Haruspeculation
"This must be the most virtuous of all possible conventions," declared Chief Predictor Hachiro Asano as 100 crack fortunetellers from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and India assembled in Seoul for a three-day meeting that ended last week. Drinking and sex were explicitly barred because, as Asano explained, "We must remain pure" for important responsibilities--that is, agreeing on answers to ten of the world's weightiest questions.
The second International Predictors' Conference, like last year's first such get-together in Tokyo, also gave Asia's various astrologers, palmists, bamboo-stick readers and other diviners a chance to understand one another at last. "Fortunetellers are like physicians," Asano explained to TIME Correspondent S. Chang. "You might specialize in one branch, but you don't qualify as a professional unless you have a working knowledge of them all." Fortunetelling in fact is one of the more respected professions in Asia. Practitioners make up to $1,000 a month in Japan, and $500 in South Korea, for giving business advice, tips on the stock market and horse races or suggestions on marital problems.
In Seoul each haruspex plied his specialty. There were no packs of cards to read ("That seems awfully amateurish to us," said Asano) or crystal balls ("That's a fake"). Instead, the astrologers cast horoscopes, the bamboo-stick men studied hoigaku, the science of directions. Asano's specialty is physiognomy or face reading (he is the author of the Japanese bestseller Faces Never Tell a Lie). Consulting recent photographs of President Nixon he found that the space between eyes and eyebrows had grown auspiciously longer; meanwhile, once cold eyes had assumed remarkable warmth. George McGovern's mouth, however, was a disaster--too weak and narrow for a winner. Asano reconfirmed his diagnosis with palmistry. Sure enough, enlarged photos of the Nixon hands showed an unmistakably straighter head line, which begins between the thumb and index finger and runs across the palm.
On the convention's last working afternoon the group assembled at Seoul's Academy House to compare forecasts. "We searched our souls while we worked, softly talked to ourselves and often felt the weight of the world heavily on our shoulders," said Asano. "We hold ourselves collectively responsible for the outcome of all predictions." All 100 agreed unanimously that:
>Nixon will win the 1972 presidential election with 50% of the popular vote.
> The Democrats will win the presidency in 1976.
> Divided countries like Germany, Korea and Viet Nam will be reunified within ten years.
> Talks between North and South Korea on the reunion of separated families will be successfully concluded by 1974.
> In that year there will be a calamitous series of natural disasters in Asia.
> In 1984 there will be a great flood in Eastern Europe that will claim thousands of lives.
> By the end of the 1980s a "spiritually oriented age will replace the present materialistically oriented age."
> The United Nations will continue to go from one crisis to another "for the predictable future."
> Around the year 2020 a holy man comparable to Jesus Christ will emerge somewhere in Asia, possibly in Korea.
> There will be no third world war.
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