Trade for Trade

The body politic needs a good purgative once in a while, but last week Japan's nearly got an overdose. For three days it looked as if 113 members of the Foreign Office Staff--all but the Vice Minister, four bureau chiefs and a handful of clerks and translators--would pass out of the political bloodstream entirely.

Month ago the Cabinet decided it would like to create a Trade Ministry. In order that this Ministry might have something to do, the Cabinet voted to give it the trade jurisdictions of the Foreign Office. But this left the Foreign Office with almost nothing to do.

The Japanese Foreign Office has always been a sort of super-club. Its positions offer security, rank, travel, perhaps titles, and most important, a chance to represent the Emperor. When it heard about the proposed Trade Ministry, it rose in its pride and told its new Admiral-Minister, huge, jovial, mild Kichisaburo Nomura, to make the Cabinet behave.

Admiral Nomura, who knows the difference between a quarterdeck and a quartermaster but is a little hazy on parliamentary procedure, came away from the next Cabinet meeting a sad man. "I am like a naval officer," he said, "who has been sent out to sink an enemy ship --and failed." The plan was going through.

With the prospect of almost nothing to do anyhow, the Foreign Office almost unanimously struck. The Cabinet was not impressed. Most of the diplomatic corps, including Ambassadors in London and Washington, protested. The Cabinet held firm. And so, last week, the 113 dissidents handed in their resignations.

The Cabinet, though by now it would not have minded accepting them, realized that it could not without dissolving itself as well. But it could not back down on its avowed plan without trading a scapegoat. And so, next morning, Admiral Nomura announced that the ship had been sunk at last, but that there had been one casualty: Vice Foreign Minister Masayuki Tani, who said it was all his fault.

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