Word: diets
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Half a Rifle. On the evening of last May 19, when the lower house of the Diet was scheduled to consider the Security Treaty, its Socialist minority sought to prevent the session by barricading Speaker Ichiro Kiyose in his office. When Kiyose called in 500 cops to break the blockade, the Socialists walked out of the session entirely. At that, Nobusuke Kishi-a man with an un-Japanese addiction to direct action-persuaded his Liberal-Democratic majority to pass the treaty then and there...
...rifle and a determined minority insists on no rifle, the proper solution is to get half a rifle-Kishi's entirely legal maneuver constituted a heinous sin known as "the tyranny of the majority." And to compound this offense, Kishi had so arranged things that, if the Diet were still in session, the treaty would automatically be ratified on the day of Dwight Eisenhower's scheduled arrival. To many Japanese this seemed entirely too much like truckling...
...Thought for Neutrals. The price that Kishi himself would have to pay for his error was now painfully clear. Courageously defying continuing riots, the strong-willed Premier kept the Diet in session until the vital moment at week's end when the revised Security Treaty at last achieved ratification. But from sources within his own squabbling party came word that Kishi would have to resign his premiership by autumn at the latest, might well be compelled to quit long before that (see FOREIGN NEWS...
Reddened Windows. The showdown began on Wednesday night, when Kishi summoned a Cabinet meeting in his official residence across from the white granite Diet building. As the 17 ministers assembled shortly after midnight, the windows were reddened by the glare of flames from police trucks set ablaze by 14,000 rioters outside. They could hear the howl of the mob as it acclaimed the martyrdom of a 22-year-old coed named Michiko Kamba, who had been trampled as the stone-throwing mob reeled backward under the charge of 4,000 nightstick-swinging policemen...
Where had Kishi miscalculated? Events had been set in train in mid-May when the Premier told his Liberal Democrats, "We are going to go all out to get the Security Treaty through the Diet." The Socialists went all out to stop him: they blockaded the 76-year-old Speaker of the House in his office; when he was freed by police and entered the chamber, Socialist Deputies nearly strangled him. With only Liberal Democratic Deputies voting, the Security Treaty was approved by a standing vote...