JAPAN: Old Wine, Old Bottles?

Last; week some 25,000,000 Japanese trudged to drab, dank schoolhouses and temples, brightened here & there with red and pink plum blossoms and fragrant daphne. For the first time they were electing their local officials—village and town headmen and mayors, prefectural governors (previously, local administrators have been appointed by Tokyo).

In most places the same old local bosses were returned to power. Although anyone tainted with "ultranationalism" was supposed to have been purged, borderline cases still ran for office, and many were elected. In Osaka a group of political purgees organized the Purgee Club to work for the election of their...

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