DearTIME-Reader:

ICHIRO HATOYAMA, TIME'S cover subject this week, is a man who is both symbol and agent of renascent Japan, a country beset anew with internal struggles and aspirations ten years after the war. The story is a penetrating assessment of a Japan at the crossroads. It is the story of how pride and tradition, international beckonings and bickerings, are once again bestirring the Japanese nation.

Our cover project was launched last month under the direction of Tokyo Correspondents Curtis Prendergast and James Greenfield, and was finished last week with their final report of Premier Hatoyama's overwhelming victory at the polls. How Hatoyama was elected, what it may portend for the rest of the world, and why he is rated Japan's most Japanese Premier since war's end are clearly set forth in Land of the Reluctant Sparrows.

Other TIME highlights this week:

P: A glimpse of an earlier Japan and its culture of unique charm in the ART STORY Out of the Floating World (with color reproductions).

P: In Dublin, it was a week to recall the famous 1926 riot in the Abbey Theater. The volatile Irish theatergoers were looking forward to a notable event: the world premiere of a new SEAN O'CASEY play. Mindful of the past, the law was ready. The first-night crowd was peppered with uniformed police and plainclothesmen, alert for action should the Dubliners repeat their 1926 objections to an O'Casey tilt with convention. Lester Bernstein of TIME'S London bureau was on hand to report the opening night of The Bishop's Bonfire (see THEATER).

P: From San Francisco comes a MEDICINE story dealing with a case so rare that the attending physician admits: "We have nothing exactly like it in world literature." The Lost Faces tells what it is like to go through life with visual agnosia.

P: One of the pleasures that a U.S. tourist enjoys only in his own country is the ever-increasing number of modern, luxurious motels. In 1951, the American Automobile Association remarked that anyone who has a "pile of bricks and a vacant lot" puts up a motel. Today, competition for the tourist dollar is even more acute, the product more enticing. How tempting and comfortable some of these motels can be is shown in our four-page color spread; what the industry is like is told in The Boom That Travelers Built, in BUSINESS.

P: Another BUSINESS story that we are pleased to publish this week is Partnership in New Orleans, a new kind of economic conference which achieved impressive results last week. Some of you may recall that I used this space in two recent issues of TIME (Jan. 24 and Feb. 21) to talk about the Inter-American Investment Conference in New Orleans. What happened at the conference both astonished and pleased some of the most hardheaded experts in the international investment world.

Cordially yours,

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