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Cherry Blossom Election

By HUGH GAUNTLETT (Balliol College, Oxford) HEN I came out from voting on February 23rd the sight of a sprig of imprudent pink blossom suddenly recalled the last time I was in a polling-booth ; in Japan,

in May, 1947. During that month were held the first elections under the new constitution which was commemorated in the school- yard of Ichknura by an ugly concrete pylon erected on the site of one condemned for the outrageous nationalism of its inscrip- tions. From S.C.A.P. in Tokyo came massive instructions for the supervision of the election ; company commanders grumbled, and detailed men unqualified but available and the least serviceable

vehicles. .

My team observer, Captain M., had been in Japan for only ten days, and had last seen Japanese through rifle sights in New Guinea. The driver, Ray, was from Maroubra, and the bonnet of our jeep advertised the fact. I was the interpreter. I had spent a mere four weeks in interpreter school, but I had a useful word-book with phrases for " proportional representation " and " infringement of electoral law." Every day that month we visited each of the nine villages in the northern half of Mitsuki gun or county. On the polling days we made three rounds, and watched the counting of the votes. Each night Captain M. made out a report showing the number of cases of bribery, of violence, of falsification of the electoral rolls, that we had discovered. Naturally, we did not discover any ; nor, I believe, did they exist. The election proceeded with that solemn decorum which British parliamentarians are pleased to regard as peculiar to this island home. But our duty was not profitless, either to us, or the electors of Mitsuki gun.

• For in those narrow valleys the Allies were still strangers after two years of occupation. There were places, indeed, where we were the first occidentals to penetrate, where we were greeted with an apparent awe which was in fact, I suspect, polite hostility. The mask of etiquette was general, and only the occasional insurgence of naked and genial curiosity made it tolerable.

Everywhere we were at first taken for Americans, although this was the heart of the British zone. We insisted on our own nationalities, but concealed the origin of our jeep, for it was the most valuable asset in the frail structure of our prestige. As we drove slowly up the narrow twisting roads, small boys sprang like rabbits from the landscape, and pursued us dizzily along the narrow dykes between the rice, calling shrilly, " Haro ! Haro ! Jeepu, jeepu ! " Our other asset was Ray's skill at table tennis. In every school-house in the area he played the local champions, and, thanks to his comparatively enormous reach, invariably won.

One man was sorry we were not Americans. -We met in embar- rassing circumstances. Three of our villages were cut off by twenty yards of shallow river. The bridge had been swept away in the spring floods of 1946, and replaced only by a vertiginous plank cat-walk. We solved the problem by charging into the water and relying on four-wheel drive and extra low gear to get us up the opposite. bank. The exhaust, of course, was under water, and at last the inevitable happened and the motor stalled in mid-stream. We sat there smoking and losing dignity like air from a slow puncture under the expressionless gaze of a gathering crowd, when this man, whose real name I forget, but who preferred to be called Charlie, appeared on the stub-end of the bridge. He was the embodiment of the spirit of enterprise. He danced with excite- ment, shouting instructions in Japanese and encouragement in American. A wire rope was produced, oxen were harnessed, and we were drawn triumphantly to safety.

Charlie had worked in an Oregon saw-mill, and later grown vegetables on two hundred acres near Seattle. For reasons I never fathomed he returned to his native village to grow rice on fifteen acres scattered in three valleys. He declared he regretted his return, and he had reason to. His sons had been killed in the war. He lived alone with his daughter, a distinguished woman with wide tragic eyes in a dead-white face, who had married a Japanese

officer and followed him to Manchuria and China, to return with nothing but two sickly children and the clothes on her back. Although she had been to High School in the States she sat silent as we talked, brooding over lost and regretted sophistications. Charlie pulled out faded photograph albums. His wedding: a background of Douglas fir ; a group of Japanese in kimono, obi and geta ; heavy men with sideboards and Teddy Roosevelt moustaches.

I would not affirm that we learnt anything important about the Japanese character in that month. It is a subject of notorious toughness, which challenges Mr. Gorer's ingenuity. I recommend to his attention the way in which children are carried on their mothers' backs. To contemplate the nape of a neck for the first two years of one's life may induce fatalism as well as myopia. It certainly produces bandy legs, as anyone who has seen a Japanese chorus can confirm. But we did leain sympathy. Even Captain M., who at first was uncomfortable at travelling in enemy territory unarmed, and recounted endless anecdotes worthy of The Naked and the Dead, was known at last to distribute chocolate and give twenty or thirty screaming children jeep rides. But he never softened towards the cups of green tea which were inevitably offered in every village office. He would swallow his as if it were rye whisky, and then, beaming amiably on the bowing and hissing headman, would comment on its execrable flavour in language of invention and vivacity.

We did, however, learn some political facts of possible interest. Japan is still fundamentally a peasant nation, and it is a homo- geneous country. Mitsuki gun was a random but fair sample. The turn-out for voting was variable but not disappointing, for the rice was being planted and the women were voting for the first time. For the elections to village offices the poll would, I think, have been heavy, had not most of them been uncontested. Indeed, some villages could not find enough candidates to provide a full village council. For national elections the poll was over seventy per cent., but for prefectural offices it sank below fifty per cent. The prefecture, originally modelled on that of France, was the key to traditional Japanese administration, but the peasants who had received its orders through their headmen were oblivious of its importance. (The prefecture, for example, fixes grain quotas.) For them there was no mean between Tokyo and the village ; but the prefecture is vastly more important than an English county.

The most surprising feature of the election was the number of invalid votes. In elections to the Lower House these wer: as many as 50 per cent. of votes cast. For each voter casts a vote not only for a candidate from his own constituency, but also for one of a number of " candidates at large," who are elected by these second votes over the whole country. A list of these candidates, 200 in number and unknown locally, is displayed outside the polling station. The voter selects a name according to party and brushes it in on the ballot, for one does not vote with a cross in Japan. This imposes a simple literacy test, or would, were Japanese calligraphy simple. Literacy is amazingly high, but Japanese names use rare and complicated characters which may defeat the unfamiliar. Most invalid votes arose from this difficulty ; others were caused by the insertion of the name of some local notability or national figure who was not actually a candidate.

My impression was that the enlargement of the democratic process was greeted with dutiful and unenthusiastic submission, as all other orders had been accepted. There was some confusion at the absence of positive instructions, and there is the possibility that from confusion Will spring curiosity, and from curiosity self- education. From the 1947 rural vote it was impossible to draw any conclusion, except on narrowly local questions, beyond the almost unanimous rejection of Communism. There was hardly any canvassing in the country because of the lack of transport.

The only national candidate I saw gathered a crowd of children and told them, "Tell your parents to vote for me. You can remember my name, Hara, because I have a big belly (hara)." It was quite

true. He was, apart from the sumo wrestlers (who don't count), and the Chief of Police for Hiroshima Prefecture (who does), the fattest man I saw in Japan. This was not perhaps political education, but it was effective. He was elected.