Envoy Praises Tokyo for Sharing Defense Burden : Retiring Mansfield Hails Ties to Japan

Slightly thinner and with a little less hair than he had 11 1/2 years ago when he became U.S. ambassador to Japan, Mike Mansfield on Monday pronounced U.S.-Japanese relations “in excellent shape” as he prepared to begin his second retirement.

The 85-year-old envoy, who became both a legend and an institution in Washington-Tokyo affairs, said that he and his wife, Maureen, will “leave with our heads high and our arms swinging” before the end of the year.

Mansfield, a former Senate majority leader, was tapped by President Jimmy Carter for the Tokyo post in 1977 after announcing his retirement from politics. He said he will send his resignation to Secretary of State George P. Shultz today and will also send a letter thanking President Reagan for allowing him to continue serving here during the Reagan Administration.

“These years here have not only been interesting,” he said. “They have been the most enjoyable in our lives.”

America’s longest-serving ambassador to Japan said he will return “to Washington first, to Montana any time but the winter, and, in cold weather, to Florida.” He represented Montana for 34 years in the House and Senate.

As Mansfield, composed but with moist eyes, made his retirement announcement Monday, many reporters broke into tears. Reporters gave him a 30-second round of applause before asking questions.

Mansfield delivered a statistics-filled valedictory on the state of the U.S.-Japanese relationship that he insisted “is the most important in the world, bar none.”

He praised Japan’s defense budget of about $30 billion, which he said would amount to $41 billion--”ahead of all our NATO allies”--if calculated as the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries compute their defense budgets. A $2.5-billion Japanese contribution, he added, pays for 40% of the cost of stationing 60,000 American troops in Japan.

“When it comes to defense burden-sharing, there is no other country in the world that has done as well as Japan,” he declared.

He also praised Japan’s promise to defend sea lanes out to 1,000 miles from Tokyo and Osaka harbors as a proper role of self-defense.

“I don’t expect Japan to become a warlike nation again,” he said.

Calling the Japanese “basically pacifistic,” Mansfield said that “the Japanese people, despite breakouts now and then, would like to remain an isolated and insular people who go their own way and do their own thing.” Japan’s economic power, however, has made it impossible for the country to remain “an island unto itself,” he added.

“We do not want Japan to become a regional military power. Japan’s neighbors do not want it to become one. And neither does Japan,” he said.

“In the field of security, (our) relationship couldn’t be better,” Mansfield said, adding that overall relations are in “excellent shape. . . . The only problem we have at the moment is rice, a difficult, delicate . . . issue.”

He praised U.S. Trade Representative Clayton K. Yeutter for a “Solomon-like decision” in rejecting a petition from the U.S. Rice Millers Assn. demanding that Japan lift a ban on rice imports. But he complained that Yeutter is pressing Japan too hard to come up with a compromise by mid-December, when an interim review of multinational trade negotiations is to be conducted in Montreal.

He also defended Japanese investment in the United States, which has reached $33 billion.

“Since I’ve been in this job,” the ambassador said, “I’ve met 47 American governors of states and territories, and they all came over seeking Japanese investment. I’ve encouraged them to continue doing so” because it creates new jobs, enlarges the tax base for U.S. communities and brings in new technology.

Mansfield said trade figures for the first nine months indicate that the U.S. deficit with Japan this year will fall to about $52 billion from a record $60 billion last year. U.S. agricultural exports to Japan, he added, promise to rise to $7.6 billion from $5.7 billion last year.

“That is progress in the right direction, and I only hope those figures will continue,” he said.

Mansfield said he has no idea who will be named to replace him and that he will make recommendations to President-elect George Bush “only if he asks me.”

Over the years, Mansfield won respect and friendship among Japanese for his understanding of Japan, his ability to identify crucial issues and his modesty and thoughtfulness. He enjoyed a personal rapport with five Japanese prime ministers.

Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita praised him Monday for “exerting great efforts for U.S.-Japan friendship.”

Although a few Americans called him too sympathetic to Japan, Mansfield’s stature remained so high in Washington that Reagan reappointed the former Democratic senator when he took office in 1981. Mansfield also survived numerous reported attempts by Washington officials to take over the Tokyo job themselves and stayed on even after undergoing triple-bypass heart surgery in January.

On Monday, Mansfield praised Reagan’s policies on Japan as “almost always right on line.”

After working with seven Presidents while in Congress, Mansfield said he “followed instructions as faithfully as I could” under Carter and Reagan.

But “when I disagreed with them, I let them know,” he said, adding that “we have been able to work out our differences.”

Since he assumed his post in June, 1977, the Japanese-U.S. relationship, he said, has “evolved from (that of) a nephew to an uncle into one of a brother to a brother.”

“The Japanese,” he said, “have achieved maturity. They no longer stand in the corner and bow their heads and remain silent. They stand on their own feet, as an equal, and they express their views candidly, as they should. . . . The Japanese have carried their responsibilities extremely well . . . and have proved a staunch and reliable ally and a friend to the United States.”