JAPAN: Push & Pull

In the bad old days, Japanese jingoism centered around the strident, state-supported cult of Shinto. The big holiday for nationalist noisemaking was Feb. 11, known as kigensetsu (Foundation Day), solemnly determined by later scholars as the day in 660 B.C. when Japan's founder, Emperor Jimmu, great-great-great-grandson of the Sun Goddess, ascended the throne with the divinely sanctioned mission of making Japan "the center of the world."

On Foundation Day, schoolchildren in black robes were led out for compulsory rites honoring the God-Emperor, bowing toward the great walled palace in Tokyo as Moslems bow toward Mecca. Shops were closed, and throughout Japan's four main islands Shinto priests, stiff-backed, wearing their lacquered black horsehair headgear, intoned the virtues and divinity of Japan and its Emperor in high-pitched ululations understandable for the most part only to relatively few initiates.

Flutes for Founders. The U.S. occupation changed all this. The Emperor was divested of his divinity; Shinto was cut off abruptly and completely from state support. But many Japanese, uncertain about the future, seeking comfort in things past, were doubtful of the wisdom of this action. "The pull back," they liked to tell Western friends, "is much stronger than the push forward."

This week there were signs that the push forward was stronger than many Japanese had realized. Since occupation's end many conservative groups have been agitating for the revival of Foundation Day. Last week Prime Minister Tanzan Ishibashi's ruling Liberal-Democratic Party proposed a bill in the current Diet session which would in effect revive Foundation Day. And at Kashihara Shrine near Nara, some 10,000 elderly Japanese streamed through the great wooden-pillared gateway to the inner shrine.

There they heard the piercing wails of ancient reed pipes and flutes. Priests in multicolored robes raised high their offerings—bean cake, teal ducks, brightly polished apples, flasks of rice wine. A special envoy of Emperor Hirohito bore a green, silk-covered chest emblazoned in gold with the Imperial 16-petal chrysanthemum seal. The celebration's chief speaker, Kashihara's Mayor Saburo Yoshikawa, 41, who has exchanged his Japanese Imperial General Staff major's uniform for white gloves and morning coat, was in excellent form. "It is only human nature to love one's country," he cried. "It is the left-wingers who are slandering our long and honorable Japanese history."

"Provincial Conceit." But Japan's Socialists, along with many others who genuinely fear a revival of Shinto, were flatly opposed to the government's bill. "Foundation Day," snapped one young business executive, "should be the day Japan surrendered." The government, modifying its bill, dropped the controversial word kigensetsu, added rather apologetically that Japan has been admitted to the U.N., and that it was "appropriate" for the country to have a holiday celebrating national foundation. Japanese politicians for the most part were doubtful that they could push the bill through—or at least the Feb. 11 date. "We cannot afford," said the English-language Japan Times, "to take the chance of reviving that provincial conceit which proved such a disaster for the nation."