World: JAPAN'S MOOD OF TRANQUILLITY

FROM his first election speech last month, when he stood atop an aqua and yellow campaign bus, Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato staked his political life on support of Japan's security pact with the U.S. It was no small gamble. Only last January, riot police had to use fire hoses to control more than 800 militantly antiwar students who tried to keep the USS Enterprise crew from taking shore leave in Sasebo. In April, Tokyo housewives marched in protest against the opening of a hospital for U.S. troops wounded in Viet Nam, and a month later a wave of fear swept the nation with reports that Sasebo's waters showed evidence of high radiation while the U.S. nuclear submarine Swordfish was in port. Last week, however, Sato's gamble paid off: in nationwide elections, his Liberal Democrats retained their majority in the Diet's upper house for another three years.

Talent Candidates. Because of his conservative party's slim margin of 13 seats in the 250-member chamber, a loss of five or six seats would probably have cost Sato his party leadership and the premiership. Now, with the loss of only two, he has taken firmer control of his party than ever. In a major defeat, Sato's chief opponents, the Socialists, lost at least eight seats. At their expense, gains were made by the small parties, notably the "clean government" Komeito Party (tour seats), which is backed by the Soka Gakkai sect of Buddhists, the Communist Party (three) and the independents (five). It was the last group—plus a trio of reform-minded members of Sato's party—that accounted for the most interesting new faces in Japanese politics.

Dubbed the "talent candidates" for their nonpolitical achievements, they campaigned on simplistic clean-up platforms and brought mass-media familiarity to the voters. Two, in fact, were popular television funnymen: Yukio Aoshima, 35, who plays a meddling grandmother on a weekly situation comedy, and Nokku Yokoyama, 36, member of a slapstick comedy team. From the Sato camp came other celebrities. Toko Kon, 70, is a Henry Milleresque Buddhist monk who gained fame as a writer of pornographic short stories, now likes to sling outrageous insults at prominent figures on a television talk show. Hirofumi Daimatsu, 47, coached Japan's Gold Medal women's volleyball team in the 1964 Olympics, and Shintaro Ishihara, 35, is the author of 22 novels on the attitudes of Japanese youth; he drew the largest vote (3,016,000) ever won by a Japanese parliamentary candidate.