They Like Jack

For Tokyo's bemused U.S. residents it was hard to believe that they were living in the same city that only six months ago had turned out thousands of screaming demonstrators against "U.S. imperialism." As more than 56 million Japanese voters prepared to go to elect a new Diet this week, the most idolized politician in the country was a 43-year-old American--President-elect John F. Kennedy.

A bar on Tokyo's gaudy Ginza was early in recognizing the onrush of another of the overnight emotional flip-flops characteristic of Japan's volatile people. It celebrated Kennedy's election with free beer for all males who could prove they were the same age as the Senator. In Tokyo offices, "I'm 43, too" became the boast of junior executives on the rise. Suddenly in the limelight was onetime Imperial Navy Lieut. Commander Kohei Hanami, who broke into print rejoicing that when his destroyer sliced a U.S. PT boat in two in 1943, Lieut, (j.g.) Jack Kennedy had providentially survived.

Most gravely stricken of all were Japan's impressionable young ladies. A 22-year-old salesgirl at the giant Takashi-maya department store in Tokyo gushed to an inquiring reporter: "He is rich, young, handsome and intelligent--the most ideal man in the world." Reiko Dan, a leading Japanese movie actress, confided that she would abstain from voting because Japanese parties lacked "a handsome candidate like Mr. Kennedy."

No men to buck a trend, Japan's electioneering politicians have unanimously jumped on the Kennedy bandwagon. The week of Kennedy's victory, Japan's incumbent Premier Hayato Ikeda staged a TV debate, frankly modeled on the Nixon-Kennedy debates, with his two opponents. Socialist Saburo Eda and Democratic Socialist Suehiro Nishio. Convinced that it was the New Frontier that had won for Kennedy. Ikeda promised: "My Liberal-Democratic Party will have precisely such a New Frontier program in Japan." In response. Socialist Eda insisted that it was he, not Ikeda, who was just like Kennedy --"flexible and progressive." In all the excitement. Eda seemingly had forgotten his party's role in the "Ike, stay home" riots as well as the fact, tartly pointed out by Tokyo's Sankei Shimbun, that, unlike many of his Japanese admirers. "Mr. Kennedy is neither a socialist nor a Communist, neither pro-Russian nor neutralist."

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