Heartbreak

The Japanese do not easily give up a notion once they get it in their heads. Last week they had quite a shock to discover that a 90-year-old notion was no longer true.

When Congress decided, in 1851, that the Japanese should be persuaded to open their ports to U. S. trade, old Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry was picked to persuade them. He had spent, as it happened, two long years reading travelers' tales--which convinced him that the whole object of Japanese ceremony was to wring from the opposite party a sense of affectionate inferiority.

So up Japan's Yeddo Bay, one afternoon, puffed two preposterous paddle frigates--Mississippi and Susquehanna--and two sloops-of-war--Plymouth and Saratoga. The former were the first steamships ever to appear in Japanese waters. As soon as they dropped anchor a great swarm of picket boats came out to shoo the smoke-breathing monsters away. A spokesman presented himself on one of these, demanding to see the commanding officer. Perry sent a warrant officer, who said that the "Lord of the Forbidden Interior" was of much too high rank to talk with a mere boatman.

The Japanese produced the Vice Governor of nearby Uraga. "Why has the Governor not come?" asked Perry, by messenger. The Japanese said the Governor's rank forbade his boarding ships, would the Lord of the Forbidden Interior designate an officer of rank low enough to talk with the Vice Governor? He would --a junior lieutenant, who haughtily informed the Vice Governor that the Lord of the Forbidden Interior had a letter from the Mikado of the U. S. to the Mikado of Japan.

The Vice Governor retired for consultation. Next day a gilded barge pulled out, with the Governor himself aboard. Upshot was that President Fillmore's letter was delivered, Perry sailed away, went back after six months, and negotiated the first U. S.-Japanese trade treaty. Negotiations culminated in a grand feast and bottle party on Mississippi's quarterdeck. Just before he passed out, the Japanese High Commissioner flung his arms around a captain's neck and declared through happy tears: "Nippon and America, all same heart." For the next 77 years--until 1931--the U. S.-Japanese heart beat warmly. The two collaborated in opening China's door, and in suppressing her Boxer Rebellion. Theodore Roosevelt sponsored the peace conference at Portsmouth, N. H., which ended the Russo-Japanese war. In 1911 a new trade treaty was concluded. At the Washington conference in 1921, Japan and the U. S. joined again in the Five-and Nine-Power Treaties.

By this time Japan had the firm idea that the U. S. was an indulgent friend. Surely the U. S. would not mind Japanese aggression in Asia, especially if it went by such a nice name as "the New Order in East Asia." Blithely the Japanese infringed the rights of U. S. citizens and U. S. property, shut diplomatic eyes to repeated protests, eagerly grasped incidents like the carrying home of Ambassador Saito's ashes on U. S. S. Astoria as examples of everlasting amity. The U. S. openly gave China commercial credits, declared a moral embargo on certain war materials to Japan, and, last July 26, gave notice of abrogation of the 1911 treaty, effective six months later. But Japanese diplomats could see no flaw in an ancient friendship.

Last week, two days before the treaty's abrogation became effective, the Japanese were still hopefully wangling for a renewal, which the U. S. State Department had no faint intention of making. The zero hour rather than the words of Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles finally convinced Japan's Ambassador to Washington Kensuke Horinouchi of the facts.

Japan was rocked back on her heels. Actually the abrogation meant no immediate change in U. S.-Japanese trade: it meant that either party could, if desired, throw up trade barriers of one sort or another. Last week there seemed no immediate probability of either side's doing anything drastic. The various embargo measures before Congress were in doldrums, and the State Department was leery of creating precedents which might prove disastrous if applied in Europe.

Nevertheless "a sword of Damocles," as the Tokyo Asahi said, "was raised over Japan's head." The country reacted, as always under pressure, with threats and recriminations. Commander Masaharu Homma of the Tientsin Garrison, an old hand at talking out of turn, warned that the Japanese Army might have to "reconsider appropriate steps." Japan's Army spokesman told a fantastic cock-&-buller about a Chinese plot against the life of U. S. Ambassador to China Nelson Trusler Johnson. The Japanese press said it was time to stop "courting favor" with the U. S. In private, statesmen loudly complained that Franklin Roosevelt was trying to wreck the "New Order in East Asia."

Officially the Japanese Government was extraordinarily humble. It had begun to realize a sad fact about U. S.-Japanese relations: Nippon and America, now two-piece heart.

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