Kaifu

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- President Bush's meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu was a session laden with warm words about the U.S.-Japanese relationship but no signals of progress on the numerous issues that continue to divide the two nations.Indeed, the two made clear that on at least two issues -- Japan's contribution to help defray the costs of the Persian Gulf war and U.S. efforts to sell rice in Japan -- the gap remains wide. And the emotional issue of Japanese automobile sales in the United States was not even discussed, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

TOKYO -- Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu scored a lightning year-end victory over his governing party's political bosses yesterday by suddenly giving them a Cabinet reshuffling they had long demanded but by doing it on virtually his own terms.Japanese newspapers credited Mr. Kaifu with swiftly turning a brewing new political-money scandal into an unexpected chance to resist mounting demands by party bosses that he restore to power old faces that had been dirtied by the Recruit stock-for-favors affair of the preceding two years.

When modernizers seized power in Japan in 1868 and "restored" the Meiji emperor, they revitalized an ancient belief that he was divine. Veneration distracted from rapid change and westernization of Japan. The Showa emperor, Hirohito, was useful to the militarists who attacked Pearl Harbor, to the Americans who occupied Japan afterward and, until his death early last year, to the political-commercial oligarchy that has directed Japanese affairs since.Now his son, Akihito, has ascended the throne of the oldest continuous monarchy while an uncertain political leadership tries to decide what direction the prosperous country he personifies will take.

TOKYO -- Japan's government agreed yesterday to scrap Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu's attempt to send soldiers to help the U.S.-led force confronting Iraq in the Persian Gulf.The decision, reported by several Japanese newspapers and broadcast stations that cited unnamed sources within the governing Liberal Democratic Party, coincided with an announcement in Baghdad that 79 of the 305 Japanese hostages now being held in Iraq would soon be released. There was no clear sign whether the two events were connected.

TOKYO -- Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu asked Japan's parliament yesterday for a new law letting him send soldiers to the Persian Gulf and to future hot spots where the United Nations works to "restore peace.""This crisis is a major time of testing for Japan and the most severe trial we have faced since the end of the war," Mr. Kaifu told the two houses of the Diet, which has been called into a special session primarily to help set policy in response to Iraq's seizure of Kuwait.Japanese newspapers billed the talk in advance as one of the central policy speeches of Mr. Kaifu's term in office.

AMERICAN ''Japan Bashers,'' supposing Tokyo to be more vulnerable to Iraqi domination of OPEC than Washington, are demanding angrily that Japan should contribute many, many billions of dollars to cover a far greater share of the financial and military burdens bravely borne by Washington. Many bashers say that if a greedy Japan continues to be a free-riding beneficiary of the risk-taking sacrifices of others we should revoke our Alliance and impose prohibitive trade barriers.Meanwhile, careful Japanese analysts tell us privately -- we also read of it in the Times -- that the Liberal Democratic Party leadership incredulously digests this most recent Gulf-related cacophony of lamentation, self-pity and savage abuse of Japan voiced by Americans blind to Japan's present strategic benevolences.

TOKYO -- Japan's Cabinet has worked out the basics of a plan to send soldiers to join United Nations operations in the Persian Gulf, Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu said yesterday.Mr. Kaifu said he would call the Diet, Japan's parliament, into special session to act on a bill that would allow uniformed soldiers to join in operations outside Japan for the first time since the U.S. occupation imposed a pacifist constitution on this country after World War II.Responding to relentless U.S. pressure to take a tangible as well as a financial role in resisting Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, Mr. Kaifu said the time had come for Japanese to be seen to "sweat" alongside other nationals in times of crisis.