Tactical Toot

So the Socialists wanted planning, eh? Well, they could have it. When Tetsu Katayama's government introduced a Socialist-sponsored planning measure in Japan's House of Representatives recently, the conservative opposition fought back with some planning of its own. After due deliberation, it decided to get good & drunk.

The New Statesmen. The hard core of the opposition stayed drunk for three full days. Purpose of this blueprinted binge was not escape, but sabotage of the hated measure (a mild bill for government control of Japan's coal mines). When the Speaker called for a preliminary vote, alcoholic catcalls greeted him. Then surow mow (slow motion) set in. Opposition members slowly sauntered to the ballot box. One of them, loudly complaining of an injured leg, took two minutes to climb the six-step rostrum to the ballot box. Others, magnificently squiffed, zigzagged through the chamber, stopped to chat with friends en route.

When Speaker Komakichi Matsuoka cried: "Speed it up," an irate representative staggered toward the rostrum, grabbed the chief Diet guard by the necktie and .slapped him over the head. The lawmaker was ejected.

The voting, which usually takes 30 minutes, lasted four hours. Next day, opposition members broke up a committee studying the coal bill. Manfully 57-year-old Banboku Ono, general secretary of the Liberal Party (which is conservative), slugged it out with the 49-year-old Socialist chairman of the House Steering Committee, Inejiro Asanuma. Other members--plus the stenographers--joined the battle, using notebooks for ammunition.

"Let us offer incense to the death of the Katayama cabinet," said one soused saboteur, as another slow-motion voting session started that evening. One scholarly Liberal slowly recited Hamlet's "To be or not to be" in Japanese as he stood poised over the ballot box, waving a yes ballot and a no ballot in either hand. A wild fist-swinging melee began when opposition shock troops tried to rush the Speaker's rostrum.

Thereupon bullet-headed Daikichi Ubukata, 67-year-old Democrat, rose solemnly from his blue plush seat, slowly wobbled over to a porcelain spittoon in one corner to execute a unique political comment. Ubukata was heard boasting in a bus next morning: "I am probably the only person in history who has ever relieved himself in the main hall of the Diet."

The Hangover. At another session Delegate Hiroshi Kanada, orating against the control bill, exceeded the 20-minute limit, refused the Speaker's order to cease. Said he: "In America a representative holds a record for filibustering for two and a half days. I am ready to talk from four to five days." When the Speaker ordered him ejected, Kanada put up the best fight of the three-day battle, holding out against the Diet guards for a full half-hour. His colleagues joined in, kicking, slapping, yelling and throwing salted beans, gumdrops and a wooden pyramided name tablet at the Speaker. Said one representative: "This is really pitiful, isn't it?" Then he began to sob.

As the after-effects of the tactical toot set in, other parliamentarians felt ashamed. Last week the Diet 1) finally passed the coal bill; 2) agreed that further deliberations should be conducted with "extreme self-containment"; 3) adopted a resolution sponsored by the women Diet members prohibiting the sale of liquor in the Diet restaurant.

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