ABSTRACT
The Japanese banking system which the American occupiers encountered in 1945 was highly developed and well established, not unlike its Western counterparts in essential respects, and yet quite obviously unique as a whole. While in institutional arrangements and basic functions Japan’s financial world showed significant similarities to the American and European systems which had originally served as its models, much seemed alien to MacArthur’s reformers, from the pattern of corporate finance to investment practices, from the legal structure to the fundamental economic philosophy of Japanese bankers, industrialists and civil servants. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was the singular characteristics of Japanese banking, those aspects unfamiliar and sometimes incomprehensible to the occupiers, that were to become the focus of American criticism and the target of reform efforts. An understanding of what the Americans considered the ‘peculiarities’ of Japanese banking, as well as an appreciation of the general nature of the system, is thus necessary as basic b ackground to an analysis of the financial programmes of the Occupation.
