Out & Ins

Bespectacled Emperor Hirohito, the earnest young Son of Heaven, had enough resignations to read last week to give His Majesty eyestrain -- 500 in all. His personal military aide-de-camp, famed General Shigeru Honjo, who commanded the Japanese Kwantung Army which swarmed up to seize Manchuria in 1931, resigned last week. So did six lieutenant generals, five major generals, five corps commanders, bevies of War Ministry bureau chiefs and slews of Japanese officers of all the higher ranks.* Thus the Army continued its "expiation" for the Army assassinations of Japanese liberal statesmen (TIME, March 16). But for every one of the 500 resignations -- far too many for His Majesty to accept -- the Army expected to receive and managed to secure last week more & more abject yielding to its Radical-Militarism.

The puppet Empire of Manchukuo, with the Japanese. Army jerking the strings, last week hurled fast-moving military detachments into Inner Mongolia and seized its capital, Pailingmiao. Apparently this was done with the bribe-bought co-operation of one of the last Celestials to wear the ancient Chinese pigtail, famed Prince Te. His Highness is the blandest foe of Soviet Russian influence, in Inner and Outer Mongolia. In effect the seizure of Pailingmiao, jabbed the Japanese spearhead 200 miles nearer to an ultimate clash with the Red Army of Joseph Stalin for the mastery of Eastern Asia.

Baba. In Tokyo the new Finance Minister, successor to assassinated Greatest-Japanese-Finance-Minister Korekiyo Takahashi, is that departed statesman's wily stooge, Mr. Eiichi Baba. As governor of the Government-controlled agricultural bankers' bank the Nippon Kwangyo Ginko since 1927, ingratiating Eiichi Baba has made the most of opportunities to become friends with the Radical-Militarists. The Army is almost entirely of peasant stock and absolutely resolved that exploited and oppressed Japanese rustics shall now get their innings. In Tokyo last week it was considered more than likely that wily Stooge Baba had sold the Army some such idea as that he knows all the tricks of assassinated Finance Minister Takahashi, who for generations was the Empire's amazingly successful floater of Japanese bond issues both at home and abroad.

New Experiments-Nervously Japanese businessmen awaited the new Finance Minister's first pronouncement. They were even more nervous after scanning what Mr. Baba had to say. Speaking obviously as the Army's Stooge, he announced "increased taxes, new experiments, the raising of Japanese defenses to a satisfactory state, restitution of the farming and fishing industries and expansion of the Nation's strength."

New Premier Koki Hirota had meanwhile announced after the first meeting of his Cabinet that it stands for ''positive and independent readjustment of the international situation to tide over the emergency situation." At this a War Office spokesman hailed "the Spirit of Hirota," and a Foreign Office statesman explained, ''It means that we are an independent country -- not a protectorate!"

By this time Japan's new Ambassador to China, belligerent Mr. Hachiro Arita, who had arrived on a Japanese warboat cleared for action, was behaving so brashly on presenting his credentials that a peep of protest was emitted even by China's Nanking Government. Peeped a Chinese

Government official, after asking that his name be kept secret: "The Japanese Ambassador is saying things which are displeasing to the Chinese People and to the Chinese Government." Not in years had a high Chinese Government official ventured to utter for publication such bold words.

Hiranuma, A final sign that the Army assassinations and insurgence at Tokyo three weeks ago was triumphantly achieving its ends came last week when the Privy Council of His Majesty was vacated by its President, the great Japanese Liberal Kitokuro Ikki, who knew what was good for him and resigned "on account of failing health." The Son of Heaven accepted this resignation, then appointed as President of the Privy Council notorious Baron Hiranuma.

This parvenu peer, a self-made Japanese of intolerant and overbearing stamp, got his start as a prosecutor of red-light Yoshiwara cases involving Government corruption. The nervous Japanese temperament is peculiarly non-resistant to adroit blackmail. Today among Japanese it is said and believed of Baron Hiranuma that he never blackmailed anyone but has built up dossiers from the contents of which he could sway numberless Japanese of consequence and wealth.

The career of this non-blackmailer was starred with slow but imposing promotions. In 1906 he became Director of the Civil & Criminal Affairs Bureau; in 1923, Minister of Justice; and in 1926 was received into the Peerage. Since Japanese law is remarkably vague on many points, and responsible officials virtually "make laws" by their rulings and interpretations, it was possible for Baron Hiranuma to pass out of judicial life with a nationwide reputation for extreme tightening up of Japanese legal severity. .

Ruthless, tight-lipped and vastly cunning, Baron Hiranuma, self-made but blooded with the Army's authentic samurai strain, was the Army's candidate in 1932 for the Privy Council Presidency into which he strode last week, camping at the ear of the Son of Heaven. The Army could feel that at last His Majesty would no longer receive only the moderate councils of mild Japanese elders like famed Prince Saionji, the Last of the Genro. Of Baron Hiranuma it is said that "naturally he can have no friends" but that for years he has been locked in a close understanding with famed General Sadao Araki, Militarist Extraordinary.

Reds-Although last month's assassinations and insurrections were entirely the work of young Army mustards in uniform, Tokyo police last week arrested 150 civilian conspirators, a number of them onetime Army officers, jugged three Japanese employed by the Soviet Embassy as "spies" and seemed to be getting ready for a great dishing of Red herrings.

Meanwhile Manchukuo police seized a Russian named Pirogov at Harbin. In enthusiastic efforts to make him sign a confession as a spy, they jabbed pencils in his nostrils, poured him full of kerosene. His sturdy constitution standing him in good stead, Russian Pirogov signed nothing, was released.

Lese Majeste. Roughly 1,000,000 members of Japan's queer Omotokyo cult were driven from their 1,200 temples throughout Japan last week by order of new Home Minister Keinosuke Ushio, a nonparty civil servant of the most uncompromising stamp. Having thus offended at one swoop considerably more than 1% of the population of the Empire, Mr. Ushio had jailed seven Omotokyo leaders and their chief, Wanisaburo Deguchi. They were charged with using the Son of Heaven's crest on their stationery and "traitorously and blasphemously" inculcating belief that Mr. Deguchi is a reincarnation of Japanese deities of such antiquity that they were holding sway before the Sun Goddess begat Japan's still-ruling line of Emperors.

After a thorough study of Omotokyo, a foreign authority on Japanese religious cults described it recently as "a combination of Shintoism, chauvinism, megalomania and mesmerism founded by the half-crazy and illiterate widow of a drunken carpenter and propagated by a shrewd man of the world" -- Mr. Deguchi. Upon her death, the drunken carpenter's not quite illiterate widow was found to have left a mass of illegible scrawls on scraps of paper. These have been piously collated and expanded with copious notes and much Japanese erudition into 30 large volumes of revered Sacred Teachings.

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