MASANORI NAKAMURA

The U.S. occupation shaped modern Japan's postwar promise. By the
1970s, Japanese intellectuals had bidden farewell to the postwar period, to
memories of the misery of war and poverty, as well as to the principles of
pacifism and socialist democracy. The high economic growth of the 1960s
made domestic prosperity the accepted criteria of Japanese life. Japanese
economic development ably transcended the two oil crises of the 1970s, and
Japan emerged as an international economic giant and a domestic conserva-
tive. The basic concepts of the postwar period disappeared. Ironically, al-
though conservatives have held political power, democracy has been consol-
idated in Japan because the agenda of progressive challengers has been
institutionalized as part of the program of the ruling bloc.

Accordingly, people in big business and conservative politicians, the leaders
of that economic development, call for a reappraisal of the U.S. occupation
and of the postwar period. The extreme Right is unhappy with democratiza-
tion. In 1983, according to former Prime Minster Nobusuke Kishi,

The initial Occupation policies toward Japan pursued by the Allied forces,
namely the United States, aimed at charging all Japanese with responsibility for
the war, and at making them realize that the hardships and humiliations en-
dured by the Japanese were the consequences of their own deeds. In that sense
the Tokyo Tribunals were nothing more than a "show" of absolute power. . . .
You should remember that the basic policies of the Occupation were aimed

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