Rorientation Policy. The democratization process, popular culture, and the literary, performing, and visual arts in Occupied Japan cannot be fully understood without knowledge of U.S. reorientation policy. To use a metaphor, the occupiers, in a continuing war of ideas, attempted to recast defeated Japan into a giant reorientation camp in order to remold values and attitudes or to remake psyches. To do so in a relatively short time, Japan was temporarily cut off from the rest of the world while the occupiers went to work to re-educate or reorient the people away from militarism and toward peace and democracy. The main vehicles were formal education and the mass media. While the educational system was undergoing drastic reform in content and organization, censors acted to delete disapproved items from the media; guidance acted officers to promote approved themes. Although such activities aided the Americanization of Japanese culture and society, Americanization was a global trend and not unique to Japan.

Civil Censorship. To assist reorientation, a huge censorship apparatus, known as the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD), was put into place within the vast Civil Intelligence Section (CIS), General Headquarters. The head of CIS was General Charles Willoughby, considered by most observers to be a right-wing member of General MacArthur’s inner circle. Telecommunications with Asia and the rest of the world were shut down. Telephone calls inside Japan were monitored. Mail and packages were opened. Until 1948-49, only a handful of Japanese were allowed to travel outside of Japan or to attend international conferences. In addition, Japan’s mass media underwent stringent surveillance. This, in turn, required the screening and recruitment of thousands of trusted Japanese nationals to read, listen, or act as media monitors under the direction of senior American and Allied staff.

Mass Media. The occupiers imposed civil censorship upon Japan’s mass media during the first weeks of the Occupation, in part to block Japanese news reports of misbehaving American troops. Strict rules were issued to representatives of the media, such as publishers and editors, but not to the general public. That fact that Americans, who billed themselves as promoters of free speech, engaged in censorship was supposed to be a secret. A special unit was created within CCD called the Publications, Pictorial, and Broadcast Section (PPB) to handle censorship of print, stage, screen, and radio. Print censorship ranged from books and magazines to newspapers and news agency releases. Pictorial censors handled classical and modern drama, film, and even children’s street shows but tended to leave the high arts alone, such as painting and sculpture. Radio experts monitored all of the programs broadcast over NHK (Japan Broadcasting Company), which at the time was Japan’s only network. Commercial television began after the Occupation.

Censorship Rules and Procedures. In September, CCD/PPB proclaimed ten basic rules for publication. Similar ones for radio broadcasting and filmmaking soon followed. In essence, the Japanese were told to tell the truth; to refrain from criticism of MacArthur, the Allies, and the occupiers; to curb militaristic or ultranationalistic sentiments; and to avoid anything which might disturb public tranquility. Obviously, these rules, especially the last one, gave the censors a wide area of discretion. In addition, keylogs were regularly provided, listing additional taboo topics, such as references to the atomic bomb, GI fraternization with Japanese women, the black market, or the American origins of the model draft constitution. For violations, censors sometimes deleted only a few words or sentences; at other times they removed whole paragraphs. For the worst offenses, they suppressed entire articles or stories. Many Japanese and American critics have noted the irony: as prior Japanese media controls were abolished, new Americans ones were instituted. Although the guiding rules and ends differed, public discourse was nevertheless compromised in Occupied Japan.

In the precensorship period, 1945-1947, publishers had to provide galley or page proof for advance review by censorship officials and to await decisions. Sometimes, this meant that newspapers faced delays in reporting breaking news or in getting exclusives. From late 1947 to November 1949, postcensorship prevailed for all but the most extreme leftist and rightist publications. In this second period, the procedure for after the fact violations was to send letters of disapproval to publishers and in the worst instances to confront them directly or to issue fines. Japan was divided into three censorship districts: District I was Tokyo and northern Japan; District II was centered in the Kyoto and Osaka area; and District III operated out of the city of Fukuoka in Kyushu. Most of the publishing world was in Tokyo, but much of importance also happened in Osaka and Kyoto. Senior censors tried to keep a close watch on local outlets and on traveling drama troupes, especially leftist sympathizers. Another important but understudied goal of civil censorship was to collect intelligence data on smuggling, the black market, or other criminal activities.

Japanese Nationals. Although efforts were made during the Pacific War to train a select group of American officers in intensive Japanese language programs, the occupiers did not have sufficient command of the language to engage in comprehensive censorship all by themselves. Japanese nationals who knew English and passed modest security checks, including many women, were in considerable demand to help scan materials in the Japanese language and bring questionable passages to the attention of their American bosses. In a bare-bones economy, such work brought needed family income, and hundreds of Japanese were employed as briefers, scanners, and re-examiners until they could find better jobs in a revitalized economy. A small number of Japanese Americans (Nisei or second generation) were also employed by PPB; some had been caught in wartime Japan and others were U.S. military personnel.

Confiscation. In a separate unit, not to be confused with civil censorship, CCD personnel identified and confiscated “ultranationalist” films made during the period, 1931 to 1945, and destroyed all but four copies of each title. A similar program was set up in CCD to confiscate militarists books published in the same period. About 50,000 titles were removed from bookstores or public channels, though not from libraries, and reduced to pulp. By mistake, tens of thousands of books were also burned. In addition, the occupiers confiscated and removed from public view over 200 wartime militaristic paintings, most of them by famous artists, and seized Japanese documentary film footage of the atomic bomb. These things were done even though the United States wished to avoid comparison with Nazi book burners and looters. A small number of Japanese literary figures were purged. None was female, although several established women writers had engaged in wartime propaganda activities. One famous woman suffragist was named in the political purge.

Media Guidance. Elsewhere in Occupation headquarters, an entirely separate special staff section known as the Civil Information and Education Section (CI&E), was also engaged in basic reorientation activities. The job of the Information side was to guide the media as opposed to censoring it. It did so in many ways: providing approved magazine and press items or photographs; recommending radio, stage, and film scenarios; securing access to world news; or arranging interviews with key Americans in Japan. A Reorientation Branch was set up in the War Department, Washington, D.C., to oversee such activities in all of the American occupied areas. Supply centers were established in New York and San Francisco to provide approved materials. The Japanese media were not forced to carry these items but often found it interesting or convenient to do so. CI&E also acted as a clearing house in assisting Japanese publishers secure translation rights for American books on approved lists. It did the same to help gain rights to show approved Hollywood movies. The British, Russians, and French engaged in similar cultural programs. In 1950, the best seller among foreign books in Japan was a translation of Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War epic, Gone with the Wind, but British and French books were not far behind. The Bible, which had few sales in 1945, also became a big seller.

Special Media Units. Within the Information Brach of CI&E, there was a Press Unit, Radio Unit, Drama Unit, and Music Unit—and a senior program officer to recommend and oversee the application of reorientation themes. In 1946, an officer in the Drama Unit of CI&E, for example, urged Japanese to stage more modern style plays and less classical drama. Instead of Kabuki, why not do John Drinkwater’s Abraham Lincoln or Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine? The complexities of monitoring Japanese films led to joint viewings of new films by censors and guidance officers. Monitoring of Japanese films continued to the end of the Occupation as CI&E took over some of the activities of the defunct PPB in late 1949. Americans were accused of forcing Japanese to introduce kissing scenes on stage and screen. If so, the Japanese caught on fast and offered little objection. The first kisses were delivered in the spring of 1946. The Press Unit of CI&E was so engaged in democratizing Japanese journalism that it by and large ignored creative writers. Of course, it joined other information units in promoting an atmosphere conducive to democratic and peaceful themes but did not hold sessions with important literary figures to urge them to write particular kinds of short stories, novels, or poems. Beginning in 1946, CI&E set up U.S. Information Centers in major cities throughout Japan. When outside contacts gradually resumed, 1948-1949, it attempted to shape close ties between the United States and Japan by organizing guided tours of America for select Japanese leaders and providing student scholarships for Japanese at American universities. In addition, it encouraged centers of higher learning in Japan to inaugurate American Studies program. In Okinawa, which was under separate control, U.S. military authorities backed the establishment of the University of the Ryukyus in 1950 and also funded scholarships for Okinawans to study abroad.

Under strict orders from General MacArthur to Occupation military and civil personnel, desecration of Japan’s shrines and temples was largely avoided. The Arts and Monuments Division, CI&E, worked closely with Japanese experts to preserve Japan’s artistic and architectural heritage and to open up private collections to the general public. Another special staff section, the Civil Property Custodian, endeavored to locate Japanese looted treasure from the wartime years and restore it to the rightful owners. The extent to which American and Allied occupiers took advantage of the situation to acquire Japanese art requires more study.

Pornography. Erotica, but more so, pornography presented special problems for the occupiers. The rules did not cover smut, trash, nudity, or indecency, or what the Japanese called kasutori culture (trash literature, nude stage shows, and other forms of commercialized sex). There was a great deal of this after 1945, and Japanese, especially mothers’ groups, blamed the Occupiers. In large part, however, this had home grown roots in 1920s Japan and further back into the popular culture of the Edo period, 1603-1868. It was further stimulated by postwar obsessions with sexuality. In such cases, the preferred policy of the Occupation was to let the Japanese police handle graphic porn under existing laws dealing with public morality. Rules or not, censors banned pornographic or nude images of Caucasian women as demeaning to the occupiers. Ironically, images from Western art of nude statues or busts were acceptable, and Japanese editors were not timid about using such visuals. When matters seemed to get out of hand--to the point of undermining respect for Occupation authority among civic-minded Japanese or vocal women’s groups, the solution was to delegate CI&E officials, not censors, to engage in tough talk with the offending Japanese.

Gendering Reorientation. Women’s liberation did not figure prominently as a topic of concern in the original wartime planning by American male experts in Washington, D.C., for defeated Japan. As the Occupation began, however, Japanese women were soon recognized as key to successful reorientation. This was, in part, because women were believed to be more inclined by nature to pacifism. As informed mothers and housewives, enjoying new rights, they would be crucial to the nurturing of peaceful and democratic children. Within CI&E, Ethel Weed, the chief women’s information officer for almost the entire period of the Occupation, saw beyond this vision of women’s talents and creativity. There should be an enhanced role for Japanese women in public life too. She used radio panels, screen scenarios, and meetings with women leaders and women’s groups to encourage voting, to promote understanding of the new constitution and civil and criminal codes, and to urge the exercise of new legal rights and educational opportunities. Weed also organized and led special tours to the United States by Japanese women leaders. A group in 1950 included lawyer Kume Ai and labor activist Tanino Setsuko. Japanese women also successfully competed for scholarships to study in the United States.

Even more important, Japanese women had their own modern history of activism and feminism. They had already been working for better treatment on the factory floor as well as within the family, access to professional and management careers, higher legal status, and expanded educational opportunities. Denied the privilege of four years of higher education at home, many young Japanese women had studied abroad before 1941, especially at small liberal arts and women’s colleges in the United States. One of them was Matsukata Haruko, granddaughter of a samurai on her father’s side and of a merchant on her mother’s side. In the Occupation period, she was a translator-interpreter and a journalist. Years later, she would become the wife of Dr. Edwin O. Reischauer, born in Japan of Methodist missionary parents, professor or modern Japanese history at Harvard, and ambassador to Japan, 1961-1965.

In early postwar Japan, many Japanese women were ready to demonstrate, agitate, protest, and compromise—in short, to deal with social reality as they experienced it. Censorship complicated matters. As early as November 1946, popular author Hayashi Fumiko said it for women, or to be accurate, tried to say it for them—and all Japanese-- in a small literary magazine. However, censors caught and deleted the following passage from her essay on being a novelist:

In many ways, the Occupation’s promotion of civil rights liberated Japanese journalism and creativity. Much of great value was in fact published. But Hayashi Fumiko’s grievance about free speech underscores another side: civil censorship interfered with public discourse on social reality in early postwar Japan, including lamentations for the dead, sexual fraternization, and American involvement in the black market. Long afterward, Japanese film and fiction depicting the interaction of Americans and Japanese in Occupied Japan remain sparse. Researchers fortunately can do much to recover that social reality, particularly on issues of class, race, and gender, by using valuable materials at the University of Maryland and the nearby National Archives II.

Resources for Study. The Gordon W. Prange Collection at the University of Maryland (which is the source for the above censored statement by Hayashi Fumiko) is indispensable to such research. It contains a vast array of Japanese language newspapers, press releases, newsletters, books, and above all magazines which document the civil censorship process from September 1945 through November 1949. This includes the many materials which passed, perhaps as high as 98 percent, as well as evidence of violations. It illustrates the censorship process from suspect passages caught by Japanese scanners working on the front lines to final decisions by senior American officers. It reveals what Japanese wanted to say but could not say in print. Virtually unexamined and unanalyzed are almost ten thousand photographs, dating mainly from 1947-1949. Although the period of civil censorship is relatively short in time, the print materials and photos in the Prange Collection permit research in depth on virtually every topic imaginable from life at the center in Tokyo to the grassroots level in early and mid-Occupied Japan.

Nearby, at National Archives II, College Park, are the official records of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers Japan, known as Record Group 331 (SCAP, Japan). These extensive official English language materials are contained in more than ten thousand boxes and cover the entire period, 1945 to 1952. The print censorship records within the PPB/CCD files are complementary to those at Maryland. In addition, there are PPB records which document Occupation censorship of radio broadcasting, theater, and film. For guidance activities, CIE boxes trace the work of chief women’s information officer Ethel Weed and the recommendations of the 1946 U.S. Education Mission, which contained four women educators. The records of the Government Section (GS) partially reveal the contribution of Beate (Sirota) Gordon to the model draft constitution and the economic purge as well as the activism of Eleanor Hadley in trust busting. The work of the 1946 Labor Standards Mission, which included one American woman, is among the many boxes of the Economic and Scientific Section (ESS). In addition, ESS records illustrate the interaction of Japanese and American women in labor reform. Of great value in a visual age, the still records of Archives II contain many thousands of photographs taken by the Army Signal Corps. The Film Division has reorientation films made for Japanese audiences and raw footage of home front devastation, daily survival, demonstrations, war crimes trials, and reconstruction.

Two Shifts of Emphasis. In 1947-48, there was a review of initial U.S. policy for Japan, resulting in a significant revision. This is reflected in NSC 13/2, a document adopted by the National Security Council in October 1948 and endorsed by the President. The essential goal was to encourage Japan’s economic revival. Primarily, this was to be done through the resumption of foreign trade in manufactured goods. This resulted in less emphasis on punishment (the war crimes trials were ending), on payment of reparations, and on trust busing. Business got more sympathy than labor. As part of the shift, strict civil censorship was viewed as counterproductive to the continued goal of nurturing democracy and a free and responsible press. Censorship eased but did not immediately end; guidance continued. The shift, moreover, did not stop drastic land reform. The Constitution remained intact. As indicated, there would be new stress by the United States on Japanese leadership training programs, educational tours, and cultural exchanges intended to link Japan to the United States and secondarily to Britain and Western European democracies.

There was a different shift of emphasis mid-way through the Occupation, this one in the attitudes of the Occupiers toward Japan and the Japanese. Americans and other foreigners rediscovered Japanese arts and culture or learned anew—not in huge numbers but enough admirers to make a difference. They fell in love with Japanese classical painting, architecture, and drama. But they also discovered modern Japanese literature and film. They admired gardens, pottery and porcelain, flower arrangements, the tea ceremony, fine kimonos, woodblock prints, and the martial arts. They became intrigued with Zen Buddhism. In a sense, this was renewal of 19th century Japonisme (a fascination with things Japanese), with perhaps a touch of orientalism (a Japan that exists for the West) or a desire for exotica (the mysterious, the fantastic, the strange). Whatever the driving force, simple exposure often turned into profound appreciation and lifelong learning. In the 1950s, East Asian and Japanese studies would begin to flourish in American colleges and universities. New and superb English language translations of early and modern Japanese literature began to appear, largely the work of scholars who had been trained during the war at the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School, Boulder, Colorado. The editor of this site is one of the beneficiaries of a deepened postwar respect for Japanese history and culture and of new post-Occupation funding opportunities to support American graduate student training.

A final question here and elsewhere on the site: Did Occupation policy, especially reorientation toward a culture of peace and democracy and away from aggression and militarism, result in the feminization of Japan? What does this mean for males and females? Was Japan eroticized and exoticized? Or demeaned as docile, submissive, and passive in international society? If so, by whom and how? Or did Japan come to be taken seriously as a key player in the cultural, economic, and political Cold War? In post-Occupied Japan, big business replaced a big military. High quality commercial goods replaced armaments. Japan’s cultural and economic capital came to the fore. In the early 21st century, can Japan be “a normal country” only if Japan has a regular army?