Revolution by Decree

The U.S. ordered Japan to be free. Japanese officialdom bowed low, smiled and consented: very well, if they must, they would make a stab at it.

In a six-page memorandum to the Imperial Government, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur last week decreed revolution. He demanded full civil liberties, release of political prisoners, abolishment of all totalitarian powers and dismissal of the Minister of Home Affairs, who had persistently abused these powers. There was to be freedom of speech (even about the Emperor) and freedom of thought (under Japanese law, people suspected of thinking wrong thoughts could be imprisoned).

All this was too much for Premier Prince Naruhiko Higashi-Kuni's still-conservative surrender Cabinet. The Prince called on his cousin, the Emperor, and asked him to accept the Cabinet's resignation. Said Cousin Hirohito: "It is good and I accept."

The New Freedom. The new Premier was slight, aging (73) Baron Kijuro Shidehara, former Ambassador to the U.S. and one of Japan's few surviving liberal lead ers. Said he: "I will do my best to lead the nation back to self-respect. . . ." His Cabinet included no outright warmakers, no great statesmen of any kind. One of his Government's first measures: abolition of bayonet and jujitsu drill.

The Japanese people had already begun to toy with freedom. Newspapers flexed their muscles and criticized the old regime. Hundreds of letters, denouncing and demanding, broke into astonishing print. Politicians and intellectuals, eager to please the Americans, were busy forming new political parties. Long-repressed concepts came up in their talk: universal suffrage, proportional representation, free economy, free trade. Old Ichiro Hatoyama, leader of the rising Liberal Party, talked soberly of strengthening the Diet and weakening the Army and Navy. The forms and manners of party rule were not new to the Japs, whose Diet (Parliament) is 55 years old. But the feel and substance of freedom were entirely new. The plain people, worried about food and work and shelter, had little time for minshu shugi (democracy) as the Americans understood it.

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