JAPAN

Horinouchi and the Mitsuis were among ten Japanese to attend Buchman's Riverside conference in California in June 1948. This group, the first other than a few technicians to travel abroad since the war, also included Yasutane and Yukika Sohma, who had met Moral Re-Armament in Japan. Yasutane was the head of a noble family with estates in central Japan who had been stripped of his title and most of his land under the new Constitution. A whimsical, charming bon viveur, he had married the brilliant daughter of Yukio Ozaki, 'the father of the Japanese Diet', who as Mayor of Tokyo presented the cherry trees to Washington which have ever since been a spring tourist attraction. Yukika had not only shared occasions when her father narrowly missed assassination because of his democratic principles, but herself flouted tradition at every turn, and had met Yasutane while she was riding a motorcycle, an unheard-of activity for a Japanese woman at that time. Only the change brought to both of them through another friend of Buchman's, an American diplomat, had converted a difficult marriage into a creative partnership.

At Riverside one of the Japanese said to Buchman, 'We have this new Constitution the Americans have given us. It is like an empty basket. What shall we put in it?' The United States government, realising the vacuum created by the destruction of Japanese militarism, had acted quickly to reorganise the country on a democratic basis, but the forms introduced did not of themselves fill the vacuum. Buchman saw that this question was as urgent as those facing Germany.

The distinguished German delegation at Riverside gave the Japanese the hope that what the Germans had found at Caux could also fill the vacuum in Japan. The Sohmas asked the Entwistles to come to Japan, bringing their baby daughter. 'In Japan, right now, with everything in ruins?' said Entwistle. 'Maybe not immediately. We'll work on it,' replied Yukika.

The next summer thirty-seven Japanese went to Caux, including a delegation centring round the recent Socialist Prime Minister, Tetsu Katayama, and his wife. They arrived in America en route just when Jean Entwistle was in hospital for the birth of her second child, Fred. Entwistle cabled Buchman the news of his son's arrival, and received a reply welcoming Fred into the world and asking his father to accompany this Japanese party to Europe. 'Never had I felt less inclined to leave Jean,' writes Entwistle. 'I felt rebellious . .. but I regarded the request as a soldier viewed his travel orders. Jean, still in hospital, was more resolute than I as I bade her farewell at her bedside.'2

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