1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,360
If you can't beat them, join them, the article says.

2
00:00:03,360 --> 00:00:08,160
If you can't join them because you weren't born into an excessively wealthy family, eat them.

3
00:00:08,160 --> 00:00:12,320
If you can't eat them, they're rich that is, because they're people and that's illegal.

4
00:00:12,320 --> 00:00:15,120
Steal from them and then brag about it on Twitter.

5
00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:19,920
Add to start with the opening paragraph, not the title of this article, which is

6
00:00:19,920 --> 00:00:24,800
Canadians are now stealing overpriced food from grocery stores with zero remorse.

7
00:00:24,800 --> 00:00:26,240
As they should, I guess.

8
00:00:26,240 --> 00:00:31,680
This is from blogto.com, so it's from Toronto.

9
00:00:31,680 --> 00:00:39,200
Obviously highlighting the vast uptick, well, more than an uptick in the cost of everything,

10
00:00:39,200 --> 00:00:40,320
including groceries.

11
00:00:40,320 --> 00:00:46,480
This article is just talking about shoplifting from stores and how groceries are becoming

12
00:00:46,480 --> 00:00:47,760
very overpriced.

13
00:00:47,760 --> 00:00:50,720
It goes on to say, some are fed up with the bullshit.

14
00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:56,160
It seems that they're willing to risk criminal charges, theft under $5,000 to stick it to

15
00:00:56,160 --> 00:00:58,800
the system or, you know, avoid starvation.

16
00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:00,320
Good point.

17
00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:06,480
Dr. Sylvian Charlebois, a frequent media commentator and senior director of the AgriFood

18
00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:12,480
Analytics Lab at Halifax's Dalhousie University reported this week that while grocery theft

19
00:01:12,480 --> 00:01:17,120
has always been a major problem for the industry, it's now worse than before, after more than

20
00:01:17,120 --> 00:01:21,120
a year of price hikes due to or under the guise of inflation.

21
00:01:21,120 --> 00:01:22,800
Yes, thank you for adding that.

22
00:01:22,800 --> 00:01:27,520
Yeah, we were just talking about that the other day actually and how some of these grocery

23
00:01:27,520 --> 00:01:31,440
store chains have reported their highest earnings in a while.

24
00:01:31,440 --> 00:01:35,600
I just looked it up in a CBC article from November 16th, 2022.

25
00:01:35,600 --> 00:01:40,080
Probably the biggest grocery chain in Canada is Loblaws in the west of that superstore,

26
00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:42,560
and I think in the east it's just called Loblaws.

27
00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:47,920
Loblaws profits up 30% led by booming sales of, led by booming sales.

28
00:01:47,920 --> 00:01:52,000
I don't want to click on it to see the whole article title, but I think that's enough.

29
00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:54,320
That's exactly what we were just talking about.

30
00:01:54,320 --> 00:01:58,560
It's up 30% quarter three year over year, just massive growth.

31
00:01:58,560 --> 00:02:03,120
Not only that, a year ago they announced that they're freezing all their prices of their

32
00:02:03,120 --> 00:02:05,760
no-name brand and that just came off.

33
00:02:05,760 --> 00:02:11,520
But we were also just talking about the fact that they're guilty of shrinkflation.

34
00:02:11,520 --> 00:02:15,680
They froze prices, but they participated in shrinkflation.

35
00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:19,440
Technically, they didn't freeze the prices because they're selling you less product

36
00:02:19,440 --> 00:02:20,640
for the same price.

37
00:02:20,640 --> 00:02:23,040
Which I had noticed firsthand.

38
00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:25,680
Not that I ever really noticed shrinkflation.

39
00:02:25,680 --> 00:02:30,560
I mean, we did that whole episode on shrinkflation, but it's actual products that I'm buying,

40
00:02:30,560 --> 00:02:33,920
that I'm seeing are going down in the quantity you're getting.

41
00:02:33,920 --> 00:02:38,480
But now they're free to increase the prices as well as shrink it on us.

42
00:02:38,480 --> 00:02:39,760
So back to this article.

43
00:02:40,960 --> 00:02:44,880
With relatively narrow profit margins in grocery, the amount is huge.

44
00:02:44,880 --> 00:02:48,000
To cover losses, grocers need to raise prices.

45
00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:53,600
So in the end, we pay for grocery theft and I guess the major profit that they're making.

46
00:02:53,600 --> 00:02:59,120
In the average family of four expected to spend less than 16,000 on groceries this year,

47
00:02:59,120 --> 00:03:05,440
roughly $1,066 more than they did in 2022, which is about 7%.

48
00:03:05,440 --> 00:03:08,880
The food bank used spiking to new all-time highs.

49
00:03:08,880 --> 00:03:13,280
Some might argue that Canadians are already paying dearly for groceries of a different

50
00:03:13,280 --> 00:03:17,760
kind, which I think is kind of funny given what we were just talking about because they're

51
00:03:17,760 --> 00:03:20,000
making pretty good margins right now.

52
00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:26,160
And I find this is kind of a very roundabout and a different way of saying that the masses

53
00:03:26,160 --> 00:03:29,920
are subsidizing a small number of people to be able to afford to eat.

54
00:03:29,920 --> 00:03:34,080
They're just going about it in a legal way and then we all end up paying for it.

55
00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:37,440
Although it's not taxes, they're raising the prices for all of us.

56
00:03:37,440 --> 00:03:41,920
So technically we are paying for these people to eat in just a very roundabout way.

57
00:03:41,920 --> 00:03:42,720
It's true.

58
00:03:42,720 --> 00:03:45,920
It's just socialism by another name with corporations involved,

59
00:03:45,920 --> 00:03:49,360
which is entirely satire on my end.

60
00:03:49,360 --> 00:03:51,440
I do not mean that as socialism.

61
00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:54,400
This is the shittiest form of socialism you can get.

62
00:03:54,400 --> 00:03:58,720
If you're too poor to afford food and the government doesn't give you any options,

63
00:03:58,720 --> 00:04:03,280
taking food from a corporate grocery train to survive doesn't sound like theft to me,

64
00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:08,160
wrote another, inspiring a now viral response from Charleboix himself.

65
00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:13,040
You think it is appropriate to shoplift while grocery shopping just because you think prices

66
00:04:13,040 --> 00:04:18,640
are too high? Crazy wrote Charleboix when retweeting the author of the aforementioned tweet who had

67
00:04:18,640 --> 00:04:22,800
been responding to another response to his recent grocery store staff article.

68
00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:24,080
Who is Charleboix?

69
00:04:24,080 --> 00:04:28,800
He's the guy that originally said something in this article.

70
00:04:28,800 --> 00:04:31,600
Is it the billionaire thing? Eat the billionaires?

71
00:04:31,600 --> 00:04:32,960
No, that was what I started with.

72
00:04:32,960 --> 00:04:39,360
He says that basically according to some industry data and average site, blah, blah, blah.

73
00:04:39,360 --> 00:04:41,520
He was the guy that was originally talking.

74
00:04:41,520 --> 00:04:45,280
Oh, is he the one that was saying that it's all inflation's fault so don't blame the grocery

75
00:04:45,280 --> 00:04:46,560
stores? Yeah, pretty much.

76
00:04:46,560 --> 00:04:47,840
Yeah. Okay. Makes sense.

77
00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:52,320
Charleboix kind of reminds me of that politician that was saying,

78
00:04:52,320 --> 00:04:56,480
you know, prices are going up so just cancel your Netflix subscription.

79
00:04:56,480 --> 00:04:58,240
Truly sage advice.

80
00:04:58,240 --> 00:04:59,920
Yeah, exactly.

81
00:04:59,920 --> 00:05:04,880
And then in response to that, Netflix made the entire company look so shitty with their

82
00:05:04,880 --> 00:05:06,480
no sharing accounts anymore.

83
00:05:06,480 --> 00:05:07,280
Yeah.

84
00:05:07,280 --> 00:05:09,600
So they obliged us all to take that into account.

85
00:05:09,600 --> 00:05:10,880
Yeah, they did.

86
00:05:10,880 --> 00:05:14,800
But yeah, that's basically what the article is saying.

87
00:05:14,800 --> 00:05:15,840
It does go on.

88
00:05:15,840 --> 00:05:19,600
But I think that gave us a good conversation for a starter.

89
00:05:19,600 --> 00:05:24,080
And now it's probably time to get on to the real topic.

90
00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:26,720
Yeah, I just want to add one thing more at the end.

91
00:05:26,720 --> 00:05:31,520
I adamantly disagree that the entire cost of living increase that we've seen over the

92
00:05:31,520 --> 00:05:33,120
last year is just inflation.

93
00:05:33,120 --> 00:05:34,640
No, there's no way.

94
00:05:34,640 --> 00:05:40,080
Companies reaping record profits off of the entire mindset that it's oh, just inflation.

95
00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:41,600
So they can do whatever they want.

96
00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:44,880
Yeah, that's basically what it is when they're profiting so much.

97
00:05:44,880 --> 00:05:49,920
And yeah, I think we have all literally heard the ethical quandary of would you steal bread

98
00:05:49,920 --> 00:05:51,440
to feed your family.

99
00:05:51,440 --> 00:05:55,760
So I think we're all ethically pretty okay with people stealing food.

100
00:05:55,760 --> 00:05:58,000
Yeah, to eat, especially when they can't afford.

101
00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:00,400
We're all feeling the pinch right now.

102
00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:04,720
The groceries have gone drastically up in cost.

103
00:06:04,720 --> 00:06:07,120
And yeah, I agree with you.

104
00:06:07,120 --> 00:06:12,720
And although I'm not advocating for you to steal, I understand where these people's mindsets

105
00:06:12,720 --> 00:06:13,280
are.

106
00:06:13,280 --> 00:06:15,200
I think that's a good way to end that.

107
00:06:15,200 --> 00:06:16,560
I agree.

108
00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:18,480
And with that, we can get on with the episode.

109
00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:26,480
From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a Journey to the Fringe.

110
00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:33,840
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe.

111
00:06:33,840 --> 00:06:37,760
And based on your willingness to click on this episode, apparently your go to source

112
00:06:37,760 --> 00:06:39,200
for Japanese history.

113
00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:43,920
People usually look for podcasts who can actually speak the language of the region.

114
00:06:43,920 --> 00:06:45,680
But hey, to each their own.

115
00:06:45,680 --> 00:06:49,920
We are your passingly speaking English hosts, Taylor and Chelsea.

116
00:06:49,920 --> 00:06:55,360
Here today, following up on an episode that came out two weeks ago, we had a recording error.

117
00:06:55,360 --> 00:06:59,440
So unfortunately, we have to rerecord this, but it'll be just as good as the first time.

118
00:06:59,440 --> 00:07:01,440
And either way, nobody really knows.

119
00:07:01,440 --> 00:07:06,800
Today, we are following up on the Japanese war crimes with a bit of a history of World

120
00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:09,920
War II Japan to about the 1980s.

121
00:07:09,920 --> 00:07:11,840
I think that's the best way to explain it.

122
00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:16,720
Just have to interject because everybody does know because you just told them.

123
00:07:16,720 --> 00:07:18,320
Yeah, but they can't know which one's better.

124
00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:19,600
They can only hear this one.

125
00:07:19,600 --> 00:07:20,080
It's true.

126
00:07:20,080 --> 00:07:21,680
This is the best one.

127
00:07:21,680 --> 00:07:22,640
It is the best one.

128
00:07:22,640 --> 00:07:24,880
It is most importantly, the most recorded one.

129
00:07:24,880 --> 00:07:26,080
Yeah, exactly.

130
00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:28,400
Only Craig knows the other one.

131
00:07:28,400 --> 00:07:33,040
I call this period the postwar Japan era, although technically it's a bit of a lie

132
00:07:33,040 --> 00:07:37,200
because I'm going to start this well before postwar Japan just for ease of understanding.

133
00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:40,080
But there's a couple episodes that are going to be coming out in the next little while

134
00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:46,000
that I think we need this historical understanding of Japan to really fully appreciate the next

135
00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:46,640
episodes.

136
00:07:46,640 --> 00:07:50,800
I think this is a lot of fun and there's some crazy stuff that happens that nobody really

137
00:07:50,800 --> 00:07:51,520
talks about.

138
00:07:51,520 --> 00:07:55,520
Despite it being just normal history, I think it's something that is a fringe topic,

139
00:07:55,520 --> 00:08:00,800
at least in Western culture, because we really like to focus on ourselves and ninjas.

140
00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:03,040
There's one thing I know about Japan is ninjas.

141
00:08:03,040 --> 00:08:05,840
And I think we've already done this talk on a previous episode.

142
00:08:06,560 --> 00:08:07,840
So let's just get to it.

143
00:08:07,840 --> 00:08:12,000
Japan was a bad dude, I think is a good way to put it during World War II.

144
00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:16,960
They saw Europe doing their colonialism era and they said, hey, me too.

145
00:08:16,960 --> 00:08:18,320
And they got on board with that.

146
00:08:18,320 --> 00:08:20,000
So this is where we're actually going to start.

147
00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:24,400
And it's with some of the things that Japan did during World War II, not the war crimes,

148
00:08:24,400 --> 00:08:26,080
just its expansionist views.

149
00:08:26,080 --> 00:08:30,560
And we're going to start it with its expansion into what's considered Manchuria, which is

150
00:08:30,560 --> 00:08:36,240
Korea and the northern part of China just above Korea, which Japan occupies during World War II.

151
00:08:36,240 --> 00:08:38,320
So how does this actually come about?

152
00:08:38,320 --> 00:08:41,920
There's a few events that people look to as to what actually happened here.

153
00:08:41,920 --> 00:08:47,920
The first one taking place on September 18th, 1931, a Lieutenant Toimori Kawamoto of the

154
00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:52,960
Independent Garrison Unit of the 29th Japanese Infantry Regiment detonated a small quantity of

155
00:08:52,960 --> 00:08:58,560
dynamite close to a railway line owned by the Japan South Manchuria Railway near Mukden,

156
00:08:58,560 --> 00:08:59,600
which is now Shenyang.

157
00:08:59,600 --> 00:09:03,920
The guy wanted to basically destroy the rail line and make it look like it was the Chinese

158
00:09:03,920 --> 00:09:06,800
that did this when it was very clearly just the Japanese army.

159
00:09:06,800 --> 00:09:11,040
The hilarious thing is that the explosion was so weak that it actually failed to destroy

160
00:09:11,040 --> 00:09:15,680
the tracks and trains just easily passed over it like less than five minutes later.

161
00:09:15,680 --> 00:09:20,400
Japan not wanting to actually have to put any more effort into a false flag event just

162
00:09:20,400 --> 00:09:21,280
invaded anyways.

163
00:09:21,280 --> 00:09:25,440
The Imperial Japanese Army accuses Chinese dissidents of the act and responds with a

164
00:09:25,440 --> 00:09:29,440
full-scale invasion that led to the occupation of Manchuria, in which Japan established its

165
00:09:29,440 --> 00:09:31,920
puppet state of Manchukuo six months later.

166
00:09:31,920 --> 00:09:36,800
And then since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, there had been many small incidents

167
00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:41,040
along the rail line connecting Beijing with the port of Tianjin, but all had subsided.

168
00:09:41,040 --> 00:09:46,160
On this occasion, a Japanese soldier was temporarily absent from his unit opposite Wanping,

169
00:09:46,160 --> 00:09:50,160
and the Japanese commander demanded the right to search the town for him.

170
00:09:50,160 --> 00:09:54,000
When this was refused, other units on both sides were put on alert with tensions rising.

171
00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:58,320
The Chinese army fired on the Japanese army, which further escalated the situation.

172
00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:02,640
Even though this is all about like a Japanese soldier that went missing, he ends up showing

173
00:10:02,640 --> 00:10:04,160
up and they're like, well, screw this.

174
00:10:04,960 --> 00:10:06,320
Everything's gone to shit.

175
00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:07,440
So let's start a war.

176
00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:09,280
You can't just be like, oh, there you are.

177
00:10:09,280 --> 00:10:10,480
Let's drop everything.

178
00:10:10,480 --> 00:10:11,280
Our bad.

179
00:10:11,280 --> 00:10:13,600
It's called the Second Sino-Japanese War.

180
00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:18,000
A lot of historians will actually point to this as the actual start of World War II.

181
00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:21,680
This is in 1931, so technically it could be the start.

182
00:10:21,680 --> 00:10:23,680
It really depends on who you ask though.

183
00:10:23,680 --> 00:10:24,240
Interesting.

184
00:10:24,240 --> 00:10:29,760
So Japan's set up, this is basically a colonized state so that it could build industry.

185
00:10:29,760 --> 00:10:31,840
It set up a ton of industry in here.

186
00:10:31,840 --> 00:10:36,800
And when it would go into countries and set up all these factories and supply lines,

187
00:10:36,800 --> 00:10:39,760
they would be run by what's called the Zaibatsu.

188
00:10:39,760 --> 00:10:43,840
Zaibatsu are large family controlled vertical monopolies.

189
00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:50,000
So it would be a small group of Japanese business people or well-off families would own a holding

190
00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:55,040
company that would own everything right from the mine to the place where the tank gets made,

191
00:10:55,040 --> 00:10:58,240
to probably the shipping company that would take it to where the tank needs to be.

192
00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:01,360
That would all be owned by one family who would end up being extremely wealthy.

193
00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:02,080
What's that called?

194
00:11:02,080 --> 00:11:03,200
Is that a monopoly?

195
00:11:03,200 --> 00:11:04,880
Yeah, it's called a vertical monopoly.

196
00:11:04,880 --> 00:11:08,880
The most famous version that you would see historically referenced in Western culture

197
00:11:08,880 --> 00:11:13,280
would be Ford because Ford would buy the rubber plants where their tires were made.

198
00:11:13,280 --> 00:11:15,920
Like they would buy everything to make sure that they owned everything.

199
00:11:15,920 --> 00:11:19,040
Yeah, but in Japan, they specifically call these Zaibatsu.

200
00:11:19,040 --> 00:11:22,320
People got extremely wealthy off it and there's famous names that you would know.

201
00:11:22,320 --> 00:11:26,560
I believe Mitsubishi's one of the families that own Zaibatsu.

202
00:11:28,160 --> 00:11:33,600
So not just German companies exist from this World War II era into today and are well known.

203
00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:37,920
I just wanted to set that up because it will come up in later episodes,

204
00:11:37,920 --> 00:11:41,440
but that's all I'm going to talk about about Manchukuo or Manchuria for now.

205
00:11:41,440 --> 00:11:44,560
All in all, the following are the areas that Japan

206
00:11:44,560 --> 00:11:46,640
invaded and occupied during World War II.

207
00:11:46,640 --> 00:11:49,840
And this, I think it's an exhaustive list, but I don't know for sure.

208
00:11:49,840 --> 00:11:52,320
Almost all the coastal areas of the Republic of China,

209
00:11:52,320 --> 00:11:56,240
Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, which was a US territory at that time.

210
00:11:56,240 --> 00:12:00,480
British Hong Kong, British North Borneo, British Protectorate of Sarawak,

211
00:12:00,480 --> 00:12:04,640
which is now part of Malaysia, British Malaya, which is now Malaysia and Singapore.

212
00:12:04,640 --> 00:12:08,960
The Dutch East Indies, which is now Indonesia, British Burma, which is now Myanmar.

213
00:12:08,960 --> 00:12:12,560
The US territory islands in the Western Pacific, Guam,

214
00:12:12,560 --> 00:12:14,400
Thuik Islands, things like that.

215
00:12:14,400 --> 00:12:17,760
Australian territory of Papua New Guinea, which was at that time called the

216
00:12:17,760 --> 00:12:19,280
Australian territory of Papua.

217
00:12:19,280 --> 00:12:21,600
British West Pacific Islands, the Solomon Islands,

218
00:12:21,600 --> 00:12:23,760
Gilbert Islands, Ellis Islands, things like that.

219
00:12:23,760 --> 00:12:28,720
And parts of the Aleutian Islands, which is Alaskan territory in the US.

220
00:12:28,720 --> 00:12:30,080
Holy crap, that's a lot.

221
00:12:30,080 --> 00:12:31,280
Yeah, yeah, it's a lot.

222
00:12:31,280 --> 00:12:34,640
They had a huge empire that nobody really talks about.

223
00:12:34,640 --> 00:12:34,960
Yeah.

224
00:12:34,960 --> 00:12:36,560
No, I had no idea.

225
00:12:36,560 --> 00:12:40,800
And except for the coastal areas of China, all regions and countries that Japan invaded

226
00:12:40,800 --> 00:12:45,600
during World War II were originally occupied or colonized by European powers,

227
00:12:45,600 --> 00:12:49,920
which I think they were justifying as like Europeans are not better than us.

228
00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:52,480
Asians are superior and we should be.

229
00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:54,400
This is purely speculation on my end.

230
00:12:54,400 --> 00:12:57,440
We should be the ones working together to put Asia forward.

231
00:12:57,440 --> 00:12:59,040
So they colonized instead.

232
00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:05,360
During this colonization area, Japan likely killed around 31 million civilians

233
00:13:05,360 --> 00:13:09,760
throughout these territories with anywhere from 10 to 20 million of these civilians

234
00:13:09,760 --> 00:13:13,120
coming just in China, like just massive numbers.

235
00:13:13,120 --> 00:13:15,360
That's the end of the World War II part.

236
00:13:15,360 --> 00:13:22,080
We're going to skip way ahead, like 10 years now to post World War II, to the date,

237
00:13:22,080 --> 00:13:27,040
August 15th, 1945, where Imperial Japan surrenders to the Allied powers.

238
00:13:27,040 --> 00:13:29,360
I think everybody kind of knows what happened here.

239
00:13:29,360 --> 00:13:31,600
There was famously two bombs dropped.

240
00:13:31,600 --> 00:13:34,720
I forget their names, but there were famously two bombs dropped on Japan.

241
00:13:34,720 --> 00:13:37,120
And they said, yeah, maybe we shouldn't be doing this.

242
00:13:37,120 --> 00:13:39,520
The US definitely didn't have to drop both of them.

243
00:13:39,520 --> 00:13:41,520
They likely would have surrendered with just one.

244
00:13:41,520 --> 00:13:45,440
But in any event, they do surrender on August 15th, 1945.

245
00:13:45,440 --> 00:13:46,800
And what happens from here?

246
00:13:46,800 --> 00:13:51,600
September 1945 to April 1952, the Allies of World War II,

247
00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:54,880
which includes all of the Allied powers, including the USSR,

248
00:13:54,880 --> 00:13:57,680
occupied Japan and attempt to transform Japanese society

249
00:13:57,680 --> 00:14:00,160
from an authoritarian regime into a democracy.

250
00:14:00,160 --> 00:14:03,120
To manage Japan under the Allies,

251
00:14:03,120 --> 00:14:07,920
General Douglas MacArthur constituted the supreme commander of the Allied powers,

252
00:14:07,920 --> 00:14:09,040
which is called SCAP.

253
00:14:09,040 --> 00:14:13,520
It was a management organization of about 2,000 officers from the Allied powers,

254
00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:15,520
also commonly known as the General Headquarters.

255
00:14:15,520 --> 00:14:18,320
So two things that might come up is GHQ and SCAP.

256
00:14:18,320 --> 00:14:19,360
That's what I'm referring to.

257
00:14:19,360 --> 00:14:20,560
They're both the same thing.

258
00:14:20,560 --> 00:14:21,520
Try and remember.

259
00:14:21,520 --> 00:14:26,000
Because MacArthur had a huge influence on the people of Japan, GHQ and SCAP,

260
00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:29,680
also are interchangeably used to refer to MacArthur and his bureaucrats,

261
00:14:29,680 --> 00:14:31,760
rather than just the organization itself.

262
00:14:31,760 --> 00:14:34,640
SCAP went right into reforms as soon as it landed.

263
00:14:34,640 --> 00:14:37,120
Basically, they got there in September and they said,

264
00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:38,960
Kate, we're going to do these few things.

265
00:14:38,960 --> 00:14:41,600
Chelsea, some of these are going to sound really interesting.

266
00:14:41,600 --> 00:14:45,600
And especially when you look at it, like this is more or less driven by Douglas MacArthur.

267
00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:47,200
He's an American general.

268
00:14:47,200 --> 00:14:50,160
So you would think, okay, he's bringing capitalism to these boys

269
00:14:50,160 --> 00:14:52,160
so that they can't fall to communism.

270
00:14:52,160 --> 00:14:54,960
What they consider protecting from communism

271
00:14:54,960 --> 00:14:56,800
might not be what we would consider it today.

272
00:14:56,800 --> 00:14:58,640
So, okay, good to know.

273
00:14:58,640 --> 00:15:02,400
First and foremost, those zaibatsu, those vertical monopolies,

274
00:15:02,400 --> 00:15:03,840
they want to dissolve all of them.

275
00:15:03,840 --> 00:15:04,480
Okay.

276
00:15:04,480 --> 00:15:06,400
They don't like the idea of vertical monopolies.

277
00:15:06,400 --> 00:15:08,480
So the first thing they want to do is dissolve all of those.

278
00:15:08,480 --> 00:15:10,960
They also start drafting the constitution for Japan,

279
00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:13,440
which grants and enshrines freedom of speech.

280
00:15:13,440 --> 00:15:15,840
They release all political prisoners,

281
00:15:15,840 --> 00:15:17,920
who were mostly socialists and communists,

282
00:15:17,920 --> 00:15:21,680
that were held during the wars by the monarchy of Japan.

283
00:15:21,680 --> 00:15:25,040
They also enact the three labor laws to protect workers' rights,

284
00:15:25,040 --> 00:15:29,600
trade union laws, labor standards law, and the labor relations adjustment law.

285
00:15:29,600 --> 00:15:33,760
SCAP also worked with Japanese leaders to disband the Japanese military

286
00:15:33,760 --> 00:15:35,920
and purged leaders from government posts.

287
00:15:35,920 --> 00:15:39,600
SCAP instituted sweeping land reforms that made tenant farmers

288
00:15:39,600 --> 00:15:42,160
the new owners of the land that they had previously rented.

289
00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:45,600
This was a huge blow against a previously powerful landlord class

290
00:15:45,600 --> 00:15:47,200
that had supported the wartime regime.

291
00:15:47,200 --> 00:15:52,720
Between 1947 and 1945, approximately 4.7 million acres,

292
00:15:52,720 --> 00:15:57,040
or 1.9 million hectares, or 38% of Japanese farmland,

293
00:15:57,040 --> 00:16:00,080
was purchased from landlords under the government's reform program.

294
00:16:00,080 --> 00:16:03,920
And 4.6 million acres, or 1.86 million hectares,

295
00:16:03,920 --> 00:16:05,840
was resold to the farmers who were working on it.

296
00:16:05,840 --> 00:16:09,600
So basically they had a peasant class who was never able to really gain money

297
00:16:09,600 --> 00:16:13,200
because they had to pay anything that they made to the actual owners of the land.

298
00:16:13,200 --> 00:16:15,040
They got given the land more or less,

299
00:16:15,040 --> 00:16:18,720
and now they actually are farmers in the sense that we would actually think of them today.

300
00:16:18,720 --> 00:16:19,840
Okay, that's nice.

301
00:16:19,840 --> 00:16:23,600
By 1950, 89% of all agricultural land was owner-operated,

302
00:16:23,600 --> 00:16:25,920
and only 11% was tenant-operated.

303
00:16:25,920 --> 00:16:27,920
So like that's pretty damn fast.

304
00:16:27,920 --> 00:16:31,840
That's five years where they go where it's pretty much all tenant-operated

305
00:16:31,840 --> 00:16:34,480
to 89% is owner-operated.

306
00:16:34,480 --> 00:16:37,360
MacArthur's efforts to encourage trade union membership

307
00:16:37,360 --> 00:16:39,200
met with phenomenal success as well.

308
00:16:39,200 --> 00:16:43,280
Basically unionization was abolished during World War II.

309
00:16:43,280 --> 00:16:44,800
I believe it was a little previous.

310
00:16:44,800 --> 00:16:46,960
I forgot because I didn't write it in my script,

311
00:16:46,960 --> 00:16:49,760
but I'm pretty sure it was abolished just before World War II.

312
00:16:49,760 --> 00:16:54,560
But by 1947, 48% of the non-agricultural workforce was unionized.

313
00:16:54,560 --> 00:16:58,800
So just two years later, almost half the working class was unionized.

314
00:16:58,800 --> 00:17:02,160
SCAP also sought to unravel the wartime Japanese police state

315
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:04,080
by breaking up the National Police Force

316
00:17:04,080 --> 00:17:07,520
into small American-style forces controlled at the local level.

317
00:17:07,520 --> 00:17:10,560
And SCAP also sought to empower previously marginalized groups

318
00:17:10,560 --> 00:17:14,240
that it believed would have a moderating effect on future militarism,

319
00:17:14,240 --> 00:17:17,280
which groups are talking about while they legalize the communist

320
00:17:17,280 --> 00:17:19,120
and socialist parties in the country,

321
00:17:19,120 --> 00:17:21,600
which had been abolished under the monarchy.

322
00:17:21,600 --> 00:17:23,920
They also encouraged formation of labor unions

323
00:17:23,920 --> 00:17:26,000
and extending the right to vote to women.

324
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:28,240
The crowning achievement of the first phase of the occupation

325
00:17:28,240 --> 00:17:33,680
was the promulgation at SCAP's behest in 1947 of the new constitution of Japan,

326
00:17:33,680 --> 00:17:36,160
which most famously includes Article 9,

327
00:17:36,160 --> 00:17:40,960
which says that Japan explicitly disavows war as an instrument of state policy

328
00:17:40,960 --> 00:17:44,080
and promises that Japan will never maintain a military.

329
00:17:44,080 --> 00:17:47,600
And to this day, Japan does not technically have a military

330
00:17:47,600 --> 00:17:49,760
because in their constitution they are unallowed.

331
00:17:49,760 --> 00:17:50,080
Yes.

332
00:17:50,800 --> 00:17:52,560
That will come up later though,

333
00:17:52,560 --> 00:17:55,920
so don't hold it up as a great thing for now.

334
00:17:55,920 --> 00:17:56,560
Okay.

335
00:17:56,560 --> 00:17:59,200
Next up, they basically abolished the monarchy.

336
00:17:59,200 --> 00:18:01,520
Yes, there is still an emperor of Japan.

337
00:18:01,520 --> 00:18:03,440
It is not what it was before though.

338
00:18:03,440 --> 00:18:06,400
Japan's hereditary peerage called Kazoku

339
00:18:06,400 --> 00:18:10,000
that lasted for over a thousand years in different but essentially similar forms

340
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:13,680
was abolished by the new Japanese constitution that was heavily influenced by SCAP.

341
00:18:13,680 --> 00:18:16,560
This was similar to the European peerage system involved in princes,

342
00:18:16,560 --> 00:18:19,040
barons, and counts that were not part of the royal family.

343
00:18:19,040 --> 00:18:23,680
Also, the extended royal family called Okei and Shinoke was abolished and stripped of

344
00:18:23,680 --> 00:18:27,360
all rights and privileges, transforming into commoners immediately.

345
00:18:27,360 --> 00:18:31,440
And the only Japanese that were allowed to call themselves a part of the royal or nobility

346
00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:35,520
after the US occupation were the emperor and about 20 of his direct family members.

347
00:18:35,520 --> 00:18:39,440
This action by MacArthur and the writers of the constitution helped transform Japan

348
00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:44,320
drastically by abolishing all of the old extended royal family class and the nobility class.

349
00:18:44,320 --> 00:18:47,840
One of the largest of the SCAP programs was the public health and welfare

350
00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:50,880
headed by US Army Colonel Crawford F. Sams.

351
00:18:50,880 --> 00:18:53,040
Working with SCAP staff of 150,

352
00:18:53,040 --> 00:18:55,760
Sams directed the welfare work of the American doctors

353
00:18:55,760 --> 00:19:00,160
and organized entirely new Japanese medical welfare systems along American lines.

354
00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:02,560
The Japanese population was in a poor state.

355
00:19:02,560 --> 00:19:05,600
Most people badly worn down, doctors and medicines were scarce,

356
00:19:05,600 --> 00:19:08,640
and sanitary systems had been bombed out in large cities.

357
00:19:08,640 --> 00:19:12,800
His earliest priorities were in distributing food supplies from the United States.

358
00:19:12,800 --> 00:19:16,640
Millions of refugees from the defunct overseas empires were pouring in,

359
00:19:16,640 --> 00:19:21,520
often in bad physical shape, with a high risk of introducing smallpox, typhus, and cholera.

360
00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:25,360
And the outbreaks that did occur were localized as emergency immunization,

361
00:19:25,360 --> 00:19:29,360
quarantine, sanitation, and delousing prevented massive epidemics.

362
00:19:29,360 --> 00:19:32,000
Sams, who was promoted to brigadier general in 1948,

363
00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:35,040
worked with Japanese officials to establish vaccine laboratories,

364
00:19:35,040 --> 00:19:37,920
reorganize hospitals along American lines,

365
00:19:37,920 --> 00:19:39,680
upgrade medical and nursing schools,

366
00:19:39,680 --> 00:19:42,240
and bring together Japanese, international, and US teams

367
00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:45,440
that dealt with disasters, child care, and health insurance.

368
00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:49,440
He set up an Institute of Public Health for educating public health workers,

369
00:19:49,440 --> 00:19:51,840
and a National Institute of Health for research,

370
00:19:51,840 --> 00:19:55,120
and set up statistical divisions and data collection systems.

371
00:19:55,120 --> 00:19:58,160
So they basically completely rebuilt the hospital system

372
00:19:58,160 --> 00:20:00,080
and immunization system in Japan,

373
00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:02,560
because it was absolutely destroyed during World War II.

374
00:20:02,560 --> 00:20:03,120
Okay.

375
00:20:03,120 --> 00:20:07,920
I took a really long time to say that.

376
00:20:07,920 --> 00:20:09,600
Thank you for summarizing it.

377
00:20:09,600 --> 00:20:10,480
You're welcome.

378
00:20:10,480 --> 00:20:12,880
And then next up, this one is huge.

379
00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:17,520
SCAP also issued edict number 109 in the name of the Japanese emperor,

380
00:20:17,520 --> 00:20:20,800
prohibiting POWs, cooperators of World War II,

381
00:20:20,800 --> 00:20:23,280
those belonging to several secret organizations.

382
00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:26,480
There's a ton of secret organizations apparently back in the day,

383
00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:30,400
not like the Illuminati per se, but like one's a Taekwondo studio.

384
00:20:30,400 --> 00:20:33,040
And it's like considered a secret society.

385
00:20:33,040 --> 00:20:37,120
But all these people that were involved with any of these

386
00:20:37,120 --> 00:20:41,040
were banned from engaging in public service in 1946.

387
00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:44,240
So in 1947, the range of prohibited positions widened,

388
00:20:44,240 --> 00:20:45,760
including private enterprises,

389
00:20:45,760 --> 00:20:49,440
and more than 20,000 people were basically unallowed to hold jobs

390
00:20:49,440 --> 00:20:51,360
because of their involvement in these things.

391
00:20:51,360 --> 00:20:53,120
So either you were part of the war

392
00:20:53,120 --> 00:20:55,840
or part of a secret organization behind everything.

393
00:20:55,840 --> 00:20:59,040
Especially those Taekwondo secret organizations.

394
00:20:59,040 --> 00:21:00,400
You never can trust them.

395
00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:00,900
Hiya!

396
00:21:00,900 --> 00:21:05,540
We were talking about ninjas and what we know about ninjas.

397
00:21:05,540 --> 00:21:06,040
Yes.

398
00:21:06,040 --> 00:21:07,060
They're mostly turtles.

399
00:21:08,100 --> 00:21:09,060
But they're from New York.

400
00:21:10,180 --> 00:21:11,940
Different kind of ninja, I guess.

401
00:21:11,940 --> 00:21:13,140
Different kind of ninja.

402
00:21:13,140 --> 00:21:18,500
And then soon after the war, SCAP indicted 70 persons as Class A war criminals,

403
00:21:18,500 --> 00:21:22,900
5,700 persons as Class B or Class C war criminals.

404
00:21:22,900 --> 00:21:26,980
And of these, 984 eventually end up being condemned to death,

405
00:21:26,980 --> 00:21:29,380
with 920 actually being executed.

406
00:21:29,380 --> 00:21:32,020
And 475 receiving life sentences.

407
00:21:32,020 --> 00:21:36,740
2,944 receiving prison terms and 1,018 being acquitted.

408
00:21:36,740 --> 00:21:39,620
And 279 not sentenced or not brought to trial.

409
00:21:39,620 --> 00:21:43,380
So they actually did take steps to try to punish

410
00:21:43,380 --> 00:21:46,980
the worst offenders during World War II, that being SCAP.

411
00:21:46,980 --> 00:21:47,480
Okay.

412
00:21:48,260 --> 00:21:50,660
I don't 100% trust this, but...

413
00:21:50,660 --> 00:21:51,140
Okay.

414
00:21:51,140 --> 00:21:54,420
I would trust it entirely and just wait and listen for

415
00:21:54,420 --> 00:21:56,660
what happens in the next three episodes.

416
00:21:56,660 --> 00:21:57,780
I'll be there.

417
00:21:57,780 --> 00:21:59,300
You will be, in different form.

418
00:22:00,820 --> 00:22:04,580
And yeah, those are all the sweeping kind of changes throughout society

419
00:22:04,580 --> 00:22:08,100
that the United Force SCAP brings to the Japanese.

420
00:22:08,100 --> 00:22:11,540
It was a feudal system before this where you couldn't unionize.

421
00:22:11,540 --> 00:22:15,220
There was a landlord group that basically ran everything

422
00:22:15,220 --> 00:22:20,020
and a few families that were allowed to run monopolies basically on anything they wanted.

423
00:22:20,020 --> 00:22:21,780
And they came and changed it and they said, let's...

424
00:22:21,780 --> 00:22:26,740
Oh, and sorry, there was no freedom of speech and it was illegal to be to left wing,

425
00:22:26,740 --> 00:22:28,500
either socialist or communist.

426
00:22:28,500 --> 00:22:30,660
I don't know how far that extended past that.

427
00:22:30,660 --> 00:22:31,140
Okay.

428
00:22:31,140 --> 00:22:33,300
And SCAP came in and opened everything up.

429
00:22:33,940 --> 00:22:35,380
It all seems pretty great, hey?

430
00:22:35,940 --> 00:22:39,140
Yeah, I think so based on what they were doing.

431
00:22:39,140 --> 00:22:41,540
And this pays off greatly for Japan.

432
00:22:41,540 --> 00:22:46,500
So Japan being seriously devastated during World War II lost so much of its industry,

433
00:22:46,500 --> 00:22:50,340
but nonetheless, with the help of SCAP, Japan quickly recovers from the suffering,

434
00:22:50,340 --> 00:22:53,300
earning the title of the Japanese economic miracle.

435
00:22:53,300 --> 00:23:00,660
In Japan, industrial production decreased in 1946 to 27.6% of the pre-war level.

436
00:23:00,660 --> 00:23:05,380
So let's just say like in the 1930s, that's 100% of what their output is.

437
00:23:05,380 --> 00:23:07,700
Post-World War II, they're at 27%.

438
00:23:08,580 --> 00:23:11,300
In 1951, they reach 100%.

439
00:23:12,020 --> 00:23:14,820
So they finally reached the pre-World War II level.

440
00:23:14,820 --> 00:23:17,860
And then they reached 350% in 1960.

441
00:23:17,860 --> 00:23:20,100
So it just continues to skyrocket after that.

442
00:23:20,100 --> 00:23:20,660
Yeah.

443
00:23:20,660 --> 00:23:23,860
And by the end of SCAP's occupation of Japan in 1952,

444
00:23:23,860 --> 00:23:28,900
Japan was reintegrated into the global economy to eliminate the motivation for imperial expansion

445
00:23:28,900 --> 00:23:31,060
and rebuild the economic infrastructure.

446
00:23:31,060 --> 00:23:36,020
However, rapid economic growth also brought huge issues for poor working classes.

447
00:23:36,020 --> 00:23:39,140
And the struggles between the working class and capitalists in Japan

448
00:23:39,140 --> 00:23:42,100
deteriorated as the reconstruction work progressed.

449
00:23:42,100 --> 00:23:45,220
So yes, it is great that everything expanded so fast.

450
00:23:45,220 --> 00:23:46,980
They ran into huge inflation.

451
00:23:46,980 --> 00:23:50,740
The workers not only formed trade unions, but also united with communists,

452
00:23:50,740 --> 00:23:53,220
the peasants, and poor urbanites in their struggle.

453
00:23:53,220 --> 00:23:56,580
Japan's rapid economic development also brought serious inflation.

454
00:23:56,580 --> 00:24:02,980
From September 1945 to August 1948, prices in Japan increased by more than 700%.

455
00:24:02,980 --> 00:24:03,940
Holy shit.

456
00:24:03,940 --> 00:24:07,620
So in three years, 700%, which furthered the unrest.

457
00:24:07,620 --> 00:24:11,060
Under these reformations, activism and with the help of SCAP authorities,

458
00:24:11,060 --> 00:24:15,220
nearly 5 million workers joined the labor movement by December of 1946.

459
00:24:15,220 --> 00:24:19,060
At first, MacArthur was confident about labor movements because,

460
00:24:19,060 --> 00:24:25,060
quote, working classes are the strongest single bulwark of the new democratic regime, end quote.

461
00:24:25,060 --> 00:24:29,220
And the number of organized workers continued to grow from 5 million in 1946

462
00:24:29,220 --> 00:24:32,180
to 6.7 million by the end of 1948.

463
00:24:32,180 --> 00:24:37,940
And from 1946 onwards, the labor movement in Japan began to gradually move beyond the vision of SCAP.

464
00:24:37,940 --> 00:24:41,380
Led by the Japanese Communist Party, the Socialist and Labor Unions,

465
00:24:41,380 --> 00:24:43,860
Japanese workers launched a series of strikes.

466
00:24:43,860 --> 00:24:47,860
Some of these strikes continued to focus on improvements for working conditions and labor rights,

467
00:24:47,860 --> 00:24:52,980
but some were dedicated to impacting or even reconstructing the nation's political system.

468
00:24:52,980 --> 00:24:59,540
In May 1946, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida blamed radical labor movements for their misuse of democracy

469
00:24:59,540 --> 00:25:04,660
and reiterating that both capitalists and workers cooperate for the same purpose of increase in production.

470
00:25:04,660 --> 00:25:10,020
SCAP retaliation also came very soon, starting with the cabinet's Imperial Ordinance Number 311,

471
00:25:10,020 --> 00:25:15,060
which imposed fines and hard labor of up to 10 years for taking part in, quote,

472
00:25:15,060 --> 00:25:20,180
acts of prejudicial or occupation objectives, end quote, followed by the usage of police enforcement.

473
00:25:20,180 --> 00:25:24,420
Nonetheless, strike action continued in various fronts and some of the strikes went well,

474
00:25:24,420 --> 00:25:29,060
such as the September 1946 strike, which was conducted with MacArthur's acquiescence and

475
00:25:29,060 --> 00:25:30,420
achieved some success.

476
00:25:30,420 --> 00:25:35,380
The subsequent strike in October, however, was condemned by Yoshida, and the resulting

477
00:25:35,380 --> 00:25:38,260
conflict eventually made MacArthur change his position completely.

478
00:25:38,260 --> 00:25:42,580
And in the same month, MacArthur and Japanese Emperor agreed on the point that labor movements

479
00:25:42,580 --> 00:25:45,940
could be highly vulnerable to manipulation by political opponents.

480
00:25:45,940 --> 00:25:50,980
So yeah, they start to unionize and because all the prices are going up like mad and they're

481
00:25:50,980 --> 00:25:53,300
working fairly hard, they want better rights.

482
00:25:53,300 --> 00:25:54,740
So they start striking for them.

483
00:25:54,740 --> 00:25:59,620
And at first, MacArthur is on board with it and he's like, yeah, that's how a healthy society

484
00:25:59,620 --> 00:26:04,260
should work is that workers, if they're not being treated right, they strike, they try to get better

485
00:26:04,260 --> 00:26:09,380
working environments, whether that be through higher wages, shorter hours, safer environments,

486
00:26:09,380 --> 00:26:10,100
what have you.

487
00:26:10,100 --> 00:26:13,140
But eventually it starts to really strain on the economy.

488
00:26:13,140 --> 00:26:16,660
So he changes his mind and he actually thinks that might lead to communism.

489
00:26:17,860 --> 00:26:22,500
But for a while, the labor movement actually sees MacArthur is on their side.

490
00:26:22,500 --> 00:26:26,500
So they keep going and in solidarity with socialist, communist and independents began

491
00:26:26,500 --> 00:26:30,020
to prepare for a general strike on February 1st, 1947.

492
00:26:30,020 --> 00:26:33,620
And Chelsea vaguely knows what a general strike is now after a few episodes.

493
00:26:33,620 --> 00:26:35,220
Generally.

494
00:26:35,220 --> 00:26:36,980
But then again, I didn't get it right.

495
00:26:37,540 --> 00:26:38,100
That's true.

496
00:26:38,660 --> 00:26:43,620
The general strike demanded both the solution of labor problems, food shortages and inflation

497
00:26:43,620 --> 00:26:45,860
and the resignation of the Yoshida cabinet.

498
00:26:45,860 --> 00:26:49,860
And on January 18th, the union sent an ultimatum to the government demanding that the worker

499
00:26:49,860 --> 00:26:52,260
demands be resolved by January 31st.

500
00:26:52,260 --> 00:26:56,900
MacArthur originally remained reluctant to ban the strike outright, merely issuing an

501
00:26:56,900 --> 00:27:00,900
informal warning to the unions and sending a document to the strike leader stating that

502
00:27:00,900 --> 00:27:06,020
he would not permit a coordinated action by the organized labor to provoke a national

503
00:27:06,020 --> 00:27:07,940
calamity by general work stoppage.

504
00:27:08,580 --> 00:27:13,300
However, the unions ignored MacArthur's warning since they thought that SCAP would not violate

505
00:27:13,300 --> 00:27:18,340
its own newly issued labor rights laws, which say that workers are allowed to strike.

506
00:27:18,340 --> 00:27:22,660
On the afternoon of January 31st, MacArthur issued a formal directive prohibiting the

507
00:27:22,660 --> 00:27:24,900
general strike that was in the process of being prepared.

508
00:27:24,900 --> 00:27:28,740
And after the ban was issued, SCAP negotiated with the strike leaders and eventually the

509
00:27:28,740 --> 00:27:30,500
strike leaders agreed to cancel the strike.

510
00:27:30,500 --> 00:27:34,900
Although the negotiations went well, leftists, especially members of the Japanese Communist

511
00:27:34,900 --> 00:27:38,420
Party subsequently became hostile towards the occupation authorities.

512
00:27:38,420 --> 00:27:44,180
So this is all building towards something and a huge event kind of happens near the

513
00:27:44,180 --> 00:27:45,540
end of 1947.

514
00:27:45,540 --> 00:27:50,100
Up until this point, communism has more or less stayed out of Asia.

515
00:27:50,100 --> 00:27:55,300
The US is looking for a place to kind of have its, what would be a good word, its pillar

516
00:27:55,300 --> 00:27:58,820
to hold up and kind of control everything in Asia.

517
00:27:58,820 --> 00:28:03,060
And they had their pick of the litter, like China's right there, Korea's there, Japan's

518
00:28:03,060 --> 00:28:03,380
there.

519
00:28:03,380 --> 00:28:07,540
There's a bunch of tiny island countries, but they're really nowhere near Japan, China

520
00:28:07,540 --> 00:28:09,300
and Korea in terms of power.

521
00:28:09,300 --> 00:28:13,780
So which one was kind of going to be the US's satellite state for kind of pushing everything

522
00:28:13,780 --> 00:28:14,820
they want in Asia?

523
00:28:14,820 --> 00:28:17,940
It was up in the air and nobody really knew which one they were going to go with.

524
00:28:17,940 --> 00:28:21,540
And MacArthur actually wanted China to be its puppet state in the area.

525
00:28:21,540 --> 00:28:27,460
However, on December 7th, 1947, the Chinese Civil War ends and communism wins.

526
00:28:27,460 --> 00:28:32,580
This scares the hell out of a lot of people and it changes kind of the direction of everything.

527
00:28:32,580 --> 00:28:32,900
Okay.

528
00:28:32,900 --> 00:28:38,260
I didn't know that because I was like, hold on, aren't there like some pretty communist

529
00:28:38,260 --> 00:28:41,460
countries over in that neck of the woods of the world?

530
00:28:41,460 --> 00:28:43,780
I guess they weren't communist at that point.

531
00:28:43,780 --> 00:28:44,340
They were not.

532
00:28:44,340 --> 00:28:48,260
No, a lot of them are still just recovering from being colonized by Japan.

533
00:28:48,900 --> 00:28:49,700
Uh, yes.

534
00:28:49,700 --> 00:28:53,460
Which actually leads to some revolutionary ideas coming out.

535
00:28:53,460 --> 00:29:00,100
And especially a lot of them were just liberated from Europeans and then liberated from Japan.

536
00:29:00,100 --> 00:29:02,020
So they've been under two different groups.

537
00:29:02,020 --> 00:29:05,300
So yeah, there's changes coming and they're slowly starting to show up.

538
00:29:05,300 --> 00:29:06,820
The changes communism.

539
00:29:06,820 --> 00:29:07,300
Yeah.

540
00:29:07,300 --> 00:29:08,180
Okay.

541
00:29:08,180 --> 00:29:13,940
So now the options of what the US can actually use as their puppet state changes significantly

542
00:29:13,940 --> 00:29:17,140
and they look at Japan and they say like, okay, looks like this is where we're going

543
00:29:17,140 --> 00:29:17,780
to have to go.

544
00:29:17,780 --> 00:29:18,340
That's fine.

545
00:29:18,340 --> 00:29:22,100
As a result of the loss of China to the Chinese communists and the subsequent Sino-Soviet

546
00:29:22,100 --> 00:29:26,900
treaty, the CIA and US military intelligence gained the rationale necessary to collaborate

547
00:29:26,900 --> 00:29:30,580
and support the Japanese right and particularly the Yakuza.

548
00:29:30,580 --> 00:29:32,580
Those guys are going to come up in the next episode.

549
00:29:32,580 --> 00:29:33,620
The Yakuza.

550
00:29:33,620 --> 00:29:38,100
Douglas MacArthur held a general dislike of the OSS, which I believe is the precursor

551
00:29:38,100 --> 00:29:43,380
for the CIA and prevented the OSS and CIA from operating in Japan until 1950.

552
00:29:43,380 --> 00:29:47,140
And as a result, many of the intelligence operations undertaken during the early phase

553
00:29:47,140 --> 00:29:51,380
of the occupation were delegated to the military intelligence, particularly the US military

554
00:29:51,380 --> 00:29:53,140
intelligence, particularly the G2.

555
00:29:53,140 --> 00:29:56,980
So with that kind of little middle history in mind, we're going to continue on with

556
00:29:56,980 --> 00:29:58,980
the story of how unions are doing.

557
00:29:58,980 --> 00:30:00,020
Okay.

558
00:30:00,020 --> 00:30:05,540
On July 22nd, 1948, shortly after the formation of the new cabinet, SCAP asked the Ishida

559
00:30:05,540 --> 00:30:10,500
cabinet to pass an order banning strikes by 40% of workers in public industries throughout

560
00:30:10,500 --> 00:30:11,060
Japan.

561
00:30:11,060 --> 00:30:15,620
The order sparked oppositions and protests from a variety of workers, teachers and civilians

562
00:30:15,620 --> 00:30:19,700
in Japan who considered it a violation of the constitutional freedoms and basic labor

563
00:30:19,700 --> 00:30:23,140
laws, and more than 100 people were arrested during the wave of opposition.

564
00:30:23,140 --> 00:30:27,700
The Soviet representative in the Allied council for Japan and all non-US members of the Far

565
00:30:27,700 --> 00:30:31,140
Eastern commission in Washington also expressed opposition to the order.

566
00:30:31,140 --> 00:30:35,140
The order was finally carried out despite heavy opposition that led to the fall of the

567
00:30:35,140 --> 00:30:40,180
ruling coalition, anti-American sentiment and the expansion of left-wing forces followed.

568
00:30:40,180 --> 00:30:44,500
And then around this time comes out what's called the Truman Doctrine, which is this is

569
00:30:44,500 --> 00:30:48,820
when people consider the real start of the Cold War is basically Truman says anywhere

570
00:30:48,820 --> 00:30:52,500
that might turn communism, we're going to send as much money and military forces.

571
00:30:53,140 --> 00:30:55,540
This is where they say we need a stronghold in Asia.

572
00:30:55,540 --> 00:30:57,940
And this is where they say Japan's going to be at.

573
00:30:57,940 --> 00:31:02,820
And in March of 1948, the US department of state sent a planner named George Kennan to

574
00:31:02,820 --> 00:31:06,900
Japan to conduct an investigation of SCAP's policies in the situation in Japan.

575
00:31:06,900 --> 00:31:10,660
He believed that MacArthur was pursuing a very moderate policy and Kennan organized

576
00:31:10,660 --> 00:31:13,940
his own group and plotted to restrict MacArthur's actions.

577
00:31:13,940 --> 00:31:18,980
Under Kennan's efforts and Washington's pressure, GHQ began to reverse policies gradually.

578
00:31:18,980 --> 00:31:22,980
In late 1948, President Truman bypassed the Far Eastern commission and introduced a

579
00:31:22,980 --> 00:31:27,300
directive emphasizing economic stability and in response, Japan passed an austerity plan,

580
00:31:27,300 --> 00:31:30,980
basically saying you can't spend too much money or you can't raise taxes too much.

581
00:31:30,980 --> 00:31:36,340
In addition, GHQ announced that its plan had a series of objectives designed to achieve fiscal,

582
00:31:36,340 --> 00:31:39,860
monetary, price and wage stability in Japan as rapidly as possible.

583
00:31:39,860 --> 00:31:43,860
And this plan will call for increased austerity in every phase of Japanese life.

584
00:31:43,860 --> 00:31:47,460
And remember how they were striking because prices were going out of control and there

585
00:31:47,460 --> 00:31:49,700
wasn't really enough food? Yeah, I remember that.

586
00:31:49,700 --> 00:31:52,340
Austerity is not good for that. What's austerity again?

587
00:31:52,340 --> 00:31:54,660
The government not really spending money. You can't go into debt.

588
00:31:54,660 --> 00:31:58,100
Right, right, yeah, that makes sense. Austerity and the economic downturn also

589
00:31:58,100 --> 00:32:02,340
contribute to the spread of communism in the education sector, which starts in September

590
00:32:02,340 --> 00:32:06,500
of 1948. Students' associations throughout Japan formed called Zenka Gurans.

591
00:32:06,500 --> 00:32:10,900
And these are organizations that were heavily influenced by communism, then spread on campus

592
00:32:10,900 --> 00:32:13,380
and later became a part of communist movements in Japan.

593
00:32:13,380 --> 00:32:19,700
In February of 1949, austerity policies ensued, cutting public spending, limiting public consumption

594
00:32:19,700 --> 00:32:24,660
and reorienting industrial production towards export, not national consumption.

595
00:32:24,660 --> 00:32:27,540
So they're already saying they're feeling the pinch at home and they're like,

596
00:32:27,540 --> 00:32:31,060
that's great. We're not going to build anything for you. We're going to send it all out.

597
00:32:31,060 --> 00:32:35,460
It seems like a good working model. So they're basically reversing everything.

598
00:32:35,460 --> 00:32:40,340
This is in fact called the great reversal. These policies not only tightened and bolstered

599
00:32:40,340 --> 00:32:45,540
Japanese economy and created a link between big business owners and Japanese conservative parties,

600
00:32:45,540 --> 00:32:50,660
but also caused a sharp drop in productivity and massive job losses for workers and government

601
00:32:50,660 --> 00:32:56,100
employees. In June, the ruling coalition decided to revise the labor union law and labor relation

602
00:32:56,100 --> 00:33:00,420
adjustment law to reshape labor management relations in Japan. Both were simultaneously

603
00:33:00,420 --> 00:33:04,020
used to suppress left-wing radicals and strengthen control over labor unions.

604
00:33:04,020 --> 00:33:08,580
Specifically, the revised laws prohibited workers from being paid during strikes,

605
00:33:08,580 --> 00:33:12,820
increased the employer's advantage in collective bargaining and required a minimum of 30 days

606
00:33:12,820 --> 00:33:17,940
cooling off period between strikes and provided that unions emphasizing on social or political

607
00:33:17,940 --> 00:33:22,980
movements would not be recognized by the government. Japan's workers strongly opposed these austerity

608
00:33:22,980 --> 00:33:27,460
policies and had been continuously opposing them through strikes, wildcat strikes, which are

609
00:33:27,460 --> 00:33:31,700
basically when the union hasn't declared a strike. It's just you walk out. All the employees just

610
00:33:31,700 --> 00:33:37,860
agree to walk out and protest since March, 1949. In April at the instigation of MacArthur, Yoshida

611
00:33:37,860 --> 00:33:42,420
issued the ordinance for controlling associations and others to facilitate the healthy development

612
00:33:42,420 --> 00:33:47,140
of pacifism and democracy to prohibit militaristic, ultra-nationalistic, violent and

613
00:33:47,140 --> 00:33:52,020
anti-democratic groups and to require each political organization to register its name,

614
00:33:52,020 --> 00:33:56,340
membership, purpose and activities. And during this time, the Japanese communist party had

615
00:33:56,340 --> 00:34:00,820
registered over 100,000 members. And in June, communist leaders announced that a September

616
00:34:00,820 --> 00:34:05,620
revolution would be launched in the same month. Tyra and some other cities were occupied by over

617
00:34:05,620 --> 00:34:10,900
500 workers. So like there's huge uprisings going on. Yeah, no kidding. The unions are pushing and

618
00:34:10,900 --> 00:34:15,700
the government's trying to crack down on them. Then comes more austerity. In April, Yoshida wrote

619
00:34:15,700 --> 00:34:20,740
to SCAP that he intended to lay off more than 100,000 railroad workers in order to comply with

620
00:34:20,740 --> 00:34:25,940
austerity program. Shortly thereafter, Yoshida began the formal layoffs. While these layoffs

621
00:34:25,940 --> 00:34:30,580
were firmly opposed by workers and railroad industry unions and numerous work stoppages,

622
00:34:30,580 --> 00:34:35,220
strikes and occupations occurred, three unsolved incidents occurred during clashes between

623
00:34:35,220 --> 00:34:39,620
railroad workers and the government. These are kind of crazy. On July 5th, Satonori Shimayama,

624
00:34:39,620 --> 00:34:43,780
the chairman of the Japanese national railways, who had been receiving threatening letters,

625
00:34:43,780 --> 00:34:50,340
disappears on July 5th and was later found dead on the tracks next to Kitasenju station. Oh no.

626
00:34:50,340 --> 00:34:54,500
He became the subject of debate as to whether his death was a suicide or a homicide.

627
00:34:54,500 --> 00:35:00,260
Uh, I'm going to go with homicide for sure. But this is also Japanese culture where

628
00:35:00,260 --> 00:35:05,460
suicide's a little more normalized. Yeah, that's what I was just thinking as well, but I feel like

629
00:35:05,460 --> 00:35:12,100
it's homicide. It's my feeling. Okay. That's good to know. There were many rumors spreading around

630
00:35:12,100 --> 00:35:16,660
like what happened. And some of them were that it was the U.S. or Soviet agents who had actually

631
00:35:16,660 --> 00:35:20,020
killed him as well. Like nobody knows what happened. So like to this day, we still don't

632
00:35:20,020 --> 00:35:26,500
know what happened. If it was a suicide, well played. Okay, we can continue. 10 days later,

633
00:35:26,500 --> 00:35:31,140
shortly after the announcement of the second round of dismissals were posted, an unmanned 63

634
00:35:31,140 --> 00:35:35,300
series train in Tokyo that had been parked overnight was suddenly released and it cast

635
00:35:35,300 --> 00:35:39,620
size after hitting and breaking a buffer stop, killing six people and injuring 20. Police

636
00:35:39,620 --> 00:35:43,940
believed that leftists had caused the incident, arresting nine communists and a former national

637
00:35:43,940 --> 00:35:48,260
driver ultimately did not reach any satisfactory conclusion. And then the last of the three

638
00:35:48,260 --> 00:35:53,860
incidents happens on August 17th, a train carrying 630 people derails. It kills three crew members

639
00:35:53,860 --> 00:35:58,980
on board and police subsequently arrested 20 people, most of them communists. Hi, Taylor here,

640
00:35:58,980 --> 00:36:05,860
editor in chief at Journey to the Fringe. And I am going to add a little bit to what I talked about

641
00:36:05,860 --> 00:36:11,300
with the Mitaka incident and the Matsukawa derailment just so that we can all be on the

642
00:36:11,300 --> 00:36:16,900
same page. This comes from the Tokyo Weekender with regards to the Mitaka incident. This happens on

643
00:36:16,900 --> 00:36:23,700
the same weekend as a second wave of JNR dismissals of around 63,000 employees takes place.

644
00:36:23,700 --> 00:36:29,220
The finger is immediately pointed at members of the National Rail Workers Union upset at the

645
00:36:29,220 --> 00:36:33,940
nationwide cutbacks. 10 people from the organization were arrested and charged with train sabotage

646
00:36:33,940 --> 00:36:38,980
resulting in death. All but one of them belonged to the Japanese Communist Party. The odd man out

647
00:36:38,980 --> 00:36:44,660
incidentally enough was conductor Keisuke Takeuchi who admitted to the crime. Yet, according to the

648
00:36:44,660 --> 00:36:50,020
testimony of a third party, he was in a communal JNR bath at the time of the incident, evidence

649
00:36:50,020 --> 00:36:55,460
that wasn't present in his trial. And in 1955, Takeuchi was sentenced to death by hanging due

650
00:36:55,460 --> 00:37:01,380
to his confessions. The judge ruled that he planned and executed everything himself. The other

651
00:37:01,380 --> 00:37:08,020
defendants were all acquitted. However, in a 2010 Japan Times article, lawyer Shoji Takamizawa said

652
00:37:08,020 --> 00:37:13,780
that Takeuchi's confession was driven by a sense of hopelessness amid harsh prolonged and coercive

653
00:37:13,780 --> 00:37:18,900
interrogations by prosecutors. In the past, police in Japan have been accused of physical and mental

654
00:37:18,900 --> 00:37:23,380
torture to get defendants to admit responsibility for a crime. Many people subsequently recant their

655
00:37:23,380 --> 00:37:28,340
confessions when it goes to court. Takeuchi did an about turn, regularly pleading his innocence

656
00:37:28,340 --> 00:37:33,780
before dying in prison for a brain tumor in 1967. With regards to the Matsukawa derailment,

657
00:37:33,780 --> 00:37:37,860
this comes from the Wikipedia page. Accident investigators found that the bolts and nuts of

658
00:37:37,860 --> 00:37:42,180
the track joints had been loosened and a large number of railroad spikes fixing the rails to

659
00:37:42,180 --> 00:37:47,140
the sleepers had been removed, resulting in one 25-meter section of rail shifting 13 meters in

660
00:37:47,140 --> 00:37:52,180
the accident. Investigators also found a spanner and pry bar and a rice paddy a short distance from

661
00:37:52,180 --> 00:37:56,900
the crime scene. Suspicion immediately fell on the Japan National Railway Union and workers at the

662
00:37:56,900 --> 00:38:01,780
nearby Toshiba Matsukawa factory and the Japanese Communist Party, because of course. Ten workers

663
00:38:01,780 --> 00:38:06,020
from the Matsukawa plant and ten workers from the Japan National Railway were arrested and charged

664
00:38:06,020 --> 00:38:10,340
with sabotage, resulting in death. During the first ruling of the Fukushima District Court on

665
00:38:10,340 --> 00:38:15,460
December 6, 1950, all 20 defendants were found guilty largely on the strength of confessions

666
00:38:15,460 --> 00:38:19,540
forced by the police during interrogation. Five of the defendants received death sentences and

667
00:38:19,540 --> 00:38:23,780
five were sentenced to life imprisonment. The remaining ten were sentenced to between 3.5 and

668
00:38:23,780 --> 00:38:29,140
15 years. In the appeal ruling at the Sendai High Court on December 22, 1955, at which the

669
00:38:29,140 --> 00:38:33,220
defendants recanted their confessions and professed innocence, three of the defendants were found

670
00:38:33,220 --> 00:38:37,700
innocent and the remaining 17 were again found guilty. Four received death sentences and two

671
00:38:37,700 --> 00:38:42,820
received life imprisonment. The cause of the defendants was taken up by author Hirotsu Kazuo,

672
00:38:42,820 --> 00:38:48,100
who wrote an essay in the literary journal Chokoron, which led to an upsurge in support

673
00:38:48,100 --> 00:38:52,980
by leading intellectuals and literary figures. And on August 10, 1959, the issue reached the

674
00:38:52,980 --> 00:38:56,980
Supreme Court of Japan, which referred it back to the Sendai High Court for a retrial. In the

675
00:38:56,980 --> 00:39:00,820
interim, it became public that a document confirming the alibi of the accused had been

676
00:39:00,820 --> 00:39:05,300
hidden by the prosecution during the previous trials. Forensic testing showing that the

677
00:39:05,300 --> 00:39:09,700
spanner found near the accident site was the wrong size and could not have been used to cause the

678
00:39:09,700 --> 00:39:15,060
accident had also been suppressed. On August 8, 1961, in a retrial at the Sendai High Court,

679
00:39:15,060 --> 00:39:19,940
all defendants were found innocent. So yeah, it got super messy. They still ended up doing those

680
00:39:19,940 --> 00:39:24,500
layoffs and that's how the austerity keeps going and it's pissing off people and it's leading to

681
00:39:24,500 --> 00:39:29,540
anti-American sentiment because they're the ones telling Japan how it has to run its economy and

682
00:39:29,540 --> 00:39:33,860
basically the things to impose. And then they have a little bit of say in how they're imposing it,

683
00:39:33,860 --> 00:39:38,500
but at the end of the day, it's the U.S. telling them how to do this. It's also leading to fairly

684
00:39:38,500 --> 00:39:43,300
large leftist movements, including unions and socialist groups. Which is what they didn't want.

685
00:39:43,300 --> 00:39:50,180
Yeah. Who'da thunk? Well played, U.S. Well played. After all these train incidents finally happen,

686
00:39:50,180 --> 00:39:55,380
we enter a phase called the purges. So with SCAP support and advanced premeditation,

687
00:39:55,380 --> 00:39:59,940
left-wing politician Jichiro Matsumoto, part of Yoshida's cabinet. Unfortunately,

688
00:39:59,940 --> 00:40:04,260
we didn't really have enough time to explain Japan's government system, but this is more or

689
00:40:04,260 --> 00:40:08,900
less somebody who would be high up in the government, but from the opposing party. Jichiro Matsumoto was

690
00:40:08,900 --> 00:40:14,180
purged from Yoshida's cabinet after a vote. And in April, Yoshida pledged that he would use

691
00:40:14,180 --> 00:40:20,180
extra-parliamentary means to combat the left. In June, employers began re-signing labor contracts

692
00:40:20,180 --> 00:40:24,660
and firing workers with communist ideological tendencies. And in July, along with the

693
00:40:24,660 --> 00:40:28,340
investigation of communists in the government, Yoshida began dismissing them. The same month,

694
00:40:28,340 --> 00:40:33,060
MacArthur suggested an official ban on the Japanese Communist Party. In July, the civil

695
00:40:33,060 --> 00:40:39,300
information and education division under SCAP sent Dr. Walter Eels of Stanford University on a six-month

696
00:40:39,300 --> 00:40:45,460
round of lectures to denounce the left and to target JCP-controlled Zangakkuren in particular.

697
00:40:45,460 --> 00:40:52,180
So they send a fairly prominent anti-communist lecturer to Japan to give them speeches on why

698
00:40:52,180 --> 00:40:57,620
communism's bad. And he declared at Nagata University on July 19th that, quote,

699
00:40:57,620 --> 00:41:03,060
communism is a dangerous and destructive doctrine, end quote. And Japanese universities need to

700
00:41:03,060 --> 00:41:08,420
dismiss communist professors as soon as possible, which later became a nationwide sentiment widely

701
00:41:08,420 --> 00:41:13,060
quoted by Japanese newspapers. Despite the fact that his lectures were not popular within the

702
00:41:13,060 --> 00:41:20,020
universities, Japanese education minister Takase Sotoro secretly began firing pro-communist teachers

703
00:41:20,020 --> 00:41:25,940
under the advice of SCAP. By March of 1950, more than 1,100 people had been dismissed. SCAP also

704
00:41:25,940 --> 00:41:31,860
recommended the government to decommunize the civil service without establishing a formal institution.

705
00:41:31,860 --> 00:41:37,060
Five days after Eels' speeches, the government announced that teachers and professors would be

706
00:41:37,060 --> 00:41:41,380
allowed to participate in political groups. Activities of university professors such as

707
00:41:41,380 --> 00:41:45,540
expressing their opinions are thought to be an integral part as professors. And while they said

708
00:41:45,540 --> 00:41:50,420
that, the educational department and universities use various irrelevant reasons to force them to

709
00:41:50,420 --> 00:41:54,420
resign. They said, oh, yeah, no, you can believe whatever you want, but that guy's haircut, man,

710
00:41:54,420 --> 00:42:00,100
you can't have that kind of haircut. We're not firing you because you're communist, it's the haircut.

711
00:42:01,780 --> 00:42:07,460
Obviously, it's so bad. The US State Department Office of Intelligence researchers reported that

712
00:42:07,460 --> 00:42:12,660
20 to 30 professors were urged to resign during late September. In the same month as Eels' speech,

713
00:42:12,660 --> 00:42:17,940
the National Railroad fired 126,000 workers. And in a report three months later, the head of

714
00:42:17,940 --> 00:42:22,020
administrative management agency said the firings were based on the law and not on a purge of

715
00:42:22,020 --> 00:42:27,060
communists. So, I don't know. It must be the truth. Yeah, it must be the truth. And just coincidentally,

716
00:42:27,060 --> 00:42:31,620
they made the Japanese Communist Party give them a year earlier a list of all their members, which

717
00:42:31,620 --> 00:42:37,060
was 100,000 people. At the time, Japanese academics considered the government's persecution of

718
00:42:37,060 --> 00:42:40,980
communists to be criminal and recalling the government's suppression of left-wing ideas

719
00:42:40,980 --> 00:42:45,300
before World War II. They believed that the academics should remain neutral and that sympathy

720
00:42:45,300 --> 00:42:50,260
for communism should not be a reason for dismissal. On March 6th, Yoshida sent a letter to MacArthur

721
00:42:50,260 --> 00:42:55,540
suggesting the formal dissolution of JCP. MacArthur replied that he did not have such authority,

722
00:42:55,540 --> 00:43:00,340
but he would not oppose the resolution if it was passed by the Diet, which is the government in

723
00:43:00,340 --> 00:43:06,100
Japan. In April, Eels was accused by students from Zengoku Ren during a lecture at Kyushu

724
00:43:06,100 --> 00:43:10,420
University of trying to turn Japan into a US colony. The students demanded the censorship

725
00:43:10,420 --> 00:43:14,900
of professors be stopped. Immediately thereafter, major industrial and business CEOs announced that

726
00:43:14,900 --> 00:43:20,180
they would not hire communist sympathizers or communist students. On May 30th, JCP related

727
00:43:20,180 --> 00:43:25,140
groups protested and chanted anti-American slogans in front of the Tokyo Imperial Palace. And during

728
00:43:25,140 --> 00:43:30,500
the same period, Akihara published a series of articles criticizing the policies of the

729
00:43:30,500 --> 00:43:35,860
occupational authorities. On June 6th, MacArthur ordered Yoshida to formally purge 24 influential

730
00:43:35,860 --> 00:43:40,500
members of the JCP's central committee and forbid them from conducting all political activities or

731
00:43:40,500 --> 00:43:45,460
publishing any articles and journals. The next day, the order was extended to the entire Akihara

732
00:43:45,460 --> 00:43:50,260
editorial board. At the start of the Korean War, roughly 22,000 public and private employees were

733
00:43:50,260 --> 00:43:54,580
forced out of their jobs due to their political views. The Japanese Communist Party's membership

734
00:43:54,580 --> 00:44:02,260
also declined sharply from 150,000 in 1945 to 20,000 in 1955. With SCAP seeing what they were

735
00:44:02,260 --> 00:44:08,260
able to do, they brushed their hands together and said, well, job well done. And SCAP withdraws in

736
00:44:08,260 --> 00:44:13,940
1951. They leave and they force on Japan what's called the US-Japan Security Treaty. They call

737
00:44:13,940 --> 00:44:19,300
it ANPO, which will come up very shortly. And it basically said it signed on September 8th, 1951.

738
00:44:19,300 --> 00:44:23,700
And it's also the same time they signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty. It ends World War II in

739
00:44:23,700 --> 00:44:29,540
Asia and went into effect April 28th, 1952. It does not have an end date or means of abrogation,

740
00:44:29,540 --> 00:44:34,580
and it allowed the US forces stationed in Japan to be used for any purposes without prior consultation

741
00:44:34,580 --> 00:44:38,820
with the Japanese government. It had a clause specifically authorizing US troops to put down

742
00:44:38,820 --> 00:44:44,420
domestic protests in Japan and did not commit the US to defend Japan if Japan were ever attacked by

743
00:44:44,420 --> 00:44:48,580
a third party. They said, we're going to get out of here. Okinawa is ours. We're going to put a base

744
00:44:48,580 --> 00:44:53,540
here. We're going to do whatever we want from that base. In fact, we can put down protests in

745
00:44:53,540 --> 00:44:57,860
Japan if we want to, but we don't have to. And if anybody attacks you, we don't have to do shit.

746
00:44:57,860 --> 00:45:03,700
Sign this. That's just great. Good job, US. Immediately on signing it, most Japanese are

747
00:45:03,700 --> 00:45:07,860
pissed off and they want it redone. They want it abolished. They want a new defense treaty.

748
00:45:07,860 --> 00:45:11,620
I could see it. Many on the Japanese left and even some conservatives on the right were united

749
00:45:11,620 --> 00:45:16,260
in hoping to chart a more neutral course in the Cold War and thus hope to get rid of the treaty

750
00:45:16,260 --> 00:45:20,660
and the US-Japan alliance entirely. The left don't like it that they're being told the way

751
00:45:20,660 --> 00:45:25,220
they need to think and specifically like communists and socialists are being outlawed again or have

752
00:45:25,220 --> 00:45:29,380
been and they're subservient to the US. They would rather have their own path. The conservatives

753
00:45:29,380 --> 00:45:34,500
also feel that way and a little bit of the sentiment of we wore this great power and now

754
00:45:34,500 --> 00:45:39,300
we're subservient to the US. This is seven years after the end of the war. There are many people

755
00:45:39,300 --> 00:45:43,860
that believe in the empire. I mean, the empire is one thing, but the US just coming in and being

756
00:45:43,860 --> 00:45:48,260
like, you're going to do this now. You have no choice is another thing. They signed that treaty.

757
00:45:48,260 --> 00:45:53,940
And then in 1959, the Liberal Democratic Party, which is the ruling party for most of Japan's

758
00:45:53,940 --> 00:45:58,980
history, proposes a new agreement that was more favorable to Japan and wanted it in place for a

759
00:45:58,980 --> 00:46:03,700
visit from Eisenhower that then Prime Minister Kishi had planned. However, the opposition by

760
00:46:03,700 --> 00:46:07,620
the Japanese socialist party who really disliked the agreement, controlled only about a third of

761
00:46:07,620 --> 00:46:12,740
the seats in the diet, lacked the votes to prevent the ratification. So socialists would use a variety

762
00:46:12,740 --> 00:46:17,460
of parliamentary tactics to drag out debate in hopes of preventing this new treaty, the new

763
00:46:17,460 --> 00:46:22,980
ANPO from being ratified before Eisenhower was supposed to arrive on June 19th. This next part

764
00:46:22,980 --> 00:46:28,260
is just ridiculous. So the Prime Minister, Kishi, he wants to get a new treaty in place so that he

765
00:46:28,260 --> 00:46:32,980
can look great and have a celebration when Eisenhower gets here in about a month with

766
00:46:32,980 --> 00:46:38,260
Eisenhower's visit approaching fast. Kishi really wanted to ratify the treaty in time.

767
00:46:38,260 --> 00:46:43,620
And moreover, the diet session was scheduled to end almost a month earlier on May 26th in the late

768
00:46:43,620 --> 00:46:49,380
evening on May 19th. Kishi took desperate measures of suddenly and unexpectedly calling for a 50 day

769
00:46:49,380 --> 00:46:54,340
extension with the diet session in defiance of long standing tarlentry norms and over the opposition

770
00:46:54,340 --> 00:46:58,660
of many members of his own ruling liberal democratic party. When socialist diet members

771
00:46:58,660 --> 00:47:04,500
staged a sit-in in the halls of the diet, Kishi took the unprecedented step of calling 500 police

772
00:47:04,500 --> 00:47:09,700
officers into the diet chamber and having opposition lawmakers physically removed from the premises.

773
00:47:09,700 --> 00:47:14,740
So the LDP can't get what they want done because the other members of the government won't play

774
00:47:14,740 --> 00:47:18,660
along. They're just doing a sit-in. They won't vote or do anything. So he calls in the cops,

775
00:47:18,660 --> 00:47:22,980
he tells them to pull them out of the building and they pull all of the members of the opposing

776
00:47:22,980 --> 00:47:26,820
party out of the building. So the only people left in the building are the LDP members,

777
00:47:26,820 --> 00:47:31,300
the liberal democratic party. They passed this extension and a final shop came after midnight,

778
00:47:31,300 --> 00:47:35,620
just after the extension was approved when Kishi then called for the immediate ratification of his

779
00:47:35,620 --> 00:47:40,340
treaty. With only members of Kishi's own party present, the revised security treaty was approved

780
00:47:40,340 --> 00:47:45,460
by the lower house of the diet with no debate and only a voice vote. Basically, he did this just in

781
00:47:45,460 --> 00:47:51,700
time so that this would go into effect by June 19th. Yeah. And like super sketchy way, like calls

782
00:47:51,700 --> 00:47:58,020
in the cops and gets everybody removed so there's no no votes. I was just gonna say so that it goes exactly how he wants.

783
00:47:58,020 --> 00:48:04,980
This is called the May 19th incident. They're so creative in this episode. Yeah, a lot of incidents

784
00:48:04,980 --> 00:48:12,100
around here. Japanese people saw this as shocking unsurprisingly. So it leads to protests in late May

785
00:48:12,100 --> 00:48:17,220
and into June. The anti-treaty protests greatly increased in size as many citizens took to the

786
00:48:17,220 --> 00:48:21,700
streets to express their outrage and the aims of the protests expanded from protesting the security

787
00:48:21,700 --> 00:48:27,620
treaty to ousting Kishi and protecting democracy. The largest protests around the national diet,

788
00:48:27,620 --> 00:48:32,900
the U.S. embassy and the prime minister's official residence of Tokyo occurred on a near daily basis

789
00:48:32,900 --> 00:48:38,100
and large-scale protests were staged in city centers all over Japan. In June, the Sohyo Labor

790
00:48:38,100 --> 00:48:42,980
Federation carried out a series of nationwide general strikes and a June 15th strike involved

791
00:48:42,980 --> 00:48:47,940
6.4 million workers across the country making it the largest strike in Japanese history.

792
00:48:47,940 --> 00:48:53,940
Like that is massive. Yeah. And then there's a couple things, Chelsea, don't laugh yet. Okay.

793
00:48:53,940 --> 00:49:01,220
This next one's called the Hagerty incident. Okay. Not so obvious yet. And then then there's the June 15th incident.

794
00:49:01,220 --> 00:49:08,980
Okay. That wasn't a laugh. So these protests are going on and Eisenhower's business coming up on June 19th.

795
00:49:08,980 --> 00:49:14,980
So Eisenhower sends his press secretary, James Hagerty to Tokyo on June 10th and he arrives at

796
00:49:14,980 --> 00:49:19,380
Tokyo's Haneda airport to make the advance preparations for Eisenhower's impending arrival.

797
00:49:19,380 --> 00:49:24,980
Hagerty was picked up in a black car by U.S. ambassador, Douglas MacArthur II, the nephew of

798
00:49:24,980 --> 00:49:30,100
the famous general. That's not the only nepotism in that family either. Douglas MacArthur's dad

799
00:49:30,100 --> 00:49:35,380
oversaw the Philippines after the American Filipino war. So that's usually how it happens,

800
00:49:35,380 --> 00:49:41,780
isn't it? Yeah. So U.S. ambassador to Japan, Douglas MacArthur II picks up Hagerty and then

801
00:49:41,780 --> 00:49:47,060
he immediately deliberately provokes an international incident by ordering the car to be driven into a

802
00:49:47,060 --> 00:49:52,660
large crowd of protesters. However, the protesters surround the car and they start cracking its

803
00:49:52,660 --> 00:49:57,380
windows and they smash out its tail lights and they rock it back and forth for more than an hour

804
00:49:57,380 --> 00:50:02,340
while standing on the roof and chanting anti-American slogans and singing protest songs.

805
00:50:02,340 --> 00:50:08,500
Ultimately, MacArthur and Hagerty had to be rescued by U.S. Marines in military helicopters,

806
00:50:08,500 --> 00:50:13,860
creating imagery of the so-called Hagerty incident that was transmitted by newswire around the world.

807
00:50:13,860 --> 00:50:17,620
Now, I actually think there's a pretty famous photo if you just type in Hagerty incident

808
00:50:17,620 --> 00:50:21,620
of this whole thing going down. Yeah, there's some very famous. I wouldn't say very famous.

809
00:50:21,620 --> 00:50:26,100
There's lots of photos of this and it's just, yeah, helicopters. Yeah. I was just going to say

810
00:50:26,100 --> 00:50:31,860
the main one is a helicopter going in to rescue them and just so many people. Yeah, that is a

811
00:50:31,860 --> 00:50:38,100
lot of people, like a lot. Like one you probably wouldn't just drive your car into. Yeah, let's

812
00:50:38,100 --> 00:50:45,380
just drive into the car. No matter who is it. And then MacArthur II sounds like an absolute dumbass.

813
00:50:46,340 --> 00:50:50,580
First off, he drives into the protest and then they have all these photos and he's like, oh,

814
00:50:50,580 --> 00:50:56,420
this will incentivize the Japanese government to crack down harder on protests. However, this

815
00:50:56,420 --> 00:51:03,700
action backfires and instead Eisenhower sees this as a safety risk and they start to take this visit

816
00:51:03,700 --> 00:51:08,580
away. They're like, yeah, I don't think we should take Eisenhower to Japan anymore. Yeah, he seems

817
00:51:08,580 --> 00:51:17,140
not very brave. That is a huge crowd. So that happens. Ridiculous, like two ridiculous events

818
00:51:17,140 --> 00:51:20,980
and they just call them incidents. Like, I'm sure you could come up with such better names. There

819
00:51:20,980 --> 00:51:25,460
probably are better names in Japanese. We just don't translate them well enough. It's true, but

820
00:51:25,460 --> 00:51:32,020
I do like it. I like the names of the incidents. They're very creatively named and you know exactly

821
00:51:32,020 --> 00:51:38,820
what they're talking about. They're very straightforward. They are very, there's no guessing. So next we move

822
00:51:38,820 --> 00:51:43,380
on to the June 15th incident. So this is four days before the Eisenhower thing was supposed to happen.

823
00:51:43,380 --> 00:51:48,580
As part of the anti-treaty coalition's 24th United Action, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched

824
00:51:48,580 --> 00:51:52,820
on the national diet in Tokyo. In late afternoon, the protesters were attacked by right-wing

825
00:51:52,820 --> 00:51:57,220
ultra-nationalist counter protesters who rammed them with trucks and attacked them with wooden

826
00:51:57,220 --> 00:52:01,940
staves spiked with nails, causing dozens of injuries from moderate to severe, including

827
00:52:01,940 --> 00:52:06,100
several hospitalizations. And just a few minutes later, radical left-wing activists from the

828
00:52:06,100 --> 00:52:11,540
nationwide student federation, the Zagakuren, smashed their way into the diet compound itself.

829
00:52:11,540 --> 00:52:16,340
This precipitates a long battle with police who beat the unarmed students bloody with their batons

830
00:52:16,340 --> 00:52:20,820
in front of mass media reporters and television cameras. The police finally succeed in clearing

831
00:52:20,820 --> 00:52:26,820
the diet compound after 1 a.m. But in a struggle, a young Tokyo university student by the name

832
00:52:26,820 --> 00:52:33,860
Michiko Kamba is killed. So after this violent June 15th incident, pressure mounted on Kishi to

833
00:52:33,860 --> 00:52:38,820
cancel Eisenhower's visit. Kishi had hoped to secure the streets for Eisenhower's visit by

834
00:52:38,820 --> 00:52:43,780
calling out the Japan Self-Defense Forces and tens of thousands of right-wing thugs that would be

835
00:52:43,780 --> 00:52:49,460
provided by, I don't want to say who, but it's the Yakuza. Basically he gets the Yakuza to come out

836
00:52:49,460 --> 00:52:54,740
as they're the counter protesters. That will come up later. But didn't Eisenhower already cancel

837
00:52:54,740 --> 00:52:59,700
his visit? I don't think it was formally. It was more so just like he was thinking of canceling it.

838
00:52:59,700 --> 00:53:04,900
He was just thinking of not showing up at that point. Yeah. And then things were just getting

839
00:53:04,900 --> 00:53:10,500
out of hand. He was like, yeah, this is looking pretty risky. Let's play it by ear right now.

840
00:53:11,300 --> 00:53:18,260
This happens. Their parliament building gets held by protesters for a day and Eisenhower's like,

841
00:53:18,260 --> 00:53:22,020
guys, I really don't think I should go. And Kishi, the prime minister was like, no, don't worry about

842
00:53:22,020 --> 00:53:26,740
it. We're going to call in 10,000 soldiers. We're going to have Yakuza everywhere. We're fine. Don't

843
00:53:26,740 --> 00:53:31,300
worry about it. But Kishi's talked out of these extreme measures by his cabinet and thereafter

844
00:53:31,300 --> 00:53:35,620
had no choice but to cancel Eisenhower's visit and take responsibility for the chaos by announcing

845
00:53:35,620 --> 00:53:40,980
his own resignation on June 16th. On June 17th, newspapers across the nation, which had previously

846
00:53:40,980 --> 00:53:45,700
supported the protesters in their struggle to oust Kishi, issued a joint editorial condemning

847
00:53:45,700 --> 00:53:50,020
violence on both sides and calling for an end to the protest movements. Nevertheless, the largest

848
00:53:50,020 --> 00:53:54,580
single day of protests in the entire movement took place on June 18th, the day before the treaty

849
00:53:54,580 --> 00:54:00,580
would automatically take effect. And the June 18th. So Kishi stepped down, but nothing regarding

850
00:54:00,580 --> 00:54:06,020
the ANPO treaty stopped. It's still going through. So on June 18th, there's a huge protest. Hundreds

851
00:54:06,020 --> 00:54:10,740
of thousands of protesters surrounded the national diet, hoping to somehow stop the treaty by yelling

852
00:54:10,740 --> 00:54:15,460
loud enough, I guess, which is apparently a rule in Japan. If you reach a certain decibel level,

853
00:54:15,460 --> 00:54:20,980
they have to do what you want. Yeah, I can't argue with it. The protesters remain in place until after

854
00:54:20,980 --> 00:54:24,740
midnight when the treaty automatically took effect. With the treaty in place and Kishi's

855
00:54:24,740 --> 00:54:29,540
resignation becoming the official on July 15th, the protest movements really lost momentum. Although

856
00:54:29,540 --> 00:54:34,660
the anti-treaty coalition held a few more united actions, turnouts became low and the movement dies

857
00:54:34,660 --> 00:54:41,300
away. What comes from this? Well, 1960 ANPO protests had ultimately failed to stop the revised US-Japan

858
00:54:41,300 --> 00:54:45,780
security treaty from taking effect, but they did force the cancellation of Eisenhower's plan visit.

859
00:54:45,780 --> 00:54:52,580
Kishi was succeeded as prime minister by Hayato Akita, who took a much more conciliatory stance

860
00:54:52,580 --> 00:54:56,660
towards the political opposition and announced the incoming doubling plan, which is basically

861
00:54:56,660 --> 00:55:01,540
we're going to double the GDP over the next 10 years to redirect the nation's energies away from

862
00:55:01,540 --> 00:55:06,100
contentious political struggles and towards a nationwide drive for rapid economic growth.

863
00:55:06,100 --> 00:55:11,140
And basically they say, like, look, just ignore politics. We're going to double the GDP. Everybody's

864
00:55:11,140 --> 00:55:16,820
going to be happy. Okay. And everybody kind of just goes along with it in Japan somewhat.

865
00:55:16,820 --> 00:55:22,100
Yeah, that was the redirection incident. Yes. The anti-American aspect of the protests and

866
00:55:22,100 --> 00:55:26,820
the humiliating cancellation of Eisenhower's visit brought US-Japan relations to their lowest

867
00:55:26,820 --> 00:55:31,140
ebb since the end of World War II, which is of course when they dropped nuclear bombs on.

868
00:55:31,140 --> 00:55:33,460
Yeah, that was pretty low. So that's pretty low.

869
00:55:35,540 --> 00:55:40,260
The incoming administration of President John Kennedy responded by taking a more gentle approach

870
00:55:40,260 --> 00:55:44,820
to US-Japan relations. Kennedy appointed sympathetic Japan expert and Harvard University

871
00:55:44,820 --> 00:55:50,260
professor Edwin Reichauer as ambassador to Japan. Instead of, you know, that second MacArthur who

872
00:55:50,260 --> 00:55:56,340
just seems like a jock. Dude, you should totally just drive that car into the protest. It'd be so

873
00:55:56,340 --> 00:56:02,500
cool. It really should have been the MacArthur incident. It really should have been. And Kennedy

874
00:56:02,500 --> 00:56:09,380
should have appointed the next MacArthur in line. It's true. Next MacArthur.

875
00:56:09,380 --> 00:56:13,780
JFK also invites Akita, the prime minister, to be the first foreign leader to visit the United

876
00:56:13,780 --> 00:56:19,380
States in his term in office. And at their 1961 summit, promised Akita he would henceforth treat

877
00:56:19,380 --> 00:56:25,300
Japan more like a close ally such as Great Britain instead of like how, you know, you know how

878
00:56:25,300 --> 00:56:31,140
SCAP and the in-between period was basically them telling them what to do. Yeah. So JFK kind of

879
00:56:31,140 --> 00:56:35,620
changes how everything goes. In Japan, protests spurred a new wave of right-wing activism and

880
00:56:35,620 --> 00:56:40,980
violence, including the assassination of socialist party chairman, Onijiro Asanuma. During a televised

881
00:56:40,980 --> 00:56:45,940
election debate in the fall of 1960, Asanuma's assassination weakened Japanese socialist party,

882
00:56:45,940 --> 00:56:51,060
which was further driven by conflicts over the conduct of the anti-treaty protests, leading to

883
00:56:51,060 --> 00:56:55,380
the splitting of the broke away democratic socialist party. Japanese students who were in college or

884
00:56:55,380 --> 00:56:59,860
graduate schools between 1960 and 1970 and protested against security treaty are often

885
00:56:59,860 --> 00:57:04,980
remembered as the ANPO generation, suggesting the defining role the anti-treaty protests had in their

886
00:57:04,980 --> 00:57:09,220
lives. However, the protests had a splintering effect on the student movement as heated discreements

887
00:57:09,220 --> 00:57:13,940
over who was to blame for the failure to stop the treaty led to inviting. And yeah, I think that

888
00:57:13,940 --> 00:57:19,460
catches you up for pretty much all of Japan post-World War II history. There's a few years

889
00:57:19,460 --> 00:57:24,500
from there to now and recent things have happened. I will kind of get a little bit of that in here,

890
00:57:24,500 --> 00:57:30,660
but from that post-World War II to now, the major party that has run Japan is the LDP,

891
00:57:30,660 --> 00:57:35,140
the Liberal Democratic Party. It's incredibly conservative, but what I say, it pretty much

892
00:57:35,140 --> 00:57:40,980
always runs Japan. From 1955 to today, there have only been six years where they didn't hold office.

893
00:57:40,980 --> 00:57:46,820
Wow. Like they are always in power. That's crazy. And the current prime minister is Fumio Kishida,

894
00:57:46,820 --> 00:57:51,380
one of the last prime ministers. His name was Shinzo Abe. He was prime minister from 2012 to

895
00:57:51,380 --> 00:57:56,820
2020. He was just assassinated in 2022. It was super weird. And this is actually why I wanted

896
00:57:56,820 --> 00:58:00,420
to do these episodes. There's some information we're going to talk about in the next episode.

897
00:58:00,420 --> 00:58:06,500
He was giving a speech and guns are illegal in Japan. So the assailant built a shotgun at home

898
00:58:06,500 --> 00:58:13,220
and killed Shinzo Abe with it. Is this the famous one or have more than one? This happened on TV.

899
00:58:13,220 --> 00:58:17,780
I just talked about one. It might actually been on TV. This one just happened in 2022. Like it

900
00:58:17,780 --> 00:58:23,220
was very recent. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, I'm not thinking of the same one. No. There's another

901
00:58:23,940 --> 00:58:30,180
one that happened on TV to a political person. I think. Yeah. In the sixties. Yeah. Yeah. Not

902
00:58:30,180 --> 00:58:34,900
the same one. No, that bad. I actually just talked about not that long ago. But yeah, from here,

903
00:58:34,900 --> 00:58:40,660
we're going to talk about the more clandestine side of Japanese history during this time. But

904
00:58:40,660 --> 00:58:45,780
this is where this episode ends. Chelsea, anything you want to add? No, that was a nice brush up on

905
00:58:45,780 --> 00:58:50,740
what I knew about Japanese history between the periods that we were just talking about

906
00:58:50,740 --> 00:58:57,540
and all those incidents. The one thing that I forgot, unfortunately, to add to the script,

907
00:58:57,540 --> 00:59:01,060
which came up in the last episode I want to talk about more was the train incidents because there

908
00:59:01,060 --> 00:59:05,300
was more information. It was super sketchy how they all went down, but maybe I talk about them

909
00:59:05,300 --> 00:59:11,620
in the next episode. I can't remember. I guess we'll all find out together. Yeah. But in the

910
00:59:11,620 --> 00:59:16,580
meantime, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea, trying to remember what we cover and what to do

911
00:59:16,580 --> 00:59:20,660
about things. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week.

912
00:59:20,660 --> 00:59:25,700
We'll be back for more incidents. This is what is known as the Journey to the Fringe incident.

913
00:59:25,700 --> 00:59:31,780
I know. I'm going to start naming major things that happened in my life in an incident. Bye.

914
00:59:55,700 --> 01:00:00,820
I bet you we are there. And if you really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new

915
01:00:00,820 --> 01:00:07,380
episodes or tell us that we're wrong and terrible, either way, please send us an email at journeytothefringe

916
01:00:07,380 --> 01:00:26,500
at gmail.com. For now, I'll see you in the next episode.