FOREIGN RELATIONS (See Cover) The battle began at dusk under a driving rain. In four days Dwight Eisenhower was due to arrive in Tokyo, and, simultaneously, the revised U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty would pass its last legal hurdle in Japan. With unflagging fanaticism, Zengakuren, the tightly disciplined, Communist-led student federation, mobilized its forces for a supreme assault on the government of Japan's wispy Premier Nobusuke Kishi.
Against the 4,000 steel-helmeted cops guarding Tokyo's Diet building, Zengakuren threw in more than 14,000 students who charged with cries of "Kill Kishi," "Down with the treaty," "Ike, stay home." Pulling away a barricade of parked police trucks, 3,000 of them finally thrust their way into the Diet compound, beating off police counterattacks with volleys of stones and pointed sticks wielded like spears. Meanwhile, those who remained outside set fire to 17 police trucks by stuffing burning newspapers into their gas tanks.
Not until after 1 a.m.—while the stu dents were dancing around the flames and singing the Internationale in one of the indelible mob scenes of the cold war-did the cops get the order that no Japanese government has given its police since 1952 : use tear gas. Eagerly, Tokyo's much-misused police complied, then sallied forth and chased the half-blinded Zengakuren diehards away from the Diet area. By dawn, the city's hospitals had treated 600 police and 270 students, and for the first time since the anti-treaty demonstrations began five weeks ago, Zengakuren had a martyr—a 22-year-old coed trampled to death by her own comrades.
Next day, as thousands howled their rage outside his residence, weary Nobusuke Kishi met with his Cabinet for the second time in 24 hours. After a brief session, he emerged to announce to newsmen the decision to ask President Eisenhower to cancel his trip. Then, in a gesture that emphasized the rebuff the U.S. had suffered, Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama formally reported the decision to a dark, ruggedly handsome man who bears a name all Japan once honored. For Douglas MacArthur II, U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo and the principal architect of present-day U.S. policy toward Japan, Kishi's retreat was an unhappy confirmation of his own growing doubts about the Ike visit. With a mixture of relief and bitter regret, Mac-Arthur phoned the news to the Eisenhower party in Manila.
Tangibles & Intangibles. To most Americans, the spectacle of a Japanese government announcing that it could not guarantee the physical safety of the President of the U.S. came as a bitter shock.
In the years since V-J day, the U.S. and Japan had developed a bond unique between an Occidental and an Oriental nation. The ties ranged from the nostalgic memories of Japan brought home by hundreds of thousands of ex-G.I.s to such carefully nurtured manifestations of official friendship as the "sister city" agreement concluded last month between New York and Tokyo.