Japan: First Test for Sato

The Japanese have a habit of giving every event its own descriptive title, and politics keeps the phrasemakers particularly busy.

When the Diet was dissolved in 1948 to permit the first elections under the present constitution, it was promptly dubbed the "Rigged Dissolution" be cause U.S. occupation authorities were the ones who arranged it. In 1952 came the "Surprise Dissolution" that caught everyone unawares. The "You Fool Dissolution" took its name from Premier Shigeru Yoshida's angry retort to a heckler in 1953. When Premier Eisaku Sato dissolved the ninth postwar Diet last week and called for new elections to be...

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