In the Eye of the Storm

Wallowing in the imported delights of full democracy, the lower house of the Japanese Diet last week staged the roughest and most disgraceful brawl in the two years since Japan regained her sovereignty. For the first time in the Diet's 64-year history, Tokyo's metropolitan police were called to restore order. In the eye of the storm, yet seemingly untouched by it, was astute, crusty and supremely confident Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, 75, whose friends and admirers call him the ablest and most important figure in today's Japan, and whose foes call him a "shameless dictator."

Yoshida had been scheduled to leave Japan last week for the U.S., seeking "loans and investments" to aid the nation's hard-pressed economy. At the last minute, because of the riot in the Diet, Yoshida had to cancel all plans, postponed his trip for several weeks, perhaps months.

"We Work All Night." Yoshida's conservative coalition (his own Liberals and Mamoru Shigemitsu's Progressives) easily musters a majority, a fact which drives his Socialist opposition into foaming rages. At lunch one day last week, Yoshida had more than his usual two Martinis. Afterward in the Diet, the sleepy-lidded Prime Minister appeared to doze. "Aha!" cried a Socialist. "We work all night on important legislation and the Prime Minister gets drunk and passes out in the Diet!"

Bills providing for Japanese rearmament with U.S. aid (opposed by the left-wingers) had been passed. Yoshida wanted one more piece of legislation disposed of: a bill to abolish local police forces in favor of a national force organized by prefects. Opponents argued that this would bring back the prewar totalitarian character of Japan's police. Yoshida's Liberals replied that the country could not afford overlapping police forces, and that there was no danger that a national force would become oppressive, since it would be supervised by a civilian commission.

The police bill had already passed the lower house, and Yoshida had the votes to pass it in the upper house as well; but before that could happen, the lower house had to vote a two-day extension of the Diet session. To prevent this, a posse of Socialist members corralled Speaker Yasujiro Tsutsumi in a corner of the chamber, thus kept him from ascending to the chair. A beefy judo expert, Tsutsumi broke through the Socialist ranks and sought refuge in a caucus room.

"One of Those Louts . . ." For two hours the Liberals mapped their counterattack, then sent a flying wedge to break through the siege lines. The Liberals got Tsutsumi out of the caucus room, started hustling him toward the chair. Battered formations of Socialists, with sweat and melted pomade shining on their foreheads, barred their way. "Forward!" shouted the Liberals. "Stop them!" yelled the Socialists. "Help, help!" screamed the lady Socialists.

The first surge of the Liberals was pushed back. They then tried a flank attack over members' desks. Several Socialist women, kicking and screaming, were dragged out of the way. A Liberal advance party reached the speaker's chair, but Speaker Tsutsumi was not among them. A lady legislator, one of Japan's emancipated women, complained later: "One of those louts tore the sleeve from my sweater, one I picked up in Denmark. If I catch him I'll tear his eyeballs out."

When the police finally stopped the fighting, some 50 persons (including 24 cops) had been injured by punches, kicks, scratches, bites, falls, or blows inflicted by undetermined objects. Next day Shigeru Yoshida called on Emperor Hirohito to apologize for the obloquy that Japanese legislators had brought on their country. In the Diet, the upper house passed the police bill by standing vote, the Socialists abstaining.

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