The Economic and Business History of Occupied Japan by French Thomas;

Author:French, Thomas;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

5  Fiats and jeeps

The Occupation, jeeps, and the postwar automotive industry

Thomas French

Introduction

The importance of the Occupation within Japanese economic history is beyond doubt, as the various chapters of this volume testify; however, there still remain various partially explored regions within the scholarly landscape of the period. One subject which falls into this category is the impact of small four-wheel-drive passenger vehicles, or jeeps, during the Occupation. This subject can be considered ‘partially explored’, as within the scholarship its cultural impact is clearly mapped out, and often linked in the process to the power of the Occupation itself, but within the economic sphere, the jeep remains all but invisible, somewhat akin to the censorship of the jeep (and all other visible symbols of the Occupation) from Japanese films produced at the time.1

The reasons for this curious partial absence of perhaps the most visible symbol of the Occupation vary, as detailed below. Indeed, the jeep could be said to be in some ways a mechanical embodiment of the Occupation; an alien, militarised, and undeniably American presence in postwar Japan. The jeep, being the omnipresent transportation of General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (GHQ) personnel, also traverses the entire landscape of Occupation. As well as being the ‘steed’ which bore everything the Occupation brought, the jeep itself also exerted other direct influences on Japan during the years 1945-1952. Some of these were cultural, influencing many Japanese people’s ideas about personal transportation and automobiles in general. Others were clearly economic, with the maintenance, refurbishment, and, later, manufacture of jeeps, forming a major but rarely examined, element within the development of the postwar Japanese automotive industry. This highly symbolic (and literal) reconstruction an iconic piece of Americana in Japan was also one which laid some of the foundations of the subsequent success of several of Japan’s postwar automotive giants. This chapter attempts to examine the impact of the jeep from both of these perspectives, reassessing the already well-established cultural interpretations of the jeep’s impact, and detailing the hitherto neglected economic influences of the vehicle during the era.

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