Shigeru Yoshida’s second premiership from 1948-1954 was one of the most transformative in Japanese history, taking the nation from its progressive, unstable early postwar era into a long period of entrenched conservative rule, ostensibly exercising independence but in reality functioning as a client state absorbed into the informal American empire.
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.
Tetsu Katayama served as Japan’s first socialist prime minister in 1947-1948. His moderate approach, however, proved unable to satisfy the increasingly contradictory demands of his political base and the US occupiers.
