Comments on Several Reports About Japan in Reference Materials [1] (June 1959)

Lin Ke [2]: There are two or three reports about Japan that are worth reading.

Printed from Mao’s manuscript.

Notes [1] This comment was written in Issue No. 18 of “The Situation in Southeast Asia and the Middle East” (a special issue of Reference Materials), compiled by Xinhua News Agency on June 18, 1959. This issue contained several reports concerning Japan. Among them, the report “The Hong Kong Times Comments on Japan’s Local Elections” stated that the Hong Kong Times, in its edition of May 8, had published a dispatch by its Tokyo correspondent Fang Ting entitled “A Summary of Japan’s Local Elections,” which pointed out that the results of these elections symbolized a “retreat” of conservative forces in Japan, and that Japanese public opinion was extremely dissatisfied with the frequent occurrences of illegal activities and vote-buying during the elections. Another report, “U.S. Newspaper Conceals the Failure of Japanese Reactionaries in Local Elections,” noted that the New York Times, in its editorial of May 10 titled “Japan’s Steadfastness,” boasted of the “victory” of Japanese reactionaries, thereby covering up their defeat in the local elections and boosting the morale of U.S.-Japanese reactionary forces. Yet another report, “Tokyo District Court Ruling on the Sunagawa Incident Inspires the People’s Fighting Spirit,” indicated that the Japanese Weekly News, in its April 8 issue, published an article titled “The Influential ‘Ruling on the Sunagawa Incident,’” which highlighted that the Tokyo District Court had ruled that the U.S. military presence in Japan was unconstitutional when farmers in Sunagawa staged demonstrations protesting the expansion of a U.S. military base, greatly encouraging the Japanese people’s struggle to abolish the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.

[2] Lin Ke was at the time secretary to Mao Zedong’s office.