Japan of Today Has Its Lost Generation

    TOKYO — There are striking things you see when you look at a country 14 years after it lost the most devastating war in its history.
   
You notice immediately that defeat doesn't mean what you always thought it did.  At least, not defeat at the hands of the United States.

    Historically, to the victor go the spoils.  And to the vanquished go the ravages of a ruined economy, humiliation, starvation and enslavement.

    But that isn't the way we do it.  We take the spoils, then we give them back, with exorbitant interest, to the nations we conquer.

    I was first made clearly aware of that a year ago when I visited Germany.

    East Berlin looked like what it was — part of a nation in defeat.  Its people wore threadbare clothes.  Their faces were pinched from the effects of fear, unhappiness and, I suppose, just plain not enough to eat.  The streets on the Communist side of defeated Germany were still in ruins.

    But a block away was a whole world away.

    West Berlin was a thriving metropolis of well dressed, well fed citizens who formed queues to get into the jammed department stores, movies, restaurants and night clubs.

    The same thing is true here in Tokyo.  They lost the war.  But with the help of their conquerors, business, every day, in every way, is getting better and better.

    It proves the rule that the way for a nation to become prosperous is to go to war with the United States.  And lose.

    But you can't argue with our role of benevolent victors.  Because of it, Japan today is a vital Asian outpost of democracy.  It is the one major Oriental country that seems immune from the cancerous spread of communism.

    There is, however, something basic that the Japanese sacrificed in defeat.

    When we gave them a democratic way of life, we necessarily took away from them the standards of behavior they had known for countless centuries. 

    Suddenly, their emperor was no longer divine.  The religion that told them they were invincible and taught them family respect was, if not lost, at least confused.  The old moral values were valueless.

    And, if you're looking, you can see that, too.

    Atheism is widespread among the young people of Japan.  Ask them, and surprisingly many will admit they can no longer accept the Buddhism of their parents, because loosing the war disproved it.

    And they can't accept Christianity because it's the religion of a people who dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima.

    The result of this groping around for something to believe in created a kind of social tragedy in Japan.

    All of a sudden there was a "juvenile delinquency" problem.

    In the past, the unruly youngster was rare.  If he existed at all, he was effectively handled within the family circle.

    But families, in the traditional Japanese way, began to fall apart in the postwar years.  Westernization set in.  And with its benefits it brought its liabilities.

    The scourge of American rock 'n' roll spread to Tokyo.  Cheap American movies dedicated to the preposition that crime may not pay, but it's glamorous, began flooding Japanese theaters.
   
With their flair for mimicry, the teenagers of Tokyo took to the ducktail and narrow-gauge pants.

    In a country that never before heard of the word-marriage "kid-gangs," juvenile crime has now become the nation's No. 2 police problem.