Breaking the Seal on the GHQ Burned Books
byNishio Kanji
The censorship put into place by the GHQ during the post-war occupation ofJapan is not a secret. Books, newspapers, broadcasts — all were subject to inspection
and analysis. Not everyone knows that the censors were Japanese working for theGHQ, and their jobs were to go so far as to open even private mail searching forunlawful ideas. While Prof. Nishio’s ire is raised against Japanese who would so
willingly sell out their own people this way, it is the lesser known “book burning”
operation of the GHQ, conducted by the same department, that motivates him tosearch for his country’s historical soul.
The “book-burning” carried out by the occupation authorities did not have books
literally thrown into bonfires, but mountains of books were confiscated and pulped. In
total, 7,769 works — periodicals, textbooks, photo books, philosophical works,
histories, etc. — were obliterated from the public record. An important part of anation’s history — especially of a nation at war, the philosophy and sentiment behindthat critical period — have been lost to the Japanese and foreigners who would wantto understand about that time.
Professor Nishio has worked to track down the missing works and to find out
where they can be found — if they can be found at all. Only one or two copies ofthese works remain. While some are stored in the National Diet Library, Japan has yet
to get the rest back from the American institutions that hold them.
It was a small unit in the GHQ — poorly staffed and not widely versed in thematerial — that had to rely on members of the Japanese intelligentsia to decide what
had to go. Prof. Nishio’s research provides an insight into the people who actuallycompiled the lists of books that were deemed “propaganda publications” by the GHQand targeted for destruction. The political biases and motives of these people become
clear as one reads their backgrounds and experiences. It is an eye-opening exposé on
the people who were given the chance to recreate Japan’s cultural mindset by firstsetting out to wipe the slate clean and destroy works that they, personally, disagreedwith.
Such a large-scale confiscation of works would not have been possible if only theoccupation forces were doing the work, so the GHQ enlisted the help of the Japanese
government. People all over Japan were selected by the prefectural governments andactually conducted the confiscations — with police support when necessary.
Who were the Japanese who sold out their own nation’s historical soul? How did
they operate, and what exactly did they do? Why were they specifically ordered not to
discuss their jobs, what they were doing, and why? Why are no names clearly on therecord today?
Prof. Nishio provides a treasure of documentation in this short work which shows
both the eccentric choices made in determining which works had to go, and the sheer
extent of the cultural and historical loss. For anyone with an interest in wartime andpost-war Japanese history, this article is a must-read, regardless of one’s politicalsentiments or take on the events. There is history in this piece — history to which
Japan no longer has access.
It is a part of the occupation history that is particularly shameful, and it needs
exposure.