Three factors caused a rethinking of the occupation in American scholarship from the late 1960s. These were the war in Vietnam, the availability of newly declassified documents and published memoirs, and the political shift to the left in America. New criticisms of the American government and a sense that American expansion into Asia had gone horribly wrong led to reinterpretations of the occupation period. Revisionist scholars, identified a “reverse course,” shift in occupation policy away from an idealist reform of Japan and towards the building of an ally in East Asia for political advantage.
