Love & the Budget

Finance Minister Sanroku Izumiyama found it hard to keep his mind on the supplementary budget. Just before a night session of the Diet last week, he expansively invited some 20 fellow Diet members to dine with him. Host Izumiyama, who is 52, turned up a little late, a little drunk. While the toasts were in progress, the Finance Minister, pausing only to hug a couple of waitresses, sat down by Mrs. Haruye Yamashita, 48, a solidly built, mannishly dressed member of the opposition, who had had a couple of drinks herself. Izumiyama wasted no time indicating that he was in an amorous mood. He suggested they have a quiet drink together somewhere.

Saved by the Bell. Mrs. Yamashita tried to change the subject. "You," she told the Finance Minister, "have the important supplementary budget to attend to, and should not be acting like this." Retorted Izumiyama: "Who cares about the budget? I love you." Mrs. Yamashita rose from the table, with Izumiyama in pursuit. He cornered her in a corridor, vainly sought to kiss her. Finally he connected, but with a bite to the cheek instead of a kiss. Mrs. Yamashita countered with a right to the Finance Minister's head, then broke away.

At this point, another woman Diet member, Miss Toshi Matsuo, wandered into view. Izumiyama, his eyes lighting on Miss Matsuo, straightened, smiled, politely offered to shake hands. "But instead of then freeing my hand," Miss Matsuo exclaimed, "he held it tight and pulled me." Miss Matsuo was saved by a bell summoning her and other Diet members, drunk or sober, to the night session, which convened at 8:47 p.m.* The Finance Minister, however, did not respond. He stretched out on a sofa in the corridor, and lay there, face up, eyes closed.

No sooner was the session convened than members of the opposition began shouting for the Finance Minister to discuss the budget. The Diet recessed four minutes later, and Izumiyama's frantic colleagues tried to revive him: they drove him home in an open car, then back again; finally they took him to the Diet medical room, where stimulants were injected. But Izumiyama was out cold.

Just Feminine Meanness. The session convened again at 9:56 with an opposition member immediately taking the floor to announce with righteous illogic: "I've just been informed the Finance Minister is drunk in the Diet Building. I demand he be called before this session to explain the budget bill." After seven more minutes of bedlam, the house recessed again, to reopen at 10:23 with embarrassed Premier Shigeru Yoshida himself manfully mounting the rostrum to apologize for Izumiyama's inability to be present.

Then the opposition played its ace. Mrs. Yamashita stepped primly forward, announced to the house: "The Finance Minister has tried to make insulting advances to me . . . I regret that as a woman representative I must say such things from this rostrum . . ." Mrs. Yamashita's opposition colleagues roared, "Shame on the government," voted to discipline Izumiyama. By 2 a.m., Izumiyama was sober enough to shamble before a caucus of his party comrades and apologize. At dawn he resigned from the cabinet.

By week's end, busy members of the opposition were screaming for the Yoshida government to resign en bloc, and some of the Premier's own aides were agreeing with them. But all was not harmony in the ranks of the opposition either: 25 of her feminine colleagues charged that Mrs. Yamashita, by drinking with Izumiyama, had invited his attentions. "Just typical feminine meanness," snapped Mrs. Yamashita, pointing out that she could not reasonably have been expected to resist the Finance Minister more vigorously since "he is a fencer, fifth class, and thus very strong in the arms."

* The big, mausoleum-like building which houses the Diet is unheated, and the Diet's Lower House restaurant frequently sells as much as 30 gallons of sake on evenings when members face a chilly, all-night session.

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