JAPAN TODAY: Reluctant Ally

Western and Communist forces share a common Oriental target: the ""New Japan"", economically prosperous, strategically located, and treacherously ripe for ideological upheaval. As the anti-Security Pact riots in 1960 convincingly demonstrated, the rock of pro-Western, U.S.-allied Japan stands on shaky ground. Poised on an uneasy psychological fence between Eastern and Western civilization and politics, Japan's internal conflict revolves around a central set of alternatives: alignment with the West, a pacifistic policy of neutrality, or a tempting answer to the ""call of the blood"" from Communist China in trade and the requisite diplomatic recognition? Here the experienced news editor of the Associated Press Bureau in Tokyo x-rays the situation that culminated in the anti-Treaty campaign: its historical sources, the political factions, the riots themselves, and most important, the forewarning of future foments in the same violent dimensions. A well-documented study in interesting repertorial form, the subject is crucial contemporary history, the treatment full and knowledgable An important and provocative political thorn.