Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

The third part of Embracing Defeat discusses a bloodless revolution—from imperial Japan to a democracy. In Chapter 6, the author discusses the neocolonial trajectory of American-led political changes that occurred in Japan during the formal occupation. Americans acted like the colonists of the old by demonstrating cultural supremacy with an undercurrent of quasi-religious Manifest Destiny, Orientalism, and the lack of interest in understanding the Japanese; “[d]aily reminders of American superiority were unavoidable” (207).

Democratizing Japan was fraught with contradictions. Americans engaged in authoritarian rule while reforming Japan into a democracy. They promoted equality but “themselves constituted an inviolate privileged class” (211). Dower underscores key aspects of American occupation: “The fact that authoritarian, top-down exhortations to dramatically alter the status quo were not new does help explain—but only in part—why the American reformers succeeded as well as they did” (203). General MacArthur played a key role. Dower qualifies him as a predictable ruler who used paternalistic language to describe Japan. He was an “indisputable overlord” with “petty viceroys” (205). However, MacArthur was not the only one with a significant degree of power. For instance, his aide, Courtney Whitney, was the chief of the GHQ Government Section and “exercised decisive influence in supervising the purges, policies regarding the emperor and the imperial institution, revision of the constitution, and all matters pertaining to the cabinet, Diet, electoral system, courts, and civil service” (209).