, Box
26, Folder: CCS 092 Japan (12-12-50) Sec. 20 (Envelope). NARA. In this mem-
orandum, CINCFE noted that the runway extensions at Yokota Air Force
Base and Niigata Air Force Base also faced public resistance, with local resi-
dents preventing surveys from taking place.
39. Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, “Second Meeting with
Shigemitsu: Defense Matters,” August 30, 1955, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23,
101.
40. Letter from the Ambassador in Japan (Allison) to the Director of the Office of
Northeast Asian Affairs (McClurkin), July 19, 1955, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol.
23, 77.
41. John Swenson-Wright, Unequal Allies? United States Security and Alliance
Policy towards Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 119–120.
U.S. military payments for land in Okinawa were only 2 to 3 percent of the
income that could be gained by farming. Miyume Tanji, Myth, Protest and
Struggle in Okinawa (London: Routledge, 2009), 63–65, 72–73.
42. John E. MacDonald to Elmer B. Staats, “Second Progress Report to the NSC
on Japan (NSC 5516 / 1),” June 27, 1956. White House Office, National Secu-
rity Council Staff Papers, 1948–1961, OCB Central File Series, Box 48, Folder:
OCB 091. Japan (File #5) (6) [April–November 1956]. Dwight D. Eisen-
hower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas (hereafter Eisenhower Library).
43. Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
(Robertson) to the Secretary of State, “Our Japan Policy: Need for Reappraisal
and Certain Immediate Actions,” January 7, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol.
23, 241, 242.
44. Letter from the Secretary of State to the Secretary of Defense (Wilson), Jan-
uary 8, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 245. Quoted in Memorandum from
the Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs (Parsons) to the Assistant
Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Robertson), January 24, 1957, in
FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 254.
45. This description of events is taken from an affidavit by Robert Dechert, gen-
eral counsel to Department of Defense, which the Defense Department sub-
mitted after Girard brought a suit against the U.S. government for allowing
him to be tried in Japan. Supreme Court of the United States, William S. Girard v.
Charles E Wilson (H.C. 47–57), Appendix A, Affidavit with Respect to the
Facts, July 11, 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Papers as President of the
United States 1953–1961 (Ann Whitman File), Administration Series, Box 8,
Folder: Herbert Brownell Jr., 1957 (2). Eisenhower Library.
46. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, February 8,
1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 261.“ ‘Koi no shasatsu’ to dantei shatō,
taiho no yōkyū, sōmagahara nōfu shasatsu jiken” [Declaring “deliberately shot
to kill,” Socialist Party demands an arrest in the shooting of a Sōmagahara farm
woman], Asahi Shimbun, February 6, 1957, 7. George R. Packard III, Protest
in Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 36. Telegram from
the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, February 8, 1957, in FRUS
1955–1957, vol. 23, 261. Telegram from U.S. Embassy Tokyo to Asian Embas-
sies, “Joint Weeka no. 22,” May 31, 1957; and Telegram from U.S. Embassy
Tokyo to Asian Embassies, “Joint Weeka no. 7,” February 15, 1957, RG 84
Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo
Embassy, Classified General Records, 1956–1958, Box 50, Folder: 350 Joint
Weeka Jan–May 1957. NARA.
47. Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
(Robertson) to the Secretary of State, “Trial of Specialist 3 / c Girard by Japa-
nese Court,” May 20, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 295.
48. Frank Bow to Dwight Eisenhower, May 20, 1957, Central Files, Official File,
328 Girard, William S., Box 936, Folder: 328 Girard, William S. Specialist
3rd Class. Eisenhower Library. Legislative Leaders Meeting, July 16, 1957,
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Papers as President of the United States, 1953–1961
[Ann Whitman Files], DDE Diary Series, Box 25, Folder: July 1957 Miscella-
neous. Eisenhower Library. Congressional Record, July 24, 1957. “Armed
Forces: The Girard Case,” Time, June 17, 1957, 16.
49. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation between the Secretary of State and
the Secretary of the Army (Brucker), May 21, 1957 (10:57 am), in FRUS 1955–
1957, vol. 23, 305. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of
State, May 24, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 315.
50. Dwight D. Eisenhower to Swede Hazlett, July 22, 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Papers as President of the United States, 1953–1961 (Ann Whitman File), Name
Series, Box 18, Folder: Hazlett, Swede, Jan 1956–Nov. 1958 (3). Eisenhower
Library. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation between the President and
the Secretary of State, May 24, 1957 (8:35 am), in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23,
316–317. Eisenhower was also referencing extensive protests against U.S. forces
in Taiwan after a U.S. Army officer was acquitted of murdering a Taiwanese
man. See Stephen G. Craft, American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and
Cold War Foreign Policy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016).
51. Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Af-
fairs (Cutler) to the Secretary of Defense (Wilson), June 7, 1957, in FRUS 1955–
1957, vol. 23, 343. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation between the
Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense (Wilson), June 11, 1957, in FRUS
1955–1957, vol. 23, 345–346. Memorandum from the President’s Special As-
sistant for National Security Affairs (Cutler) to the Secretary of Defense
(Wilson), June 7, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 343. Memorandum of
Conversation with Secretary Wilson at Secretary Humphrey’s Dinner, July 1,
1957. John Foster Dulles Papers, 1951–1959, General Correspondence and
Memoranda Series, Box 1, Folder: Memos of Conversation—General T through
Z. Eisenhower Library. Commander in Chief, Pacific to the Office of the Secre-
tary of Defense, July 8. 1957, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Geographic File 1957, 092 Japan Sec. 22–24, Box 11, Folder: CCS 092 Japan
(12-12-50) Sec. 24. NARA. Commander in Chief, Far East to the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, June 16, 1957, RG 218 Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Geo-
graphic File 1957, 092 Japan Sec. 22–24, Box 11, Folder: CCS 092 Japan (12-
12-50) Sec. 23A. NARA.
52. Memorandum of a Conference with the President, June 18, 1957, in FRUS
1955–1957, vol. 23, 358.
53. Richard Samuels, “Kishi and Corruption: An Anatomy of the 1955 System,”
Japan Policy Research Institute, Working Paper no. 83 (December 2001),
http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp83.html. Memorandum of
a Conversation, Department of State, “Second Meeting with Shigemitsu, De-
fense Matters,” August 30, 1955, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 97–98.
54. Quoted in Samuels, “Kishi and Corruption.” Douglas MacArthur II to Secre-
tary of State, May 16, 1957, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the
Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1956–

1958, Box 42, Folder: 320 U.S.–Japan January–August 1957. NARA.
55. Douglas MacArthur II to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, May 25, 1957,
RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan,
Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1956–1958, Box 42, Folder: 320
U.S.–Japan January–August 1957. NARA. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan
to the Department of State, April 17, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 277–
278. For other U.S. policymakers’ positive assessment of Kishi, see Memorandum
for the Record of a Meeting between the Secretary of State and the President’s
Special Consultant (Nash), June 5, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 339.
56. Memorandum of a Conversation, June 19, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23,
374.
57. Memorandum of a Conversation, “Final Communiqué for Kishi Visit,” June 21,
1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 411–412. Memorandum of a Conversa-
tion, “Security Arrangements with Japan,” September 8, 1958, in Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume XVIII, Japan; Korea, ed.
Madeline Chi and Louis J. Smith (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
1994), 63.
58. Packard, Protest in Tokyo, 132.
59. Packard, Protest in Tokyo, 133.
5. A Breaking Point
1. Quote from George R. Packard III, Protest in Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1966), 263. For the number of participants, see Nick Kapur,
Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 1. Kapur defines antitreaty activism
widely in this figure: for example, it includes signing petitions.
2. For more on 1960 as a year of crisis in Asia, see Gregg Brazinsky, Nation
Building South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Seth Jacobs, The
Universe Unraveling: American Foreign Policy in Cold War Laos (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2012); Charles Kim, Youth for Nation: Culture and
Protest in Cold War South Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
2017); Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and
the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).
3. Kitaoka Shinichi, “Kishi Nobusuke: Frustrated Ambition,” in The Prime Min-
isters of Postwar Japan, 1945–1995, ed. Akio Watanabe, trans. Robert D.
Elridge (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 106–109.
4. John W. Dower, “Peace and Democracy in Two Systems,” in Postwar Japan as
History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993),
17. J. Victor Koschmann, “Intellectuals and Politics,” in Postwar Japan as His-
tory, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 405.
See also Simon Andrew Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and
the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2010), 71.
5. On American assistance to Japanese economic growth, see Aaron Forsberg,

America and the Japanese Miracle: The Cold War Context of Japan’s Postwar
Economic Revival, 1950–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000); and Sayuri Shimizu, Creating People of Plenty: The United States
and Japan’s Economic Alternatives, 1950–1960 (Kent, OH: Kent State Univer-
sity Press, 2001). Emphasis in original. Letter from the Ambassador in Japan
(MacArthur II) to the Secretary of State, May 25, 1957, in Foreign Relations
of the United States, 1955–1957, Volume XXIII, Japan, ed. John P. Glennon
and David W. Mabon (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991),
326–327 (hereafter FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23).
6. Memorandum from the Secretary of State to the President, June 12, 1957, in
FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 347.
7. Letter from the Ambassador in Japan (MacArthur II) to the Secretary of State,
May 25, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 23, 330. Kishi was well known to
American policymakers and close observers prior to becoming prime minister.
See Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Oc-
cupation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 124–126.
8. Letter from Earl W. Barnes, Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force to George Morgan,
May 23, 1957, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Services Posts of the Department
of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records 1956–1958, Box
43, Folder: 320 Japan-American Security Treaty 1957. National Archives and
Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARA). Telegram
from the Commander in Chief, Pacific (Felt) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
August 19, 1958, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960,
Volume XVIII, Japan; Korea, ed. Madeline Chi and Louis J. Smith (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1994), 53 (hereafter FRUS 1958–1960,
vol. 18). Letter from CINCPAC’s Political Advisor (Steeves) to the Assistant
Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Robertson), June 19, 1958, in FRUS
1958–1960, vol. 18, 41.
9. Telegram from Douglas MacArthur II to Walter Robertson, August 18, 1958,
RG 84 Records of the Foreign Services Posts of the Department of State, Japan,
Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records 1956–1958, Box 45, Folder: 320.1
U.S.–Japan Security Treaty, Jan.–Sept. 1958. NARA.
10. Gaimushō [Foreign Ministry], “Anzen hoshō ni kansuru tōmen no shōmondai
ni kansuru ken” [Concerning various pressing problems with the security guar-
antee], June 24, 1958, Heisei 22 nendo gaikō kiroku kōkai (1) [Release of
diplomatic records in 2010 (1)], File no: 0611-2010-0791-01, Nichibei anzen
hoshō jōyaku ka [Division for the U.S.–Japanese Security Treaty], Nichibei anpo
jōyaku no kaisei ni kakaru ikisatsu (1) [Developments surrounding the revision
of the U.S.–Japanese security treaty (1)], Folder: hōshi [Bound materials], Ref-
erence no: H22036. Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Tokyo, Japan (hereafter DAMOFA). Gaimushō, “Nihonkoku kenpō to jieiken”
[Japan’s constitution and the right to self-defense], October 9, 1958, Heisei 22
nendo gaikō kiroku kōkai (1) [Release of diplomatic records in 2010 (1)], File
no: 0611-2010-0791-01, Nichibei anzen hoshō jōyaku ka [Division for the
U.S.–Japan Security Treaty], Nichibei anpo jōyaku no kaisei ni kakaru ikisatsu
[Circumstances surrounding the revision of the U.S.–Japan security treaty],

Folder: 1958 nen jū gatsu yokka yori jūichi gatsu nijūroku hi ni itaru ikisatsu
[Developments from 10.4.1958 to 11.26.1958], Reference no: H22037.
DAMOFA.
11. Report Prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Security Treaty-Japan, September
10, 1958, in FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 18, 71.
12. Telegram from Douglas MacArthur II, July 12, 1958, RG 84 Records of the
Foreign Services Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy,
Classified General Records 1956–1958, Box 51, Folder: 350 Japan, July–
December 1958. NARA. On Kishi’s motivation, see Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies
of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 137.
13. On actions against the police duties bill, see Koschmann, “Intellectuals and Poli-
tics,” in Postwar Japan as History, 406. Telegram from U.S. Embassy, Japan, to
the Secretary of State, October 18, 1958, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Ser-
vices Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified Gen-
eral Records 1956–1958, Box 51, Folder: 350 Japan, July–December 1958.
NARA.
14. Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens, 68.
15. Anpo jōyaku kaitei soshi kokumin kaigi undo hoshin (an) [Motion of princi-
ples of the People’s Council to Stop the Revision of the Security Treaty], in Anpo
jōyaku kaitei soshi kokumin kaigi: kessei taikai gian [Founding conference of
the People’s Council to Stop the Revision to the Security Treaty], March 28,
1958, Papers of Asanuma Inejiro, Documents Related to Postwar Politics, Mi-
crofilm Reel 117, document no. 1876, frames 420–428. Modern Japanese
Political History Materials Room, National Diet Library, Tokyo, Japan.
Anpo jōyaku kaitei soshi kokumin kaigi kessei taikai: kessei sengen
[Founding conference of the People’s Council to Stop the Revision of the Secu-
rity Treaty: Founding proclamation], March 28, 1959, in Nihon rōdō undo
shiryō shūsei: dai go kan, 1960–1964 [Collected documents from the postwar
Japanese labor movement, vol. 5, 1960–1964], ed. Hōsei daigaku ōhara shakai
mondai kenkyūjo [Hosei University, Ōhara Social Problems Research Institute]
(Tokyo: Junposha, 2005), 138–139 (hereafter NRUSS, vol. 5).
16. Anpo jōyaku kaitei soshi kokumin kaigi kessei taikai: surōgan [Founding con-
ference of the People’s Council to Stop the Revision of the Security Treaty: Slo-
gans], March 28, 1958, in Shiryō nihon shakaitō shijyū nenshi [A 40-year
history of the Japan Socialist Party in documents], ed. Nihon shakaitō [Japan
Socialist Party] (Tokyo: Nihon shakaitō chūū honbu, 1986), 423. Jordan Sand,
Tokyo Vernacular: Common Spaces, Local Histories, Found Objects (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2013), 7.
17. “Anpo kaitei mondai handobukku” [A handbook on the problems of Anpo re-
vision], Sekai 167 (November 1959): 2–3.
18. Kenji Hasegawa, “Waging Cold War in 1950s Japan: Zengakuren’s Postwar
Protests” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2007), 177, 192.
19. Kishi Nobusuke, “Jimin shakai ryōtō tachiai tōronkai ni okeru enzetsu”
[Public speech at debate with both Liberal Democratic and Socialist Parties],
September 1, 1959, in NRUSS, vol. 5, 134–135. Telegram from the Embassy

in Japan to the Department of State, September 9, 1959, in FRUS 1958–1960,
vol. 18, 220.
20. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks at the Signing of the Treaty of Mutual Co-
operation and Security between Japan and the United States,” January 19, 1960,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11784. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Joint
Statement Following Discussions with Prime Minister Kishi of Japan,” January
19, 1960, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11795.
21. See, for example, Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens; and Wesley Sasaki-Uemura,
Organizing the Spontaneous: Citizen Protest in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawai’i Press, 2001).
22. Gromyko quoted in Schaller, Altered States, 145. Telegram from the Embassy
in Japan to the Department of State, February 4, 1960, in FRUS 1958–1960,
vol. 18, 263.
23. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State; Commander
in Chief, Pacific; Commander of U.S. Forces, Japan, May 9, 1960, RG 84 Rec-
ords of the Foreign Services Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo
Embassy, Classified General Records 1959–1961, Box 64, Folder: 320 U-2 In-
cident, 1960. NARA. Telegram from MacArthur II to the Secretary of State,
June 3, 1960, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Services Posts of the Department
of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records 1959–1961, Box
64, Folder: 320 U-2 Incident, 1960. NARA. Telegram from MacArthur II to
the Secretary of State, May 11, 1960, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Services
Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General
Records 1959–1961, Box 64, Folder: 320 U-2 Incident, 1960. NARA.
24. Nick Kapur, “The 1960 U.S.–Japan Security Treaty Crisis and the Origins of
Contemporary Japan” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2011), 24.
25. Kapur, “The 1960 U.S.–Japan Security Treaty Crisis and the Origins of Con-
temporary Japan,” 36–38. Kapur argues that changes in visual culture and
media, especially the rise of television, played a central role in elevating the an-
titreaty protests as a national experience. See Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads,
3. MacArthur II explained such actions by asserting that the LDP had pushed
the treaty through so that it would come into effect prior to Eisenhower’s visit.
He further claimed that the rank-and-file of the LDP may have wanted to pass
the treaty before a large protest planned for the following day. Telegram from
the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, May 20, 1960, in FRUS
1958–1960, vol. 18, 296.
26. Kapur, “The 1960 U.S.–Japan Security Treaty Crisis and the Origins of Con-
temporary Japan,” 24. For protest numbers see, Igarashi, Bodies of Memory,
135. Protest description from Packard, Protest in Tokyo, 262.
27. Quoted in Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens, 95.
28. Quoted in Sasaki-Uemura, Organizing the Spontaneous, 160.
29. Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens, 10. Igarashi, Bodies of Memory, 132, 142.
30. Koschmann, “Intellectuals and Politics,” in Postwar Japan as History, 406.
Anpo jōyaku kaitei soshi kokumin kaigi [People’s Council to Stop the Revi-
sion to the Security Treaty], “Anpo soshi, kokkai kaisan, Kishi taijin,
kokumin no korazu tachiagarou! [People rise up to stop Anpo, dissolve the

Diet, and make Kishi resign!], May 1960, in NRUSS, vol. 5, 147. Socialist
Party, Tōmen no kinkyū jitai ni taisuru to no hoshin [Party principles con-
cerning the current emergency situation], May 21, 1960, in Shiryō nihon
shakaitō shijyū nenshi [A 40-year history of the Japan Socialist Party in docu-
ments], 440.
31. Quoted in Sasaki-Uemura, Organizing the Spontaneous, 167. On the protests
as a clash between past and future, see Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens, 63.
32. On everyday life conservatism, see Sand, Tokyo Vernacular, 7. On connections
between economic growth and individualism, see Koschmann, “Intellectuals
and Politics,” in Postwar Japan as History, 406. Katō Hidetoshi quoted in
Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens, 83.
33. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, May 20, 1960,
in FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 18, 297. For a discussion of the longer roots of
American support of conservative and right-wing leaders, see David F. Schmitz,
Thank God They’re on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictator-
ships, 1921–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
34. Emphasis added. Telegram from MacArthur II to the Secretary of State,
June 4, 1960, White House Office, Office of the Staff Secretary: Records,
1952–1961, International Trips and Meetings Series, Box 13, Folder: Japan
[Proposed Presidential Trip] (3) [November 1959–June 1960]. Dwight D.
Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, KS (hereafter Eisenhower Library).
35. Memorandum of Telephone Conversation between President Eisenhower and
Secretary of State Herter, May 24, 1960, in FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 18, 303.
Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, May 25, 1960,
in FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 18, 304. Memorandum of a Conversation between
President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Herter, June 7, 1960, in FRUS
1958–1960, vol. 18, 327–318.
36. Kapur, “The 1960 U.S.–Japan Security Crisis and the Origins of Contemporary
Japan,” 30–31. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State,
June 10, 1960, in FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 18, 332.
37. Kapur, “The 1960 U.S.–Japan Security Treaty Protests and the Origins of Con-
temporary Japan,” 33.
38. Journalist quoted in Sasaki-Uemura, Organizing the Spontaneous, 47. Chelsea
Szendi Schieder, “To Catch a Tiger by Its Toe: The U.S.–Japan Security Treaty,
Moral Re-Armament, and Cold War Orientalism,” Journal of American-East
Asian Relations 23, no. 2 (2016): 158. See also Chelsea Szendi Schieder, “Coed
Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left” (PhD diss., Co-
lumbia University, 2014). Sōhyō, “6.15 jikenni kansuru: seimei” [Statement on
the June 15 incident], June 1960, in NRUSS, vol. 5, 156. Socialist Party, “Kanba
Michiko san wo koroshita Kishi naikaku” [The Kishi cabinet killed Kanba
Michiko], June 15, 1960, in Shiryō nihon shakaitō shijyū nenshi [A 40-year
history of the Japan Socialist Party in documents], 449. On the Socialist
Party stance, see also Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists:
The Violent Politics of Modern Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2008), 166–167.
39. Nick Kapur, “Mending the Broken Dialogue: U.S.–Japan Alliance Diplomacy
in the Aftermath of the 1960 Security Treaty Crisis,” Diplomatic History 41,
no. 3 (June 2017): 490–491.
40. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, June 17, 1960,
in FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 18, 368. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the
Secretary of State, June 18, 1960, in FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 18, 370. Statement
by James C. Hagerty, June 16, 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Papers as Presi-
dent, 1953–1961 (Ann Whitman File), International Series, Box 35, Folder:
Japan Far East Trip-Cancelled (2) [Folder 3]. Eisenhower Library.
41. Memorandum, Discussion of the 448th Meeting of the National Security
Council, June 22, 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Papers as President, 1953–1961
(Ann Whitman File), NSC Series, Box 12, Folder: 448th Meeting of the NSC,
June 22, 1960. Eisenhower Library. On the impact of decolonization on Amer-
ican policy, see Tim Borstlemann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American
Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2003), 85–171; and Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image
of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000),
152–202.
42. Telegram from the Embassy in Japan to the Department of State, June 24, 1960,
in FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 18, 384.
43. Operations Coordinating Board, “Japanese Intellectuals: Annex to Outline Plan
of Operations with Respect to Japan (Dated February 8, 1956),” 3, White House
Office, National Security Council Staff: Papers, 1948–1961, OCB Central File
Series, Box 48, Folder: OCB.091 Japan (File #5) (3) [April–November 1956].
Eisenhower Library. Telegram from MacArthur II to the Secretary of State,
June 15, 1960, White House Office, Office of the Staff Secretary: Records 1952–
1961, International Series, Box 9, Folder: Japan—vol. II of III (1) [June 15–16,
1960]. Eisenhower Library. Telegram from MacArthur II to the Secretary of
State, June 16, 1960, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Services Posts of the
Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records
1959–1961, Box 69, Folder: 350 Japan [Jan.–June] 1960. NARA.
44. Foreign Service Despatch 198 from the U.S. Embassy, Tokyo to the Secretary
of State, August 29, 1960, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Services Posts of the
Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records 1959–
1961, Box 69, Folder: 350 Demonstrations 1960–1961. NARA. On wartime
understandings, see John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in
the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1987), 19–23; and Headquarters, Army
Service Forces, Civil Affairs Handbook Japan, Section 2: Government and Ad-
ministration (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1945), 78.
45. Emphasis in the original. Foreign Service Despatch 198 from the U.S. Embassy,
Tokyo, to the Secretary of State, August 29, 1960, RG 84 Records of the For-
eign Services Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classi-
fied General Records 1959–1961, Box 69, Folder: 350 Demonstrations 1960–
1961. NARA. French philosopher Julien Benda actually published La Trahison
des Clercs in 1927. Coming before Hitler’s rise to power, the book was not a
comment on Nazism but instead a critique of European intellectuals in the
1920s. Benda argued that European intellectuals betrayed their responsibility

to Enlightenment-era philosophy and instead followed degenerate theories such
as Marxism and fascism.
46. Telegram from MacArthur II to the Secretary of State, February 8, 1961, RG
84 Records of the Foreign Services Posts of the Department of State, Japan,
Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records 1959–1961, Box 70, Folder: 350
Japan Intellectuals 1961. NARA.
47. Takeshi Matsuda, Soft Power and Its Perils: U.S. Cultural Policy in Postwar
Japan and Permanent Dependency (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2007), 161–184; Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 123; Schieder, “To Catch a Tiger
by Its Toe,” 144–169.
48. Edwin O. Reischauer, “The Broken Dialogue with Japan,” reprinted from For-
eign Affairs, October 1960, 13, 17, 23, 25–26, William K. Leonhart, Personal
Papers, Subject File, Box 37, Folder: Reischauer, Edwin O. John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library, Boston, MA (hereafter Kennedy Library). Oral History
Interview with Edwin O. Reischauer, April 25, 1969, 1–2, Oral History Collec-
tion. Kennedy Library.
49. Edwin Reischauer to William J. Lederer, February 28, 1962. Edwin Oldfather
Reischauer Papers [HUG(FP) 73.50], Papers Related to Ambassadorial Years,
1961–1966, Box 2, Folder: Ambassadorial Years, 1963 3 of 3]. Harvard Uni-
versity Archives, Cambridge, MA.
6. Producing Democracy
1. Christian Herter to American Embassy, Tokyo, October 21, 1960, RG 286
Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of
Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 9, Folder:
Political Affairs (2). National Archives and Records Administration, College
Park, MD (hereafter NARA).
2. William M. Tsutsui, Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in
Twentieth-Century Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998),
137. See also Charles S. Maier, In Search of Stability: Explorations in Histor-
ical Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 130.
3. Andrew Gordon, The Wages of Affluence: Labor and Management in Postwar
Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 131; and Simon
Partner, Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese
Consumer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 143. See also Scott
O’Bryan, The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan (Hono-
lulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009).
4. On growth in postwar Japan, see O’Bryan, The Growth Idea, 4.
5. On Japanese thinking about postwar development, see Aaron Stephen Moore,
“Japanese Development Consultancies and Postcolonial Power in Southeast
Asia: The Case of Burma’s Balu Chang Hydropower Project,” East Asian Sci-
ence, Technology and Society: An International Journal 8, no. 3 (Sept. 2014):
297–322.
6. On Japanese wartime ideology, see Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire: Reform
Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2011); Hiromi Mizuno, Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in
Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); Aaron Stephen
Moore, Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s
Wartime Era, 1931–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).
7. See Melvyn Leffler, Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy
and National Security, 1920–2015 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2017), 118–119. For a focus on Japan, see Aaron Forsberg, America and the
Japanese Miracle: The Cold War Context of Japan’s Postwar Economic Re-
vival, 1950–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000);
and Sayuri Shimizu, Creating People of Plenty: The United States and Japan’s
Economic Alternatives (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001).
8. Harry S. Truman, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1949, http://www.presidency
.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13282. On Point Four, see Amanda Key McVety, “Pursuing
Progress: Point Four in Ethiopia,” Diplomatic History 32, no. 3 (June 2008):
377–381. On American development assumptions, see David Ekbladh, The
Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an Amer-
ican World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 79; and
Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War
America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 35–40.
9. Quote from Maier, In Search of Stability, 128. See also Michael J. Hogan, The
Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe,
1947–1952 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 135–188; and
Jacqueline McGlade, “The U.S. Technical Assistance Program: From Revolu-
tionary Vision to Production Drive,” in Catching Up with America: Produc-
tivity Missions and the Diffusion of American Economic and Technological
Influence after the Second World War, ed. Dominique Barjot (Paris: Press de
l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002), 73–74. On EPA funding, see John Foster
Dulles to the American Embassy, New Delhi, Subject: European Productivity
Agency, January 10, 1958, RG 286 Agency for International Development,
USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed
Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 17, Folder: An Asian Productivity Agency—Pros
and Cons. NARA.
10. On the founding of KD, see Mark Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination:
Schumpeter’s Guide to the Postwar Japanese Miracle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2013), 98. On KD’s views on capitalism, see Tsutsui, Manu-
facturing Ideology, 125; and Gordon, The Wages of Affluence, 36. On KD’s
view on management, see Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 98; Tsu-
tsui, Managing Ideology, 125; and Gordon, The Wages of Affluence, 39. On
Gōshi, see Tsutsui, Managing Ideology, 135 and Bai Gao, Economic Ideology
and Japanese Industrial Policy: Developmentalism from 1931–1965 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 217. Bai Gao argues that Gōshi was
deeply influenced by the German concept of blood ties between workers and
managers; traditional concepts of nationalism therefore served as a crucial
foundation for productivity ideology.
11. JPC founding statement quoted in Tsutsui, Manufacturing Ideology, 136. On

the reform of capitalism, see Laura Hein, Reasonable Men, Powerful Words:
Political Culture and Expertise in Twentieth-Century Japan (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 2004), 144–146, 151; and O’Bryan, The Growth Idea,
164–168. Description of JPC activities taken from International Cooperation
Administration, Draft Report on Examination of the United States Opera-
tions Mission to Japan, as of June 30, 1960, RG 286 Agency for International
Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P
368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 7, Folder: Japan Phase Out. NARA.
12. Quotes from Partner, Assembled in Japan, 124–125. Funding amounts from
International Cooperation Administration, Draft Report on Examination of the
United States Operations Mission to Japan, as of June 30, 1960, RG 286 Agency
for International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia
Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 7, Folder: Japan
Phase Out. NARA.
13. On the dual economy, see O’Bryan, The Growth Idea, 88, 156. On Japanese
economists, see Hein, Reasonable Men, Powerful Words, 151; and Metzler,
Capital as Will and Imagination, 69, 178, 200–201.
14. America military procurement in Japan fell 25 percent between 1953 and 1954.
See Richard J. Samuels, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the
Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1994), 132; and Clarence E. Meyer et al., “An Economic Program for Japan,”
July 1954, 8, RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau
for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files,
1955–1964, Box 2, Folder: Agreements: Original Notes etc., Meyer Report
etc. NARA. On domestic consumption, see O’Bryan, The Growth Idea, 144–171.
On plans for Japanese economic independence and the 1956 White Paper, see
Gao, Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial Policy, 207, 209; and
Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 181, 196. Gotō had traveled to the
United States in 1954, where he observed American productivity and auto-
mation efforts.
15. Tokyo Telegram 1087, Subject: Domestic Activities of the Japan Productivity
Center, March 7, 1960, RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID
Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry# P516: Subject Files, 1955–1963, Box
1, Folder: Japan Productivity Center (JPC). NARA. Japan Productivity Center,
Japan Productivity Activities, 1959, RG 286 Agency for International Devel-
opment, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368,
Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 6, Folder: Japan Productivity Activities.
NARA.
16. Operations Coordinating Board, “Statement of the Existing United States
Policy in the International Labor Field,” October 20, 1955, White House Of-
fice, National Security Council Staff: Papers, 1948–1961, OCB Central Files
Series, Box 14, Folder: OCB 004.06 [Overseas Labor Activity] (File #1) (5)
[August 1955–June 1956]. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library,
Abilene, KS (hereafter Eisenhower Library). Japan Productivity Center,
Japan Productivity Activities, 1959, RG 286 Agency for International Devel-
opment, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P
368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 6, Folder: Japan Productivity Ac-
tivities. NARA. Nakayama Ichirō, An Introduction to Productivity (Tokyo:
Asian Productivity Organization, 1963), 37.
17. Nakayama, An Introduction to Productivity, 39. On the personnel and actions
of the first American management team, see Tokyo Telegram no. 339, Subject:
“Press Announcement and Seminars,” June 20, 1955. RG 469 Records of the
U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1948–1961, Office of Far Eastern Operations,
Japan Subject Files, 1950–1959, Box 28, Folder: Japan Productivity. NARA;
and Partner, Assembled in Japan, 125. Charles Hatton to Grant Whitman,
Subject: “Report on the J.P.C.’s Top Management Seminar at the Fujiya Hotel,
Mianosita, July 6–8, 1955,” July 11, 1955, RG 286 Agency for International
Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry
#P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 9, Folder: Report * Landes Pro-
ductivity. NARA. JPC quoted in Tsutsui, Manufacturing Ideology, 139–140.
18. Stephen P. Waring, Taylorism Transformed: Scientific Management Theory since
1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 1991), 90–94.
19. “U.S. Expert Gives Advice—Seminar on Human Relations,” in Productivity:
The Bulletin of Japan Productivity Center, December 1, 1959, RG 286 Agency
Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 6, Folder: Japa-
nese Govt—Kishi Visit—Jan 1960. NARA.
20. Team Report, Small Business Management Consultants Seminars, 1961, RG
286 Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Of-
fice of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box
9, Folder: PPA / S 88-29-006—Japan Productivity Center (JPC) FY 1961. NARA.
21. Emphasis in the original. James V. Martin Jr., American Consul Fukuoka to
the Department of State, Washington, Subject: “Japan Productivity Center’s
First Study Team to U.S. Returns and Reports,” September 28, 1955, RG 469
Records of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1948–1961, Office of Far
Eastern Operations, Japan Subject Files, 1950–1959, Box 28, Folder: Japan Pro-
ductivity. NARA.
22. James V. Martin Jr., American Consul Fukuoka to the Department of State,
Washington, Subject: “Japan Productivity Center’s First Study Team to U.S. Re-
turns and Reports,” September 28, 1955.
23. W. S. Landes, “Survey of Japanese Industrial Productivity,” January 1, 1956,
RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East,
Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box
6, Folder: Landes Report. NARA.
24. Landes, “Survey of Japanese Industrial Productivity.”
25. Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 5. Japan Productivity Center, Japan Produc-
tivity Activities, 1959, RG 286 Agency for International Development,
Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 6, Folder: Japan Productivity Activities. NARA.
26. Tokyo to International Cooperation Administration, Washington, Subject: Do-
mestic Activities of the Japan Productivity Center, March 7, 1960, RG 286 Agency
for International Development, USAID Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry

#P 516: Subject Files; 1955–1963, Box 1, Folder: Japan Productivity Center (JPC).
NARA. Japan Productivity Center, Japan Productivity Activities, 1959, RG 286
Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of In-
donesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 6, Folder:
Japan Productivity Activities. NARA. U.S. Operations Mission to Japan to Inter-
national Cooperation Administration, Washington, Subject: Reports of Returning
Teams, May 31, 1957, RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID /
Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project
Files, 1955–1964, Box 9, Folder: Report * Landes Productivity. NARA.
27. Tokyo to International Cooperation Administration, Washington, December 28,
1960, RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far
East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964,
Box 1, Folder: Miscellaneous Material—FY 1961 PPAs. NARA. Telegram 335
from Tokyo, Subject: “Excerpts from the Japan Productivity News No. 98, is-
sued on May 26, 1958,” September 11, 1958, RG 469 Records of the U.S. For-
eign Assistance Agencies, 1948–1961, Office of Far Eastern Operations, Japan
Subject Files, 1950–1959, Box 58, Folder: Japan-Productivity 1958. NARA.
Japan Productivity Center, Japan Productivity Activities, 1959, RG 286 Agency
Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 6, Folder: Japan
Productivity Activities. NARA.
28. Tokyo to Washington, Telegram 808, Subject: Evaluation of Contractor Perfor-
mance (U-307)—ICA-W / Waseda / University of Michigan Contract, December 20,
Box 1, Folder: PPA / S 88-27-009 Waseda U-U Michigan. NARA. Stanley S. Miller
to Dr. Charles Jones, October 12, 1961, RG 286 Agency for International
#P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 1, Folder: Japanese Labor Ex-
change Program. NARA.
29. Japan Productivity Center, Seventh Top Management Team, Growth of Japanese
Economy and Productivity, December 1, 1961, RG 286 Agency for Interna-
tional Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs,
Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 14, Folder: Japan FY 1962
January–June phase-out Folder 5. NARA.
30. John M. Allison to Shigemitsu Mamoru, April 7, 1955, RG 286 Agency for
International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia
Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 2, Folder: Agree-
ments: Original Notes etc., Meyer Report etc. NARA.
31. Richard L. G. Deverall, “Trade Unionism: The Dangers of Totalitarian, Undemo-
cratic Control,” Jay Lovestone Papers, Office Files, 1944–1966, Box 245, Folder:
1944–1948, Japan 1948. Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California.
See also Christopher Gerteis, “Labor’s Cold Warriors: The American Fed-
eration of Labor and ‘Free Trade Unionism’ in Postwar Japan,” Journal of
American-East Asian Relations 12, no. 3 / 4 (2003): 214.
32. Operations Coordinating Board, “Statement of the Existing United States Policy
in the International Labor Field,” October 20, 1955, White House Office,
National Security Council Staff: Papers, 1948–1961, OCB Central Files Series,
Box 14, Folder: OCB 004.06 [Overseas Labor Activity] (File #1) (5) [August
1955–June 1956]. Eisenhower Library. Gordon, The Wages of Affluence, 8–9,
20, 86–88, 121.
33. Gordon, The Wages of Affluence, 49. Japan Productivity Center, Japan Pro-
ductivity Activities, 1959, RG 286 Agency for International Development,
USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368,
Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 6, Folder: Japan Productivity Activi-
ties. NARA.
34. John A. Stephens and Edgar J. Fransway, “Assignment in Japan,” 1961, RG 286
PPA / S 88-29-006 Japan Productivity Center (JPC) 1961. NARA.
35. Stephens and Fransway, “Assignment in Japan.”
36. On labor–management councils, see Gordon, The Wages of Affluence, 80, 143.
Management and Industrial Relations Specialists Study Team, Labor–Management
Cooperation in Japan, 1959 (Japan Productivity Center / International Coopera-
tion Administration, 1959), 1.
37. Gordon, The Wages of Affluence, 50. This took place alongside other labor ex-
change programs run by the State Department, U.S. Embassy, the Rockefeller
Foundation, and the AFL-CIO. These exchange programs continued into the
1960s, even after the United States stopped directly funding the JPC. James V.
Martin Jr., American Consul Fukuoka to the Department of State, Subject:
“Japan Productivity Center’s First Study Team to U.S. Returns and Reports,”
September 28, 1955, RG 469 Records of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies,
1948–1961, Office of Far Eastern Operations, Japan Subject Files, 1950–1959,
Box 28, Folder: Japan Productivity. NARA.
38. Tokyo to the International Cooperation Administration, Excerpts from the
Japan Productivity Newspaper No 101 issued on June 16, 1958, RG 469 Rec-
ords of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1948–1961, Office of Far
Eastern Operations, Japan Subject Files, 1950–1959, Box 58, Folder: Japan—
Productivity 1958. NARA.
39. U.S. Operations Mission to Japan to International Cooperation Administra-
tion, Washington, DC, Subject: Joint Declaration Regarding the Increased
Productivity Movement, September 28, 1955, RG 286 Agency for Interna-
Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 9, Folder: Report *
Landes Productivity. NARA. U.S. Information Service, Tokyo to U.S. Infor-
mation Agency, Washington, Subject: Pamphlet on Promotion of Productivity
Sponsored by Zenro and Financed Jointly by USIS and USOM, April 13,
1956, RG 469 Records of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1948–1961,
Office of Far Eastern Operations, Japan Subject Files, 1950–1959, Box 41,
Folder: Japan—Productivity 1956. NARA. On Sōhyō, see Tsutsui, Manufacturing
Ideology, 142.
40. Management and Industrial Relations Specialists Study Team, Labor–Management

Cooperation in Japan, 7–8. Gordon, The Wages of Affluence, 143.
41. Tsutsui, Manufacturing Ideology, 144. Andrew E. Barshay, The Social Sciences
in Modern Japan: the Marxian and Modernist Traditions (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994), 66.
42. Japan also had its own development initiatives, such as reparations programs,
foreign loans and investments, and participation in the Colombo Plan and
United Nations Economic Commission of Asia and the Far East (ECAFE). While I
will touch on these in this chapter, my focus is on joint initiatives between the
United States and Japan, and Japanese initiatives that received American funding.
43. See Moore, “Japanese Development Consultancies and Postcolonial Power in
Southeast Asia.” As Moore notes, the historical literature on American devel-
opment and aid pays only limited attention to Japanese participation, nor does
it discuss Japan’s rise as the second largest foreign aid power in the 1970s and
1980s and its potency as an alternative model of industrial policy, labor rela-
tions, and economic growth.
44. Christian Herter Circular, March 23, 1960, RG 286 Agency for International
#P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 3, Folder: Development Assis-
tance Group. NARA. Quoted in Moore, “Japanese Development Consultan-
cies and Postcolonial Power in Southeast Asia,” 315.
45. On contemporary understandings of “modern values,” see Gilman, Mandarins
of the Future, 72–113, 145. Robert Ward quoted Gilman, Mandarins of the
Future, 145. Barshay, The Social Sciences in Modern Japan, 67.
46. John F. Kennedy, Special Message to Congress on Foreign Aid, March 22, 1961,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8545.
47. Department of State, Guidelines of U.S. Policy and Operations toward Japan,
October 1961, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume
XXII, Northeast Asia, ed. Edward C. Keefer, David W. Mabon, and Harriet
Dashell Schwar (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1996), 728–738.
For Japanese efforts in places such as India and Pakistan, see Shinji Takagi,
From Recipient to Donor: Japan’s Official Aid Flows, 1945 to 1990 and Be-
yond (Princeton, NJ: International Finance Section, Department of Economics,
Princeton University, 1995), 13. Robert H. Johnson, Memorandum for
Mr. Rostow, Subject: Prime Minister Ikeda’s Visit, June 19, 1961, Papers of
President Kennedy, National Security Files, Countries, Box 125, Folder: Japan,
Subjects, Ikeda Visit 6 / 61, Background Materials. John F. Kennedy Presiden-
tial Library, Boston, MA (hereafter Kennedy Library). The Japanese were well
aware of their symbolic importance in international development efforts. See,
for example, Memorandum of Conversation, April 11, 1961 in Foreign Service
Despatch 1156 from the U.S. Embassy Tokyo to the Department of State, RG
286 Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East,
Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964,
Box 3, Folder: Development Assistance Group. NARA.
48. Robert Karr McCabe, “Mr. Reischauer and the Broken Dialogue,” The Re-
porter, December 7, 1961. Edwin Oldfather Reischauer Papers [HUG(FP)
73.50], Papers Related to Ambassadorial Years, 1961–1966, Box 2, Folder: Am-

bassadorial Years, 1963 [3 of 3]. Harvard University Archives, Cambridge,
MA (hereafter HUA). Notes on talk at Keio University, “Fukuzawa Yukichi,”
January 10, 1964, Edwin Oldfather Reischauer Papers [HUG(FP) 73.50], Pa-
pers Related to Ambassadorial Years, 1961–1966, Box 4, Folder: Ambassa-
dorial Years, 1964 [−B]. HUA. Edwin O. Reischauer, “Toward a Definition of
Modernization,” [Article for Jiyu Magazine, January 1965 issue]. Edwin Old-
father Reischauer Papers [HUG(FP) 73.50], Papers Related to Ambassadorial
Years, 1961–1966, Box 3, Folder: Ambassadorial Years, 1965. HUA. Barshay,
The Social Sciences in Modern Japan, 67–68. Reischauer attended the 1960
Hakone conference on Japan’s modernization before becoming ambassador;
see John Whitney Hall, “Changing Conceptions of the Modernization of
Japan,” in Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization, ed. Marius B.
Jansen (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 7–41. See also Edwin O.
Reischauer to Marius Jansen, August 22, 1962, and Marius Jansen to Edwin O.
Reischauer, September 13, 1962, Edwin Oldfather Reischauer Papers [HUG(FP)
73.50], Correspondence during Tenure as Ambassador, 1961–1966, Box 2,
Folder: J. HUA.
49. JJM, Purpose of the Tokyo International Training Center, April 5, 1958, RG
286 Agency for International Development, USAID Mission to Japan / Training
Office, Entry #P 516, Subject Files, 1955–1963, Box 8, Folder: Miscellaneous
Conferences, Seminars, Workshops, Meetings. NARA. Master Program Book
Submission, Japan, Operational Proposal FY 1959, Budget Proposal FY 60, RG
286 Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Of-
fice of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box
8, Folder: Master Program Book Submission—Japan. NARA. Language difficul-
ties were a major concern for JPC exchange programs in the United States; one
of the headaches for USOM and later the USAID offices in Japan and Wash-
ington, DC, was maintaining and paying a steady pool of interpreters.
50. On the number and geographical origins of trainees, see Far East Region
(Japan), Program Support 488, September 10, 1963, RG 286 Agency for Interna-
Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 2, Folder: #Rpts. NARA.
United States Operations Mission to Japan, International Cooperation Admin-
istration, Summary of Operations 1955–1960, December 1960, RG 286
Briefing Book United States / Japan Productivity Program Background Material
and Current Problems. NARA.
51. Technical Cooperation Section, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of
Japan, and the International Cooperation Administration, Liaison Branch /
Tokyo, Government of the United States, Opportunities for Training in Japan,
April 1962–March 1963, RG 286 Agency for International Development,
Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 18, Folder: Technical Assistance Training Pro-
gram. NARA. For example, a common site of training in the Philippines was an
agricultural course at Los Banos University, which was run through a contract
with Cornell University. Walter P. Coppinger, Summary and Report on Visit to
Philippines, Okinawa, and Taiwan, March 25–April 5, 1957, RG 286 Agency
for International Development, USAID Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry
#P 516, Subject Files, 1955–1963, Box 1, Folder: General Correspondence.
NARA.
52. William J. Parker, Report on Official Visit to Hiroshima, Osaka and Sendai,
1963, RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID Mission to
Japan / Training Office, Entry #P 516, Subject Files, 1955–1963, Box 1, Folder:
Field Trip Reports. NARA.
53. Far East Region (Japan), Program Support 488, September 10, 1963, RG 286
#Rpts. NARA.
54. Far East Region (Japan), Project No. 498-Y-99-AA, “Regional Technical
Assistance Training,” March 30, 1962, RG 286 Agency for International De-
velopment, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P
368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 13, Folder: FY ’63 Congressional
Presentation. NARA. William J. Parker, Report on Official Visit to Hiro-
shima, Osaka and Sendai, 1963, RG 286 Agency for International Develop-
ment, USAID Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry #P 516, Subject Files,
1955–1963, Box 1, Folder: Field Trip Reports. NARA.
55. Moore, Constructing East Asia, 227. On Japanese imperial development in
Manchuria, see Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Cul-
ture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998),
183–306. Throughout the 1950s, Japan signed reparations agreements with
Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia and South Vietnam; Japan would also pro-
vide unofficial reparations to other Asian states, including Thailand, Laos,
Cambodia and Malaysia. These reparations took the form of infrastructure
projects, technical assistance, and grants and they became a prominent form
of Japanese overseas development efforts. These various agreements included
both grants and private loans; payments totaled 1 billion dollars. Takagi,
From Recipient to Donor: Japan’s Official Aid Flows, 1945 to 1990 and
Beyond, 12. Information Office, Consulate General of Japan, New York, Japan
Report, vol. 5, no. 22, November 20, 1959, RG 286 Agency for Interna-
Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 9, Folder: Regional
Development—Colombo Plan. NARA.
56. The seminal work on the continuities between wartime bureaucrats and the
postwar Japanese state is Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle:
The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 1982). On Kubota, see Moore, “Japan’s Development Consultancies
and Postcolonial Power in Southeast Asia,” 298; and Moore, Constructing East
Asia, 235. On Tōbata, see Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination, 33. On
the Asian Development Bank, see Moore, “Japanese Development Consultan-
cies and Postcolonial power in Southeast Asia,” 311; and Shimizu, Creating
People of Plenty, 195–196.
57. Suehiro Akira, “The Road to Economic Re-Entry: Japan’s Policy towards South-
east Asian Development in the 1950s and 1960s,” Social Science Japan Journal
2, no. 1 (April 1999): 92, 97. U.S. Embassy, Tokyo (Lew B. Clark) to the De-
partment of State, Washington, Subject: Japan’s Ability to Participate in Devel-
opment of South and Southeast Asia, March 29, 1955, RG 469 Records of the
U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1948–1961, Office of Far Eastern Operations,
Japan Subject Files, 1950–1959, Box 26, Folder: Japan—Industry. NARA. See
also Shimizu, Creating People of Plenty, 198–199.
58. Suehiro, “The Road to Economic Re-Entry,” 92. Asia Kyokai, “Asia Kyokai
(The Society for Economic Cooperation in Asia),” 1957. Ford Foundation Ar-
chives, Overseas Development, International Training and Research, Office Files
of John Howard, ACC 2012 / 051, Box 16, Folder: Japan—General Corre-
spondence 1957. Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY (hereafter
RAC). Information Office, Consulate General of Japan, New York, Japan Re-
port, vol. 5, no. 22, November 20, 1959, RG 286 Agency for International De-
velopment, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P
368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 9, Folder: Regional Development—
Colombo Plan. NARA. Japan joined the Colombo Plan as a donor country in
1954 as part of its larger goal of increasing political, diplomatic, and economic
relationships with Southeast Asia. Founded in November 1950, the Colombo
Plan promoted cooperation by Commonwealth nations such as the United
Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and others to fund develop-
ment programming and assistance in Southeast Asia.
59. Asia Kyokai News, vol. 3, no. 3, December 1959, 16, RG 286 Agency for In-
ternational Development, USAID Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry #P
516, Subject Files, 1955–1963, Box 1, Folder: Asia Kyokai. NARA. Along with
advocating for the expansion of Japanese trade and training in Southeast Asia,
Asia Kyokai also produced a bevy of reports on Japan’s own industrial devel-
opment in Japanese and English. See, for example, Asia Kyokai, The Smaller
Industry in Japan (Tokyo, 1957).
60. T. Sichanh, “Trainee’s Forum: ‘Arigato’ Again,” Asia Kyokai News, vol. 3, no. 4,
March 1960, 10–11, RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID
Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry #P 516, Subject Files, 1955–1963, Box
1, Folder: Asia Kyokai. NARA. William J. Parker, Report on Official Visit to
Hiroshima, Osaka and Sendai, 1963, RG 286 Agency for International Devel-
opment, USAID Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry #P 516, Subject Files,
1955–1963, Box 1, Folder: Field Trip Reports. NARA.
61. Asia Kyokai, “Hope for Tomorrow,” 1957, RG 286 Agency for International
Development, USAID Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry #P 516, Sub-
ject Files, 1955–1963, Box 1, Folder: General Correspondence I. NARA.
62. Asia Kyokai, “Hope for Tomorrow.”
63. “Duties and Responsibilities of the Asia Kyokai,” RG 286 Agency for Interna-
tional Development, USAID Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry #P 516,
Subject Files, 1955–1963, Box 1, Folder: Asia Kyokai. NARA. Asia Kyokai,
Contents of the 8th Orientation Case for the ICA Participants from the Re-
public of China, August 18, 1958, RG 286 Agency for International Development,
USAID Mission to Japan / Training Office, Entry #P 516, Subject Files, 1955–1963,
Box 1, Folder: Asia Kyokai. NARA. Katsuhiko Miyaji, Chief Operations Division,
Asia Kyokai to International Cooperation Administration, August 18, 1958, RG
286 Agency for International Development, USAID Mission to Japan /Training Of-
fice, Entry #P 516, Subject Files, 1955–1963, Box 1, Folder: Asia Kyokai. NARA.
64. Tokyo to International Cooperation Agency, Washington, Subject: Asian Pro-
ductivity Agency, June 2, 1958, RG 286 Agency for International Development,
Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 17, Folder: An Asian Productivity Organization—
Pros and Cons. NARA. “Technical Exchange Seen on the Upswing: Asian Na-
tions Pushing Plans in Wake of Recent Meeting,” in Productivity: The Bulletin
of the Japan Productivity Center, No. 7, December 1959, RG 286 Agency for
International Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia
Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 6, Folder: Japa-
nese Govt—Kishi Visit—Jan 1960. NARA.
65. Gōshi quoted in Toshihiro Higuchi, “How U.S. Aid in the 1950s Prepared Japan
as a Future Donor,” in The Rise of the Asian Donors: Japan’s Impact on the
Evolution of Emerging Donors, ed. Jin Sato and Yasutami Shimomura (New
York: Routledge, 2013), 45. On American thinking, see “An Asian Productivity
Agency—Pros and Cons,” RG 286 Agency for International Development,
Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 17, Folder: An Asian Productivity Organization—
Pros and Cons. NARA.
66. Asian Productivity Organization, Asian Productivity: Monthly Bulletin, No. XV,
November 1962, RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID / Bu-
reau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files,
1955–1964, Box 14, Folder: Japan FY 1962 January June Phase Out. NARA.
67. Tokyo to International Cooperation Administration, Washington, Subject: Ex-
cerpts from the Japan Productivity News Newspaper No. 129 dated January 1,
1959, January 30, 1959, RG 469 Records of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Agen-
cies, 1948–1961, Office of Far Eastern Operations, Japan Subject Files, 1950–
1959, Box 58, Folder: Japan—Productivity 1959. NARA.
68. “Asian Productivity Body Inaugurated in Tokyo,” Japan Times, in Tokyo to In-
ternational Cooperation Administration, Washington, Subject: Asian Produc-
tivity Organization, May 25, 1961, RG 286 Agency for International Develop-
ment, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368,
Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 2, Folder: Agreements. NARA. Tokyo to
USAID Washington et al., Subject: Japan Productivity Center, September 25,
Box 2, Folder: Productivity General. NARA. “An Asian Productivity Agency—
Pros and Cons,” RG 286 Agency for International Development, USAID / Bureau
for Far East, Office of Indonesia Affairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files,
1955–1964, Box 17, Folder: An Asian Productivity Organization—Pros and

Cons. NARA.
69. Tokyo to International Cooperation Administration, Washington, Subject:
Asian Productivity Conference, November 23, 1958, RG 286 Agency for In-
ternational Development, USAID / Bureau for Far East, Office of Indonesia Af-
fairs, Entry #P 368, Closed Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 17, Folder: An Asian
Productivity Organization—Pros and Cons. NARA. On funding amounts, see
Draft Background Paper for Colombo Plan Conference on Asian Productivity
Organization, 1963, RG 286 Agency for International Development,
Project Files, 1955–1964, Box 2, Folder: #Rpts. NARA.
70. On these conferences, see J. Victor Koschmann, “Modernization and Demo-
cratic Values: The ‘Japanese Model’ in the 1960s,” in Staging Growth: Mod-
ernization, Development and the Global Cold War, ed. David C. Engerman
et al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 225–250; and
Sebastian Conrad, “ ‘The Colonial Ties Are Liquidated’: Modernization
Theory, Postwar Japan, and the Global Cold War,” Past and Present 216, no. 1
(2012): 181–214. Ford Foundation, International Affairs, “Development of As-
sociations Abroad in Japan and in Australia,” December 1962, Ford Founda-
tion Archives, International Division, Program Area 1, Series III, Herbert Passin
Subject Files (1960–1966), Box 5, Folder: Japan Program—Basic Dockets,
Memos 1963–1966. RAC.
71. Ford Foundation, International Affairs, “Paper on Japan,” September 1962,
Ford Foundation Archives, International Division, Program Area 1, Series III,
Herbert Passin Subject Files (1960–1966), Box 5, Folder: Japan Program—Basic
Dockets, Memos 1963–1966. RAC. Ford Foundation, International Affairs,
“Development of Associations Abroad in Japan and in Australia,” December
1962, Ford Foundation Archives, International Division, Program Area 1,
Series III, Herbert Passin Subject Files (1960–1966), Box 5, Folder: Japan
Program—Basic Dockets, Memos 1963–1966. RAC.
72. Herbert Passin to Shepard Stone, Subject: An Approach to Foundation Action
in Connection with Japanese Overseas Technical and Economic Aid, May 9,
1961, revised September 1961, Ford Foundation Archives, ID / Asia and the
Pacific, Program Area One Files, Box 4, Folder: Background Material—Japan,
1961–1967. RAC.
73. To Henry T. Heald from F. F. Hill, Request for Grant out of Appropriations,
Grantee: Keizai Doyukai, March 8, 1963, Ford Foundation Archives, Interna-
tional Division, Program Area 1, Series III, Herbert Passin Subject Files
(1960–1966), Box 5, Folder: Japan Program—Basic Dockets, Memos 1963–1966.
RAC. To Henry T. Heald from F. F. Hill, Request for Grant out of Appropria-
tions, Grantee: Kyoto University, January 17, 1963, Ford Foundation Archives,
International Division, Program Area 1, Series III, Herbert Passin Subject Files
(1960–1966), Box 5, Folder: Japan Program—Basic Dockets, Memos 1963–
1966. RAC.
74. Japan Productivity Center, “International Training Program for Small Industry
Management,” September 20, 1961, Ford Foundation Archives, Ford Foundation
Grants A–B, Reel 0685, Asian Productivity Organization (06400115). RAC.

Asian Productivity Organization, “Small Scale Business Management
Training—Training of Trainers and Advisors,” December 25, 1962, Ford Foun-
dation Archives, Ford Foundation Grants A–B, Reel 0685, Asian Productivity
Organization (06400115). RAC.
75. David Heaps to Shepard Stone, Subject: Meeting with Representatives of Asian
Productivity Organization, February 26, 1962, Ford Foundation Archives,
Ford Foundation Grants A–B, Reel 0685, Asian Productivity Organization
(06400115). RAC. On Oshikawa, see Young, Japan’s Total Empire, 298. Mo-
gens Host to Shepard Stone, Subject: Asian Productivity Organization, Tokyo,
May 31, 1962, Ford Foundation Archives, Ford Foundation Grants A–B, Reel
0685, Asian Productivity Organization (06400115). RAC.
76. Ford Foundation, International Affairs, “Asian Productivity Organization—
Experimental Training Program in Small Business Management,” December 1963,
Ford Foundation Archives, Ford Foundation Grants A–B, Reel 0685, Asian
Productivity Organization (06400115). RAC.
77. Ford Foundation, International Affairs, “Asian Productivity Organization—
Experimental Training Program in Small Business Management,” De-
cember 1963. Oshikawa Ichirō, “Clarifications on the Enquiries in Mr. Slater’s
letter dated 4th June,” July 1963, Ford Foundation Archives, Ford Founda-
tion Grants A–B, Reel 0685, Asian Productivity Organization (06400115).
RAC.
78. On the Japanese foreign aid budget, see Robert M. Orr, The Emergence of
Japan’s Foreign Aid Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 1.
Conclusion
1. Remarks by President Obama to U.S. and Japanese Forces, Iwakuni, Japan,
May 27, 2016, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/27
/remarks-president-obama-us-and-japanese-forces.
2. On the adoption of language of shared values in the 1990s, see Kōji Murata,
“The 1990s: From a Drifting Relationship to a Redefinition of the Alliance,”
in The History of U.S.–Japan Relations: From Perry to the Present, ed. Ma-
koto Iokibe, trans. Tosh Minohara (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 227.
The Congressional Study Group on Japan, Common Interests, Shared Values:
Perspectives on the U.S.–Japan Relationship, 2014, http://usafmc.org/wp
-content/uploads/CSGJ_EssayPublication_Oct2014.pdf. Statement by the Press
Secretary on the Visit to Hawaii of Prime Minister Abe of Japan, December 5,
2016, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/05/statement-press
-secretary-visit-hawaii-prime-minister-abe-japan.
3. Historians like John W. Dower forcefully pushed back on Bush’s attempt to
draw a direct line between the occupation of Japan and the transformation of
Iraq. See John W. Dower, “Lessons from Japan about War’s Aftermath,” New
York Times, October 27, 2002. Bush quoted in Susan Carruthers, The Good
Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2016), 2.
4. George W. Bush, “Remarks Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Re-

publican National Convention in New York City,” September 2, 2004,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=72727.
5. George W. Bush, “Commencement Address at the United States Air Force
Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado,” June 2, 2004, http://www.presidency
.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=72640. George W. Bush, “Remarks on the Situation in the
Middle East,” April 4, 2002, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=84799.
6. Lawrence Repeta, “Japan’s Proposed National Security Legislation—Will This
Be the End of Article 9?” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 13, issue 25,
no. 1 (June 22, 2015), http://apjjf.org/Lawrence-Repeta/4335.html. Abe quoted
in John Junkerman, “The Global Article 9 Conference: Toward the Abolition
of War,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 6, issue 5 (May 3, 2008), http://
apjjf.org/-John-Junkerman/2760/article.html. Akiko Hashimoto, “Nation-
alism, Pacifism, and Reconciliation: Three Paths Forward for Japan’s ‘History
Problem,’” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 14, issue 20, no. 4 (October 15,
2016), http://apjjf.org/2016/20/Hashimoto.html. Ichirō Ozawa, Blueprint for
a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation, trans. Louisa Rubinfien (Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 1993), 93–95, 106–107.
7. Tomomi Yamaguchi, “The ‘Japan Is Great!’ Boom, Historical Revisionism, and
the Government,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 15, issue 6, no. 3
(March 5, 2017), https://apjjf.org/2017/06/Yamaguchi.html. Akiko Takenaka,
“Japanese Memories of the Asia-Pacific War: Analyzing the Revisionist Turn Post
1995,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 14, issue 20, no. 4 (October 15,
2016), http://apjjf.org/2016/20/Takenaka.html. Hashimoto, “Nationalism,
Pacifism, and Reconciliation.”
8. Quoted in Gavan McCormack, “Japan: Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s Agenda,”
The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 14, issue 24, no. 1 (December 15, 2016),
http://apjjf.org/2016/24/McCormack.html. Herbert P. Bix, “Abe Shinzō and the
U.S.–Japanese Relationship in a Global Context,” The Asia-Pacific Journal:
Japan Focus 12, issue 17, no. 1 (April 27, 2014), http://apjjf.org/2014/12/17
/Herbert-P.-Bix/4110/article.html.
9. Thomas R. H. Havens, Fire across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan, 1965–
1975 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 25. Simon Andrew
Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and the Mythology of the
Shimin in Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 107.
10. Speaking in the 1980s, antiwar activist Oda Makoto argued, “Because of the
security treaty, Japan had to cooperate with the American policy of aggression.
In this sense, Japan was a victim of its alliance with that policy, but it was also
an aggressor toward the small countries in Indochina.” See Havens, Fire across
the Sea, 27, 62. In an example of this local activism, Japanese activists in the
1960s waged a long battle seeking to prevent the construction of Narita air-
port, scenes that recalled the fight at Sunagawa. See Avenell, Making Japanese
Citizens, 149. On other Japanese citizens’ movements, see Simon Andrew
Avenell, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement (Hono-
lulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017); and Robin Leblanc, Bicycle Citizens: The
Political World of the Japanese Housewife (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999). Masamichi S. Inoue, Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity
Making in the Age of Globalization (New York: Columbia University Press,
2007), 5.
11. “An Appeal from the Article 9 Association,” June 10, 2004, http://www.9-jo.jp
/en/appeal_en.html.
12. Quoted in Junkerman, “The Global Article 9 Conference.”
13. Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, “Senior Interdepartmental Group on
International Economic Policy,” Minutes of the December 5, 1984 Meeting,
December 11, 1984. Digital National Security Archive, Japan and the United
States: Diplomatic, Security and Economic Relations, Part III, 1961–2000.
14. There is a large literature from the 1980s that sought to explain the reasons
behind Japan’s success and its meaning for America’s future. See, for example,
Frank Gibney, Miracle by Design: The Real Reasons Behind Japan’s Economic
Success (New York: Times Books, 1982); Clyde V. Prestowitz, Trading Places:
How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It (New York:
Basic Books, 1989); Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); and Marvin J. Wolf, The
Japanese Conspiracy: The Plot to Dominate Industry Worldwide—and How
to Deal with It (New York: Empire Books, 1983). For a historical treatment of
this period, see Andrew C. McKevitt, Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and
the Globalizing of 1980s America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2017). Hearings before the Subcommittee on Trade of the Ways and
Means Committee, House of Representatives, 98th Congress, 1st Session,
March 10 and April 26, 17, 1983 [Serial 98-13], 53. Office of the Secretary of
the Treasury, “Senior Interdepartmental Group on International Economic
Policy,” Minutes of the December 5, 1984 Meeting, December 11, 1984. Dig-
ital National Security Archive, Japan and the United States: Diplomatic, Secu-
rity and Economic Relations, Part III, 1961–2000. Wolf, The Japanese Con-
spiracy, 15. Donald J. Trump, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 2017,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=120000. On Trump’s discussions of
Japan in the 1980s and during his presidency, see Jennifer M. Miller, “Let’s Not
Be Laughed at Anymore: Donald Trump and Japan from the 1980s to the
Present,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 25 (2018): 138–168.
15. Shintarō Ishihara, The Japan That Can Say No, trans. Frank Baldwin (New
York: Simon and Shuster, 1992). Theodore H. White, “The Danger from Japan,”
New York Times Magazine, July 28, 1985, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07
/28/magazine/the-danger-from-japan.html?pagewanted=all. See also McKevitt,
Consuming Japan, 47–79.
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Like all books, this project has been a long process. It is built on interests and ques-
tions that I first developed as a history major at Wesleyan University and nurtured
through graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, language training
and research in Japan, and the start of my professional career in the history depart-
ment at Dartmouth College. These incredible institutions, filled with generous and
brilliant colleagues, mentors, and friends, have supported me beyond what I
thought possible. I am happy to have the opportunity to thank them all.
I feel lucky to have attended graduate school at University of Wisconsin–
Madison, a school with a vibrant and robust historical community that epitomizes
the incalculable value of public institutions of higher education. I was fortunate to
study with Jeremi Suri, who first suggested that I examine the relationship between
the United States and Japan. Jeremi’s advice and unflagging support over the past
fifteen years helped make this project possible; his own scholarship has served as a
vital model of lively prose and rigorous history that crosses borders. I would also
like to thank Louise Young, who helped me to understand Japanese history, and
who provided an inspiring model as a thinker, writer, scholar, and person. Bill
Reese was a voice of constant support and encouragement, one that I especially
appreciated in tougher moments. Finally, John Hall and Andy Rotter provided
thoughtful and helpful comments on an early version of the manuscript and have
continued to support this project since. The best part of graduate school was
meeting amazing scholars who have become dear friends, who kept me sane through
coursework, language work, research, and writing. When I reflect on my time at
UW–Madison, it is these friendships that made graduate school so special. Special
thanks to Vanessa Walker (who convinced me to attend UW–Madison), Christine
Lamberson, Muggy Lee, and Heather Stur.
348 Acknowledgments
I have been equally fortunate to find a professional home in the Dartmouth Col-
lege History Department, a fantastic community of teachers and scholars. I would
especially like to thank my department chair, Robert Bonner, for his thoughtful
advice and constant support, and my colleague Edward Miller, who warmly wel-
comed me to Dartmouth when I was still a graduate student. I have also benefited
from the friendship, support, and advice of Rashauna Johnson, Paul Musselwhite,
George Trumbull, Bethany Moreton, and Cecilia Gaposchkin. The history depart-
ment administrator, Gail Patten, has always answered my numerous questions with
good cheer and generous offers of assistance. Dartmouth’s Dickey Center for Inter-
national Understanding runs an invaluable manuscript review program; the feed-
back, advice, and suggestions that I received at this review completely transformed
this book. Franziska Seraphim and Nick Cullather generously made the trip to
Hanover to offer perceptive and helpful comments on the entire manuscript. From
within Dartmouth, Ed Miller, Steven Ericson, Leslie Butler, Jennifer Lind, and
William Wohlforth participated in the review, offering productive and thoughtful
advice. Thank you as well to Christianne Hardy for coordinating this review and
offering me this opportunity. The history postdocs at the Dickey Center, including
Victor McFarland, Daniel Bessner, Simon Toner, Sean Fear, Stephen Macekura,
Stephanie Freeman, Kate Geoghegan, and Zach Fredman, have been a vital source
of intellectual inspiration and friendship. I received research assistance from Dart-
mouth students Will Baird and Hannah Solomon. Finally, my deepest thanks to
former associate dean of social sciences Nancy Marion, who helped make my
career at Dartmouth possible.
The two years that I spent in Japan for language study and research work were
especially key to the development of this project. I would like to thank Okamoto
Koichi for hosting me at Waseda University. Nakajima Shingo and Tanaka Taka-
hito took the time to engage in helpful discussions about my work. The staff at the
Japan–United States Educational Commission, especially David Satterwhite and Ito
Miyuku, made the transition to life in Tokyo an easy one. The teachers and staff at
the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama helped me
considerably in developing my Japanese language skills. Finally, the scholarly
communities in Yokohama and Tokyo made this time in Japan both fun and pro-
ductive. I would like to extend thanks to Erika Alpert, Craig Colbeck, Yulia
Frumer, Anne Giblin, Kathryn Goldfarb, Yumi Kim, Annie Manion, Ryan Moran,
Pat Noonan, Yuki Uchida, Benjamin Uchiyama, and Vanessa Young.
Beyond these intellectual communities, I have received support from many
scholars. Thank you to Renee Romano, who advised my senior thesis on the Ko-
rean War at Wesleyan University, which sparked a decade and a half of scholarly
interest in the Cold War. Thank you also to Dayna Barnes, Susan Carruthers, Ste-
phen Craft, Cynthia Enloe, Peter Feaver, Andrew Gordon, Nick Kapur, Sarah
Kovner, Brian Linn, Fred Logevall, Erez Manela, Masuda Hiroshi, Tosh Minohara,
Ken Osgood, Paul Rubinson, Kelly Shannon, Naoko Shibusawa, and Brad
Simpson for helpful questions, conversations, and feedback at various talks, work-
shops, and conferences. Nakajima Shingo kindly hosted me for a three-talk series
in Tokyo and generously sent me an invaluable series of oral histories. I am espe-
cially grateful to Hiroshi Kitamura, who provided perceptive comments on earlier
Acknowledgments 349
drafts. I also want to extend my appreciation to my editor at Harvard University

Press, Andrew Kinney, whose careful suggestions and help made completing this
project a pleasure, as well as to Stephanie Vyce and Olivia Woods for their tech-
nical assistance. Daniela Blei offered excellent editing suggestions. Westchester
Publishing Services’ Melody Negron answered my numerous copyediting queries
with skill, precision, and good cheer. Finally, many thanks to the manuscript’s
anonymous readers, whose insights and critiques significantly improved the final
book.
Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to receive funding from a variety
of sources that enabled me to develop the language skills and conduct the research
necessary to complete this book. I would like to extend my thanks to the Dartmouth
College Walter and Constance Burke Award, the Dartmouth College Dickey Center
for International Understanding, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Re-
lations, the Japan–United States Educational Commission / Fulbright-IIE, the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin–Madison History Department, the Center for East Asian
Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of Wisconsin–
Madison Graduate School, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute for National and
International Affairs, and the Eisenhower Foundation at the Eisenhower Presiden-
tial Library.
Chapters 1 and 2 are informed by arguments first developed in “Narrating Democ-
racy: The Potsdam Declaration and Japanese Rearmament, 1945–1950,” in The Power
of the Past: History and Statecraft, edited by Jeremi Suri and Hal Brands (Washington,
DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015). Portions of Chapter 4 were originally pub-
lished in “Fractured Alliance: Anti-Base Protests and Postwar U.S.–Japanese Rela-
tions,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 5 (November 2014): 953–986, and are reprinted by
permission of Oxford University Press.
I want to offer special thanks to the many individuals whose support I have cher-
ished during my years as student and scholar. I am grateful to Loren Gianini,
Amanda Chiu, Gabe Dusenbury, and Alexis Dunkle, whose friendship has been part
of my life for over two decades. I am also thankful to the many lovely and sup-
portive friends I have met during my eight years in Hanover, NH, who are now
scattered near and far. Thank you to Maile Arvin, Catherine Berry, Taryn Dinkelman,
Vanessa Freije, Tristan Kay, Chelsey Kivland, Lee Hollister, Lucas Hollister, Meredith
Kelly, Gabi Kruks-Wisner, Michael McGillen, Petra McGillen, Michael Poage, and
Sandip Sukhtankar. I had two children while working on this book. It is not an
exaggeration to say that this project would have been impossible to finish without
the support, care, expertise, and peace of mind offered by the teachers at the Dart-
mouth College Child Care Center. The deepest possible thanks to Miranda Arruda,
Gerry Bott, Jenn Boudro, Kristen Brown, Teresa Hahn, Lori Higgins, Terri Hollis,
Judy Labrie, Angelica Morrison, Kim Smith, Jennifer Sprague, and Moya Stevens.
Finally, it is the support of family that makes everything possible. I would like to
thank my parents and brother, Cathy Miller, Bob Miller, and Chris Miller, for their
never-ending love, even during the many conversations when I crankily refused to
discuss anything related to this book. Alongside this moral and emotional support,
my mom has traveled with me to conferences and on research trips, and for long
visits when my husband was traveling for his own research, making it possible to
350 Acknowledgments
build a career as a historian while also having a family. Chris, Jenn Young, Lucas
Miller, and Rose Miller hosted me for numerous (and lengthy) research visits to
Washington, DC, and provided much-appreciated company and joy after long days
at the National Archives.
Thank you to my two children, Elizabeth and Daniel, for bringing constant love
and laughter, for being good sleepers, and for never once caring or asking about
this book, thus reminding me that there are other important things in life. I could
not have completed this project without the support and love of my husband, Udi
Greenberg, a brilliant historian. I can’t imagine a better friend, partner, co-parent,
intellectual companion, and reader. He read this book with patience and attention
to detail more times than I can count, and always improved it with perceptive, in-
cisive, and helpful comments. The satisfaction of completing this book pales in com-
parison to the joy of building a life together. This book is for him.
INDEX
Photographs indicated by page numbers in italics
Abe Nobuyuki, 106, 278 grievances by, 156–157, 164, 321n16;

Abe Shinzō, 274, 277 Lucky Dragon nuclear contamination
Acheson, Dean, 59, 82, 137, 139, 141, 142, incident, 167; mixed-race children issue,
146 166–167; at Niigata and Yokota air force
Adorno, Theodor, 9 bases, 323n38; in Okinawa, 178;
Akutagawa Yasushi, 173 organization of, 162–163; sex work and,
Allison, John, 177–178, 234 166; at Uchinada, 162–163, 164, 320n13;
Allport, Gordon, 29 U.S. responses to, 157–158, 163–164,
Anpo (antitreaty) movement: about, 24, 177–178, 178–180. See also Sunagawa
192, 193–194, 225–226; cultural antibase protests
exchanges in response to, 222–223; antiwar movement, 279–280, 345n10
democracy implications, 193, 204–205, Arisawa Hiromi, 95, 235
215, 218, 227; Eisenhower visit and, Asanuma Inejiro, 181
213–214; opposition to Police Duties Bill Ashida Hitoshi, 12, 62, 91, 94
and, 200–201; organization of, 201; Asia: concerns about Japanese assistance,
participants and grievances, 191–192, 20, 259–260; opposition to peace treaty,
199–200, 201–203, 209–212; protests 116, 138, 139, 142–144, 153; U.S.
against passage of treaty, 205–206, concerns and assistance to, 83–84
207–209, 208; U-2 spy plane incident Asia Kyokai, 260–263, 341n59
and, 206–207; U.S. responses to, 193, Asian Development Bank, 259
194, 212–214, 218–222, 223–225, 227; Asian Productivity Organization (APO),
violence during protests, 214–215, 250, 263–266, 268–270
216–217. See also security treaty (1960) Atcheson, George, 27, 57
antibase movement: about, 23–24, 158, Australia, 138, 139, 141
188–190; democracy implications, Authoritarian Personality, The (book), 9
175–176; Girard shooting and, 181; autonomy, local, 35, 171, 189
352 Index
Baldrige, Malcolm, 281 Conant, James, 129–130

Ballantine, Joseph, 31 constitution, Japanese revision, 44–46,
Barnes, Earl, 197 85–86, 171, 277, 280
Barshay, Andrew, 249, 252 Coombs, Walter P., 238–239
Beheiren (Citizen’s Alliance for Peace in Coville, Cabot, 38
Vietnam), 279 cultural and educational exchanges,
Bell, Daniel, 11 127–129, 130–132, 222–223
Benedict, Ruth, 34
Bishop, Max, 58 Dahl, Robert, 12
Bix, Herbert P., 278 Del Re, Arundel, 128–129
Blakeslee, George, 31, 49 democracy: Anpo (antitreaty) movement
Bond, Niles, 151 and, 193, 204–205, 215, 218, 227;
Borton, Hugh, 31, 32, 35, 37 antibase movement and, 175–176; Cold
Bow, Frank, 183 War and, 1–2, 6–7, 15–16; conflation
Bradford, Saxton, 128 with anticommunism, 115; economic
Bradley, Omar, 82–83 growth and, 228; education and,
Bund (Zengakuren faction), 203, 209 129–130, 132; elite-driven, 11–12;
Burma, 138, 143, 149, 259, 340n55 garrison state concerns, 31, 34, 73,
Bush, George W., 275–276, 344n3 79–80; Japan as model, 18–20, 115, 118,
Buss, Claude, 130 120–121, 275, 276; Japanese democ-
Byas, Hugh, 31, 32, 34, 291n7 ratization, 25, 26–27, 28, 30, 35, 36–37,
Byrnes, James, 26, 69 39–40, 45–46, 69–70, 151–152; Japanese
divisions on, 5–6, 12–14, 16–18; militant
Chastity of Japan, The (book), 166, 321n19 democracy, 288n7, 294n32; productivity
children, mixed-raced (konketsuji), programming and, 229, 245; psycho-
166–167 logical component, 8–10, 11, 12,
China: Communist government, 117; 275–276; role in U.S.-Japan alliance, 7–8,
critique of peace treaty, 116, 143–144; 14–15; suppression of “antidemocratic”
exclusion from peace treaty, 114, 125, voices, 10–11; U.S. conceptions of, 2–3,
134, 136, 138, 139, 144–145; in Korean 219–220; U.S. democratization of Japan,
War, 107, 122; relations with Japan, 145, 3–5, 12; vigilance emphasis, 10, 294n32;
195; U.S. concerns, 83–84 vulnerability fears, 8
citizenship, 77, 210, 245 development aid. See technical assistance
Civil Information and Education (CIE), and development aid
47–48, 67 Dodge, Joseph M., 64, 121
Clark, Lew B., 260 Dooman, Eugene, 31
Clutton, George, 149 Dower, John W., 150, 344n3
Cochran, H. Merle, 142 Drucker, Peter, 237–238
Cold War, 1–2, 15–16, 51, 53–55. See also Dulles, John Foster: on antibase protests,
communism; democracy; Japan; 180; on Asian Development Bank, 259;
psychological spirit background, 119–120; cultural relations
Cold War University, 129 project, 127–128, 131, 137; death, 213;
Colombo Plan, 260, 338n42, 341n58 deterrence policy, 148; on Girard
communism: antitreaty protests blamed on, shooting, 183, 184; on Japan as model,
218–219; anxieties about, 8, 9; Japanese 19, 196, 251; Japanese rearmament and,
Communist Party, 44, 57–58, 64, 66–67, 89, 92, 278; on Mutual Security Program,
135–136, 166–167, 201; Japanese 109; Pacific Pact and, 140, 141; on
measures against, 13, 60–61, 65–69; reparations, 141, 142; San Francisco
psychological component, 28–29, 51, Peace Treaty and, 115, 119, 120–121,
53–55; U.S. fears and measures against, 3, 122–123, 126, 127, 137, 138–139, 143,
10–11, 51, 52–53, 55–56; U.S. fears of 144, 145, 146; security treaty (1960) and,
Japanese communism, 51–52, 56–57, 186, 187–188
58–60 Dyke, Kermit, 47–48
Index 353
economic growth: about, 24, 231, 271–272; Grew, Joseph, 37, 291n7
Anpo (antitreaty) concerns and, 211–212; Gromyko, Andrei, 206
as common political ground, 249–250;
democracy and, 228; ideological Hagerty, James, 214, 219
contradictions, 230–231; Japan as model, Hara Hyō, 93
21–22, 229–230, 250–252, 253–254, Haraldson, Wesley, 233
265, 338n47; postwar growth in Japan, Hashimoto Tetsuma, 106
195; rearmament concerns and, 95; Hatoyama Ichirō, 12, 13, 44, 92, 170, 195,
reforms during occupation, 48–50, 294n29
62–64; U.S. concerns, 281–282. See also Hattori Takushirō, 101, 305n51
productivity programming; technical Hayashi Keizō, 100, 105, 111
assistance and development aid Heaps, David, 268
education: anticommunist purge, 67–68; Heiwa mondai danwakai (Peace Problems
cultural and educational exchanges, Study Group), 133–134
127–129, 130–132, 222–223; democracy Heiwa suishin kokumin kaigi (People’s
and, 129–130, 132; historical revisionism, Conference for the Promotion of Peace),
278; for productivity, 242–243; reform 150
during occupation, 46–48, 295n36 Henderson, Loy W., 143
Eells, Walter C., 67–68 Herter, Christian, 213, 214, 227, 228
Eichelberger, Robert, 39, 86 Hidaka Rokurō, 207
Eisenhower, Dwight, 180, 183, 184, 187, Higgins, Gerald J., 110
193, 203–204, 206, 213–214, 219 Hoover, Herbert, 62
elections: during occupation, 42–44, 43; Host, Mogens, 269
rearmament issue, 95–96 House Un-American Activities Committee
emperor, Japanese, 37–38, 45, 46, 100 (HUAC), 29, 52, 65
European Productivity Agency (EPA), 233
European Recovery Plan (Marshall Plan), Ii Yashiro, 61
81, 232–233 Igarashi, Yoshikuni, 210
Evans, Melvin J., 238 Ikeda Hayato, 13, 64, 121–122, 230, 235,
249
families, Japanese, 33–34 Income Doubling Plan, 230, 235
Far Eastern Commission (FEC), 65–66, 108 India, 116, 138, 139, 142–143, 154, 231,
Fearey, Robert, 48–49 255, 264
Felt, Harry, 197 Indonesia, 84, 117, 138, 139, 142, 149,
feudalism, 32–33 231, 259, 340n55
Finn, Richard, 137 Inoue Kiyoshi, 136
Ford Foundation, 21, 222, 266–267, 267–270 Inter-Divisional Area Committee on the Far
Fransway, Edgar John, 246 East (IDAFE), 30–31, 291n13
Friedman, Andrea, 55 International Cooperation Administration
Fujitani, Takashi, 289n11 (ICA), 234–235, 242
Fujiyama Aiichirō, 199, 260 International House (Tokyo), 131–132
International Military Tribunal for the Far
Gao, Bai, 333n10 East (Tokyo Trial), 41
garrison state, 31, 34, 73, 79–80 Ishino Noburo, 174
Gates, Artemus, 36, 37 Ishizaka Taizō, 241
Gilman, Nils, 241
Girard, William S., 180–184, 182, 324n45 Janow, Seymour, 252
Gordon, Andrew, 247 Japan: about, 6–7, 15–16, 25; consequences
Gorer, Geoffrey, 27 of alliance with U.S., 276–277, 282;
Gōshi Kōhei, 233, 234, 235, 263, 333n10 democracy and alliance with U.S., 7–8,
Gotō Yōnosuke, 235 14–15; as democratic model, 18–20, 115,
Great Britain, 138, 140–141, 144, 149, 154, 118, 120–121, 275, 276; divisions over
314n39 democracy, 5–6, 12–14, 16–18; as
354 Index
Japan (continued) outreach, 245, 246–247, 247, 248, 249,

economic model, 21–22, 229–230, 250; management outreach, 237, 238,
250–252, 253–254, 265, 338n47; family 239; mass education initiatives, 241–242;
relations, 33–34; feudalism, 32–33; on psychological aspect of productivity,
hierarchical relationship with U.S., 241; 236, 243; small business program, 236;
Obama on relationship with, 273–274; study teams, 242; Third Country Training
Pacific War, 16–17; postwar politics, 44, program, 255
185–186; reparations by, 340n55; shame Jewett, Andrew, 129
culture, 34; shared values rhetoric, 16, Jiang Jieshi, 38, 84, 125
274–275, 279, 280, 282; U.S. Cold War Johnson, U. Alexis, 161
hopes for, 117–118; U.S. democratization
of, 3–5, 12. See also Anpo (antitreaty) Kamei Fumio, 164, 173
movement; antibase movement; economic Kanamori Tokujirō, 46
growth; education; labor; military— Kapur, Nick, 207, 214, 326n1, 329n25
Japanese; military—Japanese rearma- Katayama Tetsu, 12, 44
ment; National Police Reserve; security Katō Hidetoshi, 212
treaty (1960) Kawabe Shozo, 106
Japan, and U.S. occupation: about, 22–23, Keizai doyukai (Economic Friends
29–30, 69–70; anticommunist measures, Association), 233, 267–268
60–61, 65–69; civil liberties directives, Kennan, George, 9–10, 55, 62–63, 86, 125
42; communist fears, 51–52, 56–57, Kennedy, John F., 230, 250, 252–253
58–60; constitutional revision, 44–46, Keynes, John Maynard, 129
85–86, 171; cooperation with U.S., Kimura Akira, 278
61–62; cultural and educational Kishi Nobusuke: conservative democracy
exchanges, 127–129, 130–132; demilitar- of, 12–13, 185; Girard shooting and, 181;
ization and purge, 35–36, 40, 41–42, 44, Liberal Democratic Party and, 186; on
85; economic reforms, 48–50, 62–64; overseas assistance by Japan, 259; Police
educational reform, 46–48, 295n36; Duties Bill, 200; on rearmament, 278;
elections, 42–44, 43; emperor’s future, relationship with U.S., 186–187,
37–38, 45; hunger issues, 49; ideological 196–197, 212, 327n7; resignation as
contradictions, 27–28, 36–37; indirect prime minister, 24, 193, 215, 218–219;
rule, 40; International Military Tribunal security treaty (1960) and, 18, 192–193,
for the Far East, 41; labor and, 50, 194–195, 197–198, 203–204, 205–206,
57–58, 60–61, 64–65; land reform, 207, 209
49–50, 171, 295n40; MacArthur on, Kiyose Ichirō, 207
50–51; planning process, 30–31; Potsdam Klein, Christina, 289n11
Declaration on, 38; psychological Korean War, 57, 71, 88–89, 102, 107,
approach to democratization, 25, 26–27, 122–125
28, 30, 35, 36–37, 39–40, 45–46, 69–70, Kosaka Zentarō, 265
151–152; resistance to, 46, 47; “reverse Koschmannn, J. Victor, 210, 313n30
course” shift, 28, 52, 56–57; Roosevelt Koshiro, Yukiko, 289n11
on, 30; support for ending, 119, Kovner, Sarah, 164
120–122; U.S. control, 39. See also Kowalski, Frank, 98, 106–107
military—U.S. presence in Japan; San Kubota Yutaka, 259, 260
Francisco Peace Treaty Kupski, Gregory J., 165
Japanese Communist Party (JCP), 44,
57–58, 64, 66–67, 135–136, 166–167, labor: acceptance of productivity movement,
201 248–249; labor-management councils,
Japan Federation of Women’s Organ- 246–247; during occupation, 50, 58,
izations, 173–174 60–61, 64–65; opposition to peace treaty,
Japan Productivity Center (JPC): Asian 134–135; productivity programming for,
Productivity Organization and, 263–264, 244, 245–246, 247–248, 337n37; U.S.
264–265, 268; establishment, 234; labor outreach to, 244–245
Index 355
Ladejinsky, Wolf, 295n40 —Japanese rearmament: civilian control,

Landes, W. S., 240–241 100–101; contemporary expansion,
land reform, 49–50, 171, 295n40 277–278; dispute between Japan and
Lasswell, Harold, 31, 79 U.S. on, 126; as election issue, 95–96;
La Trahison des Clercs (Benda), 221–222, Japanese divisions on, 74–75, 91, 97;
331n45 Japanese opposition, 93–95, 113, 133;
Lavender Scare, 55–56 Japanese support, 91–93, 106; Korean
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 185–186, War as impetus, 71–72, 88–89; Mutual
200, 277, 329n25 Security Program and training assistance,
Liberal Party, 44, 62, 92, 96, 185 109–111, 308n67; peace treaty and, 149,
Lory, Hillis, 31, 291n7 150; public opinion, 304n41; U.S.
Lucky Dragon nuclear contamination opposition, 87–88; U.S. support, 71,
incident, 167 72–73, 85, 86, 88, 102, 111–112;
Yoshida on, 96–97, 126. See also
MacArthur, Douglas: background, 39; civil antiwar movement; National Police
liberties directives, 42; on communist Reserve
threat, 59–60, 66; constitutional revision, —U.S.: changing views on, 73–74, 75–76,
45; on democracy in Japan, 50–51; 113; civil-military relations, 80; concerns
educational reform, 47; labor suppression, about, 78; military assistance, 73–74,
50, 60, 61; land reform, 49–50; military 81–83, 84, 109–111, 113; Selective
purges, 41; National Police Reserve, Service Act, 80; Universal Military
89–90; political appointments and Training, 76–79, 81, 111; Weil Com-
elections, 40, 43; rearmament, 87–88, 107 mittee, 81, 111
MacArthur, Douglas, II: Anpo (antitreaty) —U.S. presence in Japan: administrative
protests and, 212–213, 214, 220–221; agreement, 160; Girard shooting,
background, 183–184; on Girard 180–184, 182; Japanese opposition,
shooting, 183–184; on Kishi, 186–187, 160–161, 162–163, 167–168; legitimacy
218; security treaty (1960) and, 195–196, issues, 161–162; mixed-race children
196–197, 197–198, 199, 329n25 issue, 166–167; during occupation,
Madison, James, 75–76 158–159, 293n22; purpose and ramifica-
Maeda Tamon, 47 tions, 159–160, 167; reduction in troops,
Magruder, Carter B., 123–124 184–185, 187; security treaty (1951) on,
Maguire, Mairead Corrigan, 280 160; sex work issue, 164–166. See also
Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 76 antibase movement
Marcum, Carlos, 61 missionaries, 291n6
Marshall, George, 76, 77, 78, 80, 82 Mitamura Yasutake, 238
Marshall Plan (European Recovery Plan), Miyazaki Akira, 171
81, 232–233 Miyazaki Denzaemon, 169
Martin, James, Jr., 239, 247 modernization theory, 252, 253–254
Maruyama Masao, 94, 132, 133, 202 Molasky, Michael, 321n19
Masuhara Keikichi, 96–97, 98, 108–109 Moore, Aaron Stephen, 257, 338n43
Matsumoto Jōji, 45 Morrison, Herbert, 144
McCloy, John J., 76 Müller, Jan-Werner, 10
Merriam, Charles E., 79 Mumford, Lewis, 9
militant democracy, 288n7, 294n32 Mutual Defense Assistance Act (1949),
military assistance, 73–74, 81–83, 84, 83, 84
109–111, 113 Mutual Security Act (1951), 83
military Mutual Security Program (MSP), 75, 83,
—Japanese: constitutional revision on, 109–110, 111, 234
85–86; demilitarization and purge,
35–36, 40, 41–42, 44, 85; Potsdam Nakasone Yasuhiro, 166, 223
Declaration on, 38; Tokyo Trial and, 41; Nakayama Ichirō, 235, 236, 237
U.S. on militarism of, 31–35, 37–38 Nanbara Shigeru, 130, 132–133
356 Index
National Police Reserve (NPR): about, pluralism, 11–12

14–15, 23, 75, 112; civilian leadership, Point Four program, 82, 84, 232
100–101; establishment, 71–72, 89, 90; Police Duties Bill, 200–201
ex-military recruited for, 105–109; Potsdam Declaration (1945), 38–39, 59,
ideological underpinnings, 98, 99, 100; 141
Japanese opposition, 74, 175–176; President’s Committee on Religion and
Japanese participation, 90–91; Korean Welfare in the Armed Forces (Weil
War and, 107; MacArthur on, 89–90; Committee), 81, 111
organization, 99–100; as potential Price, John, 314n43
foundation for new army, 102; public Procurement Agency (Japanese), 162,
confusion about, 95–96; qualification 169–170, 173
concerns, 103–105; recruitment, 99, 103; productivity programming: about, 24,
salary and benefits, 304n47; U.S. hopes 228–229, 231, 271–272; acceptance by
for, 72–73, 90; U.S. involvement, 98–99, labor, 248–249; democracy and, 229,
101–102, 105, 307n62; Yoshida on, 245; education initiatives, 242–243; and
96–97 hierarchy in U.S.-Japan relationship, 241;
National Public Service Law (1947), 61 Japanese advocacy for, 233–234, 235; for
National Security Council (NSC): on labor, 244, 245–246, 247–248, 337n37;
Japanese rearmament, 87; NSC 68 on language issues, 339n49; for manage-
Cold War strategy, 53–55, 57, 59, 219; on ment, 236–239; mass education
peace treaty, 119 initiatives, 241–242; psychological aspect,
Nielson, Arthur C., 237 236, 243; for small businesses, 236; U.S.
Nippon Kōei (development consultancy), concerns, 239–241; U.S. support,
259 234–235. See also Japan Productivity
Nishida Minoru, 165 Center; technical assistance and
Nitze, Paul, 51, 53–54, 80 development aid
Nixon, Richard, 219–220 Progressive Party, 44, 62, 92
Norman, E. H., 32–33, 48 prostitution, 164–166
Nosaka Sanzō, 57 psychological citizenship, 55
nuclear contamination: Lucky Dragon psychological spirit: communism and,
incident, 167 28–29, 51, 53–55; democracy and, 8–10,
Nugent, Donald, 47–48, 67 11, 12, 275–276; economic growth and,
21–22; Japanese democratization and,
Obama, Barack, 273–274 26–27, 28, 30, 35, 36–37, 39, 39–40,
Oda Makoto, 279, 345n10 45–46, 69–70, 151–152; Japanese
Okazaki Katsuo, 110 militarism and, 27–28, 33–35; produc-
Okinawa, 142–143, 147, 149, 178, 279, tivity and, 236, 243
324n41 Psychological Strategy Board (PSB),
Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), 151–152
178, 220, 236
Orr, James J., 167 Race, mixed-race children, 166–167
Oshikawa Ichirō, 269, 270 Radford, Arthur, 185
Ōtsuka Hisao, 132 Red Purge, 65–68
Oyama Yoshiharu, 173 Reischauer, Edwin O., 18, 118, 194,
Ozawa Ichirō, 277 223–224, 251, 253–254, 265, 338n48
reparations, 116, 125, 138, 141–142,
Pacific Pact, 139–141 314n43, 340n55
Pacific War, 16–17, 31, 85 Republic of China (Taiwan), 84, 110, 114,
Parker, William J., 255–256, 257, 261 125, 138, 145, 255, 264, 325n50
Passin, Herbert, 267 Rhee, Syngman, 84, 193, 219
Peace Preservation Law (1925), 13, 57 Ridgway, Matthew, 71, 101, 108, 159–160,
Philippines, 116, 117, 138, 139, 141, 142, 278
154, 259, 339n51, 340n55 Rizzo, Frank, 68
Index 357
Robbins, William, 237 self-government, local, 171

Robertson, Walter, 179 Seraphim, Franziska, 149
Rockefeller, John D., III, 127–128, 131–132 sex work, 164–166
Rockefeller Foundation, 115, 130, 131, shame, 34
222, 222–223 shared values rhetoric, 16, 274–275, 279,
Rodgers, Daniel, 10 280, 282
Roebuck, Kristin, 166 Shibusawa, Naoko, 164, 289n11
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 30 Shidehara Kijūro, 40, 45
Rusk, Dean, 137 Shigemitsu Mamoru, 177, 186, 234, 244
Shimizu Ikutarō, 164, 202
Sanbetsu (labor federation), 65, 134 Simpson, Bradley R., 84
Sand, Jordan, 202 Sjordal, Paul, 155
San Francisco Peace Treaty: about, 23, Smith, H. Alexander, 118
116–117, 153–154; Asian opposition to, Smith, Louis, 80
116, 138, 139, 142–144, 153; conference Socialist Party: Anpo (antitreaty) protests,
and signing, 114, 145–146, 147–148; 201, 205–206, 207, 210, 215; antibase
contents, 147; exclusion of China and protests, 163, 170, 173, 176; anticommu-
South Korea, 144–145; Great Britain and, nist measures and, 65; Girard shooting
138, 144, 149, 154, 314n39; Japanese and, 181; on peace treaty, 134, 161; on
opposition, 116, 132–136, 137, 149–151, Police Duties Bill, 200; political position,
152, 314n33; Japanese support, 121–122, 44, 96; on rearmament, 93, 94; split and
124–125, 310n10; Korean War as reunion, 185; U-2 spy plane incident, 207
impetus, 122–125; legacy and conse- social sciences, 129–130, 132
quences of, 115–116; Pacific Pact and, Sōhyō (General Council on Trade Unions),
139–141; planning process, 125, 135, 151, 173, 200, 201, 208, 209, 214,
126–127; reparations, 141–142, 314n43; 215, 249, 314n33
and security treaty between U.S. and Sony, 258
Japan, 148–149, 160, 188; U.S. concerns South Korea, 84, 102, 110, 138, 145, 193,
about Japanese opposition, 136–137; U.S. 219, 264. See also Korean War
hopes for, 114–115, 118–119, 120–121, sovereignty, Japanese, 45, 46, 134, 147,
123–124, 125, 126, 127, 137–138, 150, 159–160, 170, 182–183
138–139, 146–147, 152–153 Soviet Union, 38, 53, 56–57, 88, 125, 134,
Sapiro, Norman, 168 138, 139, 147, 195, 206
Sasaki, Tomoyuki, 103 Sparrow, James, 76
Schieder, Chelsea Szendi, 215 Special Investigation Bureau (SIB), 59, 65,
Schlesinger, Arthur, 10 67, 100
Schumpeter, Joseph, 11 State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee
Sebald, William, 89, 112, 136–137, 147 (SWNCC), 36, 45, 46, 82
security treaty (1951), 148–149, 160, 188 Steeves, John, 197
security treaty (1960): about, 24, 193–194, Stephens, John A., 246
225–226; content and purpose, 192; Stimson, Henry, 38, 76
decision to negotiate, 187–188, 194, Subversive Activities Control Act (Mc-
198–199; democracy implications, Carran Act; 1950), 14, 56, 69
204–205; Japanese concerns, 198; Kishi Subversive Activities Prevention Law
support for, 18, 194–195, 197–198, (1952), 68–69
203–204; legitimacy implications, 199; Sunagawa antibase protests: about, 156;
passage through Diet, 205–206, 207, 209, background, 155, 168–169; cause and
329n25; signing of, 204; Soviet critique of, initial organization, 168, 169–170; court
206; Sunagawa court case and, 188; U.S. case, 188; democracy implications,
motivation and concerns, 194, 195–197. 175–176; participants and grievances,
See also Anpo (antitreaty) movement 170–171, 172, 173–174; success of, 176,
Selective Service Act (1948), 80 188–189; U.S. responses to, 176–177;
Self-Defense Forces (SDF), 23, 72, 110, 277 violence during, 171–173, 175
358 Index
Sunagawa hantai kichi kakuchō dōmei Umezu Kin’ichi, 166

(Sunagawa Antibase Expansion Alliance), United States Agency for International
170 Development (USAID), 230, 253, 255,
Suzuki Teiji, 164 256, 266
Swope, Guy, 42–43 United States of America: anticommunist
fears and measures, 3, 10–11, 51, 52–53,
Tachikawa Air Force Base, 155, 165–166, 55–56; Asian concerns, 83–84; democ-
168–169. See also Sunagawa antibase racy conceptions, 2–3, 219–220. See also
protests democracy; Japan; Japan, and U.S.
Taft, Robert A., 79 occupation; military—U.S.; mili-
Taiwan (Republic of China), 84, 110, 114, tary—U.S. presence in Japan; psycho-
125, 138, 145, 255, 264, 325n50 logical spirit; San Francisco Peace Treaty;
Takakuwa Sumio, 94–95 security treaty (1960); technical
Takano Minoru, 135, 150 assistance and development aid
Takeuchi Yoshimi, 136 Universal Military Training (UMT), 76–79,
Tanishiki Hiroshi, 259 81, 111
Tatsumi Eiichi, 105
technical assistance and development aid: Vance, Lee, 237
by Asia Kyokai, 260–263, 341n59; Asian Vandenberg, Arthur, 119
concerns about Japanese assistance, 20, Vietnam, 138, 142, 193, 259, 340n55
259–260; Asian Productivity Organ-
ization, 250, 263–266, 268–270; Ford Ward, Robert, 252
Foundation support, 266–267, 267–270; Watson, Albert, 101, 102
Japanese leadership and initiatives, Wedemeyer, Albert C., 83–84
256–257, 257–259, 338n42, 341n58; Weil Committee (President’s Committee on
Marshall Plan, 81, 232–233; in Philip- Religion and Welfare in the Armed
pines, 339n51; Point Four program, 82, Forces), 81, 111
84, 232; Third Country Training White, Theodore, 282
program, 254–257, 260, 262–263; U.S. Willoughby, Charles A., 102, 305n51
understanding of, 231–232, 252–253. Wilson, Charles, 184
See also productivity programming Wilson, Sandra, 93
Third Country Training program, 254–257, Wolf, Marvin J., 281
260, 262–263
Thurmond, Strom, 183 Yoshida Shigeru: anticommunist measures,
Tōbata Seiichi, 259 65; on China, 144; conservative
Tokyo Trial (International Military Tribunal democracy of, 12, 62, 121; economic
for the Far East), 41 reforms, 64; National Police Reserve and,
Truman, Harry: on communism, 55; 74, 89, 101, 108; peace treaty and, 144,
economic stabilization in Japan, 64; 145, 146; rearmament and, 86, 92,
emperor’s future, 38; Korean War, 57; 96–97, 126; resignation as prime minister,
Pacific Pact, 139, 140; peace treaty, 124, 96; support for U.S. military presence,
146; Point Four program, 232; rearma- 161–162; on Tsuji, 303n36
ment, 73; support for military, 77–78, 80, Yoshikawa Mitsusada, 65
81; Truman Doctrine, 52–53, 81 Yoshioka Tatsuya, 280
Trump, Donald J., 281
Tsuji Masanobu, 92, 303n36 Zengakuren (All-Japan Federation of
Tsuru Shigeto, 95 Student Self-Government Associations),
134, 151, 174, 203, 209, 214
U-2 spy plane incident, 206–207 Zenkoku gunji kichi hantai renraku kaigi
Uchinada antibase protests, 162–163, 164, (National Antibase Coalition), 173
320n13 Zenrō (labor union), 248–249
Ugaki Kazushige, 92 Zhou Enlai, 143

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C O L D WA R D E M O C R A C Y

Cover art: AP Photo / Mike Yamaguchi

Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress

APO Asian Productivity Organization

to the correct ideas and values. A “real” democracy therefore needed to

remake Japanese political values, educational practices, military capabili-

“democratic mindset.” After the occupation, they continued to fund programs

Cold War Democracy and the U.S.–Japanese Alliance

“healthy” mindsets would allow democracy to flourish. Few works better

proclamations that democratic politics required a psychological—even

Robert Dahl. Pluralism held that democratic politics depended on power-

Nobusuke (1957–1960), and Ikeda Hayato (1960–1964) sought to build a

postwar Japan, their ideologies had to be recalibrated around democratic

The Other Cold War Democracy: Activism and Protest

Cold War Democracy and the Japanese Model

We can, if we will, help Japan to be an exhibit in Asia of what a free society

Americans therefore sought to seize key moments, such as the signing of

promises of capitalism. If one Asian country could establish a prosperous,

While it is true that Japan followed a different historical trajectory, U.S.

questionable assumptions. In seeking to bolster Japanese developmental

In order to trace the rise, implementation, and transformation of

legitimacy shaped security policy, leading to a substantial reduction of

The postwar U.S.–Japanese relationship was the product of complex

O n September 1, 1945, as the Japanese government prepared to for-

It is easy to dismiss Byrnes’ conception of democratization as mental, psy-

to overcome a history of militarism and move toward a universal demo-

democracy and its challengers—especially totalitarianism and, more spe-

anticommunist policies in Japan with those developed in the United States

Wartime Thinking about Democracy and Militarism in Japan

scholars; its collective membership represented the small community of ex-

Emulating such sentiments, wartime planners believed that dismantling

prohibit the expression of any opinion it deemed dangerous or antidemo-

by Cabot Coville claimed, “The problem of the overthrow of the militarists

While Potsdam was an international statement, translating its lofty ideals

Democracy during the Early Occupation

wide-scale purge of those deemed “undemocratic”; (2) the formation of new

will be somewhat in the nature of a Constitutional Convention,” tasked

thought and initiative, and on a scientific attitude in learning . . . Methods

Japanese public knowledge of and belief in democracy in all walks to

political stability and a moderate, antiextremist democratic consciousness

Democracy and the Communist Threat

immaturity, emotionalism, misguided loyalty, and lack of individualism.

Democracy and Communism in the United States

Communism, on the other hand, was so dangerous because it was an as-

Scare,” was only one example of the consequences of a psychological defi-

Democracy and Communism in Japan

the importance of mass action outside representative political institutions

an even more significant danger. Compared to the communists, the mili-

shift in policy, leading Japanese conservatives had targeted communists and

unity, confidence, and vigor as key to resisting communist incursion and

largely abandoned their earlier programs of economic decentralization and

that communists were actively and effectively operating to sabotage and

After GHQ / SCAP ordered publication to be suspended, Japanese police surround

support of occupation authorities, he took this message across Japan on a

simultaneously fueled GHQ / SCAP’s imposition of restrictions on po-

communists, stabilize Japan’s economy, and empower the Japanese state

and Southeast Asia. With the rapid disintegration of formal European,

Democracy and Military Power in the Cold War

against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at

also informed Truman’s October 1945 message to Congress urging the pas-