| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Ray A. Moore and Donald L. Robinson. Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State under MacArthur. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004. Pp. xiv, 409. $24.95.

Japan's present constitution has functioned for over half a century without a single amendment. Despite considerable criticism of its alien character and foreign authorship, a document that was drafted in great haste by American lawyers in uniform continues to determine how contemporary Japan is governed. Yet there was nothing casual about the extraordinary birth of this particular constitution. In the face of external challenges and domestic unease, a handful of Americans first wrote and then pressed the Japanese authorities to accept the inevitable. This process witnessed, as Ray A. Moore and Donald L. Robinson acknowledge in their preface, "American liberalism at work as it imposed constitutional democracy during the military occupation of Japan" (p. v). They also admit that "[a]s Americans ourselves, we confess ambivalence about the Occupation's project. On the one hand, it is pleasing to observe American soldiers passing on to a conquered foe our nation's foremost contribution to human governance. It is less gratifying to encounter an irritating combination of arrogance, ignorance, and stubborn willfulness in many of those who represented America in this episode" (pp. v-vi).

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