57 - Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013): Pragmatist Who Radically Improved Britain’s Image in Japan and Successfully Promoted Japanese Manufacturing Investment in Britain

Summary

INTRODUCTION

MARGARET THATCHER MADE a significant contribution to relations between Britain and Japan. She recognized Japan's post-war economic achievements, urged the Japanese to open up their market and promoted British exports to Japan. The reforms, which she instituted in the British economy, ensured that Britain was no longer seen as suffering from what the Japanese called eikokubyō. (the English disease). But her most long-lasting and important success was in promoting Japanese manufacturing investment in Britain.

Edward Heath in 1972 had been the first British Prime Minister while in office to pay an official visit to Japan. Mrs Thatcher (as she then was) paid two official visits to Japan in 1982 and 1989. She first visited Japan as leader of the opposition in 1977, attended the Tokyo Economic Summit in 1979 and the G7 summit meeting in Tokyo in 1986. She revisited Japan on a few occasions after her retirement either to give lectures for which she was well rewarded by her Japanese admirers or for ceremonies such as the launch in Kobe of a giant Taiwanese container ship in 1994 or as the guest of Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 1996 for their centenary celebrations. She also met Japanese leaders at intenational conferences elsewhere and received at No.10 Downing Street leading Japanese politicians visiting London. As a result she came to know and was respected by top Japanese politicians including Nakasone Yasuhiro, Takeshita Noboru, Kaifu Toshiki, Fukuda Takeo and Miyazawa Kiichi as well as outstanding Japanese businessmen such as Morita Akio,

PART I OVERVIEW

Margaret Thatcher. On Japan

Mrs Thatcher in her memoir The Downing Street Years included some seven pages of observations about Japan (pages 495–501). She saw Japan as ‘a great economic power and a leading democratic nation’. She noted that:

… the main subject of (often difficult) negotiations during my time as Prime Minister was trade. We pressed the Japanese to open up their markets to our goods, to liberalize their financial and retail distribution systems and to work towards the reduction of their huge and destabilizing balance of trade surpluses with the West.

She saw two big obstacles to expanding British exports:

The first was that their distribution system was inefficient, fragmented and overmanned and their administrative system was difficult to get around. The second was a cultural difference.