Kirkus
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A worldly-wise memoir that offers fresh perspectives on the genesis of Japan's post WW II emergence as an economic superpower. Cohen, who died in 1979, was an Occupation insider, serving as civilian labor chief in MacArthur's storied command. His vivid chronicle spans a critical era that ran from 1943 through the early 1950's, when the island-nation once again became self-supporting. Well before the end of hostilities in the Pacific theater, Cohen recounts, New Deal planners were preparing position papers that contemplated the breakup of Japan's financial combines, a purge of big business, encouragement of trade unions, and other liberal objectives. By and large, he judges, the typically conservative military men charged with democratizing a semi-feudal society did well in a not wholly congenial assignment. Indeed, many became more dedicated than their progressive masters to social engineering. By 1949, Cohen reports, effective control of the Japanese economy has passed from the occupation forces to Washington, where budget-conscious political appointees and bureaucrats were bent on saving money for American taxpayers. By the author's account, this transfer of power (which was little noted at the time) had substantive long-term consequences. With the benefit of hindsight, he argues that US authorities' insistence on a fiscally orthodox recovery was both premature and ill-advised, undermining reforms which were instituted but never fully implemented. At any rate, Cohen concludes, the occupation's eventually expedient policies alienated working-class Japanese; the bottom-line results were ""an emotionally divided public and an incomplete alliance."" Cohen makes clear that, on balance, America played a catalytic and indispensable role in Japan's dramatic revival. Whether the US may have lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn the comeback to better advantage is the central issue in his nuanced big-picture overview, informed by a wealth of sharply focused close-ups of great events. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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The late Theodore Cohen was Gen. Douglas MacArthur's labor-relations chief during the postwar occupation of Japan, when American authorities were under orders to disarm, demilitarize and democratize that conquered nation. Cohen, with Passin, professor of East Asian studies at Columbia, describes how this daunting three-part program was carried out. Although he has high praise for MacArthur as civil governor, Cohen makes it clear that the general was not the American Caesar he seemed to be during that period of his career: he was implementing policy already established in Washington during the war. The book reveals how that policy was hammered out and the means by which the resulting directive, JCS 1380/15, was translated into action. MacArthur and staff had to deal with the threat of nation-wide famine, economic collapse, general strikes and many other crises while imposing sweeping radical reforms that in the end set the stage for Japan's emergence as the economic giant it is today. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved