Covering It like a Tent

The main driveway of Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda's official residence seemed an odd place for tents. But there they were last week, 25 of them, decked with flags and swarming with excited men who periodically would rush out to surround a cringing dignitary as he emerged through Ikeda's front door. Shoving, pushing, often pummeling its victim into speechlessness, the throng would shout at the man for a few minutes, then, its business done, make an equally frantic rush back for the tents. Was it a circus or a riot? Not quite either. It was the Tokyo press corps covering a Cabinet shakeup.

Each time a Japanese Prime Minister has reshuffled his Cabinet in recent years, he has announced his intention in advance to the press, then retreated behind the massive doors of his official residence to receive the parliamentary possibles one by one. And each time the Tokyo reporters have rushed over to cover the story, setting up a tento mura (tent village) outside his door for the day-and-night vigil that sometimes goes on and on for weeks.

Last week, as Ikeda once again began the laborious Cabinet-building process, hundreds of reporters from the papers and from Japan's TV and radio stations were on duty. Some whiled away the time with games of chess and mahjongg inside the tents. Others dozed on cots or chatted idly with their colleagues, trying to beat the summer heat with bottles of cold beer, which they bring to tento mura by the case. When word was flashed by walkie-talkie radio from the agent inside the P.M.'s foyer, the press corps rushed out to extract the news from Ikeda's latest visitor.

In their extraordinary zeal to get every uttered word, reporters have left many of the bigwigs bruised. A couple of years ago, when one was struck dumb by the mob scene, someone in the press corps doused him with a bucket of water. Others have had their teeth chipped by the microphones that are thrust in their faces, and there has been more than one black eye from a swinging elbow. Onetime Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida was so incensed by the reporters' aggressive questioning that he whacked one of them with his walking stick as he left his mansion.

Last week's tento mura was the biggest ever, and the usual carnival air hung over the scene. But, alas, Ikeda's Cabinet problem was speedily resolved, and the tents came down after only two days. Sighed one disappointed reporter: "Now I have to go home to my wife. In the good old days we could count on being away much longer. There's something about a tent village that's invigorating. You just can't have a new Cabinet without it."

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