JAPAN: Something to Talk About

In formal morning dress, the Diet of Japan will gather this week for an Extraordinary Session—perhaps the most momentous since the Extraordinary Diet that met in the month before Pearl Harbor. A heavy brocade curtain will rise before a balcony in the dignified House of Peers. There, in lonely, myopic state, will perch the Emperor Hirohito. The honorable members, and the uniformed guards who see that representatives do not fall asleep, will bow their heads docilely as the Son of Heaven, flanked by Princes of the Blood, declares their meeting open.

This...

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