Editing Reverse Course (section)

==End of the Reverse Course==

The Occupation of Japan officially came to an end with the enactment of the [[San Francisco Peace Treaty]] on April 28, 1952.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=11}} This meant that the U.S.-led Occupation could no longer directly dictate policy to Japanese leaders. However, as a pre-condition of ending the Occupation, the United States required the Japanese government to agree to the [[Security Treaty between the United States and Japan|U.S.-Japan Security Treaty]], which allowed the United States to continue to maintain military forces on Japanese soil.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=11}} This locked Japan into a newly-forged [[U.S.-Japan Alliance]], and ensured that the United States would continue to exercise an outsized influence on Japanese government policies both foreign and domestic.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=11}}

Historian Nick Kapur has argued that the Reverse Course continued even after 1952 with the covert and overt support of the United States, working in tandem with sympathetic conservative governments in Japan.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=10}} In 1954, the National Police Reserve was reformulated into the [[Japan Self-Defense Forces]], a formal military in all but name.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=10}} That same year, with U.S. encouragement, a Police Law was passed which re-centralized police forces under the [[National Police Agency (Japan)|National Police Agency]].{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=10}} Finally in 1955, de-purged conservative politicians, at U.S. urging and with the covert backing of the CIA, united to form the powerful [[Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)|Liberal Democratic Party]], which has ruled Japan almost continuously since that time.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=10}}<ref>Yong Wook Lee 
 "The Origin of One Party Domination: America's Reverse Course and the Emergence of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan" in ''Journal of East Asian Affairs'' XVIII, no. 2 (2004): 371-413 [http://www.watsoninstitute.org/pub_detail.cfm?id=537 link] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120212231413/http://www.watsoninstitute.org/pub_detail.cfm?id=537 |date=2012-02-12 }}</ref>