SNA (Tokyo) — Hitoshi Ashida attempted in 1948 to give a reorganized Democratic Party-Socialist Party coalition a second chance at leading Japan’s government. But at this time the progressive phase of the US Occupation was ending, and pressure to create a conservative regime embracing Washington’s Cold War objectives became irresistible.

Transcript

On March 10, 1948, Hitoshi Ashida became prime minister of Japan.

He had a varied career as a diplomat and politician, journalist and author, and when he was tapped for the top job, he was serving as Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and leader of the Democratic Party, which had placed a close third in the recent general elections.

The formation of the Ashida Cabinet was itself controversial. Both his own Democratic Party and the Socialist Party were keen to prevent the more conservative Shigeru Yoshida from returning to power, so they basically just reorganized the previous government with a new prime minister.

Although this wasn’t a Socialist Party-led government, no fewer than eight Cabinet ministers were socialists, and this time it included figures like left-wing socialist Kanju Kato, who became the Minister of Labor.

The Ashida administration was weak from the outset. Japanese public opinion was not impressed with the new lineup. Moreover, former Prime Minister Kijuro Shidehara quickly joined forces with Yoshida to build a more threatening conservative opposition party called the Democratic Liberal Party. They were vocal in their criticism of the Ashida Cabinet.

Still, the Ashida Cabinet was able to get down to work, and it quickly passed a variety of laws reorganizing aspects of the national administration, implementing reforms in fields such as business, education, and the criminal justice system. It also founded the Japan Coast Guard.

But the Ashida government was also dogged by the broader context that had contributed to the fall of the previous Katayama administration—the policy views of the US occupiers were drifting ever more decidedly in a hard conservative direction, and this was putting pressures on the Democratic Party-Socialist Party coalition that could not be withstood.

Most destructive to the ruling coalition was SCAP’s growing insistence that labor unions’ right to strike be curtailed, and in some cases banned outright. US soldiers were sometimes directly employed as a show of force against strikers.

In July, General Douglas MacArthur openly demanded that Japan’s civil service laws be revised to remove the rights of government workers—not only to go on strike—but even to engage in collective bargaining.

The Ashida government quickly complied with MacArthur’s order at the risk of triggering the collapse of the ruling coalition, but it was only a matter of time before the Socialist Party would be forced out of government by policies aimed directly at its political base.

At this point, a bribery and corruption case called the Showa Denko scandal ensnared the Ashida government. While some of the facts remain murky, this scandal may have been partially engineered by conservative US military officers within SCAP to end—once and for all—the progressive phase of occupation. Washington’s desire to bring to power a Japanese government with a much tougher line on Cold War policies was, in any case, undeniable at this point.

When Suehiro Nishio, general-secretary of the Socialist Party, was arrested on charges of bribe-taking, the Cabinet could no longer stand.

Hitoshi Ashida resigned as prime minister on October 15, 1948. He had served for 220 days. Less than two months after the end of his administration, Ashida himself was arrested for his alleged role in the Showa Denko scandal, though he eventually beat the charges.

Ashida remained engaged in politics, making a decided turn to the political right in the 1950s. He maintained his seat in the House of Representatives until his death from natural causes in June 1959.

Become a Shingetsu News supporter on Patreon.