Rebuff for the Premier

Japan's Teachers Union is half a million strong and dominated by Communists. Some of its members use the Communist Party newspaper Akahata as a text in classes, organize their adolescent charges into party cells, on occasion contribute from their meager (average $53 monthly) salaries to the financing of anti-U.S. movies.

To clean up this situation, Premier Yoshida last winter instructed Education Minister Shigeo Odachi to draft legislation outlawing the teaching of Communism in the nation's schools. Odachi--former Home Minister and boss of Japan's infamous wartime police, who was barred from public office during the U.S. occupation--happily obliged, but the remedy he produced looked to many almost as bad as the disease it was designed to cure. As passed by the Lower House of the Diet, Odachi's bill would have made it a criminal offense for any teacher to espouse the cause of any political party or doctrine, directly or indirectly, in or out of the classroom. Offenders would be liable to fines ranging up to 30,000 yen (about $84) and one year in jail.

Solidly backed by Yoshida, the bill passed the Lower House by a vote of 256 to 137. But when it came before the Upper House last week, members balked. Instead of fines and jail sentences, they substituted "administrative punishment," i.e., reprimands or dismissals, which are seldom enforced in Japan. It was 75-year-old Premier Yoshida's first rebuff of the present Diet session.

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