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Centuries of borrowing gave Japan a reputation as a nation of agile mimics; Japanese even coined an ugly word for themselves—sarumane (monkey-imitators)—to use in candid introspective moments. But at the core there was a quality distinctly Japanese, that took or rejected, or sometimes transformed, everything foreign, from Confucius' rules of behavior to a Leica lens.
Indelible Marks. Not even the U.S. occupation could break down the immutable process of selective absorption. Occupied for the first time in its history, Japan bent, bowed and stretched to the penances of defeat. It grasped eagerly at the authority that floated in behind a corncob pipe on the U.S. Missouri to replace the authority that died with the Tojos. Its outward bitterness in defeat was directed not so much against the triumphal strangers who had used Japanese as the first targets for the Abomb, but at its own returning soldiers. Instead of sympathy, the returning veterans were greeted with coldness, and even with jeers in their home towns. They had failed.
The Japan of ten years later is imprinted with indelible marks of U.S. occupation, but far less than and in different ways from those the occupiers intended. The once divine Emperor is now a constitutional monarch, comfortable to have around and to bow to, but without power that he might abuse. Land reform has broken down the prewar imbalance under which only 30% of the farmers owned the land they farmed: by last year, only about 1,200,000 acres were tenant-farmed v. 6,000,000 in 1945.
The purging of imperialistic textbooks and the broadening of public education has improved a system which even before the war achieved a literacy rate of 97%. Women have the vote and use it (about 18 million in last week's election), though many probably voted the way their husbands directed, and most still live the hard but dignified lives of chattels, obedient to the wishes of husbands who often invoke the medieval right to spend their free time in the salons of the geishas or the chambers of their concubines. The zaibatsu—the handful of family trusts that owned Japan's commerce, banking and industry—have been gradually returning since the U.S. realized that breaking them up had left Japan without foundation for its postwar economy. The imposed MacArthur constitution still stands as the code by which the government governs. But it is subject to the governors' interpretation of phrases which often have scant practical meaning or attraction for the Japanese mind.
Empire Game. There is still much that the Japanese would like to discard ("Not because we have grown to hate Americans," explained one Japanese, "but because we have got tired of them."), but they cannot. Though they have found their way back to sovereignty, the Japanese have not found the way to stay alive without the help of the U.S.