JAPAN: The Last Blow

That bedeviled man, Japan’s Premier Nobusuke Kishi, did not even get the privilege of quitting office gracefully last week. Victimized politically for putting through the Japanese-U.S. Security Treaty by the fanatics of the left, he suffered a final personal indignity at the hands of a fanatic of the right, who knifed him in the thigh.

Box of Cake. Even the choice of his successor brought untidy dispute. From all over Japan, Liberal Democratic delegates convened in Tokyo to pick a new party president, who would automatically become the party’s nominee for Premier. Kishi’s choice was Trade Minister Hayato Ikeda. But ability or ideology had little to do with the battle. As is their custom, big Japanese business firms, hoping for future friendly treatment in such matters as import licenses, taxes and government contracts, backed one or another of the eight party factions to the tune of $4,000,000. By common consent, it was the most corrupt convention in the party’s short history. One happy delegate from southern Kyushu explained how the money went.

His air ticket to Tokyo had been bought by the Ikeda faction. But before he could board the plane, he was approached by a forceful hakoshi, or delegate rustler, from a rival faction, who persuaded him to swap his air ticket for a first-class train ride, “all meals paid for, and plenty of sake.” But once aboard the train, the delegate fell in with a smooth-talking hakoshi of the Fujiyama faction, who persuaded him to descend for a night of pleasure in the resort town of Atami, 60 miles short of Tokyo. Before resuming the journey next day. the delegate was presented with a cakebox, and the modest explanation: “It’s only a little ochugen’ (a traditional midyear gift). The cakebox was stuffed with crisp 10,000-yen (about $28) notes.

At Tokyo Station, the delegate was snatched from the Fujiyama hakoshi by burly Ikeda hakoshi, who bundled him into a waiting car and drove him to a plush, Western-style hotel (the paper-thin walls of Japanese inns might leak secrets). There a double room with bath awaited him and, on a bedside table, another cake-box stuffed with yen. Under guard until convention time, the delegate was at last safely counted as kanzume (in the can) for Candidate Ikeda.

Flocking in Cadillacs to the convention hall, the candidates bargained furiously to put together a stop-Ikeda ticket. But Ikeda was backed by two banks, a shipbuilder, the Nomura Securities Co. and much of the old Mitsui industrial combine, as well as by Premier Kishi. One rival, Party Vice President Bamboku Ohno, wailed: “I have locked up in a safe Kishi’s written promise to make me Japan’s next Premier.” .Maybe he did. But Kishi stuck with Ikeda. At the last minute. Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama tossed Ikeda a block of 49 votes that had cost a reported $280,000, and Ikeda rolled on to win the party presidency on the second ballot with 302 out of 496 votes. Within minutes a crowd of 30,000 leftists formed to snake-dance in front of the Diet and shout “Down with Ikeda!”

Token Cut. That afternoon, at a reception amid gaily striped tents on the lawn of his official residence, Kishi raised a tankard of beer and led three banzais for Ikeda. Inside the dining room, Taisuke Aramaki, 65, a crackpot and a member of a right-wing terrorist society before World War II, waited with a Japanese navy knife. As Kishi walked in through a French window from the garden, Aramaki leaped at him, shouting: “Why did you betray Ohno?” Kishi fell, blood streaming from six wounds in his left thigh. Ara-maki made no attempt to escape, stood by smiling, and later explained: “If I had wanted to kill him, I would have stabbed him in the chest or stomach.”

From his hospital bed, Kishi resigned along with his entire Cabinet, and the country at last began to settle down. Leaders of the Socialist minority rushed to pay ceremonial calls on the stricken Kishi, then abruptly ended their two-month boycott of the Diet. This week, if the Diet ratines the party’s decision as expected, Ikeda will become the ninth postwar Premier, will probably call new elections late this year.