Genro, Godling & Ginger

In the most imminent danger of assassination remained last week nearly all prominent Japanese who had any reputation as mild men or liberals and were not identified with the Japanese Army's murderously inclined "Ginger Group" (TIME, March 9).

The Japanese Navy went so far as to land marines in Tokyo and throw them in a protective cordon about the residence of Mr. Keisuke Okada, not because he rated this attention as Premier of Japan but because the Navy considers him one of its own as a retired Japanese Admiral.

Neither the Army nor the Navy was eager to guard the Last of the Genro or "Elder Statesmen," famed Prince Kimmochi Saionji, for many years Japan's great moderator. As the chief councilor of young Emperor Hirohito, venerable Prince Saionji has been for long years Japan's "Maker of Cabinets." Fortnight ago he barely escaped Army assassins. Only policemen last week comprised his guards.

Premier Okada, who by a miracle also escaped assassination by soldiers, continued to hold office ad interim last week while search was conducted for a new Premier & Cabinet. In Japan this is anything but a straightforward process. A subject is commissioned by the Son of Heaven to form a Cabinet, but he cannot do so and become Premier unless he successfully supplicates an Army officer to deign to act as War Minister and a Navy officer to deign to become Naval Minister in his Cabinet.

In each of these two great fighting services Japanese officers traditionally stand together with the solidarity of an Oriental family. The Emperor by tradition never commands an unwilling officer to agree to serve under an official so intrinsically civilian as Japan's Premier.

Generals Expiate. Presently Prince Saionji, with all his vast experience and prestige, found himself last week virtually stumped. It had become clear that the Army assassinations of the week before proceeded from a grim resolve in the Army that the guidance of the Empire must not hereafter be by Japanese identified with maintaining either the present Capitalistic status quo in Japan or the present territorial status quo in Eastern Asia.

It was not that the Army is in any sense "Marxist"; on the contrary, it is violently anti-Russian and antiCommunist. But Japan's great mass of humble soldiers and many of their officers are sprung from the Japanese peasant class, the class mercilessly ground down to starvation wages and despair by entrenched Japanese middlemen ; the agglomerations of Capital held by octopus-like "family corporations"; and, lastly, by the amazing Japanese speculator, price-chiseler and profiteer who for sheer ingenious rapacity is in a class by himself.

The Army was sorry in a Japanese way about the assassinations. It was willing last week to offer "expiation" but on the ironclad understanding that the next Premier & Cabinet would not be men who would settle down in the same old grooves of what might be called Capitalism at home and Pacifism abroad. Amazingly enough, the "Ginger Group" of the fighting services is firmly convinced that Japan's actions in respect to China have been thus far so much more peaceful than they might have been as to be shockingly Pacifist.

In Tokyo last week the Supreme War Council consisted of seven Japanese generals and four Imperial Princes. In a characteristic Japanese offering of "expiation," all seven generals handed their resignations from the Supreme War Council to their fellow general, Acting War Minister Yoshiyuki Kawashima for transmission to the Son of Heaven. There was some mumbling about the seven generals feeling "indirectly responsible" for the assassinations of last fortnight, but to a Japanese the seven resignations meant that, in exchange for this colossal "expiation," the Army expected a like return, perhaps demanded it in secret.

Saionji's Ace. Against such a dire emergency, Prince Saionji has for many years considered that he had up his Genro kimono sleeve a particularly effective card. This trump is His Highness Prince Fumimaro Konoye, the most promising young aristocrat in Japan, sympathetic toward parliamentary government, yet popular with the Navy and head of Japan's great fighting Fujiwara Clan. Legend makes His Highness a direct descendant of the most exalted Lesser Deity who was in attendance on the Sun Goddess when she created the Earth and begat Japan's present Imperial Family to rule it. History indicates that Japan's 124 Goddess-descended Emperors have been happy to accept from the fighting Fujiwara Clan a phenomenally long number of Fujiwara women as Empresses. Today a eugenist would probably say that the Son of Heaven is in flesh & blood more of a Fujiwara than anything else. Against the great and almost divine Prince Konoye it was unthinkable to most Japanese last week that the Army could stand. Yet the Prince is democratic, seemingly a perfect ace up Old Saionji's sleeve.

The Last of the Genro portentously advised His Majesty and withdrew; the Son of Heaven summoned Prince Konoye; the Prince drove from the Imperial Palace to the villa of Saionji; and finally Prince Konoye drove back to the Imperial Palace, where he communicated to the Divine Emperor this startling intimation: "I am unable to accept the task of Premier for I am in great doubt that I could tide the nation over the present crisis."

For the first time in 86-year-old Prince Saionji's experience the Last of the Genro had made publicly ready to play a smashing trump and failed to get it down his sleeve. If the Fujiwara godling could not sit on Japan's lid last week, then who could?

Diplomatic Ginger. Among Japanese civilians there is a less pungent "Ginger Group" composed of exceedingly ambitious and snappy young men who have been jumped sensationally to high promotions in the Japanese Diplomatic Service over the dismayed and hoary heads of venerable superiors who would like to know what Japan and respect for age in the Orient are coming to.

Of these brilliant youngsters the outstanding pair are Japan's Acting Foreign Minister of last week, Mr. Koki Hirota, and his equally cocky friend and protege, Mr. Hirosi Saito, Japanese Ambassador in Washington. Old Saionji in his infinitely ripe wisdom next advised the Son of Heaven to call young Hirota.

A Chinese would find Koki Hirota altogether too full of ginger and zip. He has seen much in many parts of the world to which Japanese "pure" Army men are insularly and fanatically blind. It is precisely because travel broadens one that Japanese statesmen, when they return to Japan from a diplomatic conference overseas, are always in danger of assassination by patriotic homebodies who think their diplomats have sold out the Empire. Last week Mr. Koki Hirota, broad with travel and burning with ambition, put a new Japanese Ambassador on a gunboat and sent him to China with brash demands, hoping thus to prove himself worthy of the Army "Ginger Group."

Within 24 hours Mr. Hirota had dis covered that the Navy was willing to let him have an Admiral for the Cabinet he proposed to form but the Army was as yet in no mood to let him have a General.

Generals Dictate. Meanwhile Old Saionji had steamed up the Young Emperor to acts of most aggressive moderation. The moderate Viscount Makoto Saito, assassinated fortnight ago, was replaced by His Majesty as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal last week by another mod erate longtime adviser of the Emperor, Minister of the Imperial Household Kurahei Yuasa. The Household Ministry left vacant by his promotion was given to a Japanese who sent his daughter to a Quaker school in Washington, D. C. when he was Ambassador there, famed Mr. Tsuneo Matsudaira, a really Great Moderate whom Army mustards itch to kill. Such a deed would be the most intolerable of Japanese scandals, for distinguished Ambassador Matsudaira's daughter is now the wife of the Son of Heaven's eldest brother H.I.H. Prince Chichibu.

The Army, seeing that His Majesty was thus still closely surrounded by a resolute ring of venerable moderates, finally decided this week to drive the harshest possible bargain with Mr. Hirota, as their price for his going before Parliament as Premier. The Navy, although more favorable to Mr. Hirota, jumped in at this point and exchanged its permission to let Admiral Osamu Nagano become Navy Minister for promises by harassed Mr. Hirota that the Navy budget will be increased. The Army then took Mr. Hirota's proposed Cabinet slate under advisement with such vigor that Japanese official censors passed a dispatch with this significant lead: "Army men assumed control over the formation of a new Cabinet today."

Premier Hirota, as he now began to be styled, had to make a whole set of secret promises to the Army, "including exact figures in money and men." This was the sordid part of the Army deal, the cash concessions to its patriots. The bargain was sealed with Lieut. General Count Juichi Terauchi deigning to become War Minister and spouting exceedingly vague words to the effect that while the new Cabinet, when the full list was finally made known, might contain names which would make every young Army mustard's blood boil, these pusillanimous civilian ministers were going to effect many of the reforms the Army wanted. Shouted Japan's new War Minister: "A Cabinet influenced by Liberalism and intent on maintaining the status quo cannot be accepted! A compromise will only lead to further complications"--i. e., to more assassinations.

Said new Premier Hirota, on the delicate question of what was to be done about the 1,400 young Army assassins & insurrectionists of last fortnight who this week were confined in barracks: "Regarding Army discipline, officers will employ their own methods of accomplishing it."

In other words the Seven Generals who resigned from the Supreme War Council but not from the Army will now dictate to the Cabinet from their "retirement" on many issues. All but one are natural-born dictators. The Seven Generals and an Eighth:

Sadao Araki. most famed of Japan's misnamed "Fascists," because he was War Minister when the Army overruled Japanese politicians and insisted upon seizing Manchuria, creating the puppet "Empire of Manchukuo."

Senjuro Hayashi, who, when influenza downed Araki, succeeded him as War Minister and delighted Army mustards by coining the mot: "Our Steel Bible is the Samurai Sword!"

Juichi Terauchi, a sabre-rattling Count who remained on the "inactive list" only five days before becoming War Minister.

Jiro Minami whose "resignation" was the most self-sacrificing because he was not one of the Seven Generals on the Supreme War Council. By resigning he deprived himself of Japan's choicest military-diplomatic plum: Commander-in-Chief of Japanese Armies in, and Ambassador to, Manchukuo.

Kenkichi Ueda, hero of Japan's onslaught upon Shanghai (TIME, Feb. 22, 1932). After 36 hours on the retired list, he received the twin Manchukuo plums relinquished by General Minami's great personal act of "expiation," becoming Japanese Commander-in-Chief and Ambassador to Manchukuo.

Nobuyuki Abe, definitely a freak, a "moderate General."

Jinzaburo Mazaki, super-fire-eating onetime Inspector General of Military Education, the vital Army post out of which his successor General Watanabe was fortnight ago removed by assassination as "too mild."

Yoshikazu Nishi, the only one of the Seven Generals who perhaps resigned in genuine shame and expiation, since he was in Command of Tokyo's Capital Guard which notoriously failed to nip the Army's mustards at the outset of their killings.

The New Cabinet, in which Premier Hirota was seen this week to have been permitted by the Army & Navy to balance his Cabinet with two members each from the "old gang" of Japan's regular Minseito and Seiyukai Parties:

Premier and Foreign Minister, Koki Hirota.

Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Education, Keinosuke Ushio.

Minister of War, General Count Juichi Terauchi.

Minister of Navy, Admiral Osamu Nagano.

Minister of Finance, Eiichi Baba, President of the Hypothec Bank of Japan.

Minister of Commerce, Takukichi Kawasaki, Minseito Party.

Minister of Agriculture, Toshio Shimada, Seiyukai Party. Minister of Justice, Dr. Raizaburoi Hayashi, President of the Supreme Court.

Minister of Railways, Yonezo Maeda, Seiyukai Party.

Minister of Overseas Affairs, Hidejiro Nagata, onetime Mayor of Tokyo.

Minister of Communications, Keikichi Tanomogi, Minseito Party.

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