The New D

As the new masters moved into the Japanese house, the old masters tried busily to reshuffle the furniture and the decor. General Douglas MacArthur and the United Nations might have other plans, but for the moment, at least, the rulers of the late Great Japan made a show of being men who expect to manage their own affairs.

From his charred palace, Emperor Hirohito, attended by a grim-miened bodyguard (see cut), drove to the Diet building. There, from his gold-and-maroon throne in the House of Peers, he addressed a joint session of the legislature. Tears welled in his eyes and euphemisms from his lips as he spoke not of defeat or surrender but of "cessation of hostilities . . . termination of the war . . . extraordinary measure. . . ." His command to his subjects: "remain cool, maintain self-composure, exercise patience and circumspection . . . win the confidence of the world . . . make manifest the innate glory of Japan's national policy. . . ."

"Bear the Unbearable." Two days later the Emperor's kinsman and Prime Minister, Prince Naruhiko Higashi-Kuni, spoke to the Diet. His flat face was inscrutable, his soldier's hands rigidly at attention. The legislators listened impassively (a few dozed), applauded and approved with the discipline of marionettes. But there was little to cheer in the Premier's words.

Prince Higashi-Kuni pictured Japan as virtually prostrate. The U.S. air, sea and island offensive had paralyzed commerce, crippled railways, dislocated industry, agriculture and home life. Now, "in obedience to the Imperial proclamation, we should bear the unbearable. . . ."

The key to the future was reconstruction. The road to reconstruction lay "through lively and free discussion and correct public opinion." The Premier proposed : 1) complete military and industrial demobilization; 2) all possible measures to cope with food, clothing and housing shortages; 3) a vigorous fight against unemployment and inflation; 4) development of agriculture and reorganization of industry; 5) reeducation.

"Pound Their Heads." A flurry of political activity followed. The Political Association of Great Japan, the nation's totalitarian party, prepared to disband--and to reorganize under new colors. The East Asia Federation, a patriotic society, made ready to enter politics; its leader seemed likely to be fanatical Lieut. General Kanji Ishihara, a retired Kwantung Army sword-rattler who helped plot the Manchurian adventure.

Labor unions, after 14 years of suppression, began to reorganize. One of their outstanding prewar leaders, the famed Christian minister and social reformer, Toyohiko Kagawa, 57, was appointed to a committee of "intellectuals" charged with revamping Japanese culture.

Out of a long silence emerged the grand old man of a bygone Japanese liberalism--indomitable Yukio Ozaki, 85, ex-Cabinet Minister, ex-mayor of Tokyo, Diet member since 1890, lifelong champion of parliamentary government. He had survived terrorist threats, Government persecution and the corrosion of "thought-control." Now stone deaf, Ozaki last week called on his Diet colleagues to resign rather than "persist in past practices of blind obedience to the Government."

"The Japanese people of today," he warned, "do not know right from wrong. . . . Have they not confused victory and defeat with right and wrong? Do they not believe that the strong are right and the weak wrong? . . . We must pound into the people's heads the law of humanity and the difference between right and wrong."

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