Published on August 26, 2019. This article introduces a book by Watanabe Shoichi and discusses the purge from public office in postwar Japan, Herbert Norman, Tsuru Shigeto, Hani Goro, Yanaihara Tadao, Ouchi Hyōe, Takigawa Yukitoki, and others, showing how their return and influence over universities produced disciples who spread into academia, bureaucracy, newspapers, publishing, and education, turning Japan’s intellectual sphere overwhelmingly leftist.

August 26, 2019.
After the war, they sent out their students into the universities and junior colleges that were created all over Japan like bamboo shoots after rain, raised them into professorial posts, and, moreover, created civil servants through examination questions made by these people.
This is the chapter I sent out on May 27, 2019, under the title: And the presidents and heads of Japan’s top universities, the former imperial universities and Hitotsubashi University, which would later produce professors for newly established universities, became leftist.
The following book is not only a must-read for every Japanese citizen, but also a must-read for people throughout the world.
It is filled with facts that people who merely subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun and watch NHK did not know at all…facts they were never told.
It is one of the finest books of postwar Japan.
Watanabe Shoichi was from Yamagata Prefecture, the neighboring prefecture to Miyagi Prefecture, where I was born.
People from Yamagata Prefecture must continue to boast to Japan and the world that they are from the same homeland as this man, who was one of the greatest intellectuals of postwar Japan and a true treasure of Japan.
The emphases in the text outside the headings are mine.
The intellectual sphere became entirely leftist.
In a sense, it may have been good that generational change advanced in the business world and that people could face things with a fresh spirit.
But what is important here is the thoroughness of the purge from public office against schools and journalism.
Who was at the center of the purge from public office?
Even MacArthur did not know the details of prewar Japan.
The person brought in for that reason was Herbert Norman.
He grew up in Japan as the son of a Canadian missionary who was doing missionary work there.
He could use Japanese like a Japanese person, and he knew Japan well.
He studied at Cambridge University, became a Communist Party member, and later studied at Harvard University in America, earning his doctorate with Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State, written in English.
The person who served as his private tutor in Japanese history was Hani Goro.
Hani Goro was a Marxist scholar of Meiji history.
The Occupation forces needed someone like Norman, who knew Japan thoroughly.
When Norman, though a Canadian diplomat, came to Japan to work within the Occupation forces, the first person he sought out to meet was the economist Tsuru Shigeto, a leftist comrade from his Harvard days.
It is thought that Herbert Norman, Tsuru, Hani, and others were deeply involved in drawing up the lists for the purge from public office.
Before the war, the imperial universities were “the Emperor’s universities,” and therefore leftist scholars and people connected with the Comintern were made to resign.
These people were the first to return after the purge from public office in defeated Japan.
Many of the imperial university professors who had originally been there were purged from public office.
And the presidents and heads of Japan’s top universities, the former imperial universities and Hitotsubashi University, which would later produce professors for newly established universities, became leftist.
These were people who, before the war, would have been criticized as unsuitable for His Majesty the Emperor’s universities.
The harmful influence that defeat-profiteers like them exerted on Japan was great.
For example, Yanaihara Tadao is said to have been an admirable Christian, but after the war he became president of the University of Tokyo.
Before the war, he was the kind of person who wrote an essay saying something like “God, please destroy Japan,” and was made to resign as unsuitable for His Majesty the Emperor’s university.
Japan at that time was mild, so the matter would have ended if he had withdrawn it, but he did not withdraw it.
Ouchi Hyōe, who returned to the University of Tokyo after the defeat and became president of Hosei University, had been made to resign from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo in connection with the Second Popular Front movement.
Takigawa Yukitoki was also made to resign because he wrote an anarchistic criminal-law textbook at Kyoto University.
Because anarchistic criminal law could not be taught at His Majesty the Emperor’s university, the Ministry of Education asked him to rewrite the textbook, but he refused, and so he had to resign.
However, even though he resigned, he was not punished, and Takigawa became a lawyer.
And after Japan’s defeat, he became dean of the Faculty of Law at Kyoto University, and after that, president of Kyoto University.
I heard from a close relative of Takigawa that, at the time, he was a communist.
Many of the Kyoto University professors who resigned together with Takigawa went on, after the war, to take important posts at various universities.
Araki Sadao, who became a Class-A war criminal, was a man who had reached the highest ranks as a military man: Minister of War, Military Councillor, and baron, but he was not charged as a military man.
His time as Minister of Education became the issue.
Araki wrote, “The ones who made me a Class-A war criminal were Ouchi Hyōe and Takigawa Yukitoki.”
Also, Tsuru Shigeto, who became president of Hitotsubashi University, openly confessed that he had clearly been an agent of the Comintern.
Even at a glance, the presidents and powerful professors of Japan’s major universities were people who, before the war, had been considered unsuitable for Japan’s imperial universities.
Such people returned in triumph to major posts like victorious generals, as beneficiaries of defeat.
After the war, they sent out their students into the universities and junior colleges that were created all over Japan like bamboo shoots after rain, raised them into professorial posts, and, moreover, created civil servants through examination questions made by these people.
In particular, the major universities had a chair system, so the number of positions was fixed.
People who studied under a given chair almost invariably said the same things as the professor.
Their disciples, and the disciples of those disciples, were the same.
That superstition would continue until around the generation of the disciples’ great-grandchildren.
Moreover, because the graduates of the major universities they taught at were excellent, they became high-ranking bureaucrats and entered in large numbers into influential newspapers and influential publishing houses.
Also, high school, junior high school, and elementary school teachers were educated by scholars of that line.
Before anyone realized it, Japan’s field of intellectual life had quickly become entirely leftist.
Herbert Norman, the Comintern agent mentioned earlier, is such that his collected works, which have not even been published in his home country of Canada, have been published in Japan by Iwanami Shoten.
Once the world of speech is controlled by the left, society will probably not move easily until those people die out.
At this time, among the publishers that barely survived, one of the large ones was Bunjuku Shunju.
I still remember that an article titled “His Majesty the Emperor Laughs Heartily” appeared in Bunhi Shunju.
It was an article about Tatsuno Yutaka, a scholar of French literature, Sato Hachiro, a poet, and Tokugawa Musei, a benshi, writer, and actor, speaking cheerfully with His Majesty the Emperor.
In the leftist atmosphere of the time, there were no articles like this at all in major magazines.
It was an age in which anything called intellectual meant a leftist way of thinking.
Seeing this article, ordinary people rejoiced, saying, “So a magazine like this still remains,” and it is said that Bunjuku Shunju increased its circulation at that time by about 100,000 copies each month.
As an example showing that ordinary people did not desire the leftist magazines that were said to be intellectual, I remember the story of this article even from my childhood.
Incidentally, Kikuchi Kan, who founded Bunjuku Shunju, was purged from public office.
Since Kikuchi Kan was regarded as a war criminal, one can see how abnormal the situation was.
Therefore, Bunjuku Shunju was once dissolved.
However, the twelve people who remained, including Sasaki Mosaku and Ikejima Shinpei, received the company name and magazine title from Kikuchi Kan and somehow revived it.
In this way, the people whom we now call progressive or leftist are all beneficiaries of defeat and their disciples.
Eventually, the purge from public office was gradually loosened.
Especially when the Korean War broke out, the argument made by Japan’s defense team at the Tokyo Trial, that Japan had tried to prevent the communization of East Asia, turned out to have been correct, and conversely, it was decided that Communist Party leaders should be purged.
It is truly a comical story.
After MacArthur left Japan, Lieutenant General Ridgway became Supreme Commander.
Ridgway issued a statement giving the Japanese government the authority to reexamine various laws and ordinances enacted under the Occupation in order to implement the directives of the Occupation forces, and the lifting of the purges began immediately.
In the end, because Japan became independent under the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the purge order was abolished.
This article continues.