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University Daily Kansan Monday, May 20,1963
Postwar Japan-Land of Change Political Social Economic
By Byron Klapper
Japan's military defeat of World War II was the prelude to one of the most significant periods of that nation's history. Out of war ruins grew economic reconstruction, political democracy, social changes, and a new role in international affairs.
By 1947 most of the occupation's objectives had been realized. The Japanese were responsive to the reforms—most of which have been embedded in Japanese society.
United States occupation of Japan lasted from the surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, to April 28, 1952, when the peace treaty was signed. During the occupation the Japanese government continued to function under Allied authority. Broad objectives of the occupation were elimination of Japan as a military threat, development of democratic ideas and institutions, and establishment of a peaceful and responsive government.
TO ACHIEVE those objectives, the occupation launched a program of political, economic, and social reforms. A new constitution became effective May 3, 1947. Armed forces were demilitarized, industrial and financial combines were dissolved, political parties and labor unions were organized, land was distributed among farmers, and ultra-nationalists were removed from public offices.
Japanese women were guaranteed social, legal, and political emancipation, and an American-style educational system was established. The powerful government police force was abolished and civil rights reforms were installed.
A GENERAL peace treaty was signed by Japan and 48 other nations in San Francisco on Sept. 8, 1951. Within eight months Japan regained her sovereignty. A peace treaty has never been signed with the Soviet Union, although a declaration of peace pending a formal treaty was agreed upon in October 1956.
Some of the treaty's provisions restricted the conquered nation. Others aided her development.
The treaty limited Japanese territory to the four main islands and a few minor islands adjacent to them. The United States acquired the right to control other Japanese possessions until the establishment of a United Nations trusteeship over them. Japan was required to accept Article No. 2 of the U.S. Charter calling for peaceful settlement of international disputes and restraint against the use of force.
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Bv Jerry Musil
Japan in 1963 is a country of paradoxes, a mixture of East and West which has yet to attain an equitable distribution of the two into a harmonious society.
At the close of World War II, the victorious Allies imposed a completely alien form of government on the Japanese. And this government tore down in a few weeks or months a social system which had taken centuries to build.
THE MORES which had governed the Japanese for centuries were torn away and a sketchy system imposed in its place. The people became sovereign but knew little or nothing about acting sovereign.
The Emperor was no longer a divine person, a person who could not be looked upon by the common Japanese. He was a figurehead of government, a person no longer to be adored. He could be criticized without fear of reprisals.
The Japanese lost all means of identification with their society. Men were no longer dominant—the new Constitution, a foreign constitution and another alien document, gave equal marital status to women.
THE YOUNG people and the rest of the population, separated only by a generation in age, were separated by centuries in thinking. The young people needed something to believe in, something to pattern their lives after, a direction in which to move.
Because America had won the war, anything American was acceptable. Jazz, dresses and trousers instead of kimonos, pinball machines, movies and baseball all became a part of the Japanese way of life.
College students claimed the right to experiment with trial marriages. The women began to assert their freedoms. They took lovers in revenge for their husbands' unfaithfulness.
TO THE DISMAY of some Japanese males, it seemed that their women had shed overnight the centuries-old virtues of chastity, submission and docility. They became, in their eyes, Westernized harpies.
But the revolution was not complete. Although the American manners and institutions were accepted, many Japanese retain some identification with the past.
The secretary walks spritely in high heels and a Western dress to her home for a quiet lesson in the tea ceremony. Or the businessman, in a Western-tailored suit, returns at night to the usual Japanese wood and
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By Rose Osborne
The tall woman stepped up to the cash register at the Betsy Ross house in Philadelphia and waved a dollar at the clerk. The clerk responded sacking up an amuray picturing Independence Hall.
CHINA ASHTRAYS comprise only a small part of the vast array of Japanese goods now flooding U.S. markets. Japanese exports to the United States include quantities of cotton textiles, clothing, plywood, woolen and silk fabrics, stainless steel flatware, frozen tuna-fish, Christmas tree light bulbs, sewing machines, cameras, paper hats, canvas shoes, iron and steel, shoes, hooked rugs and various sundries.
It was a souvenir of historical Philadelphia, but "made in Japan" was in black letters on the back.
American manufacturers of transistor radios, men's suits, cotton textiles and plywood have registered strong protests against the Japanese invasion of the U.S. consumer market.
Japan is the United States' second largest trading partner. Only Canada supplies more goods to the U.S. than does Japan.
IN STEEL PRODUCTION Japan is vying with the United Kingdom for fourth place in the world. Only the United States, the USSR, West Germany and the United Kingdom produce more steel.
The Japanese economy has experienced phenomenal growth since World War II.
According to Lawrence Olson, American Universities Field Staff representative, Americans went into Japan with the idea of reforming the society. U.S. capital was not injected into the Japanese economy until 1948, when Japan became an important pawn in the cold war.
Economic aid on a large scale was the method devised to transform Japan into a free-world outpost against communism. The occupation ended in 1952. From 1952-60 Japan's economy began to revive and to expand.
IN 1960, ENCOURAGED by an unexpected spurt of economic growth, newly elected Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda promised to double Japan's economic growth in 10 years to an all-time high of $72 billion. This gross national product would surpass that of Britain, France or West Germany.
Japanese housewives in urban areas are beginning to modernize their homes. About 50 per cent of the
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Japan Booms While Korea Struggles Along
By Terry Murphy
It is difficult for an American to realize just how much life in Japan has changed since 1945.
An American is used to seeing the living conditions in an industrial society. For that reason, conditions in Japan are less startling to an American.
BUT IT is a different matter when Japan's standards of living are compared with another Asian country's standards. A more meaningful perspective is gained by comparing life in Japan with life in South Korea.
For comparison, let us consider the life of a worker living in Tokyo and that of his counterpart in Seoul.
A Korean middle-class worker is, practically without exception, a college-educated man; were he not he would be either a soldier or a farmer. None of the latter groups qualifies as middle-class.
THE KOREAN worker can afford to travel to work in a worker-crowded "hopsan" taxi (a converted Jeep station wagon held together by black market parts stolen from U.S. Army vehicles) on the mornings he is tardy leaving his stucco-walled, wooden-floored home which is jammed close to similar dwellings. But to make his tight budget operate, he rides the street car or buses converted from Army trucks on most days.
Like all Korean office workers, he wears Western-style clothing.
The homes of the Japanese and Korean workers offer a vivid contrast.
Both men probably work in multi-story buildings, serviced by
modern plumbing, elevators and florescent lighting. But the Korean goes home to no plumbing, water brought from a well, and possibly a two-room dwelling lighted by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
EXCEPT FOR the light bulb,
there is little in a Korean worker's
home to remind a visitor this is the
20th century.
If he works in Tokyo or Yokohama, which practically have grown together into one city as industries search for precious space to build, he rides to work on a bus as modern as those here in Lawrence. He may own a precious motorbike or cycle, but only the more ostentate businessmen own the shiny counterparts of our Fords and Chevrolets; almost invariably, even the smallest private vehicle is chauffeur-driven.
Contrast this with the home and life of a middle-income worker in Japan, who incidentally is not a college-educated man but rather a blue collar worker. He has more marketable skills but less formal education.
Another contrast is seen in the business districts where the middle class Koreans and Japanese work. The downtown streets in Korea are dirty and trash littered, even outside Seoul City Hall. Neon signs are non-existent and the streets poorly lighted. Inside, the office furniture reminds us that Korea owes much to U.S. military surplus.
THE MAN who owns a hard-topped Jeep in Korea is either an Army general, a politician or the brother of one. Limousines are reserved for Presidents and foreign ambassadors.
Contrast this with Tokyo. The streets, even in the fish markets, are clean The main business district of Tokyo, the Ginza, is gaudily lit by neon signs which rival Broadway in New York City. The department stores are monuments of progress, with many of them faqaded by mosaics and other works of art, both modern and traditional.
THE DEPARTMENT store patrons travel from floor to floor on escalators. In contrast to Seoul
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market places, Japanese are offered every modern convenience known to man.
The home of the Japanese worker is small by the standards of the U.S. ranch style house. But compared to Korean dwellings, it is substantial, modern and built to endure for decades. Plumbing and electrical wiring to handle major appliances is nearly as commonplace in Japanese homes as in U.S. homes.
While a great social revolution has altered Japanese life, the eating habits remain virtually unchanged. Fish and rice are the staples, but now they are prepared in electric fish roasters and electric rice cookers. Charcoal and wood fill the bill in Korea.
THE PAY scale in Korea forces the middle class worker to fight for day-to-day solvency, and very few are fortunate enough to build a cash reserve for emergencies. Inflation chews at the edge of any apparent prosperity, and the cost of social amenities are a severe tax.
have changed the life of a Japanese worker:
Most Japanese workers are so far ahead of the hounds of privation that the individual works with reasonable expectations of supplying his home with most of the labor-saving devices familiar to homes in the United States. Such items are often purchased for purposes of social status as much as for a desire to lessen the housewife's work load.
This affluence is reflected by the figures which show electric washers are in half the homes, and television sets in four of every five. Only the United States has a higher ratio of televisions per home.
OTHER MORE subtle influences
The Japanese housewife has risen from the position of a personal chattel. The constitution of 1947, placed in force by Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the occupation of Japan gave the woman the vote and a guarantee of equal education. And if the old man becomes unbearable, she may get a divorce.
All three represent radical changes from pre-war customs.
However, the head of the house who decides to tour the thousand or more bars in the Shinjiku district does so with little trepidation. The woman's position has improved, but the man's power remains inviolate.
THE FAMILY pattern of home life is under pressure. Movies, bars, sports events, legitimate theatre and freer mixing of boys and girls, all attract members from the family hearth. Television reportedly is strangling as many family conversations in Japan as in the United States; alarmists predict the final result of eroding tradition shall be doom.
That remains to be seen. In the meantime, the six stadiums in Tokyo, which seat more than 40,.000 persons, will continue to draw capacity crowds for soccer, swimming, boxing, wrestling and minor sports.
The whole picture of a Japanese worker's life is so varied it totally wrecks the stereotyped image of the stoic Asian. The change is even more startling when viewed against the fact it has all happened in 18 years. And in Asia.