Calling On Close Friends

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Reagan visits Japan and South Korea

The Reagans dined last week with Japanese Emperor Hirohito at a glittering affair in his Imperial Palace, and with U.S. troops at a field kitchen in South Korea's Demilitarized Zone. They were entertained at a tea ceremony and a yabusame exhibition of mounted archery by riders arrayed in samurai costume. The President essayed a line in the Japanese language during a speech to the Tokyo Diet; First Lady Nancy Reagan visited a Japanese grade school and delighted the youngsters by scrawling the Japanese character for "friend."

It was all very visual, serving political interests of both the U.S. and two important allies, Japan and South Korea, as Reagan made the first trip to Asia of his presidency. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, in particular, faces an election, perhaps as soon as December, in which his Liberal Democratic Party may lose parliamentary seats. He was anxious to display himself to Japanese voters as a world statesman closely consulted by an ally of whom he often says: "I call him Ron, and he calls me Yasu." The White House saw reciprocal advantages in giving a boost to Nakasone, whom it judges to be more cooperative on defense and foreign policy than most previous Japanese heads of government. And alliance protocol demands that any presidential visit to Japan be accompanied by a side trip to South Korea.

The timing was perhaps not perfect, with so much else going on in other parts of the world where the U.S. was engaged. In the wake of the successful U.S. invasion of Grenada, Reagan seems to be striving for a more muscular foreign policy, one more openly backed by the threat and occasional use of military force. Thus, the U.S. last week was massing naval power in the Middle East, possibly to retaliate for the attack on Marines in Lebanon--though whom to retaliate against, and how, was an unresolved question. Largely at the instigation of Secretary of State George Shultz, the U.S. was also trying to forge closer ties to Israel, seeking somehow to make use of Israeli military might as a counterweight to the troublemaking capacity of Soviet-backed Syria.

In Europe, the approaching installation of U.S. medium-range missiles over protests of the peace movement is putting the NATO alliance under increasing strain, and may yet precipitate a Soviet walkout from the arms-control talks in Geneva.

To some White House aides, trekking to the relatively tranquil Far East was an unwelcome diversion from these more pressing concerns. Groused one Reagan lieutenant: "It's a real pain." But there was cogent reason to demonstrate U.S. solidarity with allies that it can count on. The Reagan Administration in addition hoped that the prod of the presidential visit would prompt some action on the serious trade disputes between the U.S. and Japan, and in that respect Reagan could claim some accomplishment before Air Force One even landed at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. In advance of the trip, Japan agreed to a fourth year of restrictions on exports of autos to the U.S. They will be held to 1,850,000 in the twelve months beginning next April 1, a bit more than the 1,650,000 a year provided under the expiring three-year pact, but probably much less than Toyota and Nissan could sell in a wide-open market.

In discussions with U.S. officials before and during the trip, the Japanese also agreed to put some tariff reductions into effect ahead of schedule and remove some controls on the movement of capital into and out of Japan. A freer flow of capital could increase the exchange value of the yen, which American businessmen charge the Japanese have been keeping artificially low, giving Japanese exports an unfair competitive edge. Whether these agreements will significantly shrink the U.S. deficit in trade with Japan, which is estimated as high as $23 billion a year, remains to be seen; the Japanese have yet to be persuaded to loosen restrictions on imports of American beef and citrus products, a key U.S. goal. But overall the agreements put enough thorny issues on the back burner to allow Reagan's visit to be devoted primarily to the celebration of a close alliance.

Reagan has a knack for state ceremony that he began displaying as soon as he arrived on Wednesday afternoon. After the President and Mrs. Reagan had checked into the Akasaka Geihinkan (guest house), Emperor Hirohito and the imperial family joined him for a review of an honor guard. Japanese were struck by the contrast between the two heads of state. Hirohito, 82, looked frail and stooped, and walked so haltingly that Reagan, only ten years younger but towering head and shoulders above the Emperor, had trouble slowing his stride to stay in step. His manner was so polite that one Japanese newsman, noting both Reagan's vigor and deference, remarked that the President looked "like our old boy's son."

Reagan strengthened the impression by breaking a usually ironclad rule that he ride only in the armored Lincoln Continental that is ferried along wherever he goes. For a drive to a reception at Hirohito's palace, Reagan joined the Emperor in Hirohito's hand-built black Nissan Prince Royal, which is half the size of the Continental. Since Empress Nagako was ailing and could not join the party, Nancy Reagan rode alone in the Continental; they were followed by a convoy nearly a mile long. Everywhere Reagan went in Japan, his own entourage and Japanese security forces combined to form a retinue so large that Japanese called it a daimyo gyoretsu (lord's procession).

The Japanese carried security to startling extremes. Some 90,000 police were involved; among other precautions, they spent 20 days before Reagan's arrival combing every inch of the mountainsides around Nakasone's cottage 35 miles west of Tokyo, a sort of Oriental Camp David, to make sure there were no mamushi (poisonous snakes) around when Reagan and the First Lady showed up for lunch. Ryujo Hori, 86, a dollmaker whose work is so exquisite that she has been designated a "living national treasure" of Japan, was forbidden to bring her carving knives to a showing of her art that she staged for Nancy Reagan, under a stricture against anything that conceivably could be a weapon.

Politically, the major event of the trip was an address by Reagan to the Japanese Diet, an honor no previous U.S. President had been accorded. Reagan concentrated on themes of alliance and peace. The U.S. and Japan "can become a powerful partnership for good," he declared. Speaking of arms control, the President of the only nation ever to use atom bombs in war told the elected representatives of the people on whom the bombs were dropped that "a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought. The only value in possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they can't be used, ever."

The President took the occasion to respond to two Japanese concerns. As Nakasone reminded him in private, Tokyo fears that a U.S.-U.S.S.R. agreement to limit nuclear missiles in Europe might result in the shift of some Soviet missiles to the Far East, where they could menace Japan. Reagan's response, in his speech to the Diet: "We must not and we will not accept any agreement that transfers the threat of longer-range nuclear missiles from Europe to Asia." Also, while warning against trade protectionism in both countries, Reagan strongly condemned a "domestic content" bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives before he left Washington that would severely restrict the sale of Japanese cars in the U.S. The bill, said Reagan, is "a cruel hoax. It would be raising prices without protecting jobs." In the unlikely event that the bill passes the Senate, Reagan has vowed to veto it.

Reagan's speech was enthusiastically received, with Diet members interrupting 18 times with applause. His pronunciation drew some smiles when he ventured a line in Japanese: "Japanese-American friendship is forever." Communist depu ties boycotted the session, but their empty seats only underscored the impotence of the left in present-day Japan. A fist-shaking demonstration by more than 1,000 protesters near Haneda Airport as the Reagans were about to arrive was a pale shadow of the mass snake-dancing "demos" the Japanese left used to stage in the 1960s and early '70s; this time, the marching leftists could not even distract nearby golfers and baseball players.

From Japan, Reagan flew on Saturday to South Korea, where his motorcade from the airport attracted more than a million flag-waving onlookers. In a speech before the National Assembly, Reagan's rhetoric was noticeably less restrained than it had been in Japan. He assailed the Soviet Union again for the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, pausing for silence in memory of the victims. He denounced the "despicable North Korean attack" that killed 16 South Korean government officials in Rangoon. By inference, Reagan defended the authoritarian nature of the South Korean government as a response to the pressure it is under from North Korea. Said the President: "The United States realizes how difficult political development is when, even as we speak, a shell from the North could destroy this assembly."

Talks between Reagan and South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan were so harmonious that White House aides called them uneventful. Chun told Reagan that he agreed with "every sentence, every word, every phrase" of his National Assembly speech. Reagan's visit to the demilitarized zone took him closer than any U.S. President to the North Korean lines. He helicoptered to the Liberty Bell camp, where U.N. forces guarding the historic truce village of Panmunjom are based. At a forward observation post, he had a binocular view of North Korean military positions. Returning to Washington Sunday, Reagan could reflect on a trip that seemed successful precisely because of its lack of high drama. Quiet cementing of relationships with allies lacks the theatricality and tension of crisis negotiations and the dispatching of troops and ships, but it is vitally important. U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo Mike Mansfield is fond of asserting that since the U.S. and Japan together account for a third of all economic production in the non-Communist world, their friendship is the most important bilateral relationship on the globe. And if it, and the alliance with South Korea, are singularly untroubled -- well, all the more reason to let friends know they do not have to stir up trouble to win the attention of the U.S. -- By George J. Church.

Reported by Douglas Brew with the President and Edwin M. Reingold/Tokyo

With reporting by Douglas Brew, Edwin M. Reingold This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.