JAPAN: Cost Accounting

According to a Tokyo columnist, Tanzan Ishibashi never learned to count money as a boy, and in early manhood was something of a spendthrift. Today, at 72, Ishibashi is one of Japan's foremost economists, but a reputation for unorthodoxy persists. Last week, becoming Japan's new Premier (TIME, Dec. 24), his first act was to attempt to discount widespread impressions that he: 1) favors an inflationary policy; 2) plans unlimited trade with Red China; 3) opposes U.S. policy on Japan.

In talks with industrialists, Ishibashi said that while he favored an "expanding economy," he would keep tight control over government spending. Insisting that he was not opposed to U.S. policy in general but only to U.S. Army economic decrees, Ishibashi nevertheless promised to observe the embargo on shipments of strategic goods to Red China. He then offered the Foreign Ministry to his chief Liberal-Democratic rival for the premiership, conservative Nobusuke Kishi, 60, onetime economic czar of Manchuria, one of whose electoral handicaps was the fact that he was a member of the Tojo Cabinet at the time of Pearl Harbor.