VOTES SOCIALIST
While opponents of Johnson's role in escalating the war in Vietnam were staging the largest mass demonstration in American history April 15, the voters in Tokyo, the world's largest city, went to the polls to write a historic first for their country. They elected a governor backed by both the Japan Socialist and Japan Communist parties.
The noted economist Ryokichi Minobe scored 2,200,389 votes against 2,063,752 votes cast for Conservative candidate Masatoshi Matsushita and 601,- 527 for Komeito candidate Kenichi Abe.
The birth of the first leftist administration in the history of Tokyo shocked the Conservatives, who managed in last January's general elections to retain their national majority despite bad scandals and an unpopular position of supporting the U.S. role in Vietnam.
The April 22 Japan Times Weekly reported that the results had "aroused the anxiety of the Government and the business world as well as the LDP [Liberal Democratic party -- the Conservatives]."
Minobe, of course, is not at all a revolutionary socialist. He offers only reformism and thus can pave the way for a reactionary turn to the right.
The popular appeal of the socialist label, however, shows that the mood of the Japanese people is moving toward the left and this opens up immense possibilities for the revolutionary-socialist movement in Japan if it proves itself capable of rising to the challenge.