The government did not reveal exchanges between Japan's prime minister and the U.S. president in July 1991 on converting the nation's nontariff rice import barriers to tariffs, according to a diplomatic document declassified Wednesday.
Then-Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu talked with then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush in the United States, at a time when Japanese lawmakers backed by the farm sector had opposed the use of tariffs as they would lead to opening of the nation's rice market.
Kaifu, whose position was fragile within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was apparently worried about a backlash from lawmakers seeking to protect Japan's agricultural sector from a flood of imports.