"Such Vulgarity!"

To a Japanese Gentleman of the Old School there are two ways of avenging an insult:

1) For an Insult-in-Ordinary, repair to the doorstep of your Insulter, and there publicly jump up and down, holding your breath, until your face is purple with congested blood. The insulter's neighbors will not let him forget this rebuke in a hurry.

2) For an Insult-Extraordinary, you repair again to the Insulter's home, and standing upon the door sill, disembowel yourself with a sharp knife. This is the final retort (hara-kiri), to which there can be no reply.

Last week, a young Japanese named Furoda made up his mind that he had been extraordinarily insulted. Japanese of the Old School understood, sympathized. They were glad that at least one young man had the spunk to consider himself insulted by the frequent radical utterances of notorious Senji Yamamoto, loud-mouthed Farmer-Labor member of the Imperial Diet. ex-Canadian dishwasher, publisher of The Japanese Birth Control Review.

However, although young Furoda had announced himself extraordinarily insulted, and although he seized a hara-kiri knife and rushed in a towering rage to the house of his insulter, he failed to disembowel himself upon the doorstep. Instead, when Insulter Yamamoto opened his door, In-sultee Furoda, violating every canon of Japanese etiquette, plunged the short sharp blade not into his own vitals, but into those of the astounded Farmer-Laborite, who died instanter.

"These young people!" muttered dignified Japanese gentlemen. ''Such bad taste! Such vulgarity!"

Among Japanese who did disembowel themselves last week in the good old-fashioned way was Captain Kisaburo Koyanagi, Assistant Naval Attache of the Japanese Embassy in Moscow. Reason: "private." The following cryptic utterance arrived from Moscow the next morning: "It is needless to state a painful impression has been created in foreign diplomatic circles . . . when parties grow so rowdy that neighbors protest, the case becomes a matter of public interest."