Among these key industrial sectors, coal, steel and fertilizers are at the top of the list. Among them, the most important is coal. Such inclined production is not only preferential treatment in terms of loans, but also in terms of comprehensive preferential treatment in the means of production and the livelihood of workers.

As a result of this focus on gathering the strength of the whole country, 1947 became the fastest growing year in the history of the coal industry in Japan. The growth rate was as high as 33.2 percent. In one fell swoop, it reversed the negative growth of Japan's industrial production.

Japan's economy can be regarded as a sigh of relief. A de facto recovery began.

Of course, the Americans' transformation of Japan did not stop at industry. When the Japanese Saga zaibatsu were dismantled, the Americans began to transform Japanese agriculture.

The agricultural relations of the Japanese, influenced by China, for thousands of years, were a feudal relationship between the upper class and the lower class, and the relationship between landlords and tenant farmers. Although influenced by the West, the Japanese changed relatively early. During the Meiji Restoration, in 1872, the Meiji government began land reform.

In this reform, the Meiji government of Japan recognized the private ownership of land and determined the ownership of land according to the actual right to control the land - the land leased by the peasants was owned by the peasants; The land leased by farmers for a short period of time shall be owned by the lessor; The pawned land belongs to the detainee.

In 1873, the Japanese promulgated the Land Tax Reform Ordinance.

However, such a change did not have much effect. After the reform of land tax, the amount of rent and land tax is equivalent to more than 60% of the annual harvest. The relationship between the landlord and the peasant still retains the original relationship. The peasants' land question has not been substantively resolved at all.

As a result, a large number of Japanese people still maintain a lifestyle of renting and farming. with the way of economic gain. These people simply do not have the ability to enter factories and cities. As a result of this industrial shift in labor, Japan was unable to produce a large number of industrial reserve troops that left agricultural production and flowed into the urban labor market during the Meiji Restoration, as was the case in the period of primitive accumulation in Western countries.

Due to the lack of labor and the operation of the low-level economic system, the consumption power of ordinary people is lacking. The Japanese simply don't have much of a domestic market to speak of. As a result, the Japanese economy had to find another way out during the period of primitive accumulation.

If you want to develop, foreign markets and foreign resources are indispensable. In order to develop the economy, the Japanese could only plunder wealth from the outside world. The Americans see this very clearly. Therefore, while allowing the Japanese to restore their economy, they also set out to dismantle the original agricultural production methods in Japan. This is because this is the root cause of Japan's foreign expansion and plunder.

From October 1946 to 1950, according to the Agricultural Land Reform Act enacted by the Americans, 1.94 million town steps of the land leased from the township landlord to one town step (about 14.8 city acres) were leased. It was forcibly bought by the Americans at the pre-war price of land and resold to 4.2 million ordinary peasant households.

Due to the collapse of the Japanese economy after the war, inflation in Japan was extremely severe, so the price of buying an item was 100 times higher than before the war. Buying land after the war at pre-war prices is tantamount to forcible plunder. And the so-called purchase of land is simply equivalent to giving it away for nothing.

So, such reforms. Very popular with the general public. Under the supervision of the Americans, "Agrarian Reform Committees" were quickly established in various parts of Japan. The Japanese landlords, who were obviously small in number, were powerless to resist under the guns of the Americans. The land was quickly divided among others.

As a result of the agricultural land reform of Japan by the Americans. Japanese farmers are significantly more motivated to farm. Under this premise, the output of farming has also increased significantly. As a result, the Japanese gradually emerged from the shadow of hunger after the post-war economic collapse after the agricultural land reform.

And. When a large number of peasants stabilized their lives, the hearts of the people who had fluctuated in Japan after the war finally settled down. As economic commentator Tadao Nishi put it, "Affluent rural areas are the long-term stability of Japanese society." The most fundamental reason for the continuous development of the economy. ”

However, the Americans did not have any good intentions in doing so. Although, the reform of the Japanese land initially alleviated the hunger of the Japanese. However, the aftermath is not small.

The area of arable land in Japan is already pitiful. Once divided into millions of servings, each one is even smaller and pitiful. According to human nature, once anything is dispersed into the hands of each individual, and then it is difficult to reach the sky.

To reunite, there will be at least millions of people's interests that need to be reconciled. This is hardly possible without the use of violent coercion. Therefore, the agricultural land reform carried out by the Americans against the Japanese actually blocked the possibility of large-scale agricultural production by the Japanese.

And the secret of Americans' high production efficiency and low prices of agricultural products is large-scale mechanized production. After the Japanese lost the possibility of large-scale agricultural production, the prices of agricultural products for the Japanese would naturally be higher than those for the Americans. And the yield will not be very high.

In this way, the Japanese had to rely on foreign countries for food supplies. And because the price of its food is too high, Japan will naturally become one of the dumping grounds for American agricultural products. The longer the time, the more pronounced this effect becomes.

In 1960, after the golden time of agricultural land reform had passed, the food self-sufficiency rate of the Japanese was 79 percent, but in 1990, the food self-sufficiency rate of the Japanese had dropped to 40 percent. If you count calories, the Japanese have 66 percent of their food and need to rely on imports.

However, in order to maintain the competitiveness of their agricultural products, the Japanese had to maintain tariffs on agricultural products at the highest level in the world. The tariff on wheat is 210 percent, rice is 490 percent, and peanuts are 500 percent! And the tariff of a certain kind of konjac is as high as 990 percent!

Since the output and productivity of agriculture could not be improved, a large number of Japanese people had to choose other industries in the commercial society of later generations. The number of people employed in agriculture has been declining, from 14 million to 2.8 million. In 2002, agriculture, as a basic sector, accounted for only 1 percent of the gross national product.

At the same time, the large number of people in later Japan was unable to make high profits from agriculture. The land is very desolate. Nearly half of Japan's 4.8 million hectares of agricultural land are used. In a state of desolation.

According to Hitoshi Yamashita, a former bureaucrat of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and now a research institute of industrial economics, it is possible to feed the Japanese people only if all of Japan's 4.8 million hectares of farmland are used to grow potatoes. In the event of an emergency, such as World War II, the daily food ration for each person in Japan would have to be cut by two-thirds.

Japan's post-war starvation will be repeated!

Takeichi Ogura, one of the drafters of Japan's Basic Law on Agriculture and a veteran bureaucrat who later participated in many WTO negotiations, was even more worried about Japan's grain self-sufficiency rate -- "Leaving such a bad impression in international public opinion, paying the price of being deeply isolated in the world's free trade, and living in inexplicable fear all day long, for fear that the imported rice farmers would be destroyed and the supply of staple food would be completely surrendered to outsiders......

"The current situation in Japan today. It's worrying. Some people oppose the import of rice under the pretext of food security, but when the rice they produce is seven or eight times more expensive than abroad, what security is there to say? ”

In this case, Japan seems to be prosperous. In fact, it only takes more than a month to block its grain imports, and Japan's economy will collapse again. The social order will also be in chaos. Therefore, when later generations of Japanese reinterpreted the agricultural reform imposed by the Americans, it was generally believed that it was nothing more than the product of a combination of "the absolute authority of the occupation forces and the misunderstanding of the intellectual bureaucracy."

As an omission of the Time and Space Administration, travel through the rest of your life here. Of course I know about it. Since the Americans have this plan, they might as well contribute to it for the rest of their lives.

In 1947, when the Americans began to carry out agricultural land reform in Japan, it was at its highest. For the rest of his life, he quietly added a ship to carry grain from the United States to Japan. In addition, the amount of grain delivered to Japan was no longer controlled. At this time, the purpose of the rest of his life was no longer to starve the Japanese to death. Or hollow out the Japanese.

After more than a year of looting. Ye Wuguang has already taken a group of Manchu remnants and young people to loot the black market all over Japan. Nowadays, there are few treasures on these black markets. Even if someone wants to make a move. They will also contact the people who are stationed in these black markets directly. As long as the thing is genuine, it will naturally get a more ideal price. It is far simpler and cost-saving than setting up a stall and being charged a booth fee.

The purpose of this time of his life is to occupy the Japanese grain market as much as possible. Even if you can't occupy it all, you have to occupy half of the country.

In today's Japan, there is only one person who has the protection and connivance of the Americans, abundant funds and a certain source of goods, and has the cooperation with the Japanese landlord. When a large amount of grain arrived in Japan for the rest of his life, it was natural that someone from the Osaka merchant group was in charge of sales.

The Osaka business group has been elite in Japan for hundreds of years, and its sales network and contacts are all over Japan. The distribution of food is not a problem at all. Although the Americans have carried out agricultural land reform in Japan, it will take two years for Japan's grain production to increase on a large scale. In Japan in 1947, grain was still a controlled commodity.

Therefore, there is no need to worry about the sale of food for the rest of your life. Through the black market, as long as the price is low enough, in a few days, the rest of your life can sell all the food that comes in a boatload. At this time, the second grain ship will arrive in Japan.

This kind of thing, whether it is the Americans or the Japanese, must turn a blind eye. After all, the Japanese government could not deliberately starve its own people to death, and the Americans only wanted to dismantle the original way of running Japan's agricultural economy.

As for whether Japan's food prices will fall rapidly, it is not within the scope of Americans' thinking. Moreover, in the eyes of Americans, the rest of his life can be regarded as half an American. Rather than giving the Japanese the ability to be self-sufficient, the Americans would rather see the Japanese grain market manipulated in the hands of American capital.

In this way, the lifeblood of the Japanese was in the hands of the Americans. As for whether this person is the rest of his life, it is not very important.

With this acquiescence, the number of grain ships soon changed from two to eight. Food prices in Japan are falling rapidly, and farmers in the United States, who are worried about food surplus, see the rest of their lives as a savior. Before you know it, you will quickly grasp half of the Japanese grain market for the rest of your life.

Moreover, in order to reduce competition, Yu Sheng and the Osaka business group discussed another idea. That is to guide these Japanese farmers, who already have land at hand, to grow cash crops instead of grain.

At the same time as the Osaka business group is expanding its grain sales network, it is also expanding the channels for purchasing various cash crops. While dumping grain at low prices, various cash crops are purchased at high prices. Whether it is tea or tobacco, as long as it is a cash crop, it will not be refused. Tongtong was acquired at a high price.

As a result, even without the propaganda of the Osaka merchant group, these farmers will calculate that the grain they have worked hard to grow for a year will not be able to sell one-third or even one-quarter of the cash crops of the same growth cycle in the end. As a result, after the Americans carried out agricultural land reform, a large number of Japanese farmers chose to grow cash crops instead of rice and other grains.

Moreover, in order to make this matter a certainty, Yu Sheng and the Osaka business group even adopted the method of reservation. When he used money to attack and make a large number of Japanese farmers excited, he signed a contract with these Japanese farmers. Agree on what kind of cash crops will be planted on the land in their hands, and the purchase price. A part of the deposit was paid in advance.

As a result, many Japanese peasants had no chance of repentance. If you regret it, you will lose money. If you don't have the money, you have to mortgage the land you just got in hand.

And the Japanese upper class cannot refuse this business model. In 1947, Japan's exports were only one-tenth of what it was before the war. It would be very cost-effective to export some cash crops in exchange for a substantial increase in exports.

This is easy to say, but extremely time-consuming to do. It took half a year for the rest of my life to operate this matter. In the early autumn of 1947, when Japan's grain production was counted, Yu Sheng looked at the report and laughed a long way.

Although because of the food that was shipped for the rest of their lives, the Japanese no longer have to worry about going hungry. However, its grain output was actually not as good as in 1946. Even the total amount of grain shipped from the United States to Japan in the rest of the year is large.

So far, the rest of his life can be regarded as occupying half of Japan's grain industry. As long as you want for the rest of your life, you can always let Japanese people taste hunger again. (To be continued.) )