Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy [Hardcover]

Eiji Takemae (Author), Robert Ricketts (Translator), Sebastian Swann (Translator), John Dower (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2002

Japan's success in charting a new course in the years following World War II stems from the reforming impetus of General Headquarters/Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP), headquarters of the American-led allied occupation that indirectly governed Japan for nearly seven years following World War II.

Inside GHQ is the story of the reforms of the Occupation period and of the remarkable men and women, Japanese and American, who implemented them. Eiji Takemae introduces a wealth of new material on the wartime origins of Occupation policies, the British Commonwealth Force, the Kurils, Okinawa, the Korean minority, A-bomb survivors, war crimes, the Constitution, education, and health and welfare.

Inside GHQ is the definitive account of the occupation - its strengths, shortcomings, and failures - and provides immense insight into the state of contemporary Japan.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Takemae, a professor of political science at Tokyo Keizai University, offers a superbly translated study of the legacy of the largely American postwar occupation of Japan up to the present day. General MacArthur, supreme commander in Japan from 1945 to 1951, strides likes a colossus across the pages and is credited for democratic reforms and his influence on the postwar constitution, yet faulted for cronyism and lack of oversight. Takemae points out how Americans have manipulated Japanese politics and public opinion over the decades. In the aftermath of the war, they obscured Hirohito's wartime guilt in order to capitalize on the Emperor's popularity and effect a peaceful transition. Beginning in 1948, American Cold War anticommunist fervor led Washington to essentially reverse the process of political liberalization in Japan, restoring purged politicians and businessmen some of them released from war crimes sentences to renewed and profitable careers. (Several even became prime ministers.) And yet Takemae credits the American occupation with laying the foundation for a modern, democratic Japan. He indicts myopic Japanese government and education policy-makers who refuse to acknowledge war crimes on their own side. There is still, he says, a "fault line that runs through the national psyche, using the [atomic] bombing and the dual humiliations of defeat and occupation to foster a backward-looking, narcissistic nationalism." Few books about contemporary Japan are as detailed, penetrating and compellingly objective as this overview of the postwar half-century. This is in a class with John Dowers's prize-winning Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999). 10 maps and diagrams, 76 photos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This monumental study by Japan's leading historian of the occupation period (1945-52) is the perfect complement to John Dower's Pulitzer Prize-winning Embracing Defeat. Takemae provides a finely detailed and evenhanded study of the conflicts that raged inside General Headquarters between liberals bent on reforming Japan in the image of the New Deal and conservative military officers and bureaucrats whose greatest fear was that liberal reform would open the floodgates to communism. Like Dower, Takemae sees the U.S. occupation as a collaboration between like-minded Americans and Japanese who nevertheless had separate as well as overlapping agendas. His deft sketches of the remarkable gallery of men and women who implemented the directives of Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur enliven the astute analysis of institutional and policy changes in the realms of the economy, the political system, culture, and welfare and minority rights. The summation of a lifetime of study, this is the definitive English-language work on its subject and belongs in all academic and larger public libraries. Steven I. Levine, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 751 pages
• Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group; 1st edition (May 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826462472
• ISBN-13: 978-0826462473
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,819,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid piece of study, October 31, 2007

By 

D. Green (Montclair NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy (Hardcover)

What's up y'all? Your favorite Japan Specialist is back with another review on a lesser-known book on the history of Japan.

Simply put, if you ever wanted to know about the full extent of the influence, power, and way of doing business that the Allied powers had, most noticeably the United States had on post World War II Japan, this is your book. Professor Eiji Takemae covers just about every aspect of life in Japan from the occupiers to the occupied in this one-stop shop. The redistribution of land is covered. The redrafting of the imperial constitution into a progressive model that is even more so than those of the powerful Western nations is covered. Even the rights of the sub-altern; women, the Ainus, Okinawans, the Korean, the Chinese citizens of Japan...

At five hundred pages plus, not counting the index and bibliographic notes, at times the occasional rode call-like list of names and offices can get a little mind numbing. Though at the same time, serve as a testament to the through-ness of Takemae 's research. Deep within the narrative, lies his theme of Japan's transformation from an invading empire hungry axis power at the beginning of WW II, to a world leader in peaceful economic growth via neutrality and humanitarian aid as a member of the UN. Noting that the book was completed and published in 2001, Takemae challenges Japan's role as the latter in the new age of violent senseless acts of terrorism especially with close ties to the United States, that stem directly from the occupation more than fifty years ago.

In the end, Takemae is a supportive of the GHQ and a lot of what they did for Japan after The War. Like any good scholar, he does not shy away from the negatives that the occupation brought with it. Most acknowledged by Takemae and probably the least known by the general public, the policy shift from New Deal Era progressiveness to guarded conservatism brought on by the onset of the Cold War.

Bring your curiosity and patience; this book will answer a lot of questions surrounding the Occupation like no other source.

No. The plans for the Occupation of Japan were long in place well before any American or Allied soldiers stepped foot on to Japanese soil.