Beginning in early November, GHQ initiated a frontal attack on the giant zaibatsu conglomerates, starting with the forced dissolution of the “holding companies” through which zaibatsu families controlled their vast empires. Eventually both “antimonopoly” and “deconcentration” legislation was passed, and hundreds of large enterprises were earmarked as targets for breakup. At roughly the same time, an agrarian land reform was initiated that within a few years would virtually dispossess the rural landlord class, destroying a system in which exploitative tenancy had been widespread and creating in
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