| NOTA |
(★)(Ted Cohen´s fascinating, behind-the-scenes story will forever alter our understanding of the new Japan. An insider during the American Military Occupation after World War II, Cohen here chronicles the six crucial years when a handful of Americans, governed by New Deal tenets, formed a ´hidden government´in Japan. Drawing on his experiences as labor relations chief under General Douglas MacArthur, he examines the American reforms which laid the foundation for modern Japan --transforming it from a feudalistic society based on exploiting the peasantry to a nation of middle-class voters and consumers. Following Japan´s surrender, General MacArthur´s Occupation Headquarters began an unprecedented operation to remake 70 million Japanese into a democratic and peaceful nation. Cohen paints a vivid portrait of the General as an unapproachable, arrogant man,´a political miser who hoarded support from wherever it came.´ Still, he credits MacArthur with inspiring the Japanese nation to believe in itself once more, adding,´it is highly problematical whether any other Occupation commander could have done nearly so well.´Cohen brings to light the internal struggle, motives, and political purges that marked the six-year Occupation and recounts the startling details of how American civilian planners and Cold War strategists both working with Japanese politicians and bureaucrats became the final arbiters of Japan´s fate. By far the richest legacy bequeathed to Japan by the Occupation --and America´s greatest foreign policy success-- was ´economic democratization.´Though Americans had expected peacetime industry to develop, the birth of the nation´s first-ever mass consumer market was totally unforeseen --and the country´s emergence as an economic superpower was even more astonishing. ´Remaking Japan´lays to rest much of the left/right controversy surrounding the American Occupation. Theodore Cohen was there when it happened-- as both participant and scholarly witness. Theodore Cohen, a 1930s graduate of the City College of New York, played a key role in General MacArthur´s Tokyo Headquarters for five years ; he remained in Japan for thirty-two years after the occupation, working in business. He died in 1983.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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