ABSTRACT
The occupation program of reeducation combined with censorship was taking hold and was to have enduring effects on Japanese perceptions of the war, far beyond the occupation itself. The most intense debate since the war erupted within Japan over the admissibility or desirability of a partial peace treaty excluding China and potentially other former allies sympathetic to China, especially as such a peace would tie Japan exclusively to the Western camp and allow the retention of US bases in Japan. The ‘reverse course’ was firmly set following the Communist victory in China in 1949. Newsprint rationing was a potent means of control and procedures used in censoring specific passages caused greater hardship than in wartime Japanese censorship. Although censorship ended with the occupation, when the new freedoms embodied in the Constitution took full effect, critics of the Japanese press claim that it has never outgrown the cautious habits instilled by both wartime and occupation censorship.
