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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
They order these things differently in England. Such comment on the relevance of the British political and economic experience to postsurrender Japan has been overlooked by students ofthe occupation period. The explanation for this neglect appears to vary on national lines. Research interest into Britain's postwar foreign policy in east Asia has been limited until recently by the availability of government material, while American and later Japanese scholars following in their wake seem reluctant to recognize that in name and sometimes in reality the occupation was an allied venture, since this goes against the grain of American unilateralism. Where there has been note of allied contributions to the occupation the references have tended to be perfunctory. Two recent publications might be cited as representative of this trend among American historians. John Dower's voluminous work on Yoshida Shigeru has little on Yoshida's contacts with British occupation personnel despite frequent references to the premier's anglophilia. Justin Williams's version of the occupation is equally Americocentric. The author regards the Far Eastern Commission's role in Japan's enforced democratization as reactionary ‘because SCAP dealt with the real Japan and the FEC with an imaginary Japan. Long after SCAP became immersed in constructing the democratic Japan of the future, the FEC was still preoccupied with teaching a lesson to the Imperial Japan of old.’ As a challenging quotation useful for those setting examinations on the subject it may bear repetition but not a few British and Commonwealth diplomats might be forgiven for suggesting that the remark could be profitably reversed. The distance between the United States' image of Japan and the truth behind the rhetoric remained a persistent theme of despatches from the British mission in Tokyo (UKLIM) to the Foreign Office throughout this period.
1 Dower, J. W., Empire and Aftermath (Cambridge, Mass., 1979). Sir Esler Dening, the senior Foregin Office official responsible for handling occupation affairs, is honoured with one reference. Sir Alvary Gascoigne, the head of the British mission in Japan for most of the period, receives no mention despite his frequent meetings with MacArthur and Yoshida.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Williams, Justin, Japan's Political Revolution under MacArthur (Tokyo, 1979), p. 159.Google ScholarThis ignores, for example, the 16-point ‘Principles for Japanese Trade Unions’ approved by the FEC on 12 December 1946. Article 6, which was to have some bearing on later developments, stated that ‘trade unions should be allowed to take part in political activities and to support political parties’.Google Scholar For text see Ayusawa, Iwao F., A History of Labour in Modern Japan (Honolulu, 1966), pp. 243–5.Google Scholar
3 See Buckley, , ‘Britain and the Emperor: The Foreign Office and Constitutional Reform in Japan, 1945–1946’, Modern Asian Studies 12, 4 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 ‘Notes on some questions discussed at meetings between the Deconcentration Review Board and Government Section, GHQ’, Gascoigne (UKLIM) to FO, 20 May 1948, F7673/44/23(FO371/69820). The notes were written by the British representative to the Deconcentration Review Board from an address given by Colonel Charles L. Kades of Government Section.Google Scholar
5 There was to be unease in the Foreign Office in 1948 over whether the Emperor ought to have been tried before the IMTFE. At issue was whether the obligation to follow ministerial advice freed the Emperor from answering for the consequences of actions taken in his name. The allied decision not to include the Emperor in the list of suspected war criminals, which the British government had strongly endorsed in 1945, came under public scrutiny in the autumn of 1948 as the IMTFE verdicts were announced.Google Scholar
6 On postwar Japanese perceptions of the new Imperial role see Titus, David A., ‘The Making of the “Symbol Emperor System” in Postwar Japan’, Modern Asian Studies, 14, 4 (1980). For rightist objections to the new image of the Emperor see I wasaki Akira, ‘The Occupied Screen’, Japan Quarterly (July–september 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Gascoigne memorandum on Japanese constitution to FO, 27 september 1948, F14864/44/23(FO371/69825).Google Scholar
8 Killearn–Emperor conversation of 24 January 1948 as reported by Gascoigne to FO, F2024/2023/23(FO371/69912).Google Scholar
9 Killearn also wrote personally to Foreign Secretary Bevin on his meeting with MacArthur. Killearn felt that ‘American policy, as applied by MacArthur, is very much on the right lines from the UK angle of Anglo-American post-war policy.’ Killearn's verdict on Japan was that ‘there is, or should be, very little that one cannot do with this extremely tough but also alarmingly efficient people’ (F3037/2023/23(FO371/69912).
10 UKLIM second quarterly report 1947, F10666/5729/23(FO371/63798).
11 Milward, R. S. (FORD), 25 January 1949, F366/1015/23(FO371/76178). Norman was held to do ‘less than justice to what little we know of the man. No one else dared to call the 1936 revolt a “mutiny”’.Google Scholar
Ibid.
12 Gascoigne memorandum on Japanese constitution (see note 7). See also Gascoigne to FO, 8 December 1948, F17231/44/23(FO371/69827).Google Scholar
13 Gascoigne memorandum on Japanese constitution.
14 MacArthur's new year message, 1 January 1949. Gascoigne forwarded the full text to the Foreign Office and commented that ‘it is couched in the General's usual style and is a mixture of flattery, cajolery, and thinly veiled threat. ’. Gascoigne to FO, 6 January 1949, F923/1015/23(FO371/76178).Google Scholar
15 Counsellor Macrae (UKLIM) memorandum on conversation with MacArthur, 16 December 1947, F1138/4/23(FO371/69802).Google Scholar
16 Gascoigne to FO, 20 December 1947, F55/44/23(FO371/69818).Google Scholar
17 Nippon Times, 25 November 1947, quoted in Williams, Japan's Political Revolution, p. 180.Google Scholar
18 Katayama, to Redman, Vere, reported to FO, 11 May 1948, F7345/44/23(FO371/69820).Google Scholar
19 Dening minute, 9 February 1948, F2104/44/23(FO371/69818); cf.Cheke, D. J., 11 March 1948, F3820/44/23(FO371/69820). Later interpreters of postwar Japanese politics have noted that ‘under circumstances where there were really two governments, the Occupation and the Japanese, it was extraordinarily difficult for the Japanese parties to remain true to their principles and policies or, indeed, to bear any responsibility for the execution of policy. Inevitably, this was a confusing period for leaders and people alike.’Google ScholarScalapino, Robert A. and Masumi, Junnosuke, Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan (Berkeley, 1971), p. 37.Google Scholar
20 For comment on Katayama see MacArthur–Gascoigne conversation of 10 February 1948, F3508/44/23(FO371/69819). MacArthur felt the Katayama coalition fell through ‘Yoshida's obstructive and selfish tactics.’Google Scholar
Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 There was also the additional problem of divided loyalties within SCAP GHQ. Katayama told UKLIM that ‘he had always received the greatest help and encouragement from General MacArthur but that many of the General's subordinates did not like him.’ Katayama to Redman, see note 18. Ashida, who replaced Katayama and formed his cabinet on 10 March 1948, was MacArthur's bête noire. SCAP termed Ashida ‘a slick manipulator’ after the fall of the Katayama coalition. Gairdner (Attlee's personal representative to MacArthur) on his interview with MacArthur, 24 February 1948, F3978/44/23(FO371/69819).Google Scholar
23 Gascoigne comment on Yoshida's cabinet, 19 February 1949, F3165/1015/23(FO371/76180). For FO criticism of factionalism in the Democratic Liberal, Democratic and Socialist parties see Tomlinson, F. S., 30 March 1949, F4512/1015/23(FO371/76180).Google Scholar
24 See Tomlinson (FO) comment on UKLIM report of Socialist Party convention, 3 May 1949, F6341/1015/23(FO371/76181).Google Scholar
25 Overseas Reconstruction Committee, 5 December 1945, F1104/6411/23(FO371/46504).Google Scholar For an entertaining account of the work of EIPS see Allen, G. C., ‘Japan's Post-War Economic Prospects: The British View’, in Japan's Economic Policy (London, 1980).Google Scholar
26 EIPS ‘Policy towards the great Japanese Business Houses’, 9 November 1945, F10055/4/23(FO371/46430).Google Scholar
27 See FO to UK delegation on FEC, 16 October 1947, F10851/1/23(FO371/63659). Ernest Bevin had felt that the Zaibatsu leaders were not to blame for following government orders and supporting Japan's war effort.Google Scholar
28 See Carden, Robert W., ‘Before Bizonia: Britain's Economic Dilemma in Germany, 1945–46’, Journal of Contemporary History (07 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 See Oscar Morland and Dudley Cheke (FO) minutes February 1949, F17999/4/23(FO371/69815F).Google Scholar
30 Morland minuted on the alterations to US economic polices that ‘if the alleged “experts” in the United States had known a bit more about the zaibatsu in 1945 the Americans would have been spared the nemesis which is now overtaking them.’ Morland, 11 December 1948, F15881/4/23(FO371/69815D). He inisted that the conglomertes had competiton among themselves. For Government Section's disappointments on the switch to economic revival see UKLIM to FO, 19 May 1948, F7671/44/23(FO371/69820).Google Scholar
31 SeeAllen ‘Japan's Post-War Economic Prospects’, p. 192.Google Scholar
32 Wilson, E. G., the labour adviser to the British mission, noted that many Hokkaido miners were apparently unaware of the need for productivity increases in a period when Japan was desperately short of coal. UKLIM labour report to FO, 8 January 1948, F1452/49/23(FO371/69835). The introduction of labour attachés to British embassies was the work of Bevin.Google Scholar
33 Two recent English-language accounts of these events are Sugeno, Kazuo, ‘Public Employee Strike Problem and its Legal Regulation in Japan’, Current Studies in Japanese Law (occasional papers no. 12, University of Michigan, 1979),Google Scholar and Schonberger, Howard, ‘American Labour's Cold War in Occupied Japan’, Diplomatic History (summer 1979). Neither study makes mention of British participation in the policy debates.Google Scholar
34 One former member of Government Section has stated that ‘as MacArthur saw it, Washington's principal objective was to appease those friendly powers, notably the United Kingdom and Australia where Labour governments ruled, that interpreted FEC labour policy to embrace state employees as well as workers in private enterprise.’ Williams, Japan's Political Revolution, p. 276.Google Scholar
35 The Katayama cabinet had resigned in February 1948 after its failure to solve the wage demands of railway and communication workers. Unions comprising government workers invariably led the campaigns to secure wage increases.
36 Killen had been vice-president of the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers. Hoover had boasted that he would gain MacArthur's vote because ‘my position accords more nearly with American philosophy and pracitice… even if our arguments were equally sound, my dignified bearing and impeccable attire contrasted with his cloddish manner and tawdry appearance will prejudice MacArthur against him.’ Williams, Japan's Political Revolution, p. 68.Google Scholar
37 Ashida responded with Ordinance 201 of 31 July 1948. Penalties for disbedience could include imprisonment, fines and dismissal. Sugeno has noted that ‘this outright prohibition of strikes, following a period of liberal legal policy, has affected the atmosphere of labour relations in the public sector ever since. Public employee unionists have resented not only the prohibition itself but also the sudden and wholesale manner in which it was imposed on them.’ Sugeno ‘Public Employee Strike Problem’, p. 4.Google Scholar
38 Wilson, E. G. UKLIM labour report no. II, 11 August 1948, to FO, F11720/49/23(FO371/69835).Google Scholar
39 Killen quoted by Patrick Shaw, the Australian diplomat who represented the Commonwealth on the Allied Council for Japan, in his report ‘labour relations in Japanese public service’, F11723/44/23(FO371/69822). Shaw explained to Hoover the mechanism of the Australian Commonwealth Public Serivce Arbitration Act in the hope that this might influence SCAP's drafting of the revised Japanese National Public Service Law.
40 Gascoigne to FO, 1 september 1948, F12165/44/23(FO371/69823).Google Scholar
41 Sir Oliver Franks reported on 20 August that the State Department had ‘expressed doubts at whether Japanese had ability at this stage to administer scheme on British lines, which they supposed would be complicated. Later they seemed more favourably impressed.’ Franks, UK embassy Washington, to FO, 20 August 1948, F11543/44/23(FO371/69822).Google Scholar
42 See Dening minute on Bevin–Evatt meeting, 17 August 1948), F11250/44/23(FO371/69822).Google Scholar
43 Bevin, 17 August, ibid. Opposition to American labour policies united the USSR and Commonwealth at the extraordinary meeting of the Allied Council for Japan held on 30 August. This insensed MacArthur.
44 Bevin, 17 August 1948, to UK embassy Washington, ibid.
45 McArthur quoted his old foe FDR and the 1935 Wagner Act to justify his stance. SCAPPletter to Ashida, 22 July 1948, text in B-oooI Japanese Diplomatic Record Office, Tokyo.Google Scholar
46 The legislation comprised revision of the National Public Service Law, which forbad strikes, ‘go-slows’ and collective bargaining for civil servants and the Public Corporation and National Enterprises Labour Relations Act, which left blue-collar public corporation workers without the right to strike. By 1952 these restrictions had also been extended to local civil servants and public enterprise workers. Trade union law was also revised.Google Scholar
47 Sebald, ACJ special session 28 August 1948. Sebald, who claimed ‘the freedom accorded labour in Japan is still greater than in the United States and most democracies’, maintained greater suspicion of communist influence in Japan than either MacArthur or Gascoigne. See Sebald to State Dept., 9 December 1948,Google ScholarForeign Relations of United States, 1948 [FRUS], vol. 6 (Washington DC, 1974), p. 921.Google Scholar
48 See Morland (UKLIM) to Treasury, 15 November 1948, F16107/4/23(FO0371/69815D) and UKLIM labour report no. II, see note 38. For opposing views see Thomas, H. H. (UKLIM Treasury rep.) to Norman Young (Treasury), 22 October 1948, F16127/4/23(F371/69815D). Thomas insisted that ‘the sooner Japanese industry comes down from could-cuckoo-land to earth the better.’Google Scholar
49 FO summary of developments, F10926/44/23(FO371/69822).
50 Coe, Allan B., Totten, George O. and Uyehara, Cecil H., Socialist Parties in Postwar Japan (London, 1966), p. 153.Google Scholar
51 Cheke, D. J., 19 October 1948, F14563/44/23(FO371/69824).Google Scholar
52 Gascoigne to FO, February 1949, F2420/1015/23(FO371/76179). Yoshida's antipathy towards labour was doubtless increased by the premier's memories of the Labour Relations Adjustment Law and the Labour Standards Law which he had been obliged to introduce in his first ministry. See Dower Empire and Aftermath, p. 338.Google Scholar
53 Collett, S. D., Labour Division ESS SCAP, Address to miners in Hokkaido December 1948 as reported by UKLIM labour attaché.Google Scholar
54 Gascoigne to FO, 20 October 1948, F15208/49/23(FO371/69835). Despite a presidential veto the Taft–Hartley act had been passed in the summer of 1947.Google Scholar
55 SCAP disingenuously claimed in the same interview that ‘he was completely at a loss to comprehend why the United Kingdom government should persist in trying to force him to impose something on Japan which Japanese officials left to themeselves did not want.’ For the respectful tone in which the State Department listed its reservations on SCAP's behavious see FRUS, 8 October 1948, pp. 866–70.Google Scholar
56 Ivor Pink (UKLIM) to FO on 11 May 1949 interview with MacArthur, F7508/1015/23(FO371/76182). MacArthur professed to being more concerned with disruptive rightist elements than the Japan Communist Party. For the views of SCAP's chief of Labour Division on the communist leadership see interview between Cohen, Theodore and Takemae, Eiji, Tokyo Metropolitan University Journal of Law, 14, 1 (08 1973).Google Scholar
57 Ibid. The JCP won 9·7% of the total vote and 35 Diet seats.
58 Sargent (FO) to Washington embassy and UKLIM, 8 October 1948, F13859/44/23(FO371/69824).Google Scholar
59 Bevin explained that ‘in Great Britain the civil service had no right to strike but instead there was the system of Whitley Councils and Arbitration Tribunals which provided an alternative and a safety valve.’ Bevin–Marshall conversation, F15145/44/23(FO371/69826).
60 Hoover was described by UKLIM as ‘rigid, inclined to be doctrinaire’. UKLIM to FO, 3 September 1948, F13137/44/23(FO371/69823). Valery Burati was the only American trade unionist in SCAP GHQ after 1949. On Hoover see Cohen (see note 56), pp. 36–9.Google Scholar
61 Gascoigne report on MacDonald-MacArthur, metting, 12 september 1949, F14593/1015/23(FO371/76183). Gascoigne noted that ‘there exists a gulf between our views on the implementation of trade unionism and the regulation of labour and those of the supreme commander…General MacArthur is jealous of outside interference; he has not forgotten the approaches which we made to him during the summer of 1948 regarding the emasculation of the rights of Japanese civil servants and government workers’.Google Scholar
62 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, A Dangerous Place (Boston, 1978).Google Scholar
63 The censorship of publications by Harold Laski and the expulsion of the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge are examples of SCAP's sensitivity to alien influences in Japan.
64 For disciplinary action against railway unions in 1979 and 1980 see Asahi Evening News, 31 May 1980. For similar moves against the Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation see The Japan Times, 6 July 1980.Google Scholar For the post-occupation period see also Kazutoshi, Kōshiro, ‘The Economic Impact of Labour Disputes in the Public Sector’ in Nishikawa, Shunsaku (ed.), The Labour Market in Japan (Tokyo, 1980).Google Scholar
65 UKLIM 3rd Quartery Report on Japan 1948, F14865/6047/23(FO371/69924).Google Scholar