Superpatriots in the Saddle

In a decrepit little wooden house between Tokyo and Yokohama lives a very old man with eyes like flashlight sockets, jaws still strong, a ragged white beard which fails to make him look saintly. His name, Mitsuru Toyama, is seldom spoken. At 85 he is the most feared man in the Far East. Last week he was tolerably happy, for things were going his way.

Mitsuru Toyama is the dictator of Japan's network of secret societies. With fronts as dignified as chapters of the D. A. R., these organizations operate behind the scenes with a brutal fanaticism which the Ku Klux Klan never equaled. The master society, which Toyama founded, is called the Black Dragon Society, significantly after Chinese ideographs for the Amur River, between Manchukuo and Russia. Affiliated with it in various ways are groups with such names as the Jimmu Society (after Japan's first Emperor), the National Foundation Society, the Spirited World Society, the Native Land Loving School.

These societies are dedicated to superpatriotism. In the name of the Emperor they rig politics, liquidate moderates, break ground for military adventures, serve the Army with intrigues, keep the national fervor burning. No one knows how big the societies are, though it has been said that Mitsuru Toyama could call upon any one of 10,000 youths to murder anyone but the Emperor, and the deed would be done. The societies meet in buildings which appear to be jujitsu halls, Shinto temples, homes, business offices.

Members are fanatical young men, Army officers, hooligans, chauvinistic politicians, gamblers, ronins (formerly knights who had lost their lords, now cutthroats in general) and here and there a respectable business man and Cabinet minister.

In the last decade, one or another of these blood brotherhoods was behind the assassination of Premiers Hamaguchi and Inukai, onetime Finance Ministers Inouye and Takahashi, Generals Watanabe and Nagata, Admiral Saito, Financier Baron Dan--men who seemed to the superpatriots to have betrayed Japan's divine mission to dominate Asia. Toyama personally had a hand in promoting the acquisition of Korea and in starting the Russo-Japanese war, and through the incredible Major Dohihara and a ruffian named Komei precipitated the Manchurian incident of 1931.

The hand of secret societies was seen behind the bloody February Revolt of 1936, and in the intrigues preceding the outbreak of the China war in July 1937.

Toyama has never been implicated in any of these crimes; it is doubtful whether there is any authority, except perhaps the Emperor, which would dare punish him.

A Japanese superstition holds that toads wield a dangerous hypnotic magnetism over humans, and Japanese say that like a toad Toyama pulls and pushes young men into these plots and assassinations. Born in a frenzy-inclined community on Kyushu Island, he was raised in the "school of heroes" of Miss Takaba, a unique female warrior who wore two swords and swung two hot little fists. In his youth Toyama evaded and broke successive apprentice ships, embarked on a self-righteous outlawry something like Robin Hood's, and about 1894 established the foundations of the Black Dragon Society.

His exploits are legendary. It is said that he once entered the headquarters of a robber chief, sat down and simply glared at the chief until he bowed, apologized and handed the loot to Toyama, who returned it to the owners. He made a fortune by borrowing huge sums and then paid his debts by selling coal mines he had acquired by political wangling--all to prove how easy it was to acquire riches. He then retired to poverty and his small wooden house.

Stalling of the war in China gave Toyama and his henchmen a chance for a comeback. They indirectly allied themselves with Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye's drive to abolish political parties and set up a totalitarian State. By last week their operations had become considerably more open.

In the first place, they had got Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, a violent superpatriot (TIME, Dec. 2), appointed chief of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, Prince Konoye's central directing agency concerned with streamlining the Government. Fortnight ago Baron Kiichiro Hiranuma, former premier, a leader of the secret National Foundation Society, who has long been called Japan's foremost Fascist, was named Home Minister, in charge of police, secret service, censorship.

A prominent member of the Gestapo was last week on his way to advise the Baron.

A retired general, Heisuke Yanagawa, was made Justice Minister, a post hitherto held by trained jurists. Domei news agency, which is seldom wrong about Japanese politics, last week predicted that General Baron Sadao Araki, one of Japan's most notorious firebrands, would soon be given a Cabinet post.

But the event which must have given Mitsuru Toyama greatest satisfaction of all last week was the convocation of the Diet. Parliamentary forms have always been the cardinal anathema to the secret societies. Last week's convocation indicated that the forms were very nearly dead. In the pompous Diet building in Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito made a one-minute speech to the members, who were as stray and divided as sheep. They had dissolved their political parties and their lobbying machines. They had no aims, no organization, no hope. Their first and only act was to adjourn until January 20. Then, in a mockery of the days when they could at least pretend to steer laws, some of them banded together in a Diet Members' Club, to "direct proceedings." With this they were vastly satisfied--until they found that the man who organized the club was an agent of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, which is run by Colonel Hashimoto, who is run by the secret societies, which are still run by the ancient toad of Kyushu.

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