Japanese Charades in Washington

...trade deficit with Japan-about $2 billion a year...

...Though this is a product with significant sales potential in the Japanese market, it has not exactly been the focus of U.S...

...So it is not the Left that most forcefully discourages military spending in Japan-its activities are restricted to staging a meaningless demonstration now and then and asking annoying questions in the Diet...

...The politicians, moreover, are not alone here...

...officials guilty of "scapegoating," as his interpreter rendered it, will hardly dispel this complex...

...When I first went to Tokyo as a correspondent in the early 1970s, then Ambassador Robert Ingersoll, a hard-headed big businessman from Chicago, was reflecting bleakly on the consequences of what seemed like an enormous U.S...

...NAKASONE'S GOODWILL TOUR Japanese Charades in Washington by donald kirk Washington Japan is "the unsinkable aircraft carrier," Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone told reporters on his January 17-20 visit here...

...Even American Ambassador to Tokyo Mike Mansfield, who is as dovish on get-tough moves with Japan as he was about the war in Indochina when he was Senate Majority Leader, has said that 1982 was one of the worst years in the long history of U.S.-Japanese friction over trade and defense...

...He also made much of concessions on the import of American cigarettes...

...Small wonder, then, that the feeling here in the wake of Nakasone's departure is one of despair...

...They will take any sign of relief from the protracted recession in the United States as a justification for raising, or removing, the limits on their auto exports...

...But he almost inadvertently indicated his distaste for yet another year of quotas by noting that the numbers were "for the Japanese to decide...

...His lip-service to American demands for a greater defense commitment was essentially a smokescreen to divert attention from the trade wrangle...

...market with its products...

...In reality, Japan is far from ready to revoke its unwritten law of investing no more than 1 per cent of its GNP (now well over $1 trillion annually) in the military...

...The metaphor, marvelous as it may have sounded, was bound to stir up waves of protest back home...

...In fact, Nakasone seems to have done little in the U.S...

...To judge from their public pronouncements, the fear of such steps turns Japanese statesmen into the world's most dedicated advocates of free trade...

...Japan will give ground in the area of international commerce only under the most extreme duress, namely serious moves toward protectionist legislation in the U.S...

...If anything, Japan has hardened its attitude over the past decade...

...Although Nakasone has been sounding off as a militarist for years, he and all the other LDP leaders owe their offices to a highly conservative party establishment that far prefers to invest government revenues elsewhere-and leave Japan's security to the folks who conquered it nearly 40 years ago...

...The camaraderie, however, is part of an elaborate bargaining process...

...A political hailstorm ensued and Suzuki attempted, in the bland, noncon-frontational style of Japanese public figures, to say he hadn't meant it-a ploy that only intensified the barrage...

...the word "alliance" to describe the relationship between the two countries is deemed an act of courage for a Japanese statesman...

...Nakasone, a more controversial type possessing much broader experience in foreign affairs, positively grandstanded with the label during his visit...

...Nakasone treated his American friends to a helping of the old cliches, plus a new plea for "understanding" Japan's own problems-notably the domestic pressures that keep the government from lowering tariffs and quotas on imported beef and oranges ahead of an already prescribed timetable...

...Far more influential are the dark-suited bureaucrats in the Finance Ministry committed to holding down the budget regardless of American pressure...

...capital besides provide a bit of grist for his domestic opponents, both within and without the long-ruling Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP...

...Japan, whoever is in charge, has no choice but to oblige the Americans to some extent, so that it can continue flooding the U.S...

...Still, a game of words is one thing and a genuine dedication to policy changes another...

...In the case of the first, the principal accomplishment of Nakasone's brief sojourn was his persuasively evincing a hawkish image over breakfast with the titans of the Washington Post...

...The sensitivity of the subject may be gleaned from the fact that even using Donald Kirk , a long-lime contributor, has recently returned to this country after several years in the Far East...

...It was this occasion that elicited his heroic naval image...

...Inevitably, their speeches hark back to the prevailing protectionism that, it is true, aggravated the tensions which precipitated World War II...

...In response, the Japanese were offering nearly the same conciliatory statements, promising the same studies and reviews as today...

...In general, the Japanese seem once more to believe that the rest of the world is against them...

...The journey, undertaken less than two months after the veteran opportunist who is known in Japan as the "weathervane" finally edged his way to that country's top political spot, was another one of those let's-get-to-understand-each-other fiascos . A great deal of time was wasted, the issues at hand were confused, and no identifiable progress was made toward solutions...

...The projected figure for 1983 is $20 billion...

...Washington has been hearing this kind of cant for years...

...to make good on perennial threats of imposing protective tariffs...

...this thinking suffuses the subconscious of nearly every Japanese...

...What the Japanese are wistfully hoping for is a miracle in the American economy...

...Tokyo is full of upbeat predictions for the West that sound like sympathetic pep talks from an old friend...

...The substance of his remarks was restricted to a reiteration of the official posture that a recommended 6.5 per cent increase in defense outlays for the coming year is ample proof of Japan's intention to do its bit...

...He harped on measures Tokyo had lately adopted for "liberalizing" trade, and promised action by various commissions currently reviewing ways to expedite the flow of goods into Japan...

...hopes for redressing the trade imbalance...

...The performance led to an absurdly misleading article that pictured Japan as all but sworn to attain a state of military preparedness sufficient to risk shooting down Soviet reconnaisance planes high above its territory...

...The national consensus, in a nation ruled by consensus, is that America and the European Community are blaming their own inadequacies on Japan...

...Its leaders now make a point of claiming, as Nakasone did throughout his visit, that their average tariff rate is among the lowest in the world...

...If Nakasone had not displayed enthusiasm for the alliance and talked up his country's rearmament program, he would have been daring the U.S...

...Officials are "studying" the matter the Prime Minister said...

...A Mutual Security Treaty has existed since 1960, yet the United States was first officially called an ally by Nakasone's predecessor, Zenko Suzuki...

...But Japan's leader undoubtedly shares the skepticism of most of his countrymen about aligning unequivocally with the U.S...

...In a country that was deliberately isolated from foreign contact for over three centuries before the Meiji Restoration of 1868, this is a familiar sentiment...

...At a farewell press conference, Nakasone went so far as to run off the litany about Japanese supersalesmanship and American inefficiency-meanwhile dodging all questions about the touchiest issue, the extension of Japan's "voluntary" restraints on the sale of motor vehicles to this country, due to expire at the end of March...

...And as long as this practice continues, the island nation's inability to defend itself against the USSR can only grow more glaring...

...For if Japan's Armed Forces are built up again, no one, least of all the planners and strategists in Washington, can be absolutely sure which way the guns will point next time around...

...Indeed, Nakasone showed no inclination to yield anything in this all-important sphere...

...Its dangers, particularly in the military sense, deserve attention...

...Take the two most familiar bones of contention between Washington and Tokyo, defense and trade...

...and Europe...

...Nakasone's polite assurances that he did not think U.S...

...For all his saber rattling in Washington, Nakasone tacitly bowed to these immovable pillars...

...That, the reasoning runs, is what conquering powers are for...