JAPAN: God’s Detour

Multiply the piety of an Irish policeman by ten, imagine him to be escorting the Supreme Pontiff cubed, and you have the state of mind of Police Sergeant Juei Honda when things went horribly, incredibly wrong last week in Kiryu, Japan’s silk centre.

The Son of Heaven, the divine Emperor of Japan, was returning from Grand Army Maneuvers with Sergeant Honda out in front in the police pilot car. Since any street down which His Majesty is to ride must first be swept, purified and sanded, to make a wrong turn might seem impossible. Suddenly Sergeant Honda’s heart was in his throat, his eyes bulged and sweat poured from his forehead. His pilot car had made a wrong turn. He was leading the Divine Emperor down a street unswept, unsanded, and unguarded! As horrified courtiers later reported, “‘The surprised spectators were not even fittingly garbed.”

“Step on the gas!” was Sergeant Honda’s only thought in his panic. The Imperial motorcade got so far ahead of schedule that at Nishi Technical College, Education Minister Benji Matsuda was not yet dressed when his God swept up to the door. Thrown completely out of gear, the Son of Heaven’s program for the day became so disarranged that at one point he had to wait 20 minutes—a sacrilege unspeakable.

Meanwhile Sergeant Honda was put under guard. Home Minister Fumio Goto, responsible for the police of all Japan, was moving Heaven and earth to hush the scandal. He almost succeeded. Seventy-two hours after the wrong turn no Japanese paper yet dared mention it. Then Sergeant Honda, closely guarded to prevent his trying to commit suicide, outwitted his keepers and slashed a four-inch gash in his throat. As he was rushed to hospital the story broke wide open. In Tokyo almost everyone expected the Home Minister, the Governor of the Prefecture and all officials however remotely concerned to resign.