Word: saito
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...likes the U. S. very much. Japan admires nearly everything about the U. S., from baseball to horn-rimmed glasses. Ja pan leaps like a hungry carp at every crumb of friendship the U. S. tosses onto the Pacific. When the President decided to send the ashes of Ambassador Saito home to Japan in the U. S. S. Astoria last year, Japanese almost buried Ambassador Grew's home in presents. It took only a few days, last week, for Japan to react to the new U. S. wave of appeasement...
Closest thing to a defiant Senator Borah in Japan's muzzled Diet has been a slim, sharp-faced, sad-eyed little man named Takao Saito. Ever since he returned to Japan from Yale ('04), he has championed lost causes. He looks at once so meek and so dignified that his fellow Dietarians call him Lord Mouse. Last month Lord Mouse startled Japan by standing up in the Diet and roaring like a lion: When will this war end? What does all this high-sounding talk about a New Order mean? For two hours he flayed the Cabinet...
Soon Takao Saito was the centre of a storm. Newspapers criticized him for criticizing Japan, but said that there was much in what he said-that it was even possible that a majority of Japanese agreed with him. To save face, the Minseito Party expelled him from its ranks. But when it was discovered that he had been secretly intriguing for an antimilitarist, Party-dominated Cabinet, the Army went out for his political hide...
Last week the Diet told Takao Saito to resign. Commentators considered it most important to note that despite Japan's internal crisis, the Army still had so much influence. But far more important was what the tipsters were saying: Saito is out but not down. He will almost certainly be re-elected in 1941. And then defiant Lord Mouse is expected to show that the cat has not got his tongue...
Last week those troubles were very much in evidence. For the third week in succession criticism (as rare in recent Japan as whales in the Mississippi) broke out in the Diet. Three weeks ago Takao Saito said the country was tired of war. Then Kiroku Oguchi said some of Japan's shortages and hardships could be avoided if the light industries, with the vital export trade they nourish, were not sacrificed for the sake of war industries. Last week Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita was repeatedly criticized. And Ryozo Makino bitterly attacked War Minister Shunroku Hata for keeping military finances...