Japanese trusts and reform labor and land management. Japans agriculture was the quickest of the national activities to recover from the war due to the land reforms. The new plan came from the Australians. Under the new plan, there were to be no absentee landlords. A person who worked the land could own up to seven and a half acres, while anyone living in a nearby village could keep two and a half acres. Larger plots of land, exceeding these limits, were bought by the government and sold on easy terms to former tenants. Within two years, two million tenants had become landowners. The American labor policy in Japan was created with two goals in mind: to encourage the growth of democratic unions, and to discourage communism. The intent of General MacArthur was to use the labor unions to balance the power of the business leaders. To the surprise of the American authorities, however, this movement took a radical turn. On February 1, 1947, the Japanese labor unions called for a general strike. The union leaders heeded a warning from MacArthur, however, which served to curb the appeal of radical labor actions. Thereafter, the labor unions were able to play a more traditional and useful role in stabilizing labor. Constant pressure on employers brought swelling wages, which caused a steady expansion of Japans domestic consumer market.The Americans then wanted to disband the Zaibatsu trust, the largest trust in Japan. The purpose of this was to reduce Japans war-making potential and to encourage economic growth. To accomplish this, MacArthur pressured the Diet into passing the Deconcentration Law in December of 1947. From the breakup of this trust, companies such as Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Yasuda were formed and sold on the open stock market. This law later served to encourage consumer technological growth, which is vital to Japans economy today. Presently, Japan is the worlds biggest exporter of consumer electronics.The treaty of peace with Jap...
