ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that although the cultural impact of the jeep has long been noted, albeit in perhaps a slightly over-generalised fashion, the postwar Japanese automotive industry was also heavily influenced by the vehicle and owes something, directly and indirectly, to jeeps of both US and Japanese origins. Alongside providing the necessary contextual background to the state of the Japanese automotive industry between 1945 and 1950, it focuses on these major influences of the Willys jeep and its Japanese successors within the economic and cultural history of the Occupation. To fully appreciate the economic, as opposed to cultural, impacts of the jeep upon occupied Japan, an examination of the history of the influence of General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (GHQ) policies and procurement on the automotive industry, and the struggles it faced up to 1950, is necessary.
