The Good Occupation - Law in the Allied Occupation of Japan
![handle is hein.journals/wasglo8 and id is 369 raw text is:
THE GOOD OCCUPATION? LAW IN THE ALLIED
OCCUPATION OF JAPAN
YOSHIRO MIWA
J. MARK RAMSEYER*
They left Japan in shambles. By the time they surrendered in 1945,
Japan's military leaders had slashed industrial production to 1930 levels.'
Not so with the American occupiers. By the time they left in 1952, they
had rebuilt the economy and grown it by fifty percent. By 1960 the
economy had tripled, and by 1970 tripled once more.3
For Japan's spectacular economic recovery, the American-run Allied
Occupation had apparently set the stage. The Americans had occupied, and
the economy had boomed. The Americans had ruled, and Japan had
thrived. At least during the Occupation's early years, the Americans had
apparently planned and run a Good Occupation.
Or so it is often said. In fact, the Americans did nothing of the sort.
When they arrived in 1945, they brought few economic plans. Rather than
invent a new plan, they simply helped incumbent bureaucrats keep the
legal controls they had manipulated-disastrously-throughout the War.
Coming from the New Deal, many Americans brought an instinctive
aversion to competitive market policies. After rehabilitating the Marxist
leaders and intellectuals, the Americans let them use the legal apparatus to
ideological ends. With a Socialist Premier, Japanese voters let them try.
By 1948, the voters had had enough. Under the legal controls, miners
did not mine. Firms did not produce. Farmers sold, if they sold at all, only
on the black market. With inflation out of control and production stuck at
desultory levels, conservatives struck back. They installed the
quintessentially capitalist Shigeru Yoshida as Prime Minister; Yoshida
promptly shut down the planning apparatus, and Japanese voters ratified
* Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo, and Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese
Legal Studies at Harvard University, respectively. We received helpful suggestions from Stephen
Bainbridge, David Flath, Yoshitaka Fukui, Sheldon Garon, Tom Ginsburg, Richard Grossman, John
Haley, Leslie Hannah, John E. Haynes, Janet Hunter, Harvey Kehr, William Klein, Curtis Milhaupt,
Richard Samuels, Frank Upham, and Mark West, and the participants in a conference, Law in Japan: A
Celebration of the Works of John Owen Haley, at Washington University in St. Louis. We also
benefitted from the generous financial assistance of the Center for International Research on the
Japanese Economy at the University of Tokyo and of the East Asian Legal Studies Program and John
M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business at Harvard University.
1. YOSHIO ANDO, KINDAI NIHON KEIZAISHI YORAN [OUTLINE OF EARLY MODERN JAPANESE
ECONOMIC HISTORY] 2 3 (2d ed. 1987).
2. Jd.
3. Jd.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/wasglo8&div=22&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Good Occupation - Law in the Allied Occupation of Japan
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