The Research Of The Japanese “middle-of-theroad” Regime During The American Occupation Period

This paper using a variety of original archives which related to the U.S.occupation of Japan published by Japan and United States,and on the basis of the existing researches of Chinese,American and Japanese scholars to comb in detail of the historical process of the middle-of-the-road regime from formation to collapse by discussing the interactive relationship between various political forces in the ruling system.On the one hand,it investigates the characteristics of Japan’s political system during the occupation period,on the other hand,it also discusses the decision-making autonomy and its limitations of the Japanese government during the occupation period.The first chapter is the formation of the indirect ruling system and the establishment of Japanese political parties in the early postwar period.The main purpose is to introduce the political forces existing in the indirect ruling system and the standpoint and ideological basis of their mutual opposition and cooperation.There were often power differentiation and competition under the indirect occupation system,so both the United States and Japan produced some different political forces,they launched a multi-party game on the platform of Japan’s postwar political reform and economic revival.In particular,the support and restriction between the Government Section(GS),the Economic Science Section(ESS)of the General Headquarters(GHQ)and the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party has had a significant impact on the formation,decision-making and collapse of the Katayama and Ashida Cabinet.The second chapter is about the political reform of Japan and the formulation of Japan’s constitution.The main purpose is to discuss the game of various political forces around these two democratization reform measures.First,the conservative parties were greatly weakened as a large number of their people dismissed from public office,while the Socialist Party was less affected and maintained its strength,also the public was more familiar with them as well.Since then,Japan’s constitutional reform has become the focus of the game among political forces.As the GS played a leading role in the formulation of Japan’s constitution,its power in the GHQ reached its peak.Meanwhile,the GS felt closer to the Socialist Party by recognizing the "progressiveness" of the Socialist Party’s constitution draft.In this way,the leadership of the United States and Japan got ready for cooperation to support the Katayama cabinet to come to power.The third chapter is the discussion of economic revival issue and the development of labor movement.Under the background that economic policy has gradually become the focus of attention of the United States and Japan,the Economic Science Section’s voice has rised a lot in the GHQ,while the labor force,which developed to a certain extent due to the relatively tolerant labor policy adopted by the GHQ in the early postwar period,to become an important political force.After a series of reorganization process,the labor force integrated into the"Economic Revival Conference",whose ideology emphasized labor and capital coordination.This relatively mild standpoint was unified with the Socialist Party’s doctrine about the labor and capital,so the labor force finally became the political foundation of the Socialist Party to come to power.The next chapter begins to discuss the political game of various forces revolved around different policies during the process of the establishment and collapse of Katayama cabinet.The main purpose is to explain that the political power during the period of Katayama cabinet was complex and changeable,which often plunged the regime into "multi-faceted warfare" in decision-making.At the beginning of its establishment,Katayama cabinet implemented democratization policies such as the reform of civil law and criminal law,the disintegration of the Ministry of the Home Affairs and the reform of the police system,which were consistent with the GS’s policies to reform Japan.They have made considerable achievements with strong support from each other,but its process also reflected the weakness of Katayama cabinet in decision-making.This problem has been constantly exposed when the cabinet had to dismiss Hirano from Agricultural Minister post,and dealt with the issue of nationalize management of coal mines.Therefore,the GS had to be overprotective in order to support the cabinet,but its political interference has seriously shaken the ruling power of the cabinet in turn.Moreover,with the decline of the importance of democratization reform,the importance of economic policy and the voice of the ESS have increased significantly,which has prompted the ESS to intervene in the debate of the Katayama cabinet on economic policies such as the establishment of a new price system and priority production mode,resulting in the politicization of economic issues.Finally,when the all parties could not deal with the dissension in the budgeting,the Katayama cabinet went to collapse.The last chapter expounds the short process from the establishment to the collapse of the Ashida cabinet.As the political legacy of the collapse of the Katayama cabinet,the conservative forces began their coalesce process,which caused the decline of the influence of the Socialist Party.With the development of the Cold War,the labor policy of the GHQ turned to more suppressive,but the Socialist Party has done nothing about it,resulting in a complete break between the Ashida cabinet and the labor forces.This made the Ashida cabinet lose its political foundation.Meanwhile,the dissension about the budgeting that brought the collapse of the Katayama cabinet continued,which gradually deepened the split of the regime.After being impacted by the Showa Denko Incident,a largescale corruption incident involving the political,financial and bureaucrat class that exposed for the first time in postwar period,and the G-2 further used the incident to defeat the power of the GS,the Ashida cabinet who had lost the support of the GS and the labor forces at the same time could only step down.The Katayama and Ashida cabinet as a unique and accidental the middle-of the-road regime in Japanese political history,its formation and collapse have left a certain political heritage for future generations.First of all,the policies of the regime put Japan on the track of democratic politics and faithfully implemented the values of freedom and democracy embodied in the new constitution.Secondly,the Socialist Party since then has lost its interest in joint governance and turned to the goal of seizing power alone,laying the opposition party structure between conservatism and progressiveness in Japan after the Second World War.Finally,the Japanese conservative forces have learned that,if necessary,they could welcome the opposition party join the regime and pretend to go on "the middle of the road" to alleviate the doubts of Japanese voters and other democratic countries in the world about the long-term ruling political system of the Japanese conservative forces.This is the political experience they learned from the-middleof-road regime during the occupation period.And from the perspective of the interactive relationship between Japan and the United States,although the political power of the United States dominated the occupation system,Japan still maintained a certain degree of subjective initiative and autonomy.Especially when the U.S.intervention in the Japanese politics reached the peak during the middle-of-the-road regime peroid,the relevant politicians and bureaucrats of Japan were still trying their best to negotiate and mediate with Americans to actively strive for Japan’s interests.Although most of the cases ended in the failure of the middle-of-the-road regime,indicating that Japan’s autonomy is relatively limited,only their constant "trial and error" in the process of conflict and reconciliation with GHQ has provided valuable experience for Japan to establish a good "cooperative" relationship with the United States since the second Yoshida cabinet,it has also provided the key of wisdom for today’s Japan’s difficult problem of how to deal with the relationship between China and the United States simultaneously.