JAPAN: Delaying Tactics

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For President Eisenhower's visit to Japan next month. Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi set out to prepare a modest present: the ratification of the revised U.S. Japan security pact. Howding with rage, the opposition Socialists launched a filibustering delaying action. They declared themselves fearful of "remilitarization," charged that the pact would make Japan a target in some future nuclear war between the West and Communism. When Kishi moved to end the uproar by using his clear majority in the Diet to ram through ratification, the opposition last week took to the streets.

In the wide, tree-lined boulevard leading to the Diet, some 6,000 fanatical students of the Zengakuren federation (who are so militant they consider Communists "sissified") surged against a barricade of police trucks drawn up before the Diet. In a wild melee of flying fists and thumping night sticks the police drove them back time and again. As darkness fell, the rioters were beaten at a cost of 18 seriously injured and 100 with minor bumps and bruises.

What had they hoped to accomplish? Grumbled a student: "What else can we do against Kishi? Korean students had the right idea — look what happened to Syngman Rhee." A Korean newsman who had watched the riot said wonderingly: "They must be crazy. Korea and Japan are entirely different situations. Don't they know they live in the freest society on earth today?"