THE SUMMIT IN TOKYO : Reporter’s Notebook : Quiet Diplomacy Not on Shultz’s Asian Diet

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who is normally low-key in his public pronouncements and says he favors “quiet diplomacy,” has been unusually outspoken during President Reagan’s Asia trip.

In Bali, Indonesia, he expressed outrage at Philippine Vice President Salvador Laurel’s suggestion that there were “cobwebs of doubt” among the Philippine people about how solidly Reagan backs the government of President Corazon Aquino. And in Tokyo on Saturday, he challenged the official Soviet tally of casualties from the Chernobyl nuclear accident and accused them of not being forthright about the disaster.

What’s come over the secretary? Is it the ex-Marine in him surfacing, or is there another reason for his new feistiness?

One theory among reporters covering the secretary of state is that the flashes of temper may have dietary roots. The six-foot, one-inch Shultz, a combat veteran of World War II, has recently shed more than 20 pounds after deciding that diplomacy is fattening and going on a strict diet.

Bernard Kalb, Shultz’s spokesman, says it’s true that the secretary has shown strict discipline in sticking to a diet heavy on carrot sticks and other vegetables. But he said the answer to questions about the secretary’s temperament is a lot simpler than that. “The secretary simply feels strongly about what he said,” Kalb declared.

There are Japanese as well as American yuppies, it turns out. A special summit supplement of the Tokyo Journal, in a cover story, bemoaned the tendency of upwardly mobile young Japanese to become fixated on conspicuous consumption.

“When it comes to luxury, the Japanese are no slouches,” the article said, blaming yuppies for transforming the human physique into “a framework upon which we hang signs of affluence, importance and sexual promise.”

The article ended with a cautionary quote from the philosopher Goethe: “Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.”

American reporters have been grumbling about tight security and the scarcity of real news since they arrived here Friday. To put their complaints into perspective, White House spokesman Larry Speakes on Saturday read a description of events at the 1979 Tokyo economic summit that sounded familiar.

“Give us some news,” the reporters screamed then, as President Carter’s spokesman Jody Powell “leaned back on the hind legs of his chair, somewhat bored looking, and in his drawl, answered, ‘What you’re seeing is the process of intimidation and harassment that is designed to get the White House press secretary to tell more than he wants to. It only ends when a certain amount of emotional pitch is reached and frustration has been worked out. I might add that it usually doesn’t work.’ ”

Speakes also noted that actual clashes between the careful Japanese security forces and the American press corp are nothing new, either. Reading from the same 1979 document, he recalled how a press bus loaded with American cameramen authorized to photograph Carter’s arrival in Tokyo suddenly found itself cut off from the presidential motorcade by Japanese police officers and redirected to a side entrance that was never unlocked, despite the group’s loud protests.

The Japanese press scooped the event, having been allowed by the Japanese foreign minister to position themselves hours before.

From the way Administration officials have been talking in Tokyo, you might think there will be a few cotton farmers at the summit.

When Shultz was asked a question on economic policy, he declined to answer, telling reporters he intended to “keep my cotton-pickin’ hands off the yen-dollar relationship.” He recalled that when he was secretary of the treasury under President Richard M. Nixon, he had once told Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird to “keep his cotton-pickin’ hands off economic policy.”

Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III, following Shultz to the podium, promised to keep his hands clean as well. He ducked a question on whether the United States would ask the Europeans to switch their oil purchases from Libya to a debt-ridden Third World country like Mexico, saying: “If I were (secretary of state), I would want the secretary of Treasury to keep his cotton-pickin’ hands off foreign policy questions.”

Reporters caught their first glimpse Saturday of the 50-yard-long blimp the Tokyo police have mobilized to provide security for the summit. Like most Japanese improvements on Western inventions, the police blimp is--in the words of one American reporter--”smaller than Goodyear but more mobile.”

“It hovered over the motorcade” as Reagan made his way to the home of Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone for an hourlong meeting, the reporter said.

The blimp is just the latest addition to the impressive arsenal the Japanese have mustered to defend Reagan, Nakasone and other summit participants. The police are equipped with dogs specially trained to inspect manholes for dynamite; with wet suits and scuba gear to make daily inspections of the moat encircling the palace of Emperor Hirohito.

The ultra-tight security has left central Tokyo looking like a ghost town, as traffic has been diverted away from the hotels where the heads of state are staying and the buildings where they are meeting.

So thorough are the police that today officers searched every one of the 700 radicals who rallied at a Tokyo park. The demonstrators from the Middle Core Faction, who have threatened to disrupt the summit, underwent body checks before they were allowed into Miyashita Park, where they snake-danced and waved banners reading, “Down With Nakasone” and “Blast the Summit.”

But the presence of 30,000 police officers, in the air and on the ground and down in the moat, has had one positive effect. Since March 1, when security measures were stepped up in preparation for the summit, crime in Tokyo has declined by 22%, police say.

Times staff writers Jack Nelson, Tom Redburn and Andrew Horvat also contributed to this story.