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作成日:2011/06/19 12:06:05 JST最終更新日:2019/07/04 00:09:31 JST
RUBRO EDUCACION
TITULO Unconditional Democracy (Education and Politics in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952)(★)
AUTOR Toshio Nishi
EDITORIAL Hoover Institution Press
ISBN 0-8179-7441-5
IDIOMA INGLES
CODIGO INTERNO DU-0052
NOTA (★)(On a humid night in August of 1945, the Japanese empire, its cities smoldering and three hundred twenty thousand of its citizens dead, surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers. The United States seized the opportunity to transplant democracy to a society long ordered by militarism and autocracy. Led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, the occupation forces used education as a tool in pacifying Japan and reconstructing its imperial society on the American democratic model. ´Unconditional Democracy´documents the American occupation forces´ efforts to transform the basic values and behavior of the Japanese. Like the rulers of the Meiji era, who had used education to maintain their power and further the goals of imperial Japan, General MacArthur knew the value of compulsory education in political indoctrination. Aided by the Japanese passion for learning and veneration for the conquerors, MacArthur directed the ´political reorientation of Japan´toward democracy. Whereas the schools of prewar Japan had taught obedience, discipline, loyalty to the nation as personified by the Emperor, and militarism for the sake of collective glory, Japanese schools during the Occupation expounded democracy, individuality, liberty, equality, and peace. A sweeping purge of militarist and ultranationalist elements in Japanese society included the schools : teachers were fired, textbooks pulped, new texts written, and the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education, which demanded loyalty to the Emperor, condemned. Under MacArthur´s direction, the Japanese government taught students and instructors ´the true facts of their defeat´and gratitude for American goodwill. Pacifism, once unthinkable, became Japan´s highest ideal. The new national constitution embodied MacArthur´s vision of a democratic and pacifist Japan. The Japanese intelligentsia accelerated American efforts. The Americans, who were determined to establish a party system in Japan, promoted freedom of thought and expression and encouraged liberal discourse in the universities. Tired of academic regimentation, Japanese intellectuals praised the American forces of democracy. As ultranationalists were purged and political prisoners of old regime freed, leftist politics thrived on campuses and throughout the nation. General Headquarters looked on with quiet approval as liberals, socialists, and communists quickly filled the political void left by the right-wing undesirables who had ´caused and lost´the war. With the advent of the Cold War, however, leftists were once again silenced. As suddenly as the liberals had assumed power from the ultranationalists at the end of the war, they were forced to hand it back during the Red Purge. Pacifism was renounced ; MacArthur now insisted Japan build its own defense force. When the intellectuals criticized the U.S. occupation forces, MacArthur demanded that Japanese education be politically neutral. Communists were purged from the universities in the name of democracy, and schoolchildren read primers in anticommunism. The Japanese government welcomed the ultranationalists and militarists back to society. When the occupation forces disbanded, the Americans were convinced Japan would remain a loyal, anticommunist ally. From the beginning of the Occupation, MacArthur´s autocratic style had demonstrated the practical limits of democratic idealism ; hence ; the Japanese assimilated democracy and pacifism in modified form. The success of the Occupation, Nishi writes in his conclusion, is ´an epoch-making testimony to both the quality of American democratic ideals and the ability of the Japanese people to translate the ideals into active practice.´The author, born one week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, concludes with an account of the chaos he experienced as a schoolboy in postwar Japan. Born too late to feel guilty for the war or shame for the surrender, Nishi is a product of the historical clash of cultures he documents here. Fascinated by the conflicting teachings synthesized in his own personality, Nishi explores the intimate relation between political ideology and pedagogy in Japan before and after the war. Because Americans made the policies that the Japanese government implemented during the Occupation, American official and personal documents are the primary sources for this study ; many of the documents included have been only recently declassified by the U.S. government. ◆After graduating in linguistics and literature from Kwansei Gakuin Daigaku in Japan, Toshio Nishi earned his M.A. in communications and his Ph.D. in higher education at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has worked as an account representative for the J. Walker Thompson Company in New York and Tokyo and as a research scientist for the Battelle Memorial Institute in Seattle. In writingthis book, Nishi undertook extensive archival research at the U.S. National Archives, the Harry S. Truman Library, the MacArthur Memorial Library, the National Institute for Educational Research in Tokyo, and most recently, the Hoover Institution, where he is a postdoctoral fellow. Nishi now resides in Seattle.)

   

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