Japan's imitative ability last week turned to politics. Emperor Hirohito and his Shidehara Cabinet, with General MacArthur's enthusiastic endorsement, offered the Japanese 16 closely typed pages of a new Constitution which forswears armies and war, guarantees civil rights, deprives the peerage of its privileges, promises the people an end of police tyranny. Now, with complete responsibility placed squarely on the Cabinet, and the Cabinet made fully answerable to the Diet, Japan would have a form of government more sensitive to democratic pressures.
Something Borrowed. Emperor Meiji's 1889 Constitution had proclaimed that "We [the Emperor] have inherited from Our Ancestors the rights...
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