By Public Demand

Giju Manabe, 66-year-old member of the Japanese Diet, felt he was a victim of circumstances. His constituency straddles Tokyo's red-light district. Last week, bailed out of jail, where he had been sent on a charge of accepting $1,400 in bribes from the brothelkeepers' association, Manabe fingered his mustache, explained: "Brothelkeepers are also voters. I had a duty to them. The prostitution problem has to be looked at from all angles."

"I returned $600," added Manabe, a leader of the Liberal Democratic Party's Public Morals and Health Committee. "The remainder I spent investigating prostitution in foreign countries at first hand." On a globe-girdling trip to the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in Bangkok, Manabe stopped in Honolulu, Los Angeles, Washington, New York and London. "I just asked taxi drivers to take me to brothels," he said.

In the 18 months since the Diet passed Japan's first law banning prostitution, the brothelkeepers, banded into an organization called the National Venereal Diseases Prevention Autonomy Association (Zensei), have waged a stout battle to preserve their livelihood. Zensei directors called on the Chief Cabinet Secretary, persuaded the government to postpone enforcement of the law until April 1958. Zensei spoke with the air of an organization representing men of stature in the community. Some of its 35,000 members serve in provincial and municipal assemblies; others are directors of loan associations, better business bureaus, even P.T.A.s. A Zensei-sponsored petition protesting the law's enforcement was signed by 40,000 citizens, including 63 mayors, 151 chamber-of-commerce presidents and 25 local Liberal Democratic leaders.

But two months ago, Zensei ran into trouble. Police probed Zensei's finances, concluded that it had spent $180,000 on bribes to Diet members. They jailed Director Akira Suzuki, arrested Manabe, began investigations of other Diet members.

Last week Zensei was ready to concede defeat. Some brothelkeepers decided to go legal by converting their establishments to "tea parlors" and "grilled chicken restaurants." One Tokyo group announced plans to replace its old row of houses with a $280,000 "amusement center" containing "game parlors" and "chess rooms." Zensei's Tokyo branch notified the city government that all girls would be fired in the next two months and helped to get other jobs. Said a surprised official: "This time they really seem to mean it."

But it was hard to believe that in a nation of 132,000 prostitutes, this signaled the death of the world's oldest profession.

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