Reforms
The two points people discuss the most were the new constitution and political parties. The constitution had its coverage within the Nippon Times newspaper on April 18, 1946 and with the news came its fair share of critiques from the public. [4] The biggest one of these criticisms was that the Occupation authorities forced this on the Japanese government, which Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru explains was not the case. He even goes as far as to say that nothing from the GHQ seemed to be coercive by the authorities.[5] Throughout the Nippon Times there are talks about the emerging political parties and even the entrance of women into the political sphere.[6] This was a big topic, so much so that on September 8, 1945 a Nippon Times article covered the history of political parties in Japan to inform the people.[7]
2. Education:
We see both a lot of conversations among the Japanese people, and a lot of literature on this piece of legislation. The concept of reeducation and the dismissal of nationalism is a very unique part of education reforms. These reforms have since had debate on their effectiveness and historian Henry Wray considers these to be failures when looking at them today. He examines them through their methodology, structure, and ideology. He concludes that methodologically due to the limited time of the occupation, and the deep seated traditions within Japanese culture the western education system did not stick. Ideologically the concept of decentralizing education failed as the schools relied heavily on the Ministry of Education and political behavior which led educators to look for leadership which ultimately rested in Tokyo. However, structurally it did succeed because of history of structural reforms. [8]
3. Economics:
Here we reforms that were primarily trying to deal with the major problems that Japan was facing. Here we see reforms trying to do with unemployment, massive inflation, food shortages, labor, and agriculture. During this time there were many labor movements throughout Japan, and many of the problems were solved through the labor improvements made by the government. On March 9, 1947 an article titled The Improvements of Labor Standards explains:
The Labor Standards Bill now before the Diet goes far beyond anything ever seen before in this country with respect to setting up fir standards for labor. Many of its provisions are even more advanced than those found in the labor legislation of many of the older democratic countries, and for Japan it represents in improving the conditions of her working population.[9]
