Last of the Genro

Last week a little old man died in Japan. He was respectfully mourned in his own country, but out across the world his passing was recognized as the passing of an era. Prince Kimmochi Saionji, 91, last of the Genro, or Elder Statesmen, was also the last representative of the age in Japan which was dedicated to what today's Japanese call "dangerous thoughts"--the age of Liberalism.

Prince Saionji's life span was staggering. This was a man who was intimate not only with Balfour, Clemenceau, Hindenburg, Wilson, but who wrestled in the flesh with the Emperor Meiji when the latter was a boy, heard Franz Liszt play his own music, talked politics with Prince Bismarck, had audiences with Queen Victoria and Ulysses S. Grant. As a student in Paris he saw the Commune of 1871 and learned liberalism in its laboratory. His public services were those which would have made five men great: Minister to Vienna and Berlin, president of the Privy Council, vice president of the House of Peers, twice Minister of Education, four times Foreign Minister, twice Premier, and chief delegate of Japan to the Paris Peace Conference. He helped draft Japan's liberal constitution. But his greatest service was as Genro--adviser to the Emperor, "midwife in the birth of new Premiers."

In Prince Saionji's latter years, which he spent almost entirely at his seaside villa at Okitsu, the naming of each new Premier --he has advised at least 15 times--revolved around him. About five hours before the resignation of a Premier, Saionji would be notified. His private secretary would arrange a through telephone wire to Tokyo. In his tatami mat room the old Prince would sit apparently just listening to the waves in Kiyomi Bay. He would confer for a time with the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal; then meditate some more. Finally he would pronounce a name, and the man whom he named would be the next Premier of Japan.

Prince Saionji's death meant much to Japan because extremists were afraid of him. Powerfully representing ancient as well as modernized Japan, his influence kept in check such passionate young revolutionaries as Colonel Hashimoto. He was a lover of ceremonial silks, of austere rituals of tea and wine. He had a nightingale for a pet and he tended pots of orchids with his own hands. He woke each day to contemplate an ancient plum tree silhouetted against the white paper shoji-screen. of his bedroom. He represented also the West: constitution-maker, reader of French philosophy, always abreast of international inventions such as Naziism.

But he was Japanese. In his character were the seeds of present-day Japan. A story is told that one day in his youth in Paris he was drinking in a bistro. Spirits ran high. Accidentally he broke a window. A French waiter grew angry and told him to pay up. Kimmochi Saionji, gentleman of Japan, broke several more windows in the place, paid for them all. Then he haughtily commanded the waiter to wrap up the pieces of glass in a package, took the package under his arm and stalked out, head high.

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