"Our Kingly Way"

A Japanese habit is to keep the death of a national figure secret for hours or even days, the idea being that his successor can be quietly appointed by the Sublime Emperor in the interval, without too much influential squabbling or eruptions of popular unrest. One day last week studious Emperor Hirohito and shy Empress Nagako dispatched to mud-walled Changchun, the sleazy capital of their puppet state Manchukuo, a great ceremonial basket of fruit, traditional Japanese gift to the dying.

Changchun was sure that Manchukuo's real ruler, not the puppet Henry Pu Yi "Last of the Manchus" but Field Marshal Nobuyoshi Muto, was already dead. Probably he was. Certainly he died "of jaundice with complications" (according to the Japanese War Office) before the imperial fruit arrived. In double-quick time Emperor Hirohito created the dead marshal posthumously a baron and named as his successor another member of the super-militaristic Satsuma faction which dominates the Japanese Army, grizzled old General Takashi Hishikari of the Supreme War Council.

Though he was only five feet tall, Japanese have long called Marshal Muto their "Silent Giant," thus paying homage to his clam-like taciturnity and titanic will. In Changchun he ruled, as General Hishikari will rule, with the titles of Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Army in Manchukuo and Tokumei Zenken Taishi ("The Emperor's Private Ambassador").

"Our kingly way," said Marshal Muto when he set up his Changchun Govern ment last year, "is to guide the policy of Manchukuo in a spirit identical with the glorious regime of benevolence and justice peculiar to our imperial destiny to control the moral and spiritual advance of the world."

Firmly pursuing this destiny, Marshal Muto sat in Changchun, subsisting on his Spartan diet of rice, rice, rice, while his sub-commanders conquered the Chinese province of Jehol, added it to Manchukuo (TIME, March 13). Like Marshal Muto his successor General Hishikari is con sidered not a military genius but a safe & sane commander able to guide the exuberance of junior officers and to build up Manchukuo as a state.

Only outside Japan was the late Marshal's promotion to be virtual viceroy of Manchukuo something of a scandal. As Director of Military Education he was held by many Japanese at least partially responsible for the assassination of Premier Ki Inukai by petty naval officers and cadets (see col. 2). Since this assassination was considered "patriotic," General Muto, though he resigned as Director of Military Education was soon promoted to the Supreme War Council, later sent to rule Manchukuo and created marshal. Reverently last week Japanese read what they were told was the last poem composed by Marshal Muto:

Though advanced in age am I, My true spirit yields no ground In loyalty and in death-defiance To the blossoms of a young cherry tree. Distinctly not a poet, General Hishikari is robust, horsey, tall for a Japanese (about 5 ft. 9 in.) and has a blunt sense of humor. "When I was appointed Commander of the Taiwan [Formosa] Army in 1928," said he last week, "I answered the telegrams of congratulation by saying that I was as glad as a happy sparrow. People began to call me 'General Happy Sparrow,' but can a sparrow fulfill the duties of my new mission? Shall I have to be a hawk, an eagle in Manchukuo?''

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