JAPAN: Victory for the Fox

After Premier Shigeru Yoshida's fourth cabinet was overthrown by a revolt within his own party (TiME, March 23), his exultant opponents predicted that the long reign of "the Fox" was at last over. But Japan's voters, who went to the polls this week, proved that their 74-year-old Premier is far from politically dead. In Japan's second election in its first year of full independence, Yoshida's conservative, pro-American Liberal Party won 199 of the 466 seats in the Lower Chamber of the Diet. Yoshida did not get an absolute majority, because the rebels, led by Ichiro Hatoyama, campaigned on a splinter ticket. But cigar-chewing Shigeru Yoshida won enough seats to earn his fifth crack at the premiership.

To form a new coalition, Yoshida may have to welcome back some of the errant Hatoyamaites or make a deal with the rightist Progressive Party of peg-legged Mamoru Shigemitsu. Yoshida will need all the cooperation he can get from the right, because the left is getting stronger at every election. This week 138 Socialists and one Communist were elected. A year ago there were only 46 Socialists in the Lower Chamber.