THE SUMMIT IN TOKYO : For Host Nakasone, Conference May Mark the End of a Career

For Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, hosting the Tokyo summit is likely to be a last hurrah, the capstone of a 40-year political career dedicated to restoring Japan’s international prestige.

This should be a golden moment for Nakasone, for he is basking in a global spotlight and fulfilling his dream of international recognition for himself and for Japan.

Yet, even before the summit started, Nakasone suffered one setback.

In terms of domestic Japanese politics, Nakasone needed some kind of help from his guests to brake the soaring value of the yen, which has raised cries of agony from export-oriented manufacturing firms, but President Reagan and European leaders alike have rejected his pleas out of hand.

Failed Expectations

A summit without criticism of Japanese trade policies and with a reasonable appearance of harmony on other issues would still help Nakasone claim a success. But in terms of Nakasone’s career and his own ambitions, the occasion is likely to fall short of expectations.

Although Nakasone has often spoken out for a more positive Japanese diplomacy, urging his countrymen to “make policy, not merely reflect the policy of others,” he has, in fact, been little more than a master of ceremonies at this summit.

Once again, Japan is being forced to deal with policy and issues created by others--international terrorism and the Soviet nuclear power plant accident.

There is no major Japanese policy initiative in the works at the summit. And, as prime minister, Nakasone has not spelled out clear-cut diplomatic goals, other than to stress that Japan, in its policies, and the Japanese people, in their attitudes, must become “open” and “international.”

And, while public opinion polls indicate that he has the highest approval ratings of any Japanese prime minister after 3 1/2 years in office, the insularities and idiosyncrasies of Nakasone’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party all but guarantee that the still youthful 67-year-old leader will have to step down at the end of October.

Historians may say that the greatest triumph of Nakasone’s two terms as prime minister was that he cemented Japan’s relations with the United States, its only military ally and its major overseas market, during trying times.

Has Support of U.S.

Probably no leader since the end of World War II has won the degree of confidence that the United States has placed in Nakasone.

As Japan’s trade surplus with the United States rose from $18.9 billion in 1982, when Nakasone took office, to $49.7 billion last year, the first-name, “Ron-Yasu” relationship Nakasone established with Reagan virtually single-handedly averted a major explosion with Washington.

Defense budgets under Nakasone, who had been lambasted by critics as a “hawk” when he took office, have not increased substantially, compared with those of his predecessors.

But Nakasone, a World War II naval officer and postwar advocate of greater Japanese defense efforts, has added a new dimension to the U.S.-Japan security treaty. Unabashedly aligning Japan with Reagan on most defense issues--last month’s U.S. bombing attack on Libya being the one major exception--he has committed the Japanese to a broader military role in the case of actual hostilities than any of his predecessors was willing to risk.

Most significantly, he made an exception to a post-World War II political ban on arms exports by agreeing to transfer military technology to the United States. He also is moving toward apparent approval of Japan’s participation in the research and development of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the so-called “Star Wars” plan for a space-based missile defense.

In trade, he won high marks not only from Reagan but from other Administration officials for becoming the first prime minister willing to bring Japan’s standards for product safety and quality into line with international specifications.

Equal Market Access

U.S. telecommunications executives now say that Japan’s procedures and standards provide opportunities for market access equal to those Japanese manufacturers enjoy in the United States.

Five “market-opening” packages adopted under Nakasone’s leadership have not yet produced a turnabout in Japan’s ever-growing trade surpluses.

But appreciation of the yen’s value against the dollar, which Japan itself has promoted under an agreement reached last Sept. 22, is expected to slow export growth later this year.

No prime minister before Nakasone has dared to challenge such basic Japanese premises as the belief that the country must “export or die.” Most recently, he declared that he was determined to change the very structure of Japan’s economy from one oriented toward growth through exports to one in which domestic demand will provide the major thrust for the future.

Criticized on Reform

In the face of criticism from his own party, he said he had not actually promised Reagan in Washington on April 13 to carry out the reform but did reiterate his personal determination to work for the transformation.

In another country, Nakasone would probably be a shoo-in for a third two-year term as president of the ruling party, a post which, by tradition here, is the prerequisite for serving as prime minister.

The Asahi newspaper, which treated Nakasone with vehement hostility when he took office in November, 1982, reported that a poll it took March 11 and 12 put support for the prime minister at a new high of 53%, up ten percentage points from last December. Only 21% declared that they did not support the Nakasone Cabinet.

Most prime ministers win the support of less than 40% of the electorate.

Nakasone’s conservatives, who have controlled Japanese political life since the end of the American occupation after World War II, also find themselves with the highest poll ratings in history--59% of the voters support the party, according to Asahi.

Should Nakasone dissolve the lower house of Parliament after the summit and call a general election, the ruling party is considered virtually certain to reap substantial gains.

The Liberal Democrats now hold 251 seats, five less than a majority, in the 511-seat lower house, and only a coalition with the eight-man conservative splinter group, the New Liberal Club, gives them control.

A regular triennial election for the upper house will be held in late June or early July, and Nakasone is widely expected to set a date for a lower house election to coincide with voting for the upper chamber, producing a so-called “double election.”

Yet, all the pluses put together don’t add up to a third term.

Party rules, for one, forbid it. Two-thirds of the party’s members in Parliament would have to approve a rule change that would permit Nakasone to stay on, and only one-sixth of the party’s members are personally loyal to Nakasone.

Most important, however, is the fact that that three upcoming stars of the party all want their turn at the job.

Only the importance that rivals and critics in his party attach to the summit has silenced most of the criticism of Nakasone to date. But when the last of the summit leaders leave Japan later this week, the first shells in the political battle to select a new leader in October are expected to be fired.

Time to Step Aside

It was only with the support of the now ailing former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who commands the largest (121-member) ruling party faction, that Nakasone won the party presidency and the prime minister’s job in the first place. And now that Nakasone has had his turn--with twice as much time in office as any of the last five prime ministers--the consensus in party ranks is that it is time for him to step aside.

With its hornet’s nest of factions, each seeking to make its leader prime minister, the Liberal Democratic Party is not accustomed to letting leaders serve long terms. Nakasone, for example, took over the No. 4 ranking in postwar longevity for prime ministers last April 21, with a mere 1,242 days in office.

The media call all three men grasping for power “new leaders,” an appellation dating back about 10 years, when they really were “new.” In fact, they are getting rather old.

One of them, Kiichi Miyazawa, 66, chairman of the ruling party’s executive board, is only a year and a half younger than Nakasone, and the other two, Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe and Finance Minister Noboru Takeshita, are both 62.

All three are expected to resign their posts before Nakasone’s term ends in October to free themselves to challenge the prime minister.

For all his popularity with the Japanese public and the Reagan Administration, Nakasone remains amazingly isolated, his faction of 65 personal followers ranking only fourth in size within the ruling party.

Despite the popular support it has among the public, Nakasone’s “presidential” style of leadership has reinforced the differences between him and the rest of his party.

The party received fair warning. Shortly before taking office in 1982, Nakasone declared that “consensus-making can slow down decision-making until, on many occasions, the final decisions come too late.”

Decision-Making Shortcuts

As prime minister, Nakasone has acted to short-cut the agonies of consensus-making within established bureaucratic and party institutions by initiating a new form of decision-making. On policy after policy, he has set up special advisory commissions, composed of respected private citizens he knew shared views akin to his. And in many cases, the recommendations from these commissions have become policy.

Until now, ruling party members, who often found themselves excluded from such decisions, have kept most of their resentment to themselves, partly because of Nakasone’s popularity with voters.

The American esteem for Nakasone and the widespread acceptance of the idea that Japan must put on its best face for the world at the Tokyo summit also have stifled critics in the prime minister’s party.

Nakasone’s hopes of winning a now-forbidden third term have not been completely quashed. Given all of the setbacks the prime minister has overcome so far to stay in office, the possibility of yet another turnabout in fortunes cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Complex Scenario

His hopes, however, rest on a complicated scenario in which a successful Tokyo summit would be followed by victories in the double election for the lower and upper house, continuing high ratings in opinion polls and a stalemate among his three challengers for the party’s leadership.

Even Nakasone’s principal supporters in the business community, such as Noboru Goto, president of the Japan Chamber of Commerce, have openly advised him to step down without a fight to preserve his influence within the party. Veteran political analysts also said any attempt by Nakasone to stay on would dissipate his power.

At the moment, the general election is shaping up as Nakasone’s “flowery exit.”

A general election victory also would boost Nakasone’s influence in selecting his successor--a decision the present genro-- elder statesmen--want to make themselves, according to a former political editor of a major national newspaper, who asked not to be identified by name.

All of the present genro, most of whom head the major party factions, have united in an attempt to prevent Nakasone from dissolving the lower house.

A dissolution of the lower house, whenever it comes, is likely to lead to a big victory for the party, a feather that they want to put in the cap of one of their own followers, not in Nakasone’s.

Susumu Nikaido, 76, vice president of the ruling party, who in 1984 tried to stage a “palace coup” against Nakasone, issued a new threat April 26. If Nakasone dissolves the lower house, Nikaido said, elements within the party will vote for someone else when the post-election balloting for prime minister is held in Parliament, he warned.

Funding a Key Sign

Nonetheless, it is so widely assumed that Nakasone will dissolve the lower house that candidates already have plastered the country with campaign posters and are spending funds full blast to round up votes. Indeed, the fact that many of them will run out of funds if the election is not held in late June or early July is now regarded as the chief guarantee that it will be held.

At home, Nakasone’s lasting impact most likely will be found in the attention he has drawn to problems that his predecessors pushed under the rug. His campaign for administrative reform--to create a less expensive, “small government” with a Reagan-like emphasis on deregulation--has taken firm root.

An impending break-up and privatization of the Japan National Railways, a bottomless pit of government debts, has been assured, although not yet formalized, in Parliament. And Nakasone-advocated reform of the entire education system appears inevitable, although the precise details have not yet taken shape.

The real outcome of Nakasone’s initiatives will not be seen until some time after he leaves office, as Nakasone himself said in an interview in early April.

Referring to “the process of internationalization of Japan’s society,” he told American reporters that “only the seeds have been planted. The flower has not yet bloomed. The harvest has yet to be reaped.”

Then he cited a poem to the effect that a future prime minister would preside over the “harvest.”

It went:

“The one who creates the chrysanthemum; the one who views the chrysanthemum; they are strangers to one another.”