Sceneshifters

In the Japanese theater, it is not necessary to lower the curtain to change the scene. Stagehands, wearing black suits, dart from behind a black curtain to shift scenery and help actors change costumes while the performance goes on. The audience understands from the black curtain (called kuromaku) that the stagehands aren't really there. Japanese politics also has its background manipulators who pretend not to be there and plainly are, and they are appropriately called kuromaku.

Last week the kuromaku of politics went to work and in a twinkling rearranged the whole stage. They consolidated Japan's two big feuding conservative parties, the Liberals and the Democrats, into one gigantic party, the Liberal-Democrats, which will control 300 of 467 seats in the Diet's Lower House. The merger marks the beginning of the end for Ichiro Hatoyama, who as a candidate was a great vote getter, but in office has been a weak, indecisive and garrulous Prime Minister. Hatoyama will stay in office until next April, but with a new Cabinet to be divided almost equally between Democrats and Liberals.

Two Parties. Since the two parties have long shared a firm conservatism at home and a generally anti-Communist leaning in foreign affairs, the merger should make conservative policy more stable, as well as nullify the recent parliamentary threat posed by the merger of the left-and right-wing Socialists (who together now have 154 seats). One immediate result: a hardening of Japan's demands for return of war prisoners and seized territory in the current negotiations for a Russo-Japanese peace settlement. A second major result: the beginning of a two-party system in Japan.

The man chiefly responsible for the big shift is the smoothest kuromaku of them all, Nobusuke Kishi. A candid, confident pro, Kishi masterminded the formation of the Democratic Party and its ouster of Premier Shigeru Yoshida's Liberals from power last year. He is the man who put elderly (72), crippled Ichiro Hatoyama into power and is now preparing to nudge him out.

Two Ambitions. As the newly merged Liberal-Democratic Party held its first meeting last week, the talk was that Kishi had definitely settled on his candidate for new Prime Minister. He is Taketora (literally, Bamboo Tiger) Ogata, 67, ex-editor of Asahi, Japan's leading daily, and Deputy Prime Minister in the late Yoshida regime. Ogata is a stocky, round-faced man whose baggy eyes sometimes suggest a Buddha on a bender. His past includes several incidents of personal courage against Japanese militarists before the war. With Nobusuke Kishi behind him, Ogata is the front-runner for leadership of the new party and the Prime Ministership, both to be decided in April.

But Kishi the kuromaku is beginning to show signs of restlessness. Kishi considers himself a leader of the younger conservatives (he is 59), and believes that they "sooner or later" must take over from the old conservatives. The cast is beginning to suspect that the sceneshifter has been struck with a sudden yearning to play the lead himself.

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