SPIRIT BROKEN

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21945, 13 February 1946, Page 6

SPIRIT BROKEN

JAPANESE PEOPLE GOVERNMENT’S FACE LOST NO UNREST SIGNS YET (10 a.m.) HONOLULU, Feb. 12. Sir George Sansom, the British member of the Far East Commission, on his arrival from Japan, said the tremendous physical devastation wrought in Japan was matched by the people’s spiritual upheaval. Sir George Sansom who, before the war, was counsellor at the British Embassy in Tokyo, said the Japanese did not have the same trust in the Government as they had previously. That disillusionment had nothing to do with the Emperor, but applied to the civil and military authority. The Emperor’s denial of divinity was generally well received, but some were puzzled.

“It is my impression that the Japanese before the war years, as a whole, did not believe in the Emperor's divinity. but revered him as the symbol of their Government,” he said.

Japanese unrest thus far had not crystallised, the people being too occupied with the problems of food and housing, but when those needs were satisfied they would begin to think about politics. The intelligent Japanese felt the sanest type of Government was a constitutional monarchy along the lines of the British system, under which the Emperor would have lit’tle power but would be able to exercise a certain moral leadership.