Episode 537 – The New Order

Facing Backward Podcasts

This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the Occupation comes to an end, but what happens next? This week is all about the 1950s, when clashing visions of Japan’s future would culminate in one of the largest protests in the nation’s history, laying the groundwork for the political world that has existed ever since.

Sources

Kapur, Nick. Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise After Anpo

Pyle, Kenneth. Japan Rising: The Sources of Japanese Power and Prestige

Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan

Lu, David. Japan: A Documentary History, Vol II

Images

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru signs the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952, formally ending World War II as well as the Occupation.

Yoshida Shigeru (left) and Hatoyama Ichiro. I assume both men are leaning back to be safely out of the stabbing range of the other.

The Speaker of the House being muscled to the rostrum for a vote on the treaty. Confrontations between socialists and LDP members got VERY violent over the course of the treaty debates.

Socialist and other left-wing protestors riot outside the Diet building in downtown Tokyo against the renewal of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty in 1960. The LDP faction in power had to bring in police and yakuza to prevent the crowds from halting the passage of the renewed treaty.

Protestors during the Anpo Riots. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.