New York Times, Saturday 19th February 1949 (Page
4)
NATIONALIST TREND REVIVING IN JAPAN
Popular, Traditional Patterns, Rather Than Militarism, Seen Resurgent
By LINDESAY PARROTT
By Air Mail to THE NEW YORK TIMES
TOKYO, Feb. 9 - Signs are multiplying here of a revival
of some forms of Japanese nationalism after three and a half years of Allied
occupation.
This is not to say that any class of Japanese seek
a return to an obviously impossible policy of aggression or would welcome
a new Tojo dictatorship with plans for armed expansion. The deepest fear
of Japanese of all types is of a new war that again would make their country
a battleground or force them to take active sides in the struggle between
East and West.
What has happened, the opinion of long-time observers
here, is rather a shift in Japanese thinking in many fields back to traditional
patterns which, immediately after the surrender, had seemed to have been
wiped out forever.
During the recent New Year's festival, attendance
trebled at the Shinto shrines dedicated to the veneration of the Imperial
ancestors such as the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo and the Ise Grand Shrines in
the South. State Shinto, instead of withering away, as predicted, after
it had been divorced by Allied directive from Government support, appears
to be resuming a grip on the ordinary Japanese.
Tokyo department stores now are getting ready for
the annual festival of Boy's Day, an old time spring holiday set aside
for the celebration of sturdy Japanese boyhood.
Warrior Again Put to Fore
The stores, this year like last, will be full of little
models of feudal samurai in armor; of Jimmu Tenno, legendary first Emperor
of Japan, with the golden falcon that guided him in battle at the behest
of his ancestor, the Sun Goddess; of toy bows and arrows of the ancient
type that repelled the Mongols of Kublai Khan in the days of the original
Kamikaze, or "Divine Wind."
Prices paid by the Japanese last year for the most
expensive of such things ran as high as 25,000 yen, the equivalent of three
months salary for a government clerk. Business this year will be as good
and the prices will be higher, department store managers say.
When the war ended Sumo was on its way out. Sumo
is the ancient form of Japanese wrestling, a matter of ritual and posturing
rather than a sport. In 1945, the first post-surrender Sumo tournament
was held in Tokyo, in a, fire-wrecked building, before a handful of spectators,
and the giant performers appeared in tattered regalia. Sumo, said the experts,
would never see another year.
In 1948, the Sumo Wrestlers Association began raising
8,000,000 yen for a temporary arena. It cleared more than half the sum
in a winter tournament last month.
Probably there is nothing dangerous in these developments,
and the Occupation makes no attempt to control them, although some of the
Kabuki plays, the traditional drama now being revived to packed theatres,
had been banned as teaching undesirable lessons, like the famous story
of the Forty-seven Ronin, with its glorification of treachery in the name
of blind devotion to the feudal overlords.
What is interesting is the change within the past
three years. Immediately after the surrender all things Japanese were doubted
by the Japanese themselves. Tradition, it seemed, had led only to defeat
in the war. The nation was ripe for almost anything, so long as it was
foreign.
This correspondent remembers one well-educated Japanese
who asserted he "hated Japan, wanted to go abroad and never see the country
again."