"Still, it was the restructuring of Japan that formed the main model for future American initiatives outside Europe. Although there were disagreements among US advisers as to how radical the restructuring of Japan should be, the basic direction was not in dispute: it was only through becoming more like the United States that Japan – the only non-European economic and military power – could be redeemed. The key to success was not only the rebuilding of Japanese institutions, but also the remolding of ‘‘the Japanese brain.’’ ‘‘Our problem,’’ according to an 1945 instructional film for the occupation forces, ‘‘is in the brain inside of the Japanese head. There are seventy million of these in Japan, physically no different than any other brains in the world, actually all made from exactly the same stuff as ours. These brains, like our brains, can do good things or bad things, all depending on the kind of ideas that are put inside.’’ The mix of coercion, enticement, and appeal to the popular will that the occupation authorities used to put ideas into Japanese brains emphasized the new role that the state had come to occupy in American policy at home and abroad. In the beginning phase of the restructuring of Japan – just as in the implementation of the Marshall Plan in Europe – it was veterans of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs who set the aims, and in doing so they reflected a much more positive view of what the state would be able to do than had been usual in American policy abroad. Even though the Cold War soon saw New Dealers lose influence within the occupation regime and in US foreign policy in general, all postwar American administrations up to Ronald Reagan were much more willing to use state power for social development purposes than any of their predecessors had been."