November 1, 1986

All this week, fighter planes creased the skies above this city and infantrymen crawled across muddy fields in the most comprehensive military maneuvers ever held jointly by the United States and Japan. Code-named Keen Edge, the exercise tested the two countries' combined forces against an unnamed enemy, nonetheless recognized by everyone to be the Soviet Union. Military planners here have long assumed that this northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, because of its location astride the strategic La Perouse Strait, would be a candidate for Soviet invasion in a conventional war. Technically, Keen Edge was nothing more than a bigger version of maneuvers held for years under a security treaty requiring the United States to come to the defense of Japan if Japan is attacked.

After a six-month delay, the New YormmCity Board of Education plans to distribute a videotape about AIDS, the president of the board, Robert F. Wagner Jr., said yesterday. The 20-minute tape, ''Sex, Drugs and AIDS,'' largely financed by the board, had been sitting on a shelf, Mr. Wagner said, pending changes requested by senior board officials. The tape mixes candid talk from the actress Rae Dawn Chong with scenes of addicts using drugs and short explanations from AIDS victims about how they got the disease. Mr. Wagner said officials at the board, including Chancellor Nathan Quinones and a deputy chancellor, Charles I. Schonhaut, were concerned that the tape insufficiently emphasized ''saying no'' to sex as the best way to prevent AIDS.

Against the backdrop of the American elections on Tuesday, the United States and Japan announced a broad agreement today to coordinate their economic policies and bolster both economies. Japan agreed to accelerate its sluggish economy by cutting interest rates, among other actions, and the United States agreed to abandon its efforts to drive the dollar down against the yen. Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d and Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, who began working out the agreement at a meeting in San Francisco in September, termed their actions an important step in the year-old effort of leading industrial countries to coordinate economic policies. As part of the agreement, Japan's central bank announced that it was cutting its discount rate, which it charges on loans to commercial banks, from 3 1/2 percent to 3 percent, the lowest rate since World War II. [ Page 39. ] View Stressed by Baker Mr. Baker noted today that he had been openly urging Japan and West Germany to reduce their interest rates since August in the belief that doing so would speed up their economies, assure the import of more American goods and thus help reduce the American trade deficit.

The Government's main economic forecasting gauge climbed four-tenths of 1 percent in September, reversing the slight decline of August, the Commerce Department reported today. The data added to rapidly accumulating evidence that the economy may have begun to grow somewhat faster than the 2.25 percent annual rate recorded in the first nine months of 1986. In another sign, the Commerce Department said orders received by the nation's factories posted their best advance in almost two years. [ Page 38. ] Private analysts said they were particularly heartened by the fact that the gain in the index of leading indicators, though modest, was paced by components reflecting the ''real'' economy, and that the rise in factory orders covered most industries.

The Justice Department is investigating real estate transactions involving the Philippine Defense Minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, and his wife, Christina, Federal officials said today. The investigation concerns charges that Mr. Enrile and his wife diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars in American aid for personal use, but Federal officials said they had no firm evidence to support the charges. The officials said they were examining several transactions made by the couple before the Government of Ferdinand E. Marcos was toppled early this year. The transactions to include the purchase by Mrs. Enrile in 1977 and 1979 of condominiums in San Francisco, which she sold in 1982 to a dummy corporation, according to the officials.