This 1989 Yoshino Sakuzo prize-winning book is essential reading for understanding Japan's postwar constitution, political and social history, and foreign policy. The most complete English account of the origins of Japan's constitution, it analyzes the dramatic events of 19451946 that lead to the birth of Japan's new constitution. Koseki Shoichi challenges the simplicity of the current interpretation that General Douglas MacArthur in February 1946, faced with inept Japanese efforts at constitutional reform and Soviet interference through the Far Eastern Commission, secretly ordered his staff...