JAPAN: Flight to Moscow

Two years ago when he became Premier of Japan, aging, partially paralyzed Ichiro Hatoyama declared: “My health will not permit me to remain very long as Prime Minister.” Last week, still ailing and still talking of retirement, the 73-year-old Premier launched a desperate grandstand play to prolong his political life. He will go to Moscow, he announced, to seek what two other Japanese missions have failed to get—a peace settlement with Russia.

After the last round of talks in Moscow (TIME, Aug. 13), when Russian Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov brusquely refused to consider a treaty which would return to Japan the small southern Kuril islands of Kunashiri and Etorofu, the Japanese public burst into irate criticism of Hatoyama and his government. Politically as well as physically, Ichiro Hatoyama was in poor shape to fight such attacks. With illness, his speech had grown slurred, his inordinate need for sleep had kept him away from important Cabinet meetings and caused the press to label him “the afternoon-nap Prime Minister.” Worst of all, leaders of the powerful business associations that had bankrolled his rise to power were publicly beginning to suggest that it was time for him to resign—much as they did two years before to signal the ouster of Premier Shigeru Yoshida.

One thing, however, blocked Hatoyama’s immediate downfall: there was no accepted heir apparent in the ranks of his Liberal-Democratic Party. Clutching this straw of power, Hatoyama hoped that the drama of his mission to Moscow would silence his critics. In a letter to Russian Premier Bulganin, Hatoyama proposed a peace with Russia on “the Adenauer formula,” i.e., resume diplomatic relations on an interim basis, leaving the terms of a formal peace treaty (and hence the question of ownership of Etorofu and Kunashiri) for future settlement.

Under the terms of Hatoyama’s proposal, the Russians would get a Tokyo embassy as a prestige place and as a legal base for propaganda and espionage activities. Their payments would be three cheap concessions: release of some 11,175 Japanese P.W.s still held eleven years after V-J day, formal agreement to let the Japanese fish in Russian waters, and support of Japan’s application for U.N. membership. Convinced that the U.S.S.R. would not refuse so attractive an offer, Hatoyama last week confidently booked air passage to Moscow for the end of this month. “Mr. Hatoyama,” said one of his aides, “will be quite satisfied even if his health collapses in the course of negotiations.” Echoing public dismay at the Prime Minister’s prospective surrender to the Russians, the monthly Bungei-Shunju retorted: “We are not worried about Hatoyama’s body. We are worried about his mind.”