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Perfect Harmony. While riots flared through the city, Suharto gave a state dinner for Tanaka in the heavily guarded presidential palace. Declared the host: "This meeting and Your Excellency's presence within our midst... may facilitate Your Excellency's wish to become intimate with the current problems and issues of the Indonesian people, their feelings, their hopes." Tanaka answered by expressing his thanks for having been granted the opportunity to "witness at first hand [how] the great people of Indonesia have built a society of perfect harmony."
Taking no chances on the final day of the visit the Indonesians prudently whisked their honored guest to the airport by helicopter. Back home in Tokyo, Tanaka told a press conference that the Japanese must try "to erase the causes for such demonstrations," adding: "My greatest impression was that there was a need for a much greater cooperative effort by these countries."
"The exercise may not have generated much good will," concluded TIME Correspondent Herman Nickel, "but at least it has focused attention on Japan's problems with the rest of Asia. If it gets the Japanese public to thinking of Southeast Asia in terms of more than just exports and resources, the whole bumpy ride may have been worth it."