The recent conservative trend in political science has been accompanied by the emergence of conservative interpretations of the occupation period. Among these revised views, the most conspicuous one is the high appraisal of Yoshida Shigeru, which elucidates Yoshida's politics as mainstream within the postwar Japanese conservative party. Yoshida is now seen as a main figure who contributed to the postwar political stability and economic prosperity of Japan.
My close examinations of the first-hand historical materials of the postwar occupation period, such as the diaries of Ashida Hitoshi, however, have led me to question the validity of this conservative interpretation. Moreover, that interpretation contains the following theoretical defects. First, it has somewhat ignored the systemic approach of history. That is to say, this interpretation has underestimated the significance of discontinuity between prewar and postwar Japanese society. Consequently, feudalistic aspects of prewar Japanese society as well as the significance of the democratization of postwar Japanese society have been neglected. Naturally enough, this has led to the neglect of Yoshida's feudalistic values and a tendency to evaluate Yoshida as a liberal-conservative. The conservative interpretation has ignored the fact that Yoshida regarded the USSR as an expansionist state and his anti-communist stance has been somehow ignored.
These interpretations have brought about, on the other hand, an oversimplified appraisal of Ashida as an “ultra-nationalist.” Accordingly, the importance of the Katayama-Ashida coalition government between the Japanese Social Democratic Party and the Democratic Party has not been emphasized adequately in these evaluations of the occupation period. The objective of this article is to attempt a reappraisal of the occupation period, particularly in the period of the coalition government as well as the politics and diplomacy of Ashida. This article is closely based upon the diaries of Ashida Hitoshi, which I recenty co-edited in seven volumes.
The article contains the following major points:
1. The conservative trend in interpretations of postwar history
2. Continuity and discontinuity: the meaning of democratization in the postwar period
3. Historian's interpretations of the “Konoye Memorial”
4. Ashida's views on world affairs prior to the surrender of Japan
5. The complexities of the Japanese constitution-making process
6. The rise and fall of the coalition government
7. The unknown battle over reform of the Imperial Household
8. The partisan struggle for national control of the coal industry
9. Economic recovery and the democratization of Japanese society
10. A gap in Japanese historiography: A dilemma within Japanese liberalism

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