A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
T. HE hullabaloo which is being raised in some quarters about Prince Akihito's advent in this country seems to me both foolish and unbecoming. In the last war the conduct not merely of the Kempeitai, whose duties, like the Gestapo's, gave them a vested interest in brutality, but of very many officers and men throughout the ranks of the Imperial Army was revolting; nothing in modern warfare—for most of the major Russian and German atrocities were in their origins acts of policy, not spontaneous excesses—equals in scale or in kind the wanton cruelty shown by the Japanese to their prisoners and to the people of the territories they conquered. To anyone who knew about these things the honour of Japan must appear to be -indelibly stained, and the propriety of invit- ing to the Coronation the son of the Emperor in whose name the things were done is certainly debatable. It is equally certain that it was debated before he was asked: that the decision taken had the merit, among others, of being a Christian decision: and that in any case nothing anybody says or does can modify its intended effect, which is that Prince Akihito shall attend the Coronation. He may, for all I know, be a nice young man, or he may be perfectly horrible. But he is only eighteen years old, and he is after all a guest in this country; so I think people ought to stop making a. fuss.
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