Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 183, Lifting the Lost, Part 1.

This week, it's time for something that I've been promising a series on for, well, a while now.

It's time I delivered.

It's time for the story of Japan's occupation by the United States and its rebirth into a place very

different from what it once was.

Naturally, the story of the occupation, which began itself in 1945, begins in 1918.

Specifically, it begins with the end of the First World War in 1918, when the nations of

the world decided that killing each other over a post-punk revival band from Scotland just

wasn't worth it anymore, or whatever.

Oh, we remembers.

Anyway, by 1918, the belligerent nations of World War I were exhausted and ready to head to the negotiating table.

Both the story of the armistice which ended the war at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918

and the peace conference in Versailles, France that followed the next year, have been well told, and I will not go over them in great detail here.

If you're curious, check out the podcast webpage for a few books on the subject to get you

started.

What I want to focus on here is the perceived failure of the settlement to create a lasting peace.

Now, this is not a completely fair criticism, if only because it relies so greatly on hindsight.

After all, the model of a treaty which restricted and punished a defeated power, but did not

destroy it, was set by the original uppercase A allies after the Napoleonic Wars.

That treaty, the Treaty of Paris, kept the peace in Europe

more or less for half a century. There was no reason to suspect that the Treaty of Versailles could not

do the same. But still, the traditional critique of the Treaty of Versailles that was written and signed

...