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At the start of the conflict, Douglas MacArthur II clearly underestimated its potential dangers to the U.S. Though he warned, "I don't exclude physical violence and mob scenes," he admittedly did not foresee the possible mobbing of Dwight Eisenhower himself. The miscalculation was understandable. When Ike's trip to Japan was planned five months ago, it was assumed that he would arrive in To kyo fresh from Moscow, impregnable in the mantle of a peacemaker and relaxer of East-West tensions. Another misadventure MacArthur could not reasonably have been expected to foresee was how fatally Nobusuke Kishi would play into the hands of his opponents.
Half a Rifle. On the evening of last May 19, when the lower house of the Diet was scheduled to consider the Security Treaty, its Socialist minority sought to prevent the session by barricading Speaker Ichiro Kiyose in his office. When Kiyose called in 500 cops to break the blockade, the Socialists walked out of the session entirely. At that, Nobusuke Kishi—a man with an un-Japanese addiction to direct action—persuaded his Liberal-Democratic majority to pass the treaty then and there.
To Japanese—who hold to the characteristically Oriental belief that if the majority of a group wants a rifle and a determined minority insists on no rifle, the proper solution is to get half a rifle—Kishi's entirely legal maneuver constituted a heinous sin known as "the tyranny of the majority." And to compound this offense, Kishi had so arranged things that, if the Diet were still in session, the treaty would automatically be ratified on the day of Dwight Eisenhower's scheduled arrival. To many Japanese this seemed entirely too much like truckling to the U.S.
A Thought for Neutrals. The price that Kishi himself would have to pay for his error was now painfully clear. Courageously defying continuing riots, the strong-willed Premier kept the Diet in session until the vital moment at week's end when the revised Security Treaty at last achieved ratification. But from sources within his own squabbling party came word that Kishi would have to resign his premiership by autumn at the latest, might well be compelled to quit long before that (see FOREIGN NEWS).
Less clear were the probable consequences of last week's misadventure on the international position of the U.S. With noisy triumph, Peking hailed the cancellation of Ike's visit as "an unprecedented loss of face." But from surprising quarters of Asia came indications that, far from taking any pleasure in U.S. discomfiture, even some neutralists found in it food for sober thought about Communist imperialism. Declared Rangoon's Guardian: "The lesson of Japan is all too plain to us in Burma and in the smaller countries of Asia. None of us can afford to give the least ground to those who think nothing of using violence to force their aims and objects on a peaceable majority."