Communications Gap

Describing relations between the U.S. and Europe recently, Japan's Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira somewhat enviously mused: "Blood is thicker than water." As for U.S. relations with Japan, Ohira added ruefully: "It takes twice the effort to even comprehend each other."

As a matter of fact, Tokyo is beginning to wonder these days if Washington has any desire to communicate at all with the country it has so frequently trumpeted as "our most important ally in Asia." The Nixon shokku of 1971, when former Premier Eisaku Sato was told of Washington's dramatic policy shift on China only three minutes before it became public, was bad enough. But now the American failure to consult--and include--Japan on post-Viet Nam policy has aroused deep doubts concerning the sincerity of public U.S. pronouncements that Japan should play an active role as one of the pillars of peace in Asia.

First came Tokyo's belated discovery that it had been excluded from the international guarantee conference on Viet Nam, which will convene in Paris Feb. 26. Hanoi, Japan was told, had objected to its participation because it had allowed the U.S. to use Japanese bases in connection with the war. Although that was certainly true, it struck the Japanese as a strange argument for the Americans to use in explaining the lack of any consultation on the matter. Japan had also made known its willingness to foot 50% of the $2 billion multinational reconstruction fund for Viet Nam.

The most recent cause of Japanese annoyance was U.S. Ambassador Robert Ingersoll's advice to the Foreign Ministry that an already announced Japanese mission to Hanoi--to discuss economic assistance and the possibility of establishing diplomatic relations --should be postponed until Henry Kissinger had been there first. What the Nixon Administration seemingly fails to understand about Japan is that moves like sending an emissary to Hanoi are viewed as politically necessary for the Liberal Democratic government if it is to uphold the U.S.-Japan security treaty against the mounting challenge of left-wing opposition.

Says one of Premier Kakuei Tanaka's advisers: "The Americans have fallen into the habit of taking the Japanese for granted because they have taken for granted that they will always be governed by the Liberal Democratic Party. They had better wake up to the fact that the L.D.P. is now in trouble. And when the L.D.P. is in trouble, it means the U.S.-Japan security treaty is in trouble too. Think about it."

There is a measure of special pleading in that argument for the embattled Tanaka, whose honeymoon with the voters is clearly over (TIME, Jan. 29). Moreover, Washington feels rather strongly that Tokyo often does not seem to be listening to its problems. Whether true or not, there is no doubt that the diplomatic communications gap comes at an awkward time. It coincides ominously with the threat of a U.S. Japanese economic confrontation, as dramatized by the dollar crisis and the warnings of U.S. Trade Negotiator William D. Eberle that Congress might impose an import surcharge if Japan does not do more to reduce its lopsided trade surplus with the U.S.

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