"Baka"

Raging Socialist Katsu Nomizu dashed up to the Speaker's rostrum, kicked Liberal Speaker Senzo Higai smartly in the shin. "Baka!"*(Idiot), screamed Liberal Shu Kara, flooring Nomizu in the aisle. "Stop! Quit! Disreputable!" shouted members from both sides of the house. But in a moment Japan's first postwar Diet session resembled a brawl in a frontier saloon, as members traded insults, shook one another, swung futile fists.

The Japanese were finding the trappings of Western democracy hard to learn, but it was not for lack of trying. And how were Orientals ever to fathom the inscrutable Western mind? Fifteen long blocks from the Diet Chamber, in the courtroom where Jap war criminals were being tried, spectators stood stiffly at attention as the judges filed out for the noon recess. The marshal of the court, Captain Donald S. Van Meter, rose and solemnly announced: "For the benefit of English-speaking persons, Louis won over Conn by a knockout in the eighth round."

*A name also applied by U.S. Navymen to a Japanese-piloted rocket bomb used in Kamikaze attacks on Okinawa.

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