Japan’s Economic Revival and Political System after World War II

Japan’s postwar economic revival was not a passive outcome imposed by the United States; rather, it was the product of active choices made by Japanese political elites who, driven by a consciousness of economic autonomy, leveraged the institutional foundations laid by the US occupation reforms and deliberately adopted an “economy-first” development strategy. By analyzing the deep interaction between politics and the economy under the “1955 System,” this paper reveals how this model, while propelling miraculous economic growth, gradually generated internal contradictions such as political-business collusion and strategic dependence, and eventually collapsed with the end of the Cold War.