JAPAN: No Seats for Communists

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In its first general election as a free sovereign nation, Japan last week returned Premier Yoshida's right-wing Liberal Party to power, but that was not the election's biggest news. In the previous Diet, the Communists had held 22 seats in the Lower Chamber. In last week's election, they failed to win a single seat. The total vote cast for the Reds dropped from 3,000,000 (1949) to less than 900,000. It was the biggest ballot-box defeat suffered by any Communist Party since World War II.

Not only in its voting, but in its conduct of the election, Japan had aimed to show the U.S. that it understood the meaning of democracy. To discourage the old Japanese practice of vote buying and to make campaigning for elective office possible for rich & poor alike, a set of election safeguards had been recommended by General MacArthur's staff. They produced one of the oddest election codes ever put into force in a democratic country.

The Silent Hours. No candidate, the committee ruled, would be permitted to: 1) spend more than $1,500 on his campaign; 2) make more than three five-minute radio speeches, or more than a total of 60 speeches in his entire campaign, 3) hire more than one sound truck or more than 15 workers to stand on it and shout his name and bow to the citizenry, 4) print more than 10,000 election postcards, 5) use banners larger than 8 ft. by 2½ ft., or Japanese lanterns—for night parades—higher than 30 in., 6) talk to voters in their own homes, 7) campaign at all between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Neon signs and balloons were barred. Newspapers were forbidden to support any candidate or to mention a candidate's name in a picture caption.

Police checked so thoroughly that business fell off sharply in restaurants normally used by politicians to impress constituents. But it was not long before the politicians were getting around the rules. One candidate hit upon the idea of driving his hired car into a ditch every time he saw a group of farmers, then paying the farmers 100 yen each to haul him out, chatting all the while about himself and his platform. Police reported 972 violations of the election laws, including 473 cases of vote buying. Thirteen unsuccessful candidates were thrown into jail the day after the election. Among successful candidates still under .investigation are four members of crusty old (74) Premier Yoshida's party.* Yoshida's Liberals won a bare majority of the Diet (239 out of 466 seats, a loss of 45 seats).

Return of the Purged. Yoshida's principal difficulty is that he presides over a divided party. Among the winning candidates were 139 former war criminals and ultra-nationalists once purged from government by the U.S. authorities. First among them is ailing Ichiro Hatoyama, 69, founder and first leader of the Liberal Party, who was all set to become Japan's first postwar premier until U.S. newsmen discovered that he had once glowingly praised Hitler and Mussolini. He was purged. Yoshida agreed to take his place, but now that Hatoyama is free again, Yoshida refuses to surrender control.