ABSTRACT
Japan's current parliamentary democratic system appeared when Japanese society was in a condition of partial anomie, or normlessness. The disastrous final stages of World War II, Japan's 1945 surrender, the beginning of foreign occupation, and the disarmament, demolition, and abolition of Japan's entire military system helped to discredit the militarism and extreme nationalism that had shaped the nation's political culture in the 1930s and 1940s. Japanese prime minister General Hideki Tojo, whose cabinet chose to go to war with the United States, cannot be called a dictator comparable to Germany's Adolf Hitler or Italy's Benito Mussolini. Modern scholarly literature contains a variety of interpretations in regard to the postwar period in Japan. Japan may be a far-from-perfect democracy, but the skills, goals, and actions of the major occupation decisionmakers and their Japanese counterparts did play a crucial role in producing a real democracy.
