Ronoto

A political thunderbolt, craftily prepared, was hurled by Prime Minister Baron Giichi Tanaka, last week, in an effort to weaken the Opposition parties by discrediting their extreme left wing, the Ronoto or Farmer-Laborites. The vital import of the Ronoto is that its two Deputies give the Opposition a theoretical plurality of two over the Government parties, in the newly elected Diet (TIME, March 5) which will shortly assemble. Numbers: Opposition, including Ronoto, 228; Government, 226; and Independents, 11.

First thunders against the Ronoto came, last week, in an announcement from the Ministry of Justice. This states that the Imperial Police had arrested in a secret raid 1,013 Opposition sympathizers of whom 26 were being held as Communists, on charges of attempting to subvert the state and throne. Followed at once, from the Ministry of Home Affairs, an order for the dissolution of the Ronoto, on the ground that it had become a Communist organization. In Japan, as everyone knows, the practice or preaching of Communism has been illegal since 1923. Suppressed along with the Ronoto, last week, were two sympathetic organizations: the League of Proletarian Youth and the Japanese Labor Council.

To substantiate the thunderbolt thus hurled by Prime Minister Tanaka, the Ministry of Justice next blazoned a propaganda leaflet allegedly seized during one of the police raids. Text:

"Parliament is nothing more than an organ to cheat the people. We must therefore form our own Parliament of laborers, farmers and the poorer classes.

"We must expose the crimes of capitalists and land owners.

"Our demands are: Wholesale revision of the election laws, abolition of laws aimed at the oppression of proletarians, opposition to war of imperialism, abolition of the monarchy."

Further, the police claimed to have found proof that $30,000 was paid to Ronoto during the recent electoral campaign by the Third International, famed Soviet propaganda bureau. The "master mind" who from Moscow directed the alleged subversion was declared to be Sen Katayama, the expatriate "Father of Japanese Communism" and a graduate of Yale University.

Throughout Japan the Prime Minister's thunderbolt took such potent effect that in several instances angry crowds mobbed Ronoto speakers. None the less impartial observers lent a sympathetic ear to stalwart, forthright Ikuo Oyama, Leader of the Ronoto. He swore that its members are not Communists but the unfortunate victims of a Government scheme to intimidate the Opposition.