As trim and whip-smart a little Japanese diplomat as the Empire could wish is Mr. Naotake Sato. In Tokyo his official rating was Ambassador to France last week, when suddenly he became Foreign Minister. Mr. Sato is emphatically a civilian, whereas the point of view of General-Premier Senjuro Hayashi's new "Gold Braid Cabinet" is extremely militarist (TIME, Feb. 22 et seq.), but the new Foreign Minister quickly made an adroit move. His civilian predecessors at the Foreign Office have tried to attend to their job as though the Japanese Cabinet was like any other co-operative Cabinet— whereas under the Japanese Constitution the exalted positions of the Cabinet Ministers, especially those of the War Minister and Navy Minister, give them direct access to the Emperor, making them virtual equals of the Premier. Smart Sato simply let it be known that he will not operate in an exalted vacuum. When he sits down to elaborate Japanese foreign policy, he will take counsel with War Minister General Gen Sugiyama and Navy Minister Vice Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai as often as possible. Minister Sato's promise lent weight to his opening speech before the House of Peers in which he keynoted an astonishing reversal of Japanese policy. Said he: "China demands to be treated on an equal footing. This wish should be respected and past differences forgotten."
Much less sense was made last week by officers of the N.Y.K.—greatest Japanese steamship line—who walked off the steamer Katori Maru at Yokohama, saying they had "gone on strike as a patriotic protest because the N.Y.K. last Oct. 29 failed to order all its ships in all parts of the world to hoist the Rising Sun flag while the Emperor was reviewing the Grand Fleet." This inconveniences Emperor Hirohito who intends that the Heian Maru, off which the strikers also walked, shall carry his brother Prince Chichibu to represent Japan at the Coronation in London. To be sure the strikers know this well enough, were only slyly holding up the N.Y.K. for higher pay and other inducements.
While the N.Y.K. strikers went off to their temples to pray for success, Osaka night spots welcomed back from a Buddhist temple the town's most popular Geisha girls. For eight days they had sit-down-struck, huddling at a temple in the hills, taking an icy "purification bath" nude each morning in the forest, then kneeling on hard, cold rocks for half an hour as they prayed for success. Such rigors were too much for Geisha Fukuko Miyamoto who slipped away one morning to the cosy town where, gnawed by pangs of remorse, she poisoned herself and died. After a high-powered conference of police, priests and others who had Geisha interests at heart, the strike was settled with recognition of the Geisha Guild, topped off with nights of heroic celebration in Osaka this week.