This article examines how the purge conducted during the Allied occupation transformed Japanese universities, school education, the bureaucracy, newspapers, and publishing. Quoting Shoichi Watanabe’s account of Herbert Norman, Shigeto Tsuru, Goro Hani, Tadao Yanaihara, Hyoe Ouchi, Yukitoki Takigawa, and others, it presents his historical argument that Japan’s intellectual sphere became overwhelmingly left-wing after the war.

August 29, 2020
I am republishing the chapter released on May 27, 2019 under the title: “And the presidents and chancellors of Japan’s leading universities—the former imperial universities and Hitotsubashi University—which would later produce professors for the newly established universities, became left-wing.”
The following book is essential reading not only for every Japanese citizen but also for people throughout the world.
It is filled with facts that people who merely subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun and watched NHK did not know—facts that they were never told.
It is one of the finest books produced in postwar Japan.
Mr. Shoichi Watanabe was born in Yamagata Prefecture, which borders Miyagi Prefecture, where I was born.
The people of Yamagata Prefecture must continue to proclaim proudly to Japan and the world that they come from the same prefecture as this man, who was one of the greatest intellectuals of postwar Japan and a genuine national treasure of Japan.
The Intellectual Sphere Became Entirely Left-Wing
In one sense, the generational transition proceeded in the business world, and it may have been beneficial that people were able to approach their work with a fresh outlook.
What is important here, however, is how thoroughly the purge was applied to schools and journalism.
Who was the central figure behind the purge directive?
Even MacArthur could not have possessed detailed knowledge of prewar Japan.
The person consequently appointed was Herbert Norman.
He grew up in Japan as the son of Canadian missionaries who were engaged in missionary work in the country.
He could speak Japanese like a Japanese person and knew Japan well.
He studied at Cambridge University and became a member of the Communist Party, and later studied at Harvard University in the United States, where he received his doctorate for “Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State,” written in English.
His private tutor in Japanese history was Goro Hani.
Goro Hani was a Marxist scholar of Meiji history.
The occupation authorities needed people like Norman who possessed an intimate knowledge of Japan.
When Norman, although a Canadian diplomat, came to Japan to work within the occupation authorities, the first person he sought out was the economist Shigeto Tsuru, one of his left-wing associates from his Harvard days.
Herbert Norman, Tsuru, Hani, and others are believed to have been deeply involved in preparing the lists used for the purge directive.
Before the war, the imperial universities were “the Emperor’s universities,” and left-wing scholars and people believed to have connections with the Comintern were consequently dismissed.
After the purge directive was implemented in defeated Japan, these people were the first to return.
Many of the professors who had originally been at the imperial universities were themselves purged.
The presidents and chancellors of Japan’s leading universities—the former imperial universities and Hitotsubashi University—which would later produce professors for the newly established universities, then became left-wing.
Before the war, these were people who had been criticized as unsuitable for the universities of His Majesty the Emperor.
The adverse influence that these beneficiaries of Japan’s defeat exerted upon the country was enormous.
Tadao Yanaihara, for example, was said to be a devout Christian, but he became president of the University of Tokyo after the war.
Before the war, he had written an essay containing words to the effect of, “God, please destroy Japan,” and was compelled to leave because he was considered unsuitable for the university of His Majesty the Emperor.
Japan was tolerant at the time, and the matter could have been resolved if he had withdrawn the statement, but he refused to do so.
Hyoe Ouchi, who returned to the University of Tokyo after Japan’s defeat and became president of Hosei University, had been dismissed from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo because of his involvement in the Second Popular Front Incident.
Yukitoki Takigawa was also dismissed from Kyoto University because he had written an anarchistic criminal-law textbook.
The Ministry of Education asked him to rewrite the textbook because anarchistic criminal law could not be taught at the university of His Majesty the Emperor.
He refused and consequently had to leave.
His dismissal did not mean that he was criminally punished, however, and Mr. Takigawa became a lawyer.
After Japan’s defeat, he became dean of the Faculty of Law at Kyoto University and subsequently president of Kyoto University.
I heard from one of Mr. Takigawa’s close relatives that he was a communist at the time.
Many of the Kyoto University professors who resigned together with Mr. Takigawa assumed important positions at various universities after the war.
Sadao Araki, who was designated a Class-A war criminal, had risen to the highest ranks attainable by a military officer, serving as Minister of the Army and a member of the Supreme War Council and receiving the title of baron.
He was not accused, however, for his conduct as a military officer.
His tenure as Minister of Education became the issue.
Mr. Araki wrote, “The people who made me a Class-A war criminal were Hyoe Ouchi and Yukitoki Takigawa.”
Shigeto Tsuru, who became president of Hitotsubashi University, also confessed that he had unmistakably served as an agent of the Comintern.
Even a brief examination shows that the presidents and influential professors of Japan’s leading universities were people who, before the war, had been considered unsuitable for Japan’s imperial universities.
As beneficiaries of Japan’s defeat, these people returned triumphantly to leading positions.
They sent their students to the universities and junior colleges established throughout Japan like bamboo shoots after rain, training them to become professors.
Civil servants were also selected through examinations whose questions were prepared by these people.
Leading universities, in particular, operate under a chair system in which the number of positions is fixed.
Those who study within a particular chair almost invariably repeat what their professor says.
Their students and their students’ students do the same.
Such beliefs continue until approximately the third generation of disciples.
Because the graduates of the leading universities at which these people taught were highly capable, they became senior bureaucrats and entered influential newspapers and publishing houses in large numbers.
High-school, junior-high-school, and elementary-school teachers were also educated by scholars belonging to the same intellectual lineage.
Before anyone realized what had happened, Japan’s intellectual life had become entirely left-wing.
The collected works of Herbert Norman, the aforementioned Comintern agent, were published in Japan by Iwanami Shoten even though no such complete collection had been published in his native Canada.
Once the left controls the world of public discourse, society will probably be unable to change easily until those people have passed away.
Among the publishers that barely survived at the time, one of the major companies was Bungeishunju.
I still remember an article published in Bungeishunju entitled “His Majesty the Emperor Laughs Heartily.”
It described an enjoyable conversation between His Majesty the Emperor and Takashi Tatsuno, a scholar of French literature; Hachiro Sato, a poet; and Musei Tokugawa, a benshi narrator, writer, and actor.
Within the left-wing atmosphere of the time, no major magazine carried articles of this kind.
It was an age in which left-wing thought was regarded as synonymous with intellectual thought.
When ordinary people saw this article, they rejoiced, saying, “So a magazine like this still exists.”
It is said that Bungeishunju’s circulation consequently increased by approximately one hundred thousand copies every month.
I remember this story even from my childhood as an example demonstrating that ordinary people did not want the left-wing magazines that were regarded as intellectual.
Incidentally, Kan Kikuchi, who founded Bungeishunju, was purged from public office.
Because this meant that Kan Kikuchi was treated as a person responsible for the war, one can understand how abnormal the situation was.
Bungeishunju was therefore dissolved once.
Twelve people who remained, including Mosaku Sasaki and Shimpei Ikejima, received the company name and magazine title from Kan Kikuchi and somehow succeeded in rebuilding it.
In this way, all the people whom we now call progressive or left-wing were beneficiaries of Japan’s defeat or the disciples of those beneficiaries.
Eventually, the purge directive was steadily relaxed.
In particular, once the Korean War began, the argument made by Japan’s defense counsel at the Tokyo Trial—that Japan had sought to prevent the communization of East Asia—came to be regarded as correct.
The policy then shifted in the opposite direction, toward purging leaders of the Communist Party.
It was truly an absurd situation.
After MacArthur left Japan, Lieutenant General Ridgway became Supreme Commander.
Ridgway issued a statement granting the Japanese government the authority to review the occupation-era laws and ordinances enacted to implement the occupation authorities’ directives.
The lifting of the purge began immediately.
Ultimately, Japan regained its independence through the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and the purge directive was abolished.
To be continued.