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...