At the end of WWII, the US as the sole occupying power in Japan made a careful calculation that cultivating the established right wing political and economic interests in Japan that had supported Japanese aggression before and during WWII would make American occupation easier, and would more closely align Japan to those of American interests after Japan regains sovereignty. A similar calculation could not have been made in Germany because the US shared occupation with the Soviet Union and France, and in any case US domsestic opinion gave US more latitude in conducting postwar Japan policy vs German policy.
This was the reason why war crimes was never prosecuted with similar vigor in Japan as in Germany. This was also the reason why there was never any policy comparable to the "denazification" that was carried out vigorously in Germany, and why the first postwar Japanese civilian government was made up of the same elite that had populated the Japanese wartime government as well as the aggression promoting pre-war governments.
So it is why Japanese domestic politics after the war was never built upon repentence of policies leading up to war and its crimes during the war the same way German domestic politics had been.
This was the reason why war crimes was never prosecuted with similar vigor in Japan as in Germany. This was also the reason why there was never any policy comparable to the "denazification" that was carried out vigorously in Germany, and why the first postwar Japanese civilian government was made up of the same elite that had populated the Japanese wartime government as well as the aggression promoting pre-war governments.
So it is why Japanese domestic politics after the war was never built upon repentence of policies leading up to war and its crimes during the war the same way German domestic politics had been.
