n029  1029  14 May 78
 
BC-JAPAN 2takes
By HENRY SCOTT-STOKES
c.1978 N.Y. Times News Service
    TOKYO - A major defense debate has begun in Japan, inspired in part
by President Carter's plans for withdrawing American combat units
from South Korea, but more fundamentally by a drastic reduction in
United States forces in the Far East and a rapid Soviet military
buildup in the region.
    The emergence in official circles of the debate, which is receiving
a great deal of attention in the press, coincides with the first Far
Eastern visit by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security
adviser. He will travel to Peking, Tokyo and Seoul on a week-long
trip beginning next Saturday.
    The debate began in January, when Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda
brought up defense issues in his speech opening parliament, the first
time since 1945 that the occasion had been used to raise defense
questions.
    It was further stimulated by an announcement from an opposition
Buddhist political party, Komeito, that it was switching sides and
would support the nation's 260,000-member armed forces, known as the
Self-Defense Forces.
    Since then the press, urged on by business interests eager for more
defense spending, has stirred animosity against the Soviet Union by
publishing articles that previously would never have seen the light
of day. Tokyo Shimbun recently speculated that the only foreign power
that could mount a naval invasion of Japan was the Soviet Union, and
that if it did so, its forces would land at Wakkanai or in Ishikari
Bay, on the northern island of Hokkaido.
    And Yomiuri Shimbun reported this week on its front page that
officials no longer believed that the United States had the power to
defend Japan. The bulk of the Pakific Seventh Fleet, it said, would
be shifted to the Atlantic in the event of an emergency in Western
Europe.
    These articles have not aroused strong public reaction here, but a
recent Yomiuri poll found that only 21 percent of Japanese people
believed that America would defend Japan under the joint security
treaty. Thirty-eight percent were skeptical that the United States
would honor the treaty.
    Similar polls have been published over the years with practically
the same results, but now the press and an unprecedented series of
official statements are focusing public attention on defense issues.
    (MORE)
    
0514 1329ped
***************

n030  1033  14 May 78
 
BC-JAPAN 1stadd
TOKYO: issues.
    The intensity of the issue was indicated in a speech given recently
by Shin Kanemaru, director general of Japan's Defense Agency, a
position equivalent to secretary of defense, who remarked that
''Russian warships and other vessels make such frequent appearances
in the Sea of Japan these days that we might as well refer to those
waters as the Sea of Russia.''
    Kanemaru, who was speaking at a seminar here at the Keidanren, the
Japanese Employers Association, noted the huge disparity in Soviet
and Japanese military air strength. ''The Soviet Union deploys 2,000
aircraft in the Far East,'' he said, ''while Japan possesses only
400.'PJapan recently appropriated funds to buy 100 F-15 jet fighters
and 45 P3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft from the United States at a
cost of $4.5 billion, potentially the biggest Japanese aircraft
orders ever.
    Commenting on the imbalance between Japanese and Soviet forces,
which the new aircraft would not greatly affect, Kanemaru said that
Japan had nothing more than ''bamboo spears against machine guns.''
    Some American officials have speculated that this debate is serving
to prepare the ground for closer cooperation between the United
States and Japan on military matters. Six years ago, Brzezinski in
fact proposed such cooperation in a book on Japan titled ''The
Fragile Blossom.'' In the book, he called for ''joint high-level
civilian-military planning staffs'' to be set up.
    At present there is virtually no coordination between the
Self-Defense Forces and the 46,000-strong United States forces in
Japan, spread over 130 bases and including 20,000 marines in Okinawa.
    Japan spent $8.6 billion on defense this year, equivalent to
nine-tenths of 1 percent of its gross national product, making it the
biggest defense spender in Asia except for China. The United States
spends 6 percent of its gross national product on defense.
    
0514 1334ped
***************