"Such a Small Thing"

In 1333 an obscure, ambitious general deserted the once potent Hoji family of military tyrants and threw his army on the side of the exiled Emperor Go Daigo. The Emperor's side won. Having set Go Daigo, descendant of the Sun Goddess, back on his throne in Kyoto, Takauji Ashikaga lost no time in pulling himself up by the sacred boot straps of the Emperor. As the Emperor's most trusted adviser he hoped to become Shogun. When Go Daigo appointed his son instead, Takauji, furious but resourceful, persuaded the Emperor that his son was a traitor, had him put to death. Next he worked on Go Daigo's army with bribes. Finally in 1335 he set himself up as Shogun at Kamakura. Go Daigo, refusing to recognize him, fled south to Yoshino but remembered to take the sacred mirror of the Sun Goddess, the sacred jewel and the sacred sword--symbols of his right to reign. Takauji. well aware that his title of Shogun was empty as long as it lacked the sanction of a reigning descendant of the Sun Goddess, looked for a Puppet Emperor. By 1336 Japan presented the strange picture of an Empire straddling two Emperors -- the true Go Daigo in the Southern Court and Ashikaga's false Kogen in the Northern Court. Like Britain's Wars of the Roses between Yorks & Lancasters for the succession, Japan's War of the Chrysanthemums which lasted 56 years split the Empire. For Shogun Takauji Ashikaga, though he promulgated an admirable list of moral precepts, the Ashikaga Law Code, Japanese text books and histories still reserve the place of ''blackest traitor in the history of the Empire." In 1924 Baron Kumakichi Nakajima, potent ironmonger and merchant with a scholarly flair, attempted to whitewash Traitor Takauji in a magazine article, praising him as a vanquisher of despots and a lawgiver and concluded by renaming him Japan's Oliver Cromwell. Few took notice of Ironmonger Nakajima's article. Last week Baron Nakajima, now Minister of Commerce and Industry, woke one morning to find his name and Traitor Takauji's spread across the pages of Japan's press. His enemies had dug up the article and reprinted it. Millions shuddered as they read. Deputies in the Diet shouted that Nakajima who had condoned treachery to the throne was a traitor too. Peers pointed their fingers. Lost in the hubbub were murmurs that Minister Nakajima had been distributing stock in the semi-official Bank of Taiwan below market price. In vain the flustered baron protested that ten years had changed his ideas. Though War Minister Hayashi pooh-poohed the article as "such a small thing," Baron Nakajima had to resign from the Cabinet.

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