To Restore and Reconstruct: Yoshida Shigeru, Ashida Hitoshi, Katayama Tetsu

Abstract

The end of the war in 1945 turned Japan into a country which was ‘defeated, liberated, and occupied all at once’ (Gluck, 1993, p. 66). The country was run by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), which referred to both the Supreme Commander himself, General Douglas MacArthur, and the administrative bureaucracy of the Allied powers occupying Japan. The Japanese governments during the occupation period were weak and shortlived: the seven years of occupation saw seven governments. Four of them were headed by Yoshida Shigeru (1878–1967), who influenced Japan more than any other politician in the postwar period. Son-in-law to one of the most influential statesmen in Japan’s modern history, Makino Nobuaki, Yoshida entered diplomatic service in 1907 after graduating in law from Tokyo Imperial University. Subsequently, he served as a diplomat in both Asian and Western countries and reached the upper echelons of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He withdrew from active service in 1939 but took part in clandestine peace discussions in the final years of the war, an activity for which he was arrested in 1945 and held for two months by the military police (Dower, 1979, pp. 267ff). In September 1945, at the age of 67, he entered the government when Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru was forced by the Americans to resign (Ōtsuka, 1992, p. 9).