Tokyo Plays Down Yeltsin Cancellation : Diplomacy: Officials urge patience, but anger emerges. Russian press blames Japan’s ‘hysterical’ environment for trip postponement.

TOKYO — One day after Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin abruptly canceled his impending visit to Japan, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and other officials scrambled Thursday to put the best face on the diplomatic debacle, while public opinion was split over whom to blame.

Miyazawa urged his country to “wait patiently” for Russia to sort out its domestic problems, while Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe urged people to “keep a cool head” and not respond in an “exaggerated way.”

The pleas came as the Russian press began blaming Japan’s “hysterical” environment for contributing to Yeltsin’s abrupt postponement. However, only about 100 people gathered outside the Japanese Embassy in Moscow for what was supposed to be a massive anti-Japanese protest--and half of those present were journalists.

Watanabe also announced that Japan would not renege on any of its international aid pledges to Russia. Tokyo has promised $100 million in humanitarian aid and cooperation for the safety of Russia’s nuclear power plants, part of a $24-billion package offered by the Group of Seven (G-7) industrial nations earlier this year to help the former Soviet Union pull out of its economic crisis.

But the Japanese press reported Thursday that Russia had been seeking a whopping $50-billion package of long-term aid from Japan, a request categorically turned down by officials here as long as there is no progress in settling the dispute over four small islands seized by the Red Army at the close of World War II. The islands, at the southern end of the Kuril chain, are off Japan’s northernmost main island, Hokkaido.

Yeltsin’s sudden action, coming just three days before his scheduled arrival in Tokyo on Sunday, is almost without precedent in Japan’s modern diplomatic history, and it included a snub of the imperial family, which had planned a welcome party.

While most officials kept to low-key utterances of “regret,” public anger and frustration has also emerged over what is being dubbed here the “postponement shock.”

“This is childish diplomacy,” fumed one high-level Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified by name. The official said that the postponement has shattered Tokyo’s trust in Moscow and that any Russian pronouncements will be taken with even more skepticism in the future.

Junichi Takemi, chairman of a ceramics firm, said it is just as well that Yeltsin will not come, because investing in Russia is like “throwing money down a sewer.”

The Russians were criticized here for everything from having the gall to inform South Korean President Roh Tae Woo before telling Miyazawa--Yeltsin had been scheduled to go to Seoul after visiting Japan--to damaging local merchants, to wasting the efforts that thousands of workers put into preparing for the state visit.

Members of the National Police Agency, which had completed elaborate security arrangements involving 12,000 officers, took the news in “open-mouthed” amazement, according to local press reports. They were particularly irked about having to comply with Russia’s fussy demands for security at a sumo wrestling hall, which entailed building a bulletproof shield around the entire ring--only to see it go to waste.

The New Otani Hotel, where most of the Russian delegation would have stayed, suddenly found itself with about 70% of its rooms vacant for four days.

And the emperor’s family had to call off plans for a welcome party of 70 guests and a menu specially planned to accommodate Yeltsin’s tastes: grilled fish, cold smoked chicken, lamb roast and an ice cream dessert arranged in the shape of Mt. Fuji.

However, public criticism of Japan’s hard-line diplomacy also began to surface. Hokkaido Gov. Takahiro Yokomichi, whose prefecture in northern Japan has begun building trade links with the Soviet Far East, criticized officials for pushing too hard on the issue of the Northern Territories, as the islands are referred to in Japan.

“The government aimed for 100 and ended up with zero,” Yokomichi said.

Gregory Clark, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo and a former Australian diplomat, called Japan’s diplomacy over the territorial issue “lousy.” To cling tenaciously to all claims of territory is not in keeping with international practice, he said, citing as an example Poland’s retention of its World War II territorial gains from Germany.

Others criticized Tokyo’s insistence on linking large-scale economic aid to a territorial resolution. But a top Japanese official revealed Thursday that the Miyazawa administration views the linkage as crucial for its political survival.

“If I do not get economic aid separated from the territorial issue, I will not be able to remain in office,” the government official quoted Yeltsin as telling Watanabe when the two men met recently in Moscow.

“(If Japan) began full-scale aid without progress on the territorial issue, the Miyazawa administration would not last,” Watanabe reportedly responded.

Still, the postponement is seen as a setback in the prime minister’s attempt to forge a more assertive foreign policy, which includes such unprecedented actions as the emperor’s scheduled visit to China later this year and the dispatch of peacekeeping troops to Cambodia--Tokyo’s first overseas military mission since World War II.

In Moscow, Sergei Skvortsov, co-chairman of the Russian Committee for the Defense of the Kurils, handed a letter to a Japanese diplomat protesting Japan’s demand for the islands’ return and the way the Japanese media cover the issue.

“I’m glad Boris Yeltsin has called off his visit to Japan, because I think that postwar borders must not be violated,” a former hard-line member of the Soviet Parliament, Col. Viktor Alksnis, said.

Watanabe reported from Tokyo and Dahlburg from Moscow.