JAPAN: Niceties of Assassination

Eminently respectable in Japan, political assassination is a patriotic cult. Last week the erect old Patriarch of Terror, angel-faced Mitsuru Toyama, 79, was safer than ever from arrest by Japanese police. For one thing his beloved Koki Hirota, “one of my best boys,” is Foreign Minister. For another, famed Terrorist Priest Inouye, once a likely rival for the post of Japan’s No. 1 guide, philosopher and friend of patriotic assassins, is now in jail. He inspired the killing of Japan’s greatest financier, Baron Dr. Takuma Dan, and Finance Minister Inouye, to be carefully distinguished from Terrorist Priest Inouye.

First pictures of the conviction of Priest Inouye’s boys reached the U. S. last week, erroneously captioned to suggest that they belonged to patriarch Toyama’s Black Dragon Society. It has suffered no suchindignity at the hands of Japan’s black-capped judges. Inouye’s less fortunate “boys” were sentenced to jail for life, which in Japan means for life.