JAPAN: Ineligible

The shadow of a shady past rose last week to smite ambitious Ichiro Hatoyama. His Liberal Party had won a thumping plurality in Japan’s first postwar Diet elections; after long hesitation Premier Shidehara had recommended the stocky, 63-year-old politico to the Emperor as his successor. Then the Allied Supreme Commander spoke. “The Japanese Government,” said a MacArthur directive, “having failed to act on its own responsibility, the Supreme Commander has determined the facts relative to Hatoyama’s eligibility . . . finds he is an undesirable person.” Hatoyama was out.

The directive charged that as a Cabinet member (1927-1929) Hatoyama had helped suppress freedom of speech. As late as 1942 he had endorsed aggressive war. The clincher was an erstwhile bestseller titled Face of the Earth, which Hatoyama had written in 1938, after a tour of Europe. Excerpts: “The Japanese people . . . must not betray Hitler’s faith in them.” “Mussolini is one of the great heroes of his generation.”

This week Hatoyama tried to correct the impression his book had made. “I said,” he told reporters, “that Hitler’s eye was piercing and that Mussolini was diligent.”