Daily Livelihood. Urban dwellers were still growing food in small plots, scavenging whenever they could, and running off to the countryside to barter with farmers in 1948 when Washington engaged in a review of Japan policy and concluded, with the President's endorsement, that Japan's economic recovery as a workshop of Asia was essential to American global security policy. As enforcer of Washington's new Nine Point Stabilization Plan, General MacArthur ordered the Japanese government to balance its national budget and plan for the sale of manufactured goods abroad, especially in Southeast Asia. A favorable yen-dollar exchange rate was under discussion, and Detroit banker Joseph Dodge would soon arrive to oversee stabilization but with mixed results. To further the Japanese government's own plan of economic revival through foreign trade, a new Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) was set up in May 1949 to control currency and promote key or strategic industries. Early targets for financial aid were the shipbuilding and iron and steel industries. Japanese leaders also chimed in with strictures to the Japanese people be thrifty and frugal, work hard, and save, however meager the income. This did not sit well with the grassroots; yet Japanese would manage to save on an amazing scale. The black market, a plague to the poor, was available only to those who could pay high prices for basic commodities. Frustrated by low quality, merchant indifference, and government deceit, housewives throughout Japan took direct action in 1948-49 and formed Shufurun, the Housewives Federation, under the leadership of Oku Mumeo, a member of the Upper House and advocate of kitchen politics. By then, land reform had resulted in widespread and equitable landownership in the countryside. Next, farmers would gain government support for high rice prices. Farm households were yet to benefit from labor saving machinery and appliances, but running water in the kitchen was easing the work load.

Signs of Recovery. Gradually, Tokyo, Osaka, and Yokohama and other large and small cities displayed signs of recovery, though life remained somber and grim. Much attention was given to the reconstruction of Tokyo, the capital of Japan and center of considerable curtural and intellectual activity. Along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tokyo had been reduced to a vast wasteland in 1945. Recovery was more difficult in the two A-bombed cities, where there had been a collapse of welfare and medical services and survivors suffered from radiation sickness. Under the watchful eye of the occupiers, the city of Hiroshima began holding commemorations and planning a memorial museum and park. As the economy began to make a slow and stumbling return to former economic highs, more and more Japanese were able to enjoy rice in their diet and to pleasure in festivals, parks, sports, and street entertainment. They went to the movies, read books and magazines, listened to the radio and phonographic records, attended theatrical performances, and gambled in pachinko parlors. Television did not enter the scene until 1953. A favorite place for English language materials was the local U.S. Information center. Meantime, the great internal debate over spiritual rebirth continued. Politicians, scientists, educators, literary critics, authors and artists all chimed in with ideas on remaking Japan as a nation of peace and culture. Hiratsuka Raicho, feminist and founder of the Bluestockings back in 1911, was among the many women who emerged or re-emerged as pacifists and firm supporters of Article Nine, the peace clause in the Constitution.

Korean War. With the sudden outbreak of war in the Korean peninsula in June 1950 and resulting procurement by United States and United Nations forces of goods and services on a mass scale in Japan, industries were reborn and jobs became more plentiful for men and women. By the end of the Occupation, April 1952, and the return of sovereignty, somewhat compromised by the peace and security treaties, modest urban reconstruction had taken place. Within a few years, the unimaginable began to happen. Under the first Five Year Economic Plan, 1955, Japan entered a period of high speed growth and economic doubling in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This time, MITI's strategic targets for special aid included electronics and automobiles as well as iron and steel plants. Urban housewives would begin to realize dreams of owing the three treasures: electric rice cookers, refrigerators, and washing machines. Added to the list were vacuum cleaners and black and white television sets. The transformation of the daily household routine was underway. Consumerism could replace survival. For the lower middle-class and working poor, the struggle would continue for living wages and improved working conditions against a well-organized conservative coalition of officials, big businessmen, and bureaucrats. By the 1970s, the increasingly affluent Japanese would see themselves as a middle-class society.