ABSTRACT
Japan’s defeat in World War II inaugurated a new era in world history. It also opened a new chapter in Japanese historiography and in East and Southeast Asian historiography in general. During the period of U.S. occupation of Japan (1945-1952), General Douglas MacArthur, while helping retain the Japanese Emperor, did everything else to undermine the Japanese traditions, political and cultural alike, deemed by him as culpable for the country’s aggressive and militarist behavior in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1947, under his direct supervision, the SCAP (Supreme Commander of Allied Powers) drafted a new constitution for Japan, promoting women’s and workers’ rights and expanded suffrage, on which a new Diet was elected. The constitution guaranteed freedom of expression and press, public assembly, political parties, and organizations. As union movement and socialist activities came back to life, Marxist historiography also boomed, enjoying the freedom it never had had before in the country. The main task the Marxist historians tackled at the time was to criticize and condemn prewar and wartime historiography and historical education, which also led them to scrutinize the course of Japanese modernization. And their endeavor was joined by the “modernist” historians, another important historical school developed in postwar Japan.
