One More Haircut

Twenty-six years ago, in Tokyo's Central Railroad Station, a nationalist fanatic named Yoshiaki Sagoya shot Japan's liberal Premier, "Lion" Hamaguchi. Last week bull-necked Yoshiaki Sagoya was back doing business at his old stand. In protest at Prime Minister Ichiro Hato-yama's avowed intention of flying to Moscow to negotiate a World War II peace treaty with the U.S.S.R. (TIME, Sept. 24), Sagoya and the khaki-clad toughs of his "National Protection Society" staged a mock funeral service for the ailing, 73-year-old Premier. On top of an altar, flanked by artificial flowers, sat a 12-ft. high Buddhist memorial tablet that described Hatoyama as "traitorous, greedy, cowardly and paralytic."

Sagoya and his bullyboys were by no means the only Japanese who were disturbed by Hatoyama's new-found willingness to agree to an interim peace settlement that would not commit Russia to return to Japan the southern Kuril islands of Etorofu and Kunashiri. Earlier, the powerful businessmen who finance Hatoyama's Liberal-Democratic Party demanded that the Premier abandon the Moscow trip unless the Russians could be persuaded to give advance assurances that possession of Etorofu and Kunashiri would "continue to be the subject of negotiations" even after a peace settlement. To pacify the businessmen, the Hatoyama government promptly sent Japan's Roving Ambassador Shunichi Matsumoto off; to Russia to seek such assurances. Last week, after letting Matsumoto cool his heels in a hotel room for three days, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Federenko gave the Soviet reply: "Russia is ready to welcome Premier Hatoyama to Moscow for the purpose of signing a pact normalizing relations between the two nations. Russia agrees to postpone discussion of the territorial issue . . ." This made it fairly certain that a deal would go through, that Russia will soon have an embassy in Tokyo, and that Japan, eleven years after defeat, will get a seat in the U.N. (four times vetoed by the U.S.S.R.). Federenko's answer seemed to blast all hope of keeping Hatoyama safe in Tokyo. As he got his weekly haircut, the Premier remarked cheerfully: "I probably will need only one more before going to Moscow." But if Hatoyama was counting on prolonging his political life by achieving a settlement with Russia, he seemed to be sadly mistaken. By last week nearly half of the Liberal Democratic members of Parliament had joined an organization called the Jikyokn Kondankai ("Council for Deliberating the Current Political Situation"). The Kondankai's basic purpose: to oust Hatoyama from the premiership.

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