JAPAN: The New Thing

In a driving snowstorm this week several hundred blue-clad, brass-buttoned students gathered in the ruins of Meiji University to hold an anti-Communist rally. They had been summoned by the “League of Former Cheer Leaders of the Six Major Universities in Tokyo.” Two bored, white-helmeted American MPs watched the proceedings for a minute and sniffed: “Them Commies is at it again.”

The MPs were wrong about the meeting, right about Japan’s Communists, whose leader, Sanzo Nosaka, recently returned to Japan after a 16-year exile in Russia and China. A shrewd, realistic politician, Nosaka immediately set about to reconcile Communists, Social Democrats, and other leftist groups in a united front. He persuaded doctrinaire Communists to drop their agitation against the Emperor system.

Asahi, Mainichi and Yomiuri Hochi, the three big Tokyo dailies, all touted the leftward trend. Former militarist editors, now wearing pinkish hues, might privately admit they were hypocrites, but they made a great show of turning coats publicly. General MacArthur’s headquarters had summoned the editors last December, the day before the Communists announced their platform, and warned them that they must be fair to new parties. Some editors said they took the warning as a plug for the Communists. And behind their unfamiliar attitude was a feeling that, as an Asahi editor put it, “the new thing in Japan is the left.”

Harshly repressed since the militarists clamped down during the “China Incident,” labor unions and parties alike were flexing their muscles. Since the Americans landed there have been about 200 strikes in Japan. Most have been quiet affairs, without violence; all have been at least partly successful.

Japanese strike methods are sometimes unique. A favorite form of “strike” is to occupy the plant, continue work, and make the management lose face by increasing production. Strikers at a Mitsui-owned coal mine barred all management personnel from the pits and stepped daily output up from 250 tons to 620. Workers at Ashio copper mines operated during a “strike,” increased production, and doubled their own wages.