ARE WE DEMOCRATIZING JAPAN?
Romer, Samuel
Are We Democratizing Japan? PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRACY IN JAPAN. By T. A. Bissoii. Macmillan. $2.75. Reviewed fey SAMUEL HOMER WITH CHINA CRUSHED by the juggernaut of Communism and the insurgent...
...Mac Arthur is "to foster conditions which will give the greatest possible assurance that Japan will not again become a menace to the peace and security of the world...
...This point of view, compounded of political naivete and pollyannuh stupidity, takes on its full significance in light of the facts that the Socialists, alone of the Japanese political pat ties, backed the Occupation reforms and the victorious Yoshida government has sabotaged the program from the day of surrender...
...Instead, our objective, as laid down in the first (and still unaltered) directive to General Samuel Re-mar was formerly Labor Relations Chief of tha American Occupation Forces in Japan...
...The growth and continued existence in Japan of labor and farm organization and huge cooperatives provide the tools whereby a free Japan will be forged...
...and the purge from official position of wartime leaders...
...yet it was the latter reform, directed by anti-labor civil service fanatics from the United States, which broke the backs of the government workers' unions and sparked the current labor unrest...
...It is disheartening, then, when the Socialists suffered the disastrous defeat during the last election to have a MapArthur Spokesman shrug off the election returns by announcing: "Obviously all that happened was an internal redistribution of strength among the parties advocating one or another form of socialisation...
...When something truly democratic happens, Mr...
...Bisson have his cake and eat it, too...
...We are in Japan as victors—but not to claim vengeance...
...The rnibatsit, Japan's wartime economic overlords, have come through the various purges without irreparable damage...
...Bisson believes...
...Bisson complains, it is forced upon the Japanese over the objections and sabotage of the old-line politicians, as was the new Constitution...
...He wants both a militant labor movement and civil service reform...
...Among these were encouragement of labor and farmer Unions...
...The Occupation not only sought demobilization of the Japanese armed forces and destruction of its war potential, but undertook a series of nonmilitary measures as well...
...Its success or failure will be an important determinant in man's current struggle for freedom...
...Reviewed fey SAMUEL HOMER WITH CHINA CRUSHED by the juggernaut of Communism and the insurgent nationalism of Indonesia and Viet-Nam caught in the pincers of prewar imperialism, Japan has become the basic test of United States colonial policy...
...They need and want guidance and direction from a sympathetic Occupation headquarters which recognises in them America's insurance against a militaristic rebirth...
...their leaders are hesitant and fumbling...
...Bisson's book is an evaluation of American efforts in these non-military fields...
...He is not very happy about it...
...Despite the Far Eastern Council at Washington and the Allied Council for Japan at Tokyo, the policy followed in Japan is that of Washington and no other eapital...
...abolition of police repression and legalization of civil rights...
...Nor can Mr...
...dissolution of the gangster societies which paralyzed parliamentary initiative during the early '30's...
...YET THE PICTURE is not as dark as Mr...
...Except in extraordinary cases, the Occupation does not interfere while they manipulate their puppet cabinet ministers...
...The much-publicized plan to break up monopolies has been vetded by a policy of "production first" which fosters these monopolies...
...Of course, the great people's c ganizations of Japan are still unsure of themselves...
...The political purgees sit behind the "bamboo curtain" of Japan's civil government...
Vol. 32 • June 1949 • No. 23
