Land of the Reluctant Sparrows

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Once upon a time, goes a story, there was an Emperor who was particularly fond of cherries. When he discovered one day that the sparrows were eating his cherries, he decreed that all sparrows must be killed or driven away. But with the birds gone, the beetles abounded. They overran the orchards and devoured the crops. The Emperor, rueful of his error, ordered the sparrows back.

It is now ten years since the Allies drove the Japanese back to the cage of their meager islands and forbade them ever to bear arms again. It is three years since the West ruefully reversed course, gave the Japanese their independence, and bade them rearm and join in the defense against Communism.

But the restless, dynamic and ingenious people of Japan are not so movable or removable as the Emperor's sparrows. These sparrows have the vote. With pencil and ballot box, they notified the outside world last week that Japan has emerged from the passivity of defeat to seize and assert its independence.

Souls in Nirvana. By the millions, the Japanese went to the polls to elect a new parliament. The last blandishments blared from loudspeaker trucks. An enormous white vinyl balloon in the shape of a pigeon bobbed in the sunshine over Tokyo, soliciting votes for the Democratic Party of Ichiro Hatoyama, the caretaker Premier who aspired to a longer lease on the job. The election was as orderly as any in the West, but with occasional trimmings that were made in Japan. In the templed city of Nara, officials rejected the request of eleven Buddhists who, engaged in a religious retreat, insisted that they needed absentee ballots. "Despite the fact that our bodies will be here on election day," they pleaded, "our souls will be in Nirvana." Some 38 million other Japanese, a remarkable 75.8% of the electorate,* clambered to the polls.

In the dingy Tokyo headquarters of the Democratic Party, the sounds of celebration began almost with the first returns. Though the Democratic Party is only three months old, it stole the thunder, many of the members and thousands of the votes of the recently dominant Liberal Party. Each time a Democrat's election was clinched, party workers pounded a lacquered drum and the crowd shouted, "Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!" By morning they had banzaied themselves hoarse.

The man who made the victory relaxed under a prebreakfast massage in his 13-room, Western-style house on a hill in central Tokyo, while supporters trooped in with sake, beer, and trays of tai fish for a long day of celebration. For most of his adult life, Ichiro Hatoyama has longed to govern Japan. In fact, even before he was born, his politician father intended him to be a politician, and his mother, a woman of learning and vigor who believed that a child in the womb is shaped by the mother's thoughts, carefully limited her pregnancy reading to biographies of great men and politicians. "I do not wish to give birth to a child with a small mind," Haruko Hatoyama wrote in her diary.

It had taken Ichiro Hatoyama a near lifetime of nimble politicking and Diet brawling, of playing along with Japan's prewar militarists and yet surviving them, of being purged by the U.S. occupiers and turning the purging to profit, of losing power and then grabbing it back. At last, at 72, he had unfurled the long-dusty banners of Japanese nationalism and marched with them to his life's goal.

Jovially, he descended to join the celebrators. Partially paralyzed from a cerebral stroke, he got about with the aid of a gnarled black cane or the arm of an aide, but even in feebleness he had a courtly air. He worn, as he always does, well-cut Western clothes. His small bronze face sat satisfiedly behind round black spectacles that looked, in a certain light, as if they had been painted on by Bobby Clark's makeup man. Beneath a hesitant growth of gray mustache^ his round mouth was flattened into a broad grin. "What would you like for breakfast?" someone shouted. "More votes," grinned Ichiro.

Identical Pin-Stripes. In the final tally, Hatoyama got more votes (149,541) than any Japanese Diet candidate in history. The transfer of power from the Liberals of ex-Premier Shigeru Yoshida to Hato-yama's Democrats was in great part a result of Hatoyama's personal popularity, his canny exploitation of Japan's disillusionment with his highhanded and distant predecessor, Yoshida. But, as Hatoyama was among the first to acknowledge, his mandate went far deeper than a change of personalities. In sweeping out the Liberals, the Japanese were sweeping away a regime that represented to the majority of Japanese a decade of meek complaisance to the commands and suggestions of the U.S. occupiers. Yoshida was re-elected from his own Kochi district last week, and his former Foreign Minister ran a dramatically repudiated eighth in a nine-man race.

In place of the Yoshida men, the electorate had turned to men of almost identical pinstripe; indeed, some were the very same men. But they wore new colors -- more independence from the U.S.; negotiations with the Chinese Communists and Russia; some second thoughts about rearming and lining up on the Western side of the cold war. "... I feel that alignment only with the Western nations and the ignoring of the Communist nations . . . could lead to a third world war," said Ichiro Hatoyama. "I would like to awaken the people to a deeper, more serious sense of their independence."

A Tokyo businessman put it more crudely. "Yoshida," he said, "sold Japan from under his kimono, like a Parisian selling dirty pictures. Hatoyama is different. He is like a brand-new shopkeeper on the Ginza -- his door is open to everybody.''

Niggardly Rewards. The shopkeeper's shop is like no other on the face of the globe. It is a strange, oriental apothecary shop where a mysterious alchemy of history has produced a foaming blend of East and West and a ferment of contradictions. Old conflicts with new, beauty with ugliness, prejudice with progress. Pride in past greatness collides with shame for the way the brief greatness was misused. Ambitions for the future collide with a poverty of the means to build with. Some 88 million people, endowed with extraordinary energy, ingeniousness and elasticity, struggle with land that can pay but niggardly rewards even to the most industrious.

The Tokyo sky, soft as the tint of a Hiroshige print, is punctured by the girders of the tallest TV tower in Asia. The Emperor's pine trees stand, as they have for generations, near the weathered walls of the imperial palace, but the trees are slowly dying from Tokyo's 20th century soot. In magnificent settings all lacquer and silk, with costumes and gestures that have barely changed for centuries, Kabuki and No players perform the weirdly beautiful theater of old Japan. To this day, young men go out into winter woods and deliberately screech away their normal voices, then painstakingly build new voices that can boom like tympani or wail like flutes for the Kabuki dialogues. Not many blocks away, in neon-glaring bars and cabarets with such names as "America" or "Atomic" or "Grumman" (for the U.S. Navy fighter planes), sloe-eyed girls in satin gowns dispense sin by the drink, and chorus girls bump and grind en masse to cheap Western tunes; not content with the miserly Occidental custom of one stripper at a time, Tokyo has blended Minsky with the Radio City Rockettes.

In the capital, as in the smoking industrial cities to the south, ugliness is what first catches the eye. Tokyo, the world's third largest (pop. 7,800,000) and one of its most sprawling cities, is a nerve-jangling centrifuge of electric trains and streetcars, buses, suicidally driven taxis (Japanese and foreigners alike call them "Kamikaze cabs"), coughing motorcycles, bamboo-loaded handcarts. Seemingly endowed with more elbows than New Yorkers, crowds surge in uncaring haste through the streets. Advertising balloons float above new glass-and-chrome office buildings, smoke clouds spew up from 10,000 rickety, small factories in the Tokyo area which produce a deluge of goods--delicate brocades, electric generators, aircraft engines, dried seaweed to eat, and cosmetics of nightingale dung for geisha girls.

Like cheap cosmetics, many of the conquerors' customs have rubbed off on the conquered. Thousands pour money into a pinball game called pachinko, played with steel balls which the Socialists solemnly insist are made to double for shrapnel when rearmament comes. The bobby-sox passion is the Audrey Hepburn hairdo (U.S. movies grossed $24 million in Japan last year and Roman Holiday accounted for $1,000,000 of it). Sh-Boom, Sh-Boom pours from radio sets, and at least three "mambo kings" are playing near the Ginza. The Japanese baseball teams have just gone south for spring training.

It is all real, but really only a part of Japan. The stenographer who trips along in high heels and Western dress is often hurrying home for a quiet lesson in flower arranging. The man who elbows his way into an elevator jammed with strangers will a moment later bow two or three ceremonial bows to an acquaintance. The Western-tailored businessman returns at night to a severely plain house of wood and paper. At the entrance he takes off his shoes, steps onto a straw mat (tatami), changes into a kimono and walks straight out of the Western world until tomorrow morning. The central room, except for mats and sliding panels and perhaps a low table, is without furniture; the eye is left free to contemplate the one picture and the single flicker of white plum blossom arranged carefully beneath it.

The factory worker's home in Osaka or the farmer's on Kyushu will be smaller and meaner, but it too will have half a dozen or more prints to be hung, one at a time, and contemplated according to the seasons. Each object, each gesture gives off a melancholy beauty inimitably Japanese. All is so precisely arranged that a wisp of dried fern or a few swirls of gravel in a garden may seem more overpowering than an Alpine view; a slightly disarranged bamboo blind can suggest chaos.

Something Borrowed. Between these two ways of life, between the jostle and the ceremony, the Japanese maintain a sort of coexistence, each facet rubbing against and invisibly changing the other, but never allowed quite to melt into one pattern. This frictional interplay was going on long before the Americans arrived with their atomic bombs, occupation army and MacArthur's new constitution. For 70 remarkable years after Commodore Perry steamed into Uraga Harbor, Japan, under the enlightened reign of Emperor Meiji, force-fed itself on all the Western notions, inventions, techniques and customs it could absorb.

Just as, 14 centuries earlier, they had borrowed the essentials of their nationhood from Asia--the writing and art of China, the advanced mores of Korea, the ethic of Confucius, the religion of Buddha --the Japanese in the Meiji period borrowed the makings of a second way of life, and wrought history's most remarkable transformation. The cocoon of medieval primitivism was broken and Japan emerged a modern world power--the first and only industrial nation of the Orient.

From the industrial revolution the Japanese borrowed the factory (Japan got steel mills almost as early as home looms); from the English they borrowed Parliament, from the Latins a brawling way of running it, and from Tammany Hall the ways to get around it. The new Japanese army was modeled after Prussia's, the navy after Britain's, and the battleships came by way of the latest designs of Clydeside and Newport News, Va. The Japanese bought Manhattan's disassembled Sixth Avenue Elevated as scrap iron (and returned it later with a bang). They also borrowed, from Britain's successful example of the 17th to null centuries, the notion that a poor island nation has a right and a destiny to build an empire. What they could not get by borrowing or adapting, they went after with a savagery that bloodied history with the rape of Nanking and the death march of Bataan.

Centuries of borrowing gave Japan a reputation as a nation of agile mimics; Japanese even coined an ugly word for themselves--sarumane (monkey-imitators)--to use in candid introspective moments. But at the core there was a quality distinctly Japanese, that took or rejected, or sometimes transformed, everything foreign, from Confucius' rules of behavior to a Leica lens.

Indelible Marks. Not even the U.S. occupation could break down the immutable process of selective absorption. Occupied for the first time in its history, Japan bent, bowed and stretched to the penances of defeat. It grasped eagerly at the authority that floated in behind a corncob pipe on the U.S. Missouri to replace the authority that died with the Tojos. Its outward bitterness in defeat was directed not so much against the triumphal strangers who had used Japanese as the first targets for the Abomb, but at its own returning soldiers. Instead of sympathy, the returning veterans were greeted with coldness, and even with jeers in their home towns. They had failed.

The Japan of ten years later is imprinted with indelible marks of U.S. occupation, but far less than and in different ways from those the occupiers intended. The once divine Emperor is now a constitutional monarch, comfortable to have around and to bow to, but without power that he might abuse. Land reform has broken down the prewar imbalance under which only 30% of the farmers owned the land they farmed: by last year, only about 1,200,000 acres were tenant-farmed v. 6,000,000 in 1945.

The purging of imperialistic textbooks and the broadening of public education has improved a system which even before the war achieved a literacy rate of 97%. Women have the vote and use it (about 18 million in last week's election), though many probably voted the way their husbands directed, and most still live the hard but dignified lives of chattels, obedient to the wishes of husbands who often invoke the medieval right to spend their free time in the salons of the geishas or the chambers of their concubines. The zaibatsu--the handful of family trusts that owned Japan's commerce, banking and industry--have been gradually returning since the U.S. realized that breaking them up had left Japan without foundation for its postwar economy. The imposed MacArthur constitution still stands as the code by which the government governs. But it is subject to the governors' interpretation of phrases which often have scant practical meaning or attraction for the Japanese mind.

Empire Game. There is still much that the Japanese would like to discard ("Not because we have grown to hate Americans," explained one Japanese, "but because we have got tired of them."), but they cannot. Though they have found their way back to sovereignty, the Japanese have not found the way to stay alive without the help of the U.S.

With its empire gone, Japan is a harsh and meager land. It cannot feed itself. It cannot provide raw materials for its factories. Its population grows by 1,000,000 a year, yet of its land--a total area smaller than California--a mere 17% is arable. Dirt is so precious that graves are limited to two square feet (cremation is almost universal in Japan). Factories, and the machines in them, are in advanced obsolescence. There are not enough jobs, though many tasks are featherbedded to employ two craftsmen, four janitors or two taximen where one would do. Costs and wages have gone up so much that Japan is no longer able to undersell everyone else in the world market. Eager British, German and other traders have invaded old Japanese markets. Some of the old customers--Indonesia, Burma, the Philippines--are still too mindful of Japanese aggression to want to do much business again. "No amount of amnesia on our part," a Japanese newspaper reminded its readers recently, "will erase the impressions made on the minds of the injured parties." World War II wiped out Japan's captive markets in Korea, Formosa and Manchuria, and the cold war has closed the door to trade with mainland China. Yet the old cries of Japanese underselling are still heard) Item: in Dublin last week, the Irish Rosary Council protested that even a 37.5% import duty was insufficient to keep out Japanese rosaries.

"Export or die" has long been Japan's watchword. There is danger that it will turn into an epitaph. While they should have been sacrificing and skimping at home to retool for export, Japan's politicians and businessmen frittered away time and resources in loose planning, uncontrolled lending, lavish government subsidies, politically expedient tax reductions, a splurge of domestic production and a rash of corruption. Under Yoshida the country did not begin until last year the gestures of discipline and austerity that were needed. The gestures helped--only eight months ago economists were predicting total economic collapse. But gestures are far from enough. Japan needs an austerity at least as stringent as Britain and West Germany went through, and it needs a leader whose government will tug at the belt until it bends the very national backbone.

Leader in the Middle. For all his political canniness and his present popularity, it is by no means certain that aged, crippled Ichiro Hatoyama is the one who can do the job. He is essentially a politician, a man who made his way up by nifty deals across the go and mah-jongg tables, by tough brawling in the Diet (once he rushed to the rostrum and tried to punch a fellow Diet member in the nose), and by tacking with the winds of national sentiment. "He is not the kind of leader who stands out and looks down on the people," said a friend, "but more the kind who leads by standing in the middle, of them."

His manner and his mode of living are Western. Brought up on John Wesley and Adam Smith, he worshiped for years as a Christian, and still devotes several hours a week to robust singing of Christian hymns. But when the militarists took over in the '30s to pursue their dream of empire, Hatoyama accepted it, endorsed it on a tour of foreign capitals, wrote a book praising Hitler and Mussolini. He was not close enough to the team to be completely trusted, so before war's end he was nudged into retirement; but he was not clean enough to pass the occupation's purview, and was purged (along with 201,815 other Japanese) after he had formed the postwar Liberal Party and was about to become Premier.

Until he could return, Hatoyama entrusted the Liberal Party to his good friend Yoshida. By the time he was de-purged five years later, Hatoyama had been laid low by a stroke, and tough-minded Shigeru Yoshida had grown too attached to the job to relinquish it. Hatoyama bided his time until the conservatives and their business backers began chafing under Yoshida's leadership, and the public began showing its irritation with the remnants of U.S. occupation and those who cooperated with it. All that was then necessary was a shrewd deal across the game tables. Overnight last fall, a chunk of the Liberals broke off, styled themselves the Democrats, and chose Ichiro Hatoyama as their leader. Another convenient arrangement with the Yoshida-hating Socialists knocked the Premier out and brought Hatoyama in.

Wearing his purge record like a boutonniere and his physical handicaps with a winning courage, the temporary Premier overlooked no opportunity to nail down his job. In the tradition of prewar Premiers, he hurried to the great Ise shrines to notify the Shinto gods of his election--a gesture of nationalism and a studied slap at foreigners who had tried to reduce the chauvinistic role of Shintoism. He distributed promises--cheaper fertilizer, lower taxes, more jobs. But most of all he appealed to Japan's reawakened pride as a nation, able once-more to stand on its own, free to make foreign friends and commitments as it pleased.

This strategy has made Hatoyama's newborn Democrats the dominant party in Japan. Last week they won 185 of the 467 seats in the Diet. Yoshida's Liberals (now guided by Taketora Ogata) were reduced to 112 seats. With nowhere else to go but into coalition with their fellow conservatives. Ogata promptly announced that the Liberals would support Hatoyama. Hatoyama may not be in charge for long, but he talks confidently of carrying on for two years. Out of this alliance may come one strong, conservative party, and with Right and Left Socialists also talking merger, a two-party system may emerge in Japan.

Hatoyama, with the help of the Liberals, has a clear majority to conduct the day-to-day business of governing. But he does not have the two-thirds majority necessary for changes in the constitution. A leftward swing in national sentiment chopped another 21 seats away from the Liberals and transferred them to the two Socialist groups. The Socialists differ on many issues (the left-wing group often runs close to the Communist line), but they emphatically agree in their opposition to Japanese rearmament. Counting miscellaneous left-wing Deputies (among them two Communists), the Socialists can block any amendment to the Mac-Arthur constitution. This, to the barely concealed satisfaction of most of the conservatives, means that the Diet will probably not erase the no-war clause from its constitution in response to the current U.S. desire for Japanese rearmament.

Trade & Cooperation. "Cooperation with the U.S.," says Hatoyama with a polite smile, "is the basic policy of the Japanese government." He also believes that "Soviet intentions toward world domination are still there." Nevertheless, this wealthy and conservative politician is eager to negotiate a peace settlement with the Russians, and is convinced that trade with Communist China is vital to Japan's revival. The statistics suggest otherwise--China accounted for only about 12% of Japan's prewar trade--but the vision whets the desires of many Japanese. "I am convinced that China has no idea of trying to conquer Japan through Communist infiltration and violence," says Premier Hatoyama. "Right now I see no reason for regarding China as an enemy." Desire for Neutralism. Looking ahead, some Westerners fear a revived Japanese appetite for conquest, but the appetite, if it exists, would be hard to gratify without the great war-making resources of Manchuria and the food-producing potential of Formosa, which are both now lost to Japan. A livelier concern to the U.S. is the possibility that an independent Japan might one day be drawn too close to the Communist mainland. In Communist theorizing, Japan, the Ruhr of the Orient, is the big prize in the East.

"If, under economic pressures, Japan should feel forced to accept political arrangements with the Communist mainland," said U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at Bangkok last fortnight, "that would surely have a grave effect upon the entire free world position in Asia. All of us know what it meant to combat Japan alone ... If there should be combined at any time under international Communism the power of Soviet Russia in Asia, of Communist China, and the industrial capability of Japan--if all three were a unit of force, then, I think, we must recognize that our position . . . would be extremely precarious."

So far, to judge by the campaign appeals that proved most powerful, the dominant wish of the Japanese, ten years after Hiroshima and surrender, is to have the best of two worlds. They yearn to be neutralist--and mean by that a nimble sort of neutralism which would provide them with the continuing money, protection and support of the U.S. while leaving them free to dicker and deal with the Communists. It is a dream others have had, too. But being what they are and where they are, the Japanese can hardly hope to avoid the angry winds around their wood and paper houses.

* Compared to 63% in the 1952 U.S. presidential elections.

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