Vote of Confidence

Two years ago, Japan's pink-tinged, left-wing opposition parties whipped the country into a froth with their shrill charges that the conservative Liberal-Democratic government was "slavishly" dependent on U.S. "imperialism." With anti-U.S. mobs snake-dancing through Tokyo's streets, the embarrassed Japanese government was forced to cancel Dwight Eisenhower's scheduled state visit to Japan. But the rioting and the increasing coziness of Japanese Socialists with the Chinese Communists sobered Japan. Last week, in elections to the upper house of the Japanese Diet, Premier Hayato Ike-da's Liberal Democrats won a resounding vote of confidence.

Major issue of the campaign was not foreign policy, but the mild recession that had temporarily slowed down Japan's dizzying industrial growth (21.5% increase in the gross national product in 1961). But the 38 million voters who went to the polls seemed undisturbed by the accusations of the Socialists that Ikeda had mismanaged the economy. The Liberal Democrats picked up five new seats to give them 142 in the upper chamber, while the Socialists were able to round up only one, for a total of 66.

The most striking feature of the elections was the relative strength exhibited by women candidates and by the Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Society). Largest individual votegetters were Mrs. Aki Fujiwara, ex-wife of Japan's great opera singer and a panelist on the TV quiz show (What's My Secret?), and Mrs. Shizue Kato, who spearheaded Japan's antiprostitution drive several years ago.

As for Soka Gakkai, it is a right-wing Buddhist lay organization run along military lines (ten families constitute a squad, six squads a company), whose main support comes from Japan's poor and rootless. Preaching that politics is part of the business of saving souls, Soka Gakkai hopes to become Japan's national religion. The organization picked up nine new seats in the upper house, raising its membership to 15, third largest party after the government's Liberal Democrats and the Socialists. This significant but modest gain should put considerable demands on Soka Gakkai's self-help formula: by chanting the magic words, "Namu Myoho Rengekyo [I devote myself to the Scripture of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law]," a believer is supposed to overcome sickness, poverty, and practically any other obstacle.

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