ABSTRACT
Since the mid-nineteenth century, change in Japan has involved choice, the essence of politics. In the 1860s and 1870s, the Japanese chose to open their nation, to seek knowledge throughout the world, and to modernize the traditional society. Postwar politics meant that increasingly the Japanese were making choices on the path toward further development. Many Americans and some Japanese believe that the true modernization of Japan got under way only with the defeat and the Occupation. Japanese increasingly cast aside unworkable principles of federalism, which had been imported by Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. Informal change saw the reestablishment of centralized control of fiscal policy, education, and, to some extent, police standards. In the period of growth of the 1960s, the Japanese were able to carry with them a large measure of traditional behavior to protect themselves against the shocks of change.
