Friendly Enemies

Fumio Tanaka and Shosuke Matsumoto, both 24 and friends since boyhood, attended the same high school, fought with the Japanese forces, and are now completing their economic studies at Tokyo's Keio University. Their common background even includes the purge of both their fathers: Tanaka's because he was a wartime cabinet member, Matsu-moto's as a general. However, young Tanaka is a conservative, young Matsumoto a Communist. They typify the two vigorous parties in Japan--and the way Japanese youth is torn.

Last week, Tanaka and Matsumoto talked with TIME Correspondent Sam Welles, who cabled back this report of their conversation:

Tanaka: "Japanese workers are leading a very miserable life. What Japan needs most of all is a capitalism sensible enough to survive. That is important."

Matsumoto: "Nothing in the world is more important than Communism. There is no truth except dialectical materialism. I wish I could go to a university in Russia where it is the only system taught. When Japan becomes Communist, we will teach nothing but Marxism here."

Tanaka: "That is why there is no more liberty in Russia than there was in Japan when we were allowed to believe only in the Emperor's divinity."

Matsumoto: "We don't want to imitate Russia. We want national independence. This cannot be obtained without Communism, because American capitalists are colonizing Japan, and we would end this."

Tanaka: "As Premier Yoshida has said, 'No country with brains stays a colony; America was a colony once.' Many things are now decided by the American occupation authorities, but that is the price of defeat. America is helping us."

Matsumoto (changing the subject): "Germans recently voted Bismarck the greatest man in history. That shows Germany under American occupation is far from being democratized."

Welles: "Whom do you consider the greatest man in history?"

Matsumoto: "Marx, Lenin, Stalin and then Nozaka and Tokuda."*

Tanaka: "I think Admiral Togo/- is the greatest man in Japanese history. Togo was an honest nationalist, which is not the same thing as a militarist. I also respect Admiral Yamamoto [who planned and carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor], not as a militarist but as an excellent human being. I had a copy of his biography, but when we surrendered I burned it."

Welles: "Why did you burn it?"

Tanaka: "I then thought that the Americans would punish me for having such a book, so I burned it and many others. Now I would not do so because I know Americans value freedom of thought. In the old days, we had no chance to think for ourselves. Now we can, and most of us have changed our minds, but democracy has come so fast that we are not yet able to understand all its meaning and spirit."

Welles: "Do you still want to die for the Emperor?"

Matsumoto: "I would die if it would help Communism."

Tanaka: "I hope we can all live and prosper peacefully. But I will struggle all my life--and die if I must--to keep the few from dominating the many as they did in militaristic Japan and do in Communist Russia."

(A photographer arrived to take their pictures. Tanaka and Matsumoto instinctively draped their arms over each other's shoulders and smiled.)

Welles: "Will you continue as close as that?"

(They stopped smiling and wrinkled their brows.)

Matsumoto: "When I joined the Communists, I told Tanaka we should remain friends."

Tanaka: "I think we can keep it up. It will not be easy, but it is worth almost any effort. If non-Communists can keep Japan happy and healthy, the Communists will never be strong enough to fight."

* Sanzo Nozaka is the chief strategist of Japan's Communist Party, Kyuichi Tokuda its secretary general. /- Who commanded the Japanese fleet which routed the Russians at the battle of Tsushima Straits in May 1905.

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