Temptations

For years Japanese fishermen shipping out of Hokkaido have faced a particular risk above and beyond the normal hazards of their trade. From bases in the tiny Habomai and Shikotan islands, only two miles off Hokkaido, Soviet patrol boats steam out at unpredictable intervals, seize from 50 to 100 Japanese fishing boats a year on charges of violating the twelve-mile limit. The crews and the boats are usually sent home, but the Russians keep the captains, sentence them to a year or so at hard labor.

Islands Offered. Last week the Russians were using the hapless fishermen in a traditional Communist ploy: in exchange for concessions from the Japanese, they were offering to stop doing what they should not have been doing in the first place. In Tokyo, Aleksandr Ishkov, Soviet minister of fisheries, named the Russians' price for halting its harassment --that Japan scrap its security treaty with the U.S. This was a follow-up to a gambit offered by Nikita Khrushchev, who last month told a group of Japanese visiting in Moscow that he would be willing to hand back Habomai and Shikotan (which the Russians grabbed at war's end), except for the fact that they would "fall into the hands of the U.S."

Such Communist threats and blandishments to steer Japan toward the neutralist road are nothing new. But in recent months the pressure has been stepped up, and Japan has shown a new and disconcerting willingness to listen. The Red Chinese, in particular, have spared no efforts. Last week a Red Chinese trade-union delegation beat its way up and down Japan, loudly demanding that Premier Hayato Ikeda "suspend his hostility" toward Red China. And a delegation of 16 top Japanese businessmen flew off to Peking on an economic good-will mission. "World thinking is rapidly shifting," said Managing Director Heigo Fuji of Yawata Steel, Japan's biggest steelmakers. "Japan, too, must take positive steps by actively supporting Red China's entry into the U.N."

Peking's lure to Japan is trade--described in the oft-repeated phrase "600 million new customers." From the past record, the Japanese should know that Red China is interested in politics, not business. Two years ago, Peking unsuccessfully tried to use a $196 million trade pact as a lever to secure diplomatic recognition. When the Japanese government stubbornly withheld recognition, the Chinese peevishly broke the pact and flooded Japan's Asian markets with cut-rate textiles and consumer goods. But the Chinese bait is nonetheless as enticing to many Japanese as is the Russian talk of the offshore islands.

Our Task. Premier Ikeda himself says he wants a "flexible" policy, by which he apparently means going along with the Communists as far as he can without endangering Japan's ties to the U.S. Last week, in Ikeda's first speech to the new session of the Diet, elected in his overwhelming victory last December, the Premier declared that improving relations with Peking was "our task this year," and he added that "I am one of those who earnestly desire resumption of trade with Red China." But he insisted: "We will never adopt a neutral policy, whatever weak, small countries may do." This brought catcalls from the opposition.

One top U.S. diplomat predicted that, as 1960 had been the "year of demonstrations" over relations with the U.S., 1961 would be the "year of arguments" over relations with the Communists.

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