1947 (143 of 466 seats) and a government was formed by Tetsu Katayama, forming a coalition with the Democratic Party and the Citizens' Cooperation Party. Katayama's coalition fell in February 1948, in large part due to inexperience and subsequent poor performance in leading government. Hitoshi Ashida succeeded Katayama as prime minister of a new coalition with the Democrats. In October 1948, just seven months after taking office, Ashida resigned due to his alleged involvement in the Showa Denko corruption scandal. In 1958, he was acquitted of all charges. The confusion and disarray caused by the corruption scandal were part of what allowed Shigeru Yoshida and the Liberal Party to return to government. In the period following the end of World War II, the JSP played a key role in the drafting of the new Japanese constitution, adding progressive articles related to issues such as health, welfare and working conditions. Unfortunately for the JSP and the broader Japanese left in the immediate postwar era, their time in power coincided with a change in U.S. policy towards Japan commonly known as the Reverse Course. Beginning around 1947, and intensifying with the victory of the Communists over the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the U.S. occupation government headed by Douglas MacArthur felt the need to revise its previously conciliatory stance towards the kinds of policies pursued by Japanese leftists, from the breakup of Zaibatsu, the country's business conglomerates, to land reform, to the ousting of nationalist figures in government. Apart from reversing early steps taken towards implementing these policies, the U.S. occupation government oversaw and assisted in the purging of almost 30,000 workers deemed to be "red" between 1948 and 1950, frustrating leftist attempts to hold on to state power. 1950s The Showa Denko scandal not only brought the downfall of the cabinet, but also led to an acrimonious schism between the left and right halves of the Socialist Party amid mutual recriminations, as one of the main targets of the investigation had been Right Socialist faction leader Suehiro Nishio. Finally in 1951, the JSP split into the Right Socialist Party, consisting of more centrist socialists who leaned toward social democracy; and the Left Socialist Party, formed by orthodox Marxists favoring a socialist revolution. Both parties claimed to be the true Socialist Party of Japan and refused to recognize the legitimacies of their rivals. The faction farthest to the left