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308 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. vii (1956)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0308 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD How much has Japan changed since the official termination of the Allied occu- pation on April 28, 1952? Is the process of democratization being undone? How much of it will stick? Can the economy sustain preparations for self-defense? And which way is Japan heading in domestic politics and foreign relations? Thoughtful individuals may well have these and other questions in mind as they read this volume of seventeen articles written by both Japanese and American contributors. This volume was not, however, designed simply to answer such litmus-test ques- tions. Rather the articles emphasize Japanese domestic development, particularly the social and institutional changes modifying or describing the character of Japan since recovery of sovereignty. Space limitations have necessitated concentration only upon selected phases of these problems and prohibited treatment of cultural changes or even important fields such as local government. Nevertheless, the at- tention focused on the major developments within the seventeen areas of Japan's national life offered in this volume will, it is hoped, chart the major milestones on the course Japan has followed in the four and one-half years since April 1952. In perusing the combined insights of this volume, the reader may be struck by the remarkable stability Japanese political, economic, and social institutions have displayed throughout the titanic tremors of military defeat, foreign occupation, democratic revolution, and reassertion of independence in all types of policy de- cisions. The same Showa Emperor who traveled abroad as a Crown Prince dur- ing Japan's liberal period following the first World War and who later in a pe- riod of aggression reviewed the imperial troops on their way to war in China and Southeast Asia still reigns from his sprawling palace in Tokyo, preserving silence on the hotly debated question of his position in respect to the locus of sovereignty. Although the overseas empire is done and the nearest archipelagoes to the north and south remain in dispute, Japan proper has escaped the fearful divisions of Germany, Korea, and other occupied lands or those subsequently torn by clashing ideological armies. The central administration, like the proverbial French bu- reaucracy, remains relatively intact. For the most part, political and business in- stitutions have retained their similarity to prewar forms, while a number of those that had been altered are reverting in varying degrees to former patterns. At the same time, the fact that so many contributors note the cry for revision of occupation reforms, on the one hand, and the challenge to any such backward course, on the other, indicates that within the fields covered in this volume the process of digesting and assimilating the changes wrought by six and one-half years of occupation control still continues. Transition seems to be the characteristic not only of political development but of the economy, education, the family, and the full gamut of Japanese life. That so many writers eschewed dogmatic statements as to the future course of a nation with the established culture and the lengthy vii

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