JAPAN: End of Compromise

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It was two days before Tokyo read of the new Cabinet. Sharp as Mount Fuji on a clear day was its outline. There were five holdovers, mostly civilians, concerned with domestic affairs. There was a new Admiral in the Ministry of the Navy: Shigetaro Shimada. Foreign Minister was Shigenori Togo, onetime Ambassador to Berlin and Moscow, a colorless, competent diplomat, who has a German wife. Finance Minister was Okinobu Kaya, who helped the Army develop North China during the past few years. But Tojo was The Man. Three times he had been invested by the Emperor: once as Premier, once as War & Home (espionage, police) Minister, once as full General.

"In Tojo's Opinion." The sloppy uniform, horn-rimmed glasses and sad mustache of Japan's new Premier make him look like a professor at a masquerade, but his bluntly expressed, razor-sharp opinions are anything but mild. In 1938 he so infuriated Japanese political and business circles by one of his speeches that he was kicked upstairs from Vice Minister of War to Chief of the Air Force.

Earliest hate of Premier Tojo is Soviet Russia. In 1938 he warned Japan that she must face a "titanic" simultaneous war with China and Russia. During the last two years he has hated the U.S. and Great Britain as the greatest obstacles to a "lasting peace." Last summer, when Germany blasted Russia into the arms of the democracies, all of General Tojo's hates were turned against one iron ring of encirclement. Last week, as Russia convulsed in agony, General Tojo and the Army felt that the moment had come to strike. "In Tojo's opinion," said a Japanese magazine once, "the entire nation should move as one cannon ball of fiery resolution."

General Tojo's hates were important. More important was the fact that his hates were the Army's hates, his will the Army's will. He is one of the Army's Big Three, confrere of square-faced Chief of Staff General Gen Sugiyama, who believes the Army is "the pilot rather than the spark plug of Japan's efforts to advance her fortunes," and of the little-known, politically potent Commander of General . Defense Headquarters, General Otozo Yamada, who once commanded the Central China expeditionary forces (1939) and is an arch foe of the Soviet Union.

This week, at last, the Army moved to front center on the stage, took full responsibility for Japan's future. Japan had turned her corner in history.

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