The Rose & the Thorn

The Japanese, so often accused of slavish copying, are capable of adding their own fantastic variations to what they borrow. Take parliamentary government, for example.

Weary of always being outvoted in the Diet, the Socialists have tried to outshout and outbrawl their opponents, at times reducing Japan's postwar democracy to a mess. Faced with these outbursts, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi remained politely placid, meek and smiling. "But Kishi's smile," the Socialists admit with just a trace of admiration, "is like a rose--it has thorns that slash." Last week, faced with the toughest battle in his 21 months in office, Kishi injected some thorny parliamentary shenanigans of his own.

Trouble in the House. Ever since he introduced his Police Duties Execution Bill to cope with the nation's alarming rise in crime and labor violence (TIME, Nov. 3), Kishi has been denounced by the unions and the Socialists for wanting to return to harsh prewar police rule. Last week 180,000 coal miners, 60,000 postal and 50,000 telegraph workers went on strike in protest. Railroad workers forced the cancellation of 150 train schedules, and a brief teachers' walkout closed half the nation's schools. But Kishi's most nettlesome problem was in the Diet itself. Only four out of 46 bills introduced this session have been passed, and the Diet was scheduled to adjourn before week's end. Kishi decided to have the Diet's Speaker announce a 30-day extension.

The only trouble with the idea was that the Socialists do not hesitate to kidnap Speakers to keep them from performing their duties. Kishi took the precaution of secluding both the Speaker and his deputy in another part of the Diet building. When the Socialists discovered that their intended victims had disappeared from their offices, they stationed guards at each chamber door to keep them out. For good measure, they disconnected the electric bell that the Speaker rings to call a plenary session of the house to order. That, they thought, should do the trick: no Speaker, no bell, no session. But all of a sudden, the bell rang out--it was hooked up to an emergency wire that the Socialists did not know about. Just as suddenly, up popped Vice Speaker Saburo Shiikuma. He announced quickly that the session would be extended 30 days, and then bobbed down again, to an outburst of Liberal-Democrat banzais.

To the Men's Room. Enraged, the Socialists started after Shiikuma, who, hiding his face in his sleeve, had been smuggled into the chamber before the session began and had been waiting, crouched between two desks, for his cue. When Shiikuma managed to escape behind a phalanx of progovernment members, the Socialists turned on a regular Diet guard, accused him of allowing the getaway, and began strangling him. "Violent revolution," cried the secretary-general of the Socialists, "is the only road to power!" As members and their male secretaries began flailing away at one another, 300 left-wing students forced their way into the building to join the fray. And where was Kishi? "In the toilet," someone said. The Socialists headed for the men's room to get their man. He was not there. As soon as he heard the bell go off, he had sneaked away home.

"The 30-day extension," Prime Minister Kishi announced tartly, "is now an accomplished fact." But at week's end, disturbed by the public unrest over his police legislation, Kishi took the unprecedented step of consulting his three elderly living predecessors. Their advice: quit trying to jam through the unpopular police bill now.

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