Which Way for Japan ? '
Mr. Yoshida's sustained determination to make his present world tour, and the opposition which he had to surmount at home in order to do so, should suggest what is indeed the case—that Japan's relations with the West are at a crucial stage. The moment for the joint Moscow-Peking declaration of 'deep sympathy for Japan' was of course deliberately chosen. But its significance—falling as it did in quite a shower of Sino-Soviet manifestos on October 1 1—may not yet have been fully appreciated. Think of any Russian statesman, Tsarist or Communist, visited by a nightmare in which China and Japan, advancing in material power under concerted programmes, were publicly offering at the same time a joint foreign policy, and the geopolitical weight of the Communist entente as seen from Tokyo bezomes apparent. Japan is being Invited to take up economic and other relations with 'her neighbours '—and the Russians, looking across from the once- Japanese tip of Sakhalin, are very near neighbours, able to make an extraordinary amount of fuss over fishery rights. Nobody need be, and few will be, deceived by what the Sino- Soviet ddmarche wraps up in the word 'normalisation,' but one of the items is trade. Nor is the choice for Japan merely a matter of those relations with the United States which the Communist powers are bent on severing. Britain Ind the Commonwealth are deeply concerned. History will eventually show whether it is wise to confine that concern 'to irritating trade ' reservations ' which (however well-founded the fears that they express) are not keeping Japan out of GATT.
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