A Vigorous Visitor with an Urgent Message

JAPAN'S PREMIER

Said Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as Japan's new Conservative Premier got set to make his first official call on Washington this week: "This visit is very important and comes at a formative period in the relations between our two countries. There is a growing feeling in Japan that a new stage is approaching in [its] relations to the rest of the world, and I hope and believe that we will have a chance to talk that over constructively."

Tte Premier: Nobusuke Kishi, 60.

Early Career. Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, 70 miles from Hiroshima, son of a poor sake manufacturer and an aristocratic mother (her father was a samurai) who demanded perfection. Nobusuke (meaning: defender of the trust) was a child prodigy at school, specialized in German law at Tokyo University, graduated at the top of his class (1920). With offers of teaching posts, he chose the civil service, joined the Agriculture and Commerce Ministry as a clerk, rose rapidly, toured (1926-27) in the U.S. and Europe studying the steel industry. Posted to Manchuria in 1937, he was a top economic czar of the Japanese-occupied territory. In 1939, aged 42, astute Kishi returned to Japan as Vice Minister of Commerce and Industry.

World War II. Invited to join militaristic Premier Tojo's wartime Cabinet, Kishi served for three years as Commerce and Industry Minister, resigned in 1944 after a showdown with Tojo over military strategy (Minister Kishi wanted to sue for peace if the U.S. landed at Saipan). Arrested by the U.S. in 1945 as a suspected war criminal and put into Tokyo's grim Sugano Prison, Kishi mopped floors, cleaned latrines, had "plenty of time for soul-searching" until his release in 1948 (he was never brought to trial). Kishi regards his prison term as the turning point in his life: "In Sugano, I learned to see men for the first time really stripped of convention and pretense. I began to get a new idea of human values. I was forced to the conclusion that the war had been futile from the start, and that I should have tried to stop it. I became convinced that Japan must never again be involved in war."

Political Career. Well established as a business tycoon (pulp, chemicals) when finally "depurged" in 1952, onetime Bureaucrat Kishi took a long, hard look at resurgent Japan. went into politics. He soon became the dominant figure in the backstage maneuverings from which: 1) Japan's two big feuding conservative parties, the Liberals and the Democrats, were merged into the gigantic Liberal-Democratic Party and ranged in solid opposition to the Socialists and Communists; and 2) Kishi himself emerged last winter as Foreign Minister under 72-year-old Premier Tanzan Ishibashi. Four months ago, Nobusuke Kishi became his country's Premier (and his own Foreign Minister) when Ishibashi resigned because of bad health.

Foreign Policy. Swarthy, slight (5 ft. 4 in. 130 Ibs.) Premier Kishi is as avid a golfer as President Eisenhower, happily looks forward to a match with Ike at Burning Tree this week. His handicap is a "state secret,'' but under the pressure of work it has gone up from 15 to 21. No state secret are the "suggestions" for a "new era" in Japanese-U.S. relations that he will raise with Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles. Basic to Kishi's problem, as his political opponents are well aware, is an ominous statistic for a country that must export to live: since World War II, Japan's population has increased more than 20%, now stands at 90 million, while the land area available has decreased by more than 40% from the heyday of the empire. The obvious remedy: increased trade in any of three directions: i) the Red Chinese mainland, 2) the U.S., 3) Southeast Asia. Premier Kishi's pet solution: creation of a $700 million to $800 million Southeast Asian Development Fund drawing its raw materials from the Southeast Asian countries, its capital goods and technology from Japan, and most of its financing from the U.S. The fund, Kishi is expected to argue, will relieve pressure in Japan for greater Red China trade. Moreover, with U.S. backing, it would transform a peaceful and renascent Japan into the political leader of free Asia.

Also on Kishi's mind: restoration of at least some Japanese civil administration on U.S.-controlled Okinawa; revisions in the U.S.-Japanese defense and security agreements--e.g., Kishi is bringing with him a three-year timetable for a Japanese armed-forces buildup, will probably ask for a similar timetable for the U.S. withdrawal of at least part of its forces from the Japanese home islands; and, hottest of all, increased scope for Japanese trade with Red China.

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