CONFIDENTIAL
From the Private Secretary
LAST
MON
10 DOWNING STREET
For Gasten the 49
is
Ps/Firs Min Contami
in ihway
PEO R&❤.
IN
8 May 1977.
e. H
11 Mar 1977 ·
(40)
HKK 16+1
Withanas
Me Stanley FRO
Stufen lift.
TRED
iste
fisall
Call on the Prime Minister by the Japanese Prime Minister:
915
As you know, the Prime Minister agreed to have a bilateral' meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister following the Downing Street Summit, and Mr. Fukuda called at 10 Downing Street at 1950 this evening. He was accompanied by Mr. Hatoyama, his Foreign Minister; the Japanese Ambassador in London; his Private Secretary and an interpreter. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary was also present.
*
After a preliminary conversation, during which Mr. Fukuda said that he had paid a visit to the boarding house where he had lived during his posting to London in the early 1930s, the Prime Minister said that Mr. Fukuda had made a real impression on his colleagues at the Downing Street Conference. There was then a brief discussion about the Japanese electoral situation.
Mr. Fukuda told the Prime Minister that there had been very close relations between the UK and Japan before the War. The Japanese had often talked about "my Britain" or "my England" and it was his personal wish to restore our bilateral relations to that level again. He personally believed that relations were now improving. The Prime Minister agreed, but said that there was one problem which Mr. Dell had raised with him during his visit to Japan, namely our worry about the imbalance of trade and its effect on unemployment. Japan was so productive that there were bound to be difficulties. If he raised these problems with Mr. Fukuda, he wanted to assure him that he was not doing so in any spirit of ill-will. Mr. Fukuda said that if the Prime Minister found any problems, he hoped he would let him know. The Prime Minister said that he would certainly take up this offer.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary said that the main problem in the EEC's relations with Japan was still shipbuilding, and to a lesser extent steel. There was also a problem over the penetration of the electronics industry and television sets. Mr. Fukuda himself would know that this was not solely, or even primarily, a British problem. We had raised it with the Japanese as the Presidency of the European Council. Nevertheless, we faced a particular difficulty, as a maritime nation, with our shipbuilding industry in depressed areas such as Merseyside, and we faced a real risk of having no shipbuilding industry left. This was a matter of concern both to us and to the French, and indeed to the smaller EEC countries. In Britain, whole firms had collapsed, and it was very difficult to find other ways of introducing employment, eg into Clydeside. Mr. Fukuda said that shipbuilding presented a problem which might not yet have been fully solved. But in the case of other
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