SHATTERED CREED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26041, 3 January 1946, Page 5

SHATTERED CREED

EMPEROR'S DIVINITY SHOCK FDR THE PEOPLE (Rec. 9.30 p.m.) TOKIO, Jan. 2. The Imperial rescript, which was displayed in all newspapers, was read with stunned amazement by the Japanese people, says the Tokio correspondent of the New York Times. It was a complete surprise not onlv to the ordinary citizen, but also even to high officials outside the tiny paiace and Governmental circle, and to all but a handful of officers at General MacArthur’s headquarters. The average Japanese after a generally hungry, heatless, and cheerless New Year’s Day scarcely knows what happened and probably does not yet realise that the creed of the Emperor’s divinity and the superiority of the Japanese race, which for generations he was even forced to believe, has been repudiated by the divinity itself. As the rescript was delivered to the newspapers at publication deadline, they were unable to make editorial comment which might have served as a guide to the reader in one of the most cataclysmic events in Japan since the arrival of Commodore Perry. General MacArthur. commenting on Hirchito’s rescript, said: “ The statement pleases me very much. By it the Emperor undertakes to take a leading part in the democratisation of his people. He squarely takes his stand for the future along liberal lines. His action reflects the irresistible influence of a sound idea which cannot be stepped.” General MacArthur has ordered the suspension of all courses of geography and Japanese history in all educational establishments throughout Japan, says the New York Herald-Tribune’s Tokio correspondent. . The order followed a survey which revealed that these courses were inextricably interwoven with Shinto and militaristic ultra-nationalistic propaganda. All pupils’ textbooks and teachers’ manuals from which these subjects were- taught will be collected and shipped to pulping centres, where they will be converted to new paper for the printing of new books, from which pernicious angling will be barred.