The very notion of democratizing Japan represented a stunning revision of the propaganda Americans had imbibed during the war, when the media had routinely depicted all Japanese as children, savages, sadists, madmen, or robots. In the most pervasive metaphor of dehumanization, they were portrayed in word and picture as apes, “jaundiced baboons,” or, most often, plain “monkey-men.” There had been scant place in popular consciousness for “good Japanese,” as there usually had been for “good Germans.”
