Theory & Practice

Despite SCAP's democratizing directives, unreconstructed Shinto nationalism was a long way from dead in Japan.

Last week, police turned up a middle-aged "sun goddess," 45-year-old Yoshika Nagaoka. During the war she had counseled many Japanese generals; now, as "Jiko-san" (Divine Light), she got financial support from Japanese aristocrats and militarists, averaged $16,000 a month in contributions. Over her temple in Kanazawa, Jiko-san flew the red "meatball" flag of Imperial Japan; to her followers she restated the basic State Shinto principles of hakko ichi-u--the whole world under Japan's Emperor. Jiko-san had included General Douglas MacArthur and Generalissimo Joseph Stalin in her cabinet of lesser deities.

When 30 Japanese police tried to arrest her, they were met by a one-man banzai charge by 380-pound Futubayama, until recently Sumo wrestling* champion of Japan. Once subdued (it took 30 minutes), Futubayama renounced the goddess. Jiko-san was judged a religious paranoiac, and released. But the continuing popularity of her brand of paranoia was affirmed when the unofficial "New Masses Party" loosed two assassins on Labor Leader Katsumi Kikunani, whose Tokyo unionists were preparing a general strike for Feb. 1.

The would-be killers, dressed in old Kamikaze uniforms, slashed at Kikunani with fish knives, surrendered after failing to kill him. Later, a "New Masses" spokesman defined the party aim: "To fight the trend of labor, which is a menace to the nation's recovery." He also revealed that the party had eight more Kamikaze-clad vigilantes in its "Special Attack Corps."

* Japan's ancient national sport, in which specially bred-and-fed giants, clad only in jundoshi (breechclouts) and their traditional topknots, grunt and tug interminably, like slow-motion dancing bears. Object:' to force one's opponent down so that some part of his body above the knee touches the mat.

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