President Richard Nixon described his counterpart, Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, in 1973 as "nationalist" and a "new boy" on the Western bloc, according to a tape recording recently made public.
Nixon, who was said to have differences with Tanaka over policies on China, made the remarks in a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti on April 18, 1973, at the White House, according to the recording.
"He (Tanaka) is more nationalistic than the old regimes that ran through Yoshida, Ikeda, Kishi and Sato," Nixon said in referring to Tanaka's predecessors in postwar Japan — Shigeru Yoshida, Hayato Ikeda, Nobusuke Kishi and Eisaku Sato. Nixon had met with Tanaka the previous year.