World Notes JAPAN

Until recently Japan's two dozen known AIDS victims were either male homosexuals or hemophiliacs. Then came word that the first female patient had died on Jan. 20 of AIDS-related pneumonia in Kobe, a western coastal city on the island of Honshu. The victim, a prostitute, was unquestionably heterosexual. Fear rattled the country like an earthquake. Stock in condom manufacturers soared by as much as 500 points on the Tokyo exchange. A TV news special seeking to pinpoint the source of the problem, suggested darkly that foreign sailors frequenting Kobe's red-light district were to blame, and asked: "Can Kobe live down this shame?"

Another TV host propounded a persistent -- and utterly unfounded -- theory that AIDS "was created by the U.S. military and tested on 'undesirables,' who were later released into the general public." That had the familiar ring of a Soviet disinformation campaign that originated last September in the Soviet weekly New Times and has spread as far afield as Zambia and the Philippines in the past six months. Meanwhile, two years after AIDS first hit Japan, Tokyo talk-show panelists were advising viewers to stay away from U.S. servicemen.