Progress Report

The Japanese agreed that it was a "historic" election--the nearest thing they had ever had to a free vote. There was campaign give-&-take as 2,781 candidates, representing 257 parties, wrangled for 466 parliamentary seats. They ranged from sturdy Kenshin Izumi of the Buddhist priesthood, which recently organized for politics, to efficient Miss Shidzue Yamaguchi, a typist sponsored by Christian Leader Toyohiko Kagawa. A few Communists had been stoned. The Communists had mobbed the residence of Premier Baron Kijuro Shidehara. One radical had even called the Emperor "that guy," a bit of new liberty the legality of which was under study by the high courts.

On election day almost three-fourths of the registered electorate (36 millions) turned out in orderly style. Women voted for the first time, in surprisingly large numbers. As U.S. Military Government men toured the polls, men & women bowed politely, smiled toothily, as if to say: "See how well we practice what you preach!"

Sitting at their abaci, with hot green tea and cold rice balls for refreshment, the election clerks diligently tallied their beads and the vote. No one was surprised when the conservatives--Liberals, Progressives and Independents, all in favor of free enterprise and the Emperor system--emerged with a clear-cut victory (about 300 seats). Unexpected was the strength of the Social Democrats, who stand for evolutionary socialism (about 90 seats). The Communists, despite militancy and tight organization, got only five seats. Most revolutionary was the election of 38 women, including Mrs. Shidzue Kato, the former Baroness Ishimoto, famed as the Margaret Sanger of Japan. At least 13 ballots were merely marked "More Food," one was cast for Harry Truman, and a dozen bore the write-in "General MacArthur."

The Great Experiment. In his Tokyo headquarters, a palatial oasis of paneled halls, cut-flower arrangements, kimonoed servants and monogrammed silverware, set in a desert of bomb-&-fire rubble, General Douglas MacArthur watched his wards at work. "Satisfactory," was his pronouncement on the election.

The poll was a climax of an amazing experiment. To date, MacArthur's methods had been dazzlingly successful in demilitarizing Japan and in establishing the outward forms of democracy. If the Japanese still lack the inward democratic light, that could be blamed on centuries of Japanese history rather than on MacArthur's occupation policies. Only those Japanese institutions and attitudes which were impermeable to Western thought were left untouched.

During the election campaign Progressive politicians had openly called for the return to Japan of Korea and Manchuria.

The Liberal leader, chunky, elderly Ichiro Hatoyama, had been grilled by U.S. newsmen over his book, Face of the Earth, written in 1938 and studded with praise of Naziism, Fascism and Japanese expansion in China. Asked if he now considered himself a suitable candidate for office, the flustered Liberal had stuttered: "My thoughts . . . were wrong ... I have no confidence."

But last week, after the returns were in Ichiro Hatoyama recovered his confidence. As chief of Japan's biggest party, he pressed for a new Government, with himself as premier.

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