"He's the Top!"

Japanese troops are often primed for battle by stirring their souls with the fervent poem which concludes ". . . immeasurable as the depths of the sea is the debt we owe our Emperor. The time has come to pay our debts!"

To Chinese the Emperor of Japan is no more impressive or sacrosanct than any other crowned head. Last May the Shanghai weekly New Life printed a piece entitled "Gossip About Emperors." Most of it was about bygone Emperors of China all of whom were disparaged. In passing New Life noted that the present Japanese Emperor is said to have a homely knowledge of biology, remarked that His Majesty might have achieved more as a scientist than he has as an Emperor. Mentioning that Emperor Hirohito of Japan has little real power, New Life then mentioned Emperor Kang Te of Manchukuo as "the puppet of a puppet."

Japanese Army chiefs, to whom the Divine Emperor has all the sanctity of God, promptly ordered Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to order Editor Tu Chung-yuan of New Life punished to the extreme limit of Chinese law in cases of defamation. In Shanghai last week these Japanese orders were carried out by a cringing panel of Chinese judges, scared to death because 200 Chinese students pack-jammed their courtroom, shrieking "There is no justice in China! Death to our judges! Down with Japanese Imperialism! Long live Chinese Communism!"

Editor Tu produced the alibi that he was not in Shanghai when New Life prepared its gossip about Emperors and had not authorized the piece. Associate Editor Yih Sui, presumably responsible, was shown to have escaped to a place unknown. Thereupon, as a trim Japanese officer watched grimly in the courtroom, Editor Tu received the maximum sentence of 14 months in jail at hard labor.

Same day throughout China the local bureaus of the Government Party or Kuomintang ordered the 300,000,000 Chinese people not to "circulate any report likely to hurt the feelings of the Japanese people" (68,000,000).

Cabinet's Birthday. Meanwhile in Japan the exact and hotly disputed nature of the Emperor Hirohito's godhood remained a major issue which still threatened to upset the Government of bustling old Admiral Keisuke Okada. Somewhat to his enemies' amazement the present stop-gap Cabinet rounded out a full year in office last week, celebrated with a champagne lunch.

Retired Admiral Okada was picked by Japan's great Elder Statesman Prince Saionji because he was just enough of a patriot to satisfy the fanatic Army & Navy, yet had enough common sense to make Japanese bankers & businessmen feel that they would not be crushed by utterly ruinous taxes to pay Japan's bills for the impractical, grandiose conquest of too much of China (TIME, July 16, 1934). Once in office Premier Okada yielded to the exhibitionist bug which bites so many Japanese. He let himself be photographed with the crazy old camera and the prim old garden plants which are his hobbies (see cut). He also posed while a dentist filled one of his teeth, again while a barber clipped his almost bald head, and even in the act of putting on his shoes, not to mention countless poses of the Premier buzzing about Tokyo in full Admiral's regalia. Such antics have their use. While Premier Okada has monopolized the spotlight, Finance Minister Takahashi has been able to wage quietly and not altogether without success a grim battle for budgetary economy against War Minister Hayashi and Navy Minister Osumi. Though the Japanese budget last week was fantastically unbalanced by $88,000,000, the Government nonetheless had Japanese essentials well enough in hand to be worried about its stand on the Divine Emperor.

Last week the Army & Navy flatly demanded that the Home Ministry, which had already rejected a previous doctrine that the Emperor is "an organ of the State" (TIME, April 15 et ante), should not only recognize His Majesty's ineffable superiority but proceed to express it in a Japanese idiom so elaborate and metaphysical that U. S. correspondents could only translate it "He's the top!" With the Cabinet floundering among Japanese terms so high flown that many of them are rarely heard and but partially understood by an average subject of Emperor Hirohito, His Majesty seemed certain to emerge with a newly defined status so breathtaking that it could be fully grasped only by a pure fanatic.

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