The Development and Limitations of Democracy in Postwar Japan: An Exploration Based on Ministry of Education's Textbook Democracy in Early Postwar Japan

Japan's Ministry of Education issued the first and second volume of the textbook Democracy in October, 1948 and August, 1949 respectively. The textbook became the common denominator of Japanese people's understandings of democracy, and is an important historical document for the research and exploration of the development and limitations of democracy in postwar Japan. The making of the textbook was influenced by the change of GHQ occupation policy, and the textbook was ultimately made into a tool for cold war ideological struggle. The textbook tried to promote and beautify a version of democracy that was based on the abstract bourgeois concept of human nature. It sang about the advantage of bourgeois parliamentary politics, and regarded Communism as a form of authoritarianism and absolutism, believing that Communism was antithetical to democracy. This was a belief that was strongly criticized by Japanese communists in that time. Despite this, this textbook, as a reader for ideological enlightenment, was then