Homeward Bound

In the big gold and white East Room of the White House last week, Japan's Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi brushstroked his signature to the new treaty with the U.S. (TIME, Jan. 25). Just a century ago, in this same room, President James Buchanan received the first diplomatic delegation to leave Japan in modern times, which was why President Eisenhower, to the surprise of the Japanese, presented Kishi with a commemorative medal bearing the face of President Buchanan, one of the U.S.'s least-remembered Presidents.

More conspicuous in the minds of most men assembled in the East Room were more recent events. Watching the ceremony were Marine Commandant David Shoup, who earned his Medal of Honor at Tarawa, and Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh ("31-Knot") Burke, who earned his nickname by sending his destroyer flotillas racing against the Japanese fleet at their top speed. There may well have been memories for Prime Minister Kishi, who, in bygone days, signed Japan's declaration of war against the U.S.

Bitterness at Home. Yet there was friendliness and warmth for Kishi in the U.S., and the revised treaty was generally hailed as taking into proper account Japan's independent status. President Eisenhower accepted the Prime Minister's invitation to visit Japan on his way home from Moscow. Kishi also got a favorable reception in Canada. Only in Japan did bitterness appear. The big Tokyo daily newspaper Asahi responded angrily to Florida's Senator Spessard Holland's suggestion that Kishi get the Nobel Peace Prize. "JAPANESE PEOPLE ARE FLABBERGASTED!" snorted Asahi. "Kishi has not contributed to peace; he is a destroyer of peace." The Tokyo Yomiuri cried that "the people fear the treaty may bring them into a war." Sankei reported that "the feeling in Kishi's own party is that he will resign."

How serious was all this press criticism against Kishi in his homeland? One of democracy's odd manifestations in post-war Japan is the way all newspapers, including the conservative sheets, are compulsively antigovernment, perhaps as a reaction to the slavish and subservient newspapers of the war years (explains one Japanese newspaperman seriously: "To do otherwise would be to act feudally").

Free Lunch. Yet on the basis of last year's upper house elections--when Kishi and his Liberal Democrats won an overwhelming victory over the Socialist opposition--the rancor of the press hardly reflects the feelings of the voters of Japan. At week's end, when Kishi's plane touched down at Tokyo airport, 12,000 supporters (each provided with a free lunch box of beancake and rice) braved an icy, knifelike wind to cry "Banzai!" Although police had been massed to hold off student demonstrators who had rioted at Kishi's departure, the students did not show up for his return. The newspapers continued their grumbling about Kishi, the U.S. treaty and the coming "ruin" of Japan. But, said Kishi philosophically, "Japanese have a bad habit of knocking a fellow Japanese who is making good."

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