Word: hatoyamas
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...bitter, sleety day in Moscow last week, as ailing Japanese Premier Hatoyama climbed gingerly into a Soviet limousine, he asked the Russian chauffeur: "Is the weather a bad omen for the talks...
Cracked the chauffeur: "You know the Russian proverb: 'Rain on Saturday, laughter the following Friday.' " But the following Friday, as 73-year-old Premier Hatoyama sat down with Russia's Premier Bulganin to sign an agreement to "end the state of war" between Japan and the Soviet Union, only the Russians were laughing...
...South Sakhalin, the Kurils and other Japanese islands. By holding the islands and delaying peace talks, they kept themselves in a strong bargaining position for eleven years. Last month the Russians decided that the time had come to strike a bargain with the Japanese, hinted that if Premier Hatoyama dropped in at Moscow's Spiridonovka Palace, he might hear something to his advantage about the island territories. Hatoyama, who needs such a political victory to keep his Liberal-Democratic government from falling apart, had hopes that the Russians might yield, not Sakhalin or all the Kuril Islands...
Accompanied by his wife, a nurse (carrying a wheelchair) and his foreign-affairs brain, Ichiro Kono, aging Hatoyama hobbled out of his plane at Moscow airport, smiled gratefully as white-bearded Premier Bulganin took him firmly by the arm to help him down. Hatoyama was obviously flattered by the imposing list of Soviet notables attending the conference: "Some of their biggest men," said Ambassador Matsumoto. The visits began with banquets too rich for Japanese stomachs ("Oh, if they'd only cut the servings in half," muttered Mrs. Hatoyama), accompanied by toasts to the glories of Japanese culture...
Last week, with the situation thus stalemated, bustling, rotund Ichiro Kono, whose official title as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry serves to disguise the fact that he is one'of the brainiest men in the Hatoyama government, invited priests and mayor alike to Tokyo to talk the whole thing over. "With 8,000,000 tourists coming to Kyoto yearly," he pointed out, "nobody's coffers need be empty." Let the temples charge their admission, he suggested; let the city collect its tax. Then let the temples put in for heavy tax deductions against the national government...