Written on 2019-05-27.
This passage argues that the GHQ’s dissolution of the zaibatsu and land reform undermined Japan’s domestic order and economic foundations, thereby weakening postwar Japan.
By contrasting these policies with the principle that a modern nation requires both wealth and strength, and with Park Chung-hee’s effort to model Korea’s development on Japan, it sharply questions the true nature of the occupation reforms.

2019-05-27

The book below is not only essential reading for every Japanese citizen, but also essential reading for people throughout the world.
It is packed with facts that those who merely subscribed to Asahi Shimbun and watched NHK never knew at all… facts they were never told.
It is one of the finest books in postwar Japan.
Watanabe Shoichi was from Yamagata Prefecture, the prefecture neighboring my native Miyagi Prefecture.
The people of Yamagata must continue to take pride before Japan and the world in the fact that they are compatriots of a man who was the greatest intellectual of postwar Japan and one of Japan’s genuine treasures.

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.

The Dissolution of the Zaibatsu Was a Policy to Weaken Japan

In addition to the purge from public office, the occupation forces carried out various policies in Japan’s domestic affairs.
Among them were the dissolution of the zaibatsu and land reform.
Could these two policies have been carried out in the United States?
Of course not.
If someone went to somewhere like Texas in America and gave a speech saying, “It is time for land reform,” he would probably be lying there as a corpse within three days.
They carried out in Japan things that they could never have done in their own country.
The zaibatsu were hated by the Left, but probably even Americans who were not on the Left supported the breakup of Japan’s zaibatsu.
That was because a small island country with no natural resources and with eighty percent of its land covered by mountains had fought a major war against the United States.
For at least the first year and a half, it was a situation in which no one knew which side would win.
America took this as proof that Japan had financial power.
Therefore, it likely supported the dissolution of the zaibatsu because it believed that doing so would become a breakwater preventing Japan from ever waging war again.
On this matter, I believe that both the American Right and Left wanted to carry it out.
Still, they did not go so far as to produce war criminals from the business world.
It seems that they abandoned the idea of producing war criminals from the zaibatsu for various reasons.
Certainly, it was the new zaibatsu, not the old zaibatsu, that had advanced into places like Manchuria.
But of course, they were purged from public office.
I think the one who understood best that something like a zaibatsu is necessary for a nation to develop as a modern state was President Park Chung-hee of South Korea.
A modern state cannot achieve a “strong military” unless it first has a “wealthy country.”
No matter how much one trains samurai, they will lose to guns.
And it is obvious that a gun with a range of five hundred meters is superior to one with a range of only three hundred meters.
I believe that conscientious Koreans before the war understood in their bones that the Yi dynasty had failed to do this.
That is why Park Chung-hee caused zaibatsu-like conglomerates to be created.
And imitating the Meiji Restoration, he carried out what he called a “revolution of restoration.”
He envied Japan.
And he achieved the economic growth later called the “Miracle on the Han River,” setting South Korea on its course toward becoming a wealthy nation.

(Note 1) Park Chung-hee (1917–1979), a South Korean soldier and politician.
He was born in Korea under Japanese rule and graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy.
At the end of the war, he was a lieutenant in the Manchukuo Army.
In 1961, he established a military regime by coup d’état, and in 1963 he assumed office as President of South Korea.
He concluded the Japan-South Korea Basic Treaty and promoted a policy of rapid economic growth, but in 1979 he was assassinated by his close aide, KCIA Director Kim Jae-gyu.

To be continued.