The range and vigor of this response to defeat and democratic opportunities went far beyond anything the American or English “old Asia hands” had believed possible. Indeed, these experts had rarely been able to come up with anything more than a short list of geriatric “old liberals” who might be expected to respond positively to reform (and who usually, like Yoshida Shigeru, did not). They had no inkling of who constituted the intelligentsia, what their personal or scholarly backgrounds were, or how they might respond to defeat and liberation. In this regard, the nonexperts who introduced a
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