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Even the Genro. Scouring Tokyo and suburban resorts, more mustards slew the Inspector General of Military Education, jovial General Jotaro Watanabe. They gravely wounded the Son of Heaven's Grand Chamberlain, doughty Admiral Kantaro Suzuki. They set fire to a beach hotel from which had escaped venerable Count Nobuaki Makino, for many years Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and one of the very few Japanese whom constant duty and association have brought humanly close to the Divine Emperor.
The young mustards were after still more exalted human game. Their ambition was to machine-gun none other than "The Last of the Genro," or long-venerated Elder Statesmen who were responsible with Japan's late, great Emperor Meiji for opening up the Empire, mechanizing it and making Japan a Great Power. The last of the Genro is 86-year-old Prince Kimmochi Saionji, outwardly a very gentle old man who asks thoughtful questions of the greatest living Japanese and never makes any comment or suggestions himself except to the Son of Heaven.
If His Majesty's ancestress, the Sun Goddess, who is supposed to be the constant celestial Protectress of the Empire, can look into the hearts of wicked Japanese and warn good Japanese of their foul intentions, Prince Saionji inevitably would be one of the first to be warned. Some secret source, human or divine, tipped off Japan's Exalted Octogenarian. From his rustic villa at Okitsu in a speeding motor car Prince Saionji raced through night and snow to nearby Shizuoka where he was guarded by 100 police who kept the secret from murderous mustards.
Mysteries. Tokyo has one of the world's most up-to-date Metropolitan Police Buildings, a modernistic affair especially built to resist sudden attack. Yet (Continued on page 25) by dawn, without a shot having been fired in attack or defense, it was in the hands of young mustards.
The headquarters of Japan's General Staff, with its bombproof and gas-proof centre, its direct wires to every military garrison in the Empire, has never been considered exactly unguarded or defenseless. Yet by dawn it, too, had quietly filled up with mustards.
Before most Japanese were awake the nerve centres of their capital were thus in the hands of some 1,000 Army men, of whom the two highest in rank were one Captain Teruzo Ando and one Captain Shiro Nonaka. The dastards were most considerate of foreigners, not a single one of whom was molested in all Japan during last week's amazing 81 hours.
With the business centres of Tokyo, the cream of the swank embassy district and an increasing number of Japanese public buildings in their hands, the young Army mustards did not swagger, did not strut. Their informal eating and drinking place was soon the Sanno Hotel. When a white correspondent asked daringly if he might come in and look around, a mustard sergeant nodded and smiled, "Certainly. I regret that you cannot book a room, however."