Japanese Official Calls Hills ‘Cute’ but Aging : Trade: Takayuki Sato said he only wanted to assure his fellow politicians that the U.S. trade envoy is not as tough as she is imagined.

A senior Japanese politician has told a Japanese audience that U.S. Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills is “easy to handle” and “cute but getting on in age.”

Takayuki Sato, deputy secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said at a dinner Monday that Hills is not so tough and “can be handled easily if you lull her with talk of the Oriental way of life and philosophy.”

In an interview Tuesday, Sato said he wanted to assure his listeners, predominantly bureaucrats and politicians who attended the recent economic summit in Houston, that Hills is not as ferocious as her image suggests.

“Everybody in Japan says she is fearful,” he said. “I wanted to explain that she is not.”

In his comments Monday night, Sato reportedly said that Hills, who is 56, “is charming and cute but getting on in age. When I spoke of her husband, she smiled, and I realized she is really quite feminine.”

In Tuesday’s interview, Sato, 62, said he intended no harm.

“Those were not sexist comments,” he said. “I did not say ‘she is feminine’ with any intention of discriminating. Was that sexist?”

Sato, who said he sat next to Hills for more than two hours at a dinner in Houston that President Bush gave July 10, added that he has warm feelings of friendship toward Hills and hopes to meet her the next time she is in Tokyo.

“I gave her my business card and asked her to visit me,” he said. “The prime minister said he will set it up because we get along so well.”

Hills has a reputation as a tough negotiator. When Bush nominated her as trade representative, she pledged to open foreign markets with “a crowbar where necessary.” The statement earned her the nickname the “velvet crowbar.”

Hills played a key role in getting Japan to agree this year to open its market to supercomputers, satellites and wood products, and to adopt economic reforms aimed at cutting the nearly $50-billion U.S. trade deficit with Japan.

Several Japanese newspapers expressed concern that Sato’s comments could have an adverse affect on already touchy U.S.-Japan trade relations.

“The U.S.-Japan relationship seems quiet on the surface, but there are still issues remaining--like opening the rice market, which Hills is in charge of--so there are some people who are worried about Hills’ reaction to Sato’s remarks,” said the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper.

“What will be the reaction from Hills?” asked the Mainichi Shimbun.

The women’s movement in Japan has been gaining steam, partly in reaction to offensive comments and actions by male politicians. Prime Minister Sousuke Uno was hounded out of office last year, in part because of allegations that he had an affair with a geisha.

Also last year, Japan’s agriculture minister, Hisao Horinouchi, stirred a controversy with his remark that women had no place in politics and should “keep to the house.”

Women voters registered their anger by electing a record number of women to Parliament last year and early this year.