ABSTRACT
Declarations made before and immediately following the cessation of the Pacific War pledged the United States mission of the occupation of Japan, after disarming the erstwhile enemy of its military capacity and purging those responsible for the war, to be the introduction of democracy to its domestic politics. The same Potsdam Declaration that demanded Japan’s “unconditional surrender” appended the notion that through occupation the democratic ideals of “[f]reedom of speech, of religion and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established.” Article 14 of the 1946 postwar Constitution that the occupation forces imposed upon the Japanese people adopted the spirit of these ideals in its declaration that “[a]ll the people are equal under the law, and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.”1
