CONNIDENTTAL
More generally, Mr. Royle spoke of the British Government's determination to maintain a military interest east of Suos. If Mr. Takeuchi appeared to evince no real interest in this, it would be wrong to interpret this as indifference on the part of the Japanese Government. He already knew our position, and perhaps ho might have been mildly surprised that points of substance were touched upon at all in a courtesy call. You will have seen from my telegram number 753 of 13 October about the agenda for the forthcoming conversations between Mr. Heath and Mr. Sato that the Japanese are in fact particularly interested in the nature of the British presence in the Persian Gulf.
5. After the courtesy call you had discussions with Mr. Ryozo Sunobe, the Director-General of the Asian Affairs Bureau, and Mr. Hiroshi Hashimoto, head of the China Division. The deputy head of the Division, Mr. Koji Watanabe, was also present on the Japanese side. It was made abundantly clear to us afterwards that the Japanese greatly appreciated Michael Wilford's and your account of the present state of our relations with China; they were predictably avid for details of your visit to Peking. Those from our Embassy who had been attending our periodic meetings with the Japanese on China had the impression that, thanks largely to your questioning, the talks showed a better balance of give and take than is sometimes the case. Mr. Hashimoto made a particularly good impression. (Chancery is sending you a separate record of conversation).
6. At the dinner which Mr. and Mrs. Takeuchi gave in honour of Mr. and Mrs. Royle, that evening, we were unable to follow all the conversation but the table was understandably siled by what we thought we heard Mr. Takeuchi say to the effect that Japan might have nuclear weapons within five years, though without the actual war-heads. There is still a doubt
in our minds as to what he actually said and Japanese is a language full of nuances to indicate varying degrees of probability. We are still looking for an opportunity to check this with the interpreter that evening, but would be very interested to know how Mr. Royle recollects the conversation in view of the Ambassador's intention to send a despatch fairly soon on (for want of a better phrase) "Japanese Militarism". A remark of this kind by the Parliamentary Vice-Minister obviously deserves careful analysis, but we should point out that although he is the only other political Minister in the Ministry beside the Foreign Minister himself, he does not differ from his predecessors in occupying a strangely peripheral place in the Ministry's structure.
7. Mr. Royle had earlier mot a small group of newspaper mon from the Times, the Daily Telegraph, Reuters, the Chicago Tribune, A.P. and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, This enabled him to place in perspective his motives for being in Japan and answer on a non-attributable basis questions about our Far Eastern policy with special reference to China. We hope that the Minister was also for his part interested to talk with as knowledgable a China hand as Mr. Roderick of A.P. and as close an observer of the Indo-China scene as Mr. Jamieson of the Chicago Tribune.
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CONTIDENTIAL
(B. Hitch)
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