Plucking the Thorn

Awkwardly mounted on a large black horse, a Tokyo university professor spurred up to his assembled students crying, "Today even the heavens are rejoicing." In the imperial palace near by, a slight, myopic man periodically stepped onto a balcony to acknowledge 100,000 voices raising a roar of banzai (ten thousand years). Less than a dozen years after renouncing the legend that he is a descendant of the gods, Hirohito, the 124th Emperor of Japan, was again the object of something close to religious veneration.

The outburst of devotion that greeted Hirohito's 56th birthday last week was eloquent testimony to the failure of the determined U.S. effort to alter Japan's national character.

Bamboo Swords. Intent on destroying the foundations of Japanese militarism. General Douglas MacArthur after World War II not only stripped the Emperor of his divinity, but banned movies "glorifying war," prohibited such samurai sports as kyujutsu (archery) and kendo (fencing with bamboo swords), and saddled Japan with a constitution renouncing war "as an instrument of national policy."

Confused and humiliated by their defeat, millions of Japanese for a time accepted the victor's thesis that their warlike past was something to be ashamed of. But today, all over Japan, bamboo swords once again thud on steel helmets.

First sign of Japan's reviving interest in her military prowess was the publication of I-58, the story of the Japanese submarine which sank the U.S.S. Chicago. The first Japanese book about World War II that was not a tale of defeat, I-58 sold 100,000 copies, has been followed by a spate of similar war books as well as a monthly magazine called Maru. Almost entirely devoted to eyewitness accounts of World War II actions, e.g., "Dogfight over Rabaul." Maru has become the bible of many a Japanese teenager. Wrote one young reader: "I felt an inexplicable satisfaction when I learned from your splendid magazine that although Japan was ultimately defeated, the armed forces were absolutely dominant in individual battles."

Puny Shield. At first blush this wave of war pride might be expected to help Premier Nobusuke Kishi's efforts to expand Japan's puny Self-Defense Forces (150,000 soldiers, 20,000 sailors, 15,000 airmen). But despite the fact that members of the Self-Defense Forces can quit the service almost any time, volunteers are few, and in March the government ruefully revealed that of 8,200 recruits accepted in 1957, only 60% had bothered to show up at a basic-training center. Clearly what is reviving in Japan is not so much militarism as simple nationalism. Explained one Japanese last week: "We are slowly plucking out the thorn of defeat."

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