The Lull

Toward midnight, a senior Japanese bureaucrat cautiously ventured out into Tokyo's sheltering darkness carrying a chrysanthemum-embossed copy of the revised U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty. He inspected the streets for signs of left-wing demonstrators with all the wariness of an oldtime plainsman watching for hostile Sioux, then headed for the Imperial Palace. There he was admitted inconspicuously, waited as Emperor Hirohito brushed on his signature.

Next morning U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II slipped through the cordon of 300 cops guarding Tokyo's U.S. embassy and set out for the quiet residence of Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama, well removed from downtown Tokyo. With him MacArthur carried the U.S. ratification papers, which, in a kind of "hold for release" technique unprecedented in diplomatic history, had been shipped to Japan fortnight ago complete with the signatures of President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Herter. Three hours earlier, at a signal from Ike, MacArthur had inserted into the papers the date of Senate ratification. While 300 students demonstrated before the Foreign Office building three miles away in downtown Tokyo, MacArthur and Fujiyama exchanged documents, and the treaty at last went into force. Said one American: "Has an international document ever been ratified in such a hole-and-corner fashion?"

Less than an hour later, Japan's tough-minded Premier Nobusuke Kishi fatalistically paid the cost of his three-year fight for treaty revision. Meeting with the kingpins of his Liberal Democratic Party, Kishi announced: "I feel strongly the need for a fresh public atmosphere. Therefore, I have decided to resign." Kishi's one condition: the Liberal Democrats must first agree upon his successor.

The Fence Menders. With that, a curious sense of anticlimax swept Japan. Returning wearily to his home in suburban Shibuya, Kishi found it free of the yelling, snake-dancing mobs that have besieged it every day since May 20. Taking advantage of the calm, workmen were busy repairing Kishi's smashed gates and fences.

Elsewhere in Tokyo, demonstrations continued, including one eerily protesting "the U.S.-sponsored attack on North Korea" ten years ago. But the force and fury had largely gone out of them. Japan's conservatives were even treated to the spectacle of a falling-out among the Marxists when Japan's Communist Party denounced the Trotskyite faction of the Zengakuren student federation for provoking the police to "murder" Coed Michiko Kamba during the assault on the Diet building (in fact, Miss Kamba was trampled to death by her own fleeing comrades). Roaring with outrage, 200 Zengakuren members assaulted the Reds' Tokyo headquarters, began a brawl that ended with one Communist in the hospital. Explained Communist Party Secretary Kenji Miyamoto later: "The Trotskyite students of Zengakuren are tools of the American State Department, which, as everyone knows, is financing Zengakuren activities."

The Scramblers. Despite last week's lull, the trials of Japanese democracy were far from over. Instead of uniting in the face of crisis, the eight factions that make up the Liberal Democratic Party were engaged in savage infighting over who was to succeed Kishi. Japan's big businessmen, anxious to get the country back to normal, were throwing their weight behind Trade Minister Hayato Ikeda, 61, the tough-minded economist who had helped the U.S. occupation's Economic Adviser (and Detroit banker) Joseph Dodge lick Japan's postwar inflation. The Socialists hinted that they might offer parliamentary support to Kenzo Matsumuru, one of the 27 Liberal Democrats who did not vote for the treaty, and who was recently feted in Peking as a backer of closer ties between Japan and Red China.

But at least six other Liberal Democratic politicians were also bidding for the job, and one hungry candidate reportedly had offered to give all Cabinet seats save one to rival factions in return for their support. Said one Tokyo observer sadly: "With the Liberal Democrats, policy does not come first but last--only after the sordid scramble for Cabinet posts."

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