EDWIN O. REISCHAUER
(Edwin Oldfather Reischauer)
Although very authoritarian in his governing style, the substance of the Constitution that and basic laws that he imposed on post war Japan were extremely left wing. Japan eschewed having a military, required total equality of women for the first time in Japanese history. The Civil Service was given great power and authority over business, there was a complete social safety net. MacArthur would not take kindly to this characterization as he thought of himself as a lifelong conservative and was the darling of the American right wing extremists. He took the American Constitution literally and was determined to turn ultra-militaristic Japan into a democracy. He did in one of the most dramatic cultural and governmental changes in history.
Edwin Oldfather Reischauer was an American diplomat, educator, and professor at Harvard University. Born in Tokyo to American educational missionaries, he became a leading scholar of the history and culture of Japan and East Asia. Together with George M. McCune, a Korean scholar, in 1939 he developed the McCune–Reischauer romanization of the Korean language.
