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Only 14 years ago such a treaty would have been unthinkable, and that it would be signed for Japan by Kishi, inconceivable. Then, Japan was a nation in ruins: a third of its factories had been leveled by U.S. bombers; eight of every ten ships in its merchant fleet lay at the bottom of the ocean; its exhausted population faced starvation. And Kishi himself was cleaning latrines in Sugamo Prison while awaiting trial as a war criminal. Defeat was so complete and catastrophic that the Japanese seemed to take an almost perverse pleasure in the totality of their humiliation. "Shigataganai—it can't be helped," they shrugged. "We lost the war."
Yet Japan, going into the 1960s, has risen phoenix-like from the ashes. The Japanese people are 25% better off than they were before the war, even though 20 million more of them are crowded into an area 52% smaller than their old territory. Japan's industrial growth has soared to its highest rate ever, enough to double the national income every ten years. Its tiny farms (average size: 2½ acres) are so intensely cultivated that they have one of the world's highest yields. Nearly every Japanese family owns a radio, one in every four, a TV set; more newspapers are sold per capita than in the U.S. The people of Japan are incomparably the best fed, clothed and housed in all Asia.
The Comeback. Japan did not lift itself by its own sandal straps. Since the war U.S. aid has averaged $178 million a year; a serious business recession was eased by the 1950 Korean war, which poured vast sums into the Japanese economy; war reparations in kind to Southeast Asia have kept factories humming; and the very high rate of capital investment is possible since Japan spends little on armaments. But major credit belongs to the Japanese themselves. In a typically Japanese swing from one extreme to another, they shook off the apathy of defeat, and with skill, hard work and enthusiasm began rebuilding at home and recapturing markets abroad.
Yet, as always, Japan remains the land of contrasts and contradictions. The flourishing economy consists of "elephants and fleas," i.e., giant automated factories in the midst of millions of family workshops whose low-paid women employees make everything from toys to machine parts. The universities are jammed, but students must often sell their blood to pay tuition and may commit suicide if they fail to get a job on graduation. The cities blaze with neon lights, teen-age girls in pony tails squeal their delight in "rockabilly" singers, and the streets resound to jukebox music and the clatter of pachinko (pinball) machines. But in most of Japan, marriages are still arranged by traditional matchmakers, business deals are still settled in geisha houses, and wives still greet their husbands on hands and knees. Laments a young sculptor: "It is impossible for us not to lead a double life, half Japanese, half Western. The result is that we are frustrated, and do not know whom to turn to or what road to follow."