(2 of 2)
Escaping Satellite. Three weeks ago Kishi braved outcries of the left in Parliament to announce that his government would regard any attack on U.S. bases in Japan or .Okinawa as an attack on Japan itself, and would, if necessary, order Japan's puny "Self-Defense Force" to retaliate against the attacker's home bases. But he was quick to claim political credit for the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces from Japan last year, has also promised his H-bomb-hating countrymen that "when" (not if) Okinawa is returned to Japan, he will insist upon removal of all U.S. nuclear bases from the island.
Equivocal as his public pronouncements may be, there is no doubt about Kishi's direction. When he became Premier 13 months ago. his country was regarded by much of the world as little more than a U.S. satellite. Said Kishi himself: "Internationally our voice is still low." Unlike the ailing old men who preceded him in office.* Kishi has both the energy and ambition to regain for Japan the loud voice of a major power.
The Unalarmed. So far, official Washington has refused to take alarm at Kishi's behavior, justifying the China trade pact on the grounds that Japan must export to live, and minimizing the illiberal trend of Kishi's domestic policy by arguing that once Japan was on its own, it was bound to retreat somewhat from the alien and often visionary governmental forms imposed by MacArthur. In the long run, say Japanese specialists, the likeliest alternative to the kind of oligarchic society envisaged by Kishi would be Marxist totalitarianism. Besides, they do not think that Kishi has either the desire or the popular backing to turn the clock full back to where it stood under Tojo. And they accept a reassertion of Japanese independence as inevitable unless the U.S. is prepared to occupy Japan militarily until the end of time.
* Kishi's immediate predecessors: Ichiro Hatoyama, popularly known as "the afternoon-nap Premier," and Tanzan Ishibashi, who resigned because of illness 65 days after he took office.