Japan: Criticism at the Polls

For Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, last week's upper-house elections could hardly have been more badly timed. Although production lines are humming faster than ever, Japan is going through a painful economic "readjustment" which in the past 16 months has wiped out thousands of small businesses, sent the stock market plunging 15% and consumer prices soaring. The government has been widely attacked for its open support of the U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam as well as for signing the long-overdue peace treaty with South Korea (TIME, July 2). Worst of all, Sato's Liberal Democratic Party—which, despite its name, is conservative—was...