大竹メインディッシュ - 大竹まことゴールデンラジオ！currently outside the Japan top 100
【辻田真佐憲(青木理)】2026年10月15日 「「戦後」とは何だったのか - 未来を変える日本現代史」（「新しい戦前」ではなく「新しい戦後」／戦後日本の成長は多くの条件が奇跡的に重なっていただけ）
Cultural critic and modern Japanese historian Tsujita Masanori (辻田真佐憲) appeared on the show to discuss his new book "What Was the Postwar Era? — A Modern History of Japan That Can Change the Future" (Bunshun Shinsho), arguing that Japan should actively envision a "new postwar" rather than resign itself to a "new prewar." He contended that Japan's postwar peace and high-growth economy were a "miracle" produced by a convergence of contingent factors — the Korean War procurement boom, surplus rural labor, cheap oil, and Cold War dynamics — all of which have since vanished. With those conditions gone, he urged Japan to recover the shrewd pragmatism of Yoshida Shigeru and construct a new national narrative.
What this episode answers
What does Tsujita mean by a "new postwar," and how does it differ from Tamori's "new prewar"?
The "new postwar" means actively preparing third and fourth options beyond the binary of prewar versus postwar continuity; whereas Tamori's phrase was a warning, Tsujita reframes it positively — precisely to avoid a new prewar, Japan should proactively envision a new postwar.
Was Japan's postwar high economic growth really the product of Japanese diligence and hard work?
No: the high growth was the product of overlapping contingencies — Korean War and Vietnam War procurement booms, the fortunate conversion of surplus rural labor into urban industrial workers, near-free oil, and American backing under the Cold War — not simply Japanese diligence, and Tsujita criticizes Prime Minister Takaichi's claim at the "Showa 100th Anniversary Ceremony" that Japan succeeded because its people were hardworking as one-sided.
What was the original intent of the Yoshida Doctrine, and does it still hold today?
The Yoshida Doctrine — delegating security to the United States and concentrating on economic recovery — was never intended by Yoshida Shigeru himself to be permanent; in his later years he spoke of the need to rearm and even consider nuclear weapons once the economy recovered, but those premises have shifted entirely with China's rise, the Cold War's end, and growing American demands.
Why does Tsujita regard the 1990s as a major hidden turning point in the postwar era?
The 1990s concentrated an extraordinary set of transformations that formed the foundation of contemporary Japanese society: the Aum Shinrikyo incident, the Great Hanshin Earthquake, the end of the Cold War, the post-bubble "Lost Decade," the spread of the internet via Windows 95, and the shift from medium-sized to single-member electoral districts in the lower house — and the effects of those changes are only now fully manifesting.
What kind of "national narrative" does Japan need going forward?
Japan needs a coherent narrative that owns the negative dimensions of its past, including war responsibility, under the collective pronoun "we," while inheriting and developing the positive legacies of the postwar era; Tsujita argues this narrative must also accommodate immigration, correct Tokyo's over-concentration, and reassert Japan's strengths in freedom and freedom of expression.
The Challenge of a "New Postwar"
Tsujita Masanori published his previous book in 2025 to mark the 80th anniversary of the postwar era, recording 110,000 copies sold including digital editions. His new book, released as Japan enters its 81st postwar year — a span now longer than the prewar period itself — sets out to interrogate the postwar era as such. He describes it as an introductory history of the postwar period, a subject that has received inadequate coverage in school textbooks and had never been synthesized into a single volume.
Tsujita takes as his starting point the observation, made by television personality Tamori (タモリ) some years ago, that "a new prewar may be coming" — a remark with which many Japanese immediately agreed. Rather than refuting it, Tsujita reframes it: "So that a new prewar does not come, let us actively envision a new postwar." The problem, he argues, is that Japanese society is trapped in a false binary — prewar or postwar — where any criticism of the postwar settlement is immediately attacked as a desire to return to the prewar. There must be more than two options.
The Postwar "Miracle" Was Genuinely Accidental
Tsujita stresses that Japan's postwar peace and rapid economic growth resulted from a cluster of fortunate conditions that have all since disappeared.
First, the Korean War procurement boom drove postwar reconstruction, and Japan benefited indirectly from the Vietnam War as well. Second, Japan's large surplus rural population — swelled further by repatriates from the former empire — flowed into Tokyo, Osaka, and other cities, supplying the industrial labor force. While European nations had to import workers from former colonies or Turkey, Japan was able to draw on this "internal migration," initially avoiding the immigration tensions that now beset Europe. Third, oil was then so cheap as to be "practically free," enabling the construction of petrochemical complexes and thermal power infrastructure. Fourth, under the Cold War structure the United States showed deference to Japan, while China was far weaker economically and militarily.
Every one of those conditions has since vanished. China now far surpasses Japan; the Cold War is over; the United States makes ever-greater demands. Tsujita criticizes Prime Minister Takaichi's reported claim at the "Showa 100th Anniversary Ceremony" that Japan succeeded because its people were hardworking as a narrative that ignores all of these contingencies, warning that Japan is becoming dangerously susceptible to false stories.
Recovering Yoshida's Pragmatism
Yoshida Shigeru (吉田茂), the architect of postwar Japan's basic strategy, built his doctrine — delegate security to the United States, concentrate on economic recovery — with no intention of making it permanent. A career diplomat from the prewar Imperial Japanese Foreign Ministry, Yoshida stated in his later years that Japan should consider rearmament, and even nuclear weapons, once its economy had recovered.
Yoshida pursued a shrewd diplomatic course: openly foregrounding the Japan–U.S. alliance and swiftly reintegrating Japan into the international community, while privately treating the United States as an instrument to be used. He simultaneously maintained continuity with the prewar order — keeping the Showa Emperor in place and retaining many prewar politicians, bureaucrats, and business figures — while presenting a face of clean rupture. Over time, however, this pragmatism hardened into unquestioned orthodoxy, and Tsujita locates the loss of Yoshida's original cunning roughly in the era of Prime Ministers Ikeda Hayato and Sato Eisaku.
Going forward, even if the United States must remain the primary anchor, Tsujita argues it is vital to preserve back-channels to China and Russia and keep alternative options open. His point that excluding politicians who maintain communication lines with foreign leaderships — for fear of being labeled pro-China — would leave Japan unable to negotiate in a crisis is a direct critique of current Diet politics.
The 1990s as a Hidden Turning Point
Tsujita identifies the 1990s as a decisive break in the postwar trajectory. The Aum Shinrikyo attacks, the Great Hanshin Earthquake, the end of the Cold War, the post-bubble "Lost Decade," the spread of the internet through Windows 95, and the shift from medium-sized to single-member lower-house constituencies all converged in that decade, and the consequences are only now becoming fully visible.
He also critiques the rhetoric of "Lost Decades" — ten, twenty, thirty years — arguing that it carries the illusion that prosperity was originally Japan's by right and can therefore be recovered. The slogan "Take Back Japan" from the Abe era, Prime Minister Takaichi's "Japan is Back," and the hopes pinned on the Tokyo Olympics as a replay of the 1964 Games and on the Osaka World Expo all reflect the same illusion. The high-growth Showa era may feel like nostalgic comfort, he says, but "we should admit those conditions are gone and think about how to build a new country."
Building a New National Narrative
Tsujita's prescription is the construction of a new national narrative: one that accepts the negative dimensions of the past — including war responsibility — under the collective subject "we," while inheriting and developing what was genuinely good. He notes that the posture of "I was not alive in the prewar, I was not a Japanese soldier, so I bear no war responsibility" is untenable for conservatives or prime ministers who claim to represent national continuity.
On immigration, now unavoidable given depopulation and an ageing society, he observes that the postwar myth of Japan as a mono-ethnic nation can be rewritten — the prewar government, after all, actively promoted a multi-ethnic identity. Europe's mistakes offer a cautionary lesson in the need for orderly management. On regional decline and Tokyo's over-concentration, he argues that because agriculture is inseparable from land stewardship it cannot be evaluated on economic efficiency alone.
He closed with a historical analogy: "At the Meiji Restoration, ideas accumulated by Edo-period scholars were synthesized and deployed in a moment of crisis. We are now in the tool-building phase." By stockpiling keywords for third and fourth options beyond the prewar-postwar binary, Japan can enter any future political upheaval or major disaster with many more conceptual tools at hand — and that preparation, he said, is what the book is for.
Takeaways
- Japan's postwar high growth was a miracle produced by overlapping contingencies — Korean War procurement, surplus rural labor, near-free oil, and Cold War backing — not Japanese diligence alone, and every one of those conditions has now disappeared.
- Yoshida Shigeru pursued a shrewdly pragmatic diplomacy that treated the U.S. alliance as a tool rather than an end, but that original cunning was gradually forgotten as the postwar extended and the doctrine became an unquestioned assumption.
- Rather than choosing between a return to the prewar or an uncritical defense of the postwar, Japan must urgently accumulate the conceptual vocabulary for third and fourth options, accepting changed realities and building a new, honest national narrative.
This article is edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. It is not an official summary — please listen to the episode itself.