Foreign Relations: Dialogue Restored

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In 1960, U.S.-Japanese relations were at their lowest postwar ebb. Student demonstrations against their country's security pact with Washington had culminated in the cancellation of a visit to Tokyo by President Eisenhower. In world affairs Japan still labored under the inferiority complex of a conquered nation. That fall, Foreign Affairs ran an essay titled "The Broken Dialogue" by Dr. Edwin Oldfather Reischauer, director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute dealing with Far Eastern studies. In his article Reischauer pointed up the "weakness of communication between the Western democracies and opposition elements in Japan"—and so impressed President-elect Kennedy that he subsequently appointed its author Ambassador to Tokyo.

"Easy Equality." By last week, when Reischauer, 55, confirmed that he is stepping down in order to return to Harvard, he could take major credit for a notable improvement in relations between the U.S. and Asia's most advanced nation. Lacking any previous diplomatic field experience, he brought to the job some extraordinary qualifications. Born in Tokyo of Presbyterian missionary parents, Reischauer is married to a member of a distinguished Japanese family, speaks the language fluently and is one of the world's leading authorities on Japanese history. In scores of articles in Japanese publications and in close personal contacts with Japanese from virtually every walk of life, the ambassador—who was respectfully labeled sensei, honorable teacher—was a powerful influence in restoring the nation's self-confidence.

The Japanese government has become increasingly aware of its international responsibilities. Moreover, though Tokyo and Washington still have their differences—most Japanese, for example, deplore U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam, while the U.S. opposes Japan's granting of long-term credits to Communist China—relations between the two capitals are more cordial than ever before. As Reischauer noted in a sayonara statement last week, Americans and Japanese now enjoy "a full and frank exchange of opinion on a basis of easy equality."

His Own Division. Picked to succeed Reischauer was U. (for Ural)* Alexis Johnson, 57, Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and him self an old Asia hand. Also fluent in Japanese, Kansas-born Johnson started his career as an embassy language officer in Tokyo in 1935; on Pearl Harbor Day, as a vice consul in Japanese-controlled Manchuria, he was interned. Exchanged in 1942, he later joined General Douglas MacArthur's Tokyo staff. More recently, Johnson was deputy ambassador in Saigon before returning to Washington last year.

Though he occupies the State Department's No. 4 post, Johnson himself requested the Tokyo assignment. Like a Pentagon general or desk-based admiral, he explained, "You just want to have your own division or your own ship to run." Besides, fellow diplomats note, an assignment to Tokyo "is like going to the Court of St. James's for European hands." Johnson's principal challenge will be nurturing Japanese participation in cooperative economic endeavors in Southeast Asia.