In spite of his autocratic style and right-wing politics, he introduced some very liberal reforms during the occupation of Japan.

Early on, he released the Communist Party from prison, where the wartime Japanese government had locked them up.

He introduced agrarian reform, breaking up the great holdings of the landlord class, selling the land to their tenant farmers at reasonable prices.

He broke the back of the great industrial conglomerates, or zaibatsu.

He democratized the Japanese constitution, introducing concepts from the US Bill of Rights, the New Deal, and European social democracies.

He conducted parliamentary elections, in which women were included in the franchise.

He gave Japan its first industrial trade unions and Labor Standards Act.

Abolished the state religion of Shinto.

Japan was a country under military occupation, and that occupation was managed to meet American political, military and economic objectives, particularly as the Cold War heated up. But Japan could have done much worse.