Peace, It's Wonderful

JAPAN Peace, It's Wonderful

In the wake of President Truman's icy blast of news that Russia had the bomb, the Japanese had adopted a new catchword to replace banzai. It was "peace."

Peace was on every lip last week, repeated over & over like a mystic incantation whose simple reiteration could drive away the nightmare of war. There were songs about peace and a "peace dance." A patent-medicine company put out a new sedative tablet and proudly named it the Sleep of Peace. Prospective buyers could pick it up in a Peace drugstore and shuffle off to enjoy their rest on a Peace mattress. The first postwar Japanese civilian train to boast an observation car was christened the Peace Special and the government tobacco monopoly hired a corps on flashily dressed "peace girls" to boost the sales of its latest product, Peace cigarettes.

Oh, Fighting Comrades! In the plaza before Hirohito's Imperial Palace a group of intransigent rightists gathered to hear frock-coated orators extol the virtues of peace and antiCommunism. In Hibiya Park next day, 5,000 Communists and fellow travelers cheered wildly when 69-year-old Ikuo Oyama proclaimed: "The atom bomb is now in the hands of the masses. It will be used for the protection of peace. Oh, fighting comrades," they sang, "sing hosannas for the Soviet. . . Peace. Peace. Protect Peace!"

On Sunday at Ueno Zoo, starchy Premier Shigeru Yoshida made his bid for peace by gingerly thrusting a bunch of bananas at India's good-will ambassador, an elephant presented to Japan by India's Prime Minister Nehru.

Everywhere the old & the new, the right & the left seemed to be seeking the elusive dove in their own fashion. From far-off Hokkaido, lured by an enterprising Tokyo promoter, a tribe of Japan's aboriginal Ainus came to stage the first touring performance of their ancient bear festival.

For Tokyo audiences, the Ainus only pretended to kill the bear and drink his blood. They shared the bill with a bebop band and a nicely undressed chorus. "Tokyo," murmured one bush-bearded, 74-year-old aborigine eying the chorus, "is the best part of Japan; Hokkaido is too far out in the sticks."

Please Applaud. In Tokyo's shiny new sports center, a crowd of 10,000 thronged to join the hallelujah chorus. Before a papier-mache globe surmounted by doves, black-robed Shinto priests in formal vestments, shaved Buddhists in red, blue and saffron robes, turbaned Moslems and black-clad Japanese Episcopal ministers stood rigidly in silent prayer for peace.

Each of the onlookers in the grandstand got yellow "peace buttons" to wear in their lapels. Each signed individual cards promising to "repent and pray" for the "Chinese, Filipinos and South Sea Islanders whose houses our troops had pillaged and burned, whose properties they looted, whose families they insulted and killed." This humility was echoed over a loud speaker at a baseball game between a badly outclassed team from MacArthur's headquarters and a team from the Japanese Ministry of Trade. "Please," the announcer urged the audience in Japanese, "applaud more loudly for the Americans."

At Tokyo's Christian Meiji Gakuin College, a young student who couldn't remember the name Garry Davis, formally asked the government for permission to become a world citizen and "work for eternal peace on an international plane like that fellow in France."

After weeks of wrangling, peace came with the autumn to 1,200-year-old Horyuzi Temple when ancient Abbot Join Saeki at last decided to let scientists dig for a casket supposedly containing the ashes of Buddha. There was only one condition: the casket could be opened only by a picked seven-man committee acceptable to the abbot. "Tampering with an old structure," said Saeki, "is tantamount to vivisection."

Even once restless Yoshio Kodaira, who last year was convicted of raping 40 women and murdering eight, seemed to have caught the general spirit. "I am fortunate," he said as he marched to the gallows last week, "to be able to die on such a calm and peaceful day."

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