Old Wine, Old Bottles?

Last; week some 25,000,000 Japanese trudged to drab, dank schoolhouses and temples, brightened here & there with red and pink plum blossoms and fragrant daphne. For the first time they were electing their local officials--village and town headmen and mayors, prefectural governors (previously, local administrators have been appointed by Tokyo).

In most places the same old local bosses were returned to power. Although anyone tainted with "ultranationalism" was supposed to have been purged, borderline cases still ran for office, and many were elected. In Osaka a group of political purgees organized the Purgee Club to work for the election of their candidates.

Hat in Hand. On the whole, the election returns indicated that General MacArthur was right last month when he said: "The process of democratization . . . takes years." But there were some signs of progress. At Makuwari, farmers and fishermen (who returned the local bosses to power) noticed at least one change. "Once officials were stiff-necked and paid no attention to ordinary people," they said. "Now they come to us and ask us as a favor to vote for them." Commented a U.S. official: "Isn't that the beginning? How else does an awareness of self-government occur, if not in the phenomena of the candidate coming, hat in hand, to ask for votes? People, even Japs and Germans, like the idea of picking their own dogcatcher."

The Write-in Vote. A better test of Japanese democracy will come later this month, in national elections for the two houses of parliament. On the broader national scene, Prime Minister Yoshida's Liberal incumbents had used the purge powers given them by General MacArthur to get rid of the leaders of the Democratic Party, their principal opposition.

Military Government officials cared less about these party maneuvers than about the lack of connection between political and economic issues. In Chiba prefecture, however, occurred one small sign that politics is related to the people's lives. A farmer's wife, greeted by an aging villager near the Toofuku Temple voting place, said: "Now you have made me forget the name I've tried so hard to memorize." Said the villager: "Then vote as I did. Just write in 'kome' " (rice).

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