JAPAN TODAY
Romer, Samuel
Japan Today THE UNITED STATES AND JAPAN, by Edwin O. Reischauer. Harvard University Press. 357 pp. $4. Reviewed by Samuel Romer THIS book is an extraordinary compendium of knowledge about modern...
...Reischauer compresses into a pithy 14 pages a brilliant editorial on the forthcoming Japanese peace treaty —an editorial which should (but won't) be a guide for our treaty makers...
...But it is more than an informative study...
...there was no apparent doubt, especially among Occupation officials, that the incident was part of a Communist plan of sabotage...
...the proceedings lasted 13 months, and the verdict was delivered last Aug...
...Reischauer is at his best discussing the Occupation's virtues and faults...
...because he did not expect perfection, he is neither naive nor oversensitive...
...instead, he urges that the treaty signers become guarantors of Japan's territorial integrity...
...The verdict absolved the nine Communists...
...Such a trial is a demonstration that the pupil has learned better than his master...
...Prof...
...Either an essential minimum of our reforms will survive because they are basically in conformity with natural developments within modern Japanese society, or else we have been building on sand...
...yet both Japan and' the western world will be better off in the long run linking Japan's democracy to world-wide final victory than through rearming, forcing the Japanese to violate their constitution and rebuilding a militaristic, authoritarian state...
...II What next in Japan...
...the present book, utilizing the same perspective, carries the discussion into the future as well...
...Prof...
...if its thoroughness and compass have been equalled by its companion volumes, the entire library deserves an honored place on the shelves of an American citizen concerned with the world he lives in and the role his government plays...
...Reischauer's volume is the first of the series I have seen...
...the treaty must be without strings, restoring Japan to real independence, limited only by international law and United Nations principles...
...The author's earlier ]apan: Past and Present was a masterful summary of Japan's history...
...In June 1949, during a Communist-led railroad strike, an electric train on a wildcat run in a Tokyo suburb killed six bystanders...
...Despite Occupation hysteria and Communist provocation in turning the trial into a political rally, the court refused to subvert its judicial role...
...And there are daily assurances that, in grafting Western democracy onto the Japanese tree, some of the results cannot be undone— even by ourselves...
...That mere guarantees or even foreign military installations on Japan's soil can prevent occupation of Japan by Russian (or Chinese) forces in the event of World War III is improbable...
...In this, he echoes the wish of Set-su Katayama, the former Socialist premier, who has proposed that Japan become a "Red Cross nation" —an island of mercy in a world at war...
...Ten men (including nine Communists) were arrested and brought to trial...
...No one reform," he comments, "is in itself essential to success...
...it embraces enough information to give a full understanding of Japan's problems—yet it never lapses into the encyclopedia's staccato style...
...A case in point is the Mitaka trial, virtually ignored in the non-Japanese press...
...Reviewed by Samuel Romer THIS book is an extraordinary compendium of knowledge about modern Japan...
...A peace treaty (with or without Soviet participation) is a must, Reischauer says...
...What does not fit will inevitably be eliminated...
...The United States and Japan is another in the American Foreign Policy Library, edited by Sumner Welles and Donald C. McKay, which so far has discussed the United States in relation to Britain, the Near East, the Caribbean, Russia, South America, China, and Scandinavia...
...But he insists that the Japanese must not rearm...
Vol. 14 • November 1950 • No. 11
