ABSTRACT
Professor Hollerman's interesting article on the economic controls imposed during the American Occupation of Japan raises many provocative issues, and stimulates speculation not only on the substance of SCAP's economic policies, but also on a wider range of interpretive problems related to the period. The timing of the piece is useful, too, for we are on the verge of a minor boom in Occupation studies, and it provides an opportunity to reflect on many serious questions that are being raised in current research. This essay is intended less as a discussion of Professor Hollerman's conclusions on their own terms than as an exploration of some of the implications of his findings for the study of the Occupation as a whole. What follows is an attempt to raise some questions about the period that interest me; to explore in different contexts some implications of what Professor Hollerman has called “contradictions between stated goals of the Occupation and SCAP's actions and policies”; and to offer my own hypothesis about the source of that contradiction.
