Blue Eyed Shogun Analysis

August 12th-14th Japan was compelled to unconditionally surrender signed the Potsdam Declaration after the two atomic bombs and the emperor announced this to the people via radio on the 15th. Shortly after, 350 military officers committed suicide, and they burned official documents of the war because they knew there would be war crime trials. “The Blue-Eyed Shogun” (a.k.a. Truman) had the power to disperse the Diet, “censor the press, disband political parties, issue administrative directive” with no need for consent. The key phrase for the reforms was “Demilitarize and Democratize,” which included pushes towards ideas like the U.S. 1st amendment, which led to minority groups to rise up including women. The first postwar election got 39 women …show more content…
One way they did this was the “Declaration of Humanity,” that basically accentuated the Meiji Character Oath but most of the people didn’t quite have the same meaning to the people because of how the emperor’s dialect was a little too classical. Finally, a new constitution was created that lowered the rank of the emperor to only symbol, established a stronger Diet, assured basic human rights, prohibited discrimination, and had the significant Article 9. Which forced the people to “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat of use of force as means of settling international disputes.” An “economic purge” of wartime companies and economic laws created like the Trade Union Law (Dec.1945) and the Anti-Monopoly Law (Apr 1947). Land reforms led to 90% of the land was run by the inhabitants and not tenants. They amended the Civil Code (1948) and dissolved the tradition family style and instead include “equality of the sexes” and separating marital couples from the mother’s