The Redheaded Crane

Japanese school teachers were liberated by the U.S. occupation from a militarist thought-control system, only to be gulled by the exponents of a worse tyranny. The 500,000-strong Japanese Teachers Union, representing two-thirds of the country's teachers, is noisy, well knit--and dominated by Communists. This week Diet members from Premier Shigeru Yoshida's government party produced two bills designed to curb the union's new Communist-line politicking. Unfortunately, the bills seemed to approach the old thought-control methods.

Twisted Idealism. The Communist-lining in the Teachers Union was plain to see. Japanese teachers are overworked (average work week: 60 hours) and underpaid (average salary: about $50 a month). A small group of Reds and fellow travelers has played on their grievances and twisted their idealism to work up a propaganda war against the U.S. and "capitalist war plans," and for "peace" and "neutrality." Japan's unruly student population, in turn, has proved to be fertile soil for the smooth-sounding "peace" campaigns of the teachers.

Kyoto last week offered a case in point. There parents of children attending high school complained to the board of education that teachers were reading the Communist party newspaper Akahata (Red Flag) in their classrooms and forcing students to sing the Internationale. Children were urged to see a current crop of anti-U.S. movies, notably Hiroshima, a lurid hate movie about the atom bombing, which the Teachers Union itself produced and sponsored.

To get at such pro-Communist activities, the government's two new bills offered drastic alternatives. One of them would rule out almost all political activity by teachers, public and private. The other proposes to put all teachers into the formal status of government civil servants.

Police Control? The bills worried a great many anti-Communist Japanese, including the editors of Asahi and Mainichi, the country's leading newspapers. The bulk of the Teachers Union membership, it was agreed, is not Communist; newspapers aptly call the union tancho-zuru, after a native crane with a white body and a small, red head. But action taken against the whole group would strengthen the Communists' hand. Also, warned Mainichi: "Twisted interpretation of the laws could place the nation's education system under police control."

While editorialists debated and the Teachers Union held loud, anti-government rallies in protest, ordinary citizens were puzzled, but generally more disturbed by the pro-Communist teachers than by the prospect of a revived thought control. Said a Tokyo housewife after her two children had brought anti-government pamphlets home from school: "I have my misgivings about the government's bills, but if the teachers are sending such leaflets to our homes through our children, I hope the laws will be passed immediately."

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