It is one thing to try to understand another culture: that is admirable.
What is NOT admirable is trying to apply our local standards to a culture we know little or nothing about.
Think of the Neocon whizkids who were sent to Iraq to create some sort of Libertarian utopia there that knew nothing about Arabs, Arabic, Islam or anything else. They even designed a new flag.
It was a rather monumental failure. Or perhaps just a ruse to carry out a ploy. No one still has been able to determine where a billion US dollars in currency disappeared to.
A shot in the dark doesn't always hit .
I don't know the story you cite here , have you a link so I could read further?
General McArther assigned the writing of a Japaneese constitution to his staff, and influenced it a bit himself.
They did a great job , but the real success is not intrinsic to the document or the expertese of its writers , but in how the Japaneese have made use of it as a tool of government.
Japaneese society being what it is , they might have made a success of their restoration without such a constitution.
The Iriqui Constitution has been written by Iriquis called into an elected constitutional convention , which struggled for a long time to beat out a complex and perhaps useless document.
It might have been better to hand them a copy of the Japaneese Constitution and allow them to admend it gradually or replace it with their own writing in the year following our leaving.
