The Land od the Rising Yen

Britain (said Mr Khrushchev) could be completely destroyed by three
hydrogen bombs and France by four. Japan would probably need another four. Japan could not retaliate after an attack by hydrogen bombs but neither could Britain or France. It is not our bomb that protects us but the knowledge that should we be attacked,
the United States could and would retaliate — irrespective of whether she
herself had been attacked too or not. In other words, Britain — whatever our illusions — is in exactly the same position as Japan: our defence is left
to the United States. Japan grows rich but she has no effective deterrent; we
grow poor, ruined by defence expenditure, and have no effective deterrent
either. As Miss Sophie Tucker, one of the brightest if not one of the most
distinguished philosophers of these decades, has said: ‘I’ve been poor, I’ve
been rich. Rich is better.’
     
    A few words on Japan’s political parties. The country is ruled by the Liberal Democratic Party, founded in
1955 from a merger of various conservative groups. The ruling party is
conservative, a friend and ally of the Americans; it is anti-Communist, and
both supports and is supported by big business. As the United States is Japan’s
good friend and protector; as the country is doing well and the standard of
living is going up by leaps and bounds; and as the Communists across the water
cannot be completely ignored, most people are inclined to believe that Sato’s
policy — although debatable on points of detail — is the only sensible one.
‘What’s wrong with this government?’ people ask. Perhaps the only trouble is
that it’s deadly dull. The Japanese feel frustrated and long for political
excitement. The United States is an excellent target. You are always more
irritated by your true friends than by your enemies. And Okinawa, as we have
seen, is a remarkably good issue to become excited over, from extreme left to
extreme right.
    President Nixon knows that too. He has
said that in the new security treaty he would be ready to undertake to return Okinawa in 1972.
     
    The Japanese Socialist Party was also
founded in 1955, under the Chairmanship of Mr Mosaburo Suzuki. Although the
party was the reunification of left-wing and right-wing Socialists who had been
split for years, today it follows a left-wing line. It is strongly
anti-American and keeps making attempts to take the wind out of the Communist
sails. It tries to gain the support of young people by protesting against the
new security treaty, but loses this support almost before gaining any because
it condemns violence.
    The Japanese Communist Party tried to
maintain neutrality between the Soviet Union and China as long as possible.
When this proved impossible, it split into pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet factions.
Its skilful leaders have managed, in the end, to patch things up and establish
some measure of independence. They do not identify themselves with either great
Communist power but follow their own interests. This does not endear them to
either: they were not represented at the Moscow summit. They are an important
political force but numerically not a great party. They have about 300,000
members and five seats in the Diet. Seventy per cent of the Party’s members are
under forty. Marxism-Leninism, like all full and closely reasoned systems, has
always had a magnetic attraction for many Japanese; on the other hand the
brutal and treacherous occupation of Czechoslovakia was a bitter blow to the
party’s popularity.
    The most interesting party on the
scene is the Komeito. It is the political arm of the Soka Gakkai, a religious
group of the Nichiren Sect of Buddhism. The party advocates a welfare state,
talks in vague but appealing terms about humanity and a human type of socialism,
about cleaning up political life, about making democracy really democratic and
about other generalities. Its appeal is great; it is an unknown quantity and a
much feared force. Ever since its foundation in 1964 it has set a target for
itself before parliamentary and municipal elections and has always reached its
target. In the last Diet it had twenty-five members, the Socialists had
thirty-one. The most curious thing about Komeito is that its programme is so
mystical, semireligious and vague, that no one really knows whether it is a
right-wing or a left-wing force. (Mr Sato ordered new elections in the last
days of the sixties, and won an overwhelming victory. The Socialist Party went
into