Profile : The Tough Cop of Japan Trade Has Resurfaced : But this time Makoto Kuroda is in the private sector. His ‘descent from heaven’ is unprecedented.

It looked as though Makoto Kuroda, Japan’s notoriously abrasive top trade negotiator, would give new meaning to the term “descent from heaven” when he ended his career at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry two years ago.

Kuroda signed on as an adviser to an American company--a move unheard of in the tradition of amakudari, the “celestial plunge” of mighty bureaucrats who retire into lucrative jobs in Japan’s private sector. It was particularly noteworthy in the case of Kuroda, the sharp-tongued former vice trade minister who made an art out of humbling U.S. officials with his tough-cop tactics.

And it was widely acclaimed as a coup for Kuroda’s new employer, Salomon Brothers, the New York-based investment bank that had been making steady inroads into Japan’s coveted financial markets.

At the time, critical scrutiny was starting to focus on former U.S. officials working as lobbyists and consultants for Japanese interests in Washington. Kuroda’s case was held out as an example of how Americans can have similar access to the power elite in Tokyo.

But look again. Salomon’s influential agent has since returned to the bosom of corporate Japan. In June, Kuroda, 58, joined Mitsubishi Corp., the giant trading house at the core of the powerful Mitsubishi industrial group. In October, the company made him a managing director.

“I wanted to do some real work,” Kuroda confided before making a recent luncheon speech to the America-Japan Society in Tokyo on the topic of economic “interdependence” between the two nations. “I need to earn money, just like anybody else.”

Kuroda perhaps personifies the tight web of relationships between government and business in Japan. Although his brief stint with Salomon raised hopes of new access for Americans fighting on Japanese economic turf, his ultimate choice of career demonstrates how fundamentally incongruous the two countries’ systems remain.

Fair or unfair, ethical or not, it has in fact become common for former U.S. government officials to work for foreign firms--especially the Japanese--soon after leaving office. But in Japan the domestic firms are the ones paying a premium for the insider’s savvy that former bureaucrats like Kuroda have to offer. It may be many years before foreign companies can plug in.

Kuroda’s deal with Salomon Brothers, for example, was no more than a temporary arrangement during his two-year “drying out period”--the length of time when top Japanese government officials are barred from taking full-time jobs in industry. During that transition he also advised the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan and the Japan Economic Foundation.

“I accepted the advisory role at Salomon because I thought helping Americans do business in this country would be good for Japan,” Kuroda told The Times in an interview the other day. “If it sets some precedent I’ll be very happy.”

Ironically, Kuroda has been an outspoken critic of Pat Choate, a political economist who sounded an alarm about the practice of selling knowledge and clout to outsiders in Washington. Choate outlines Japan’s formidable lobbying efforts in a controversial book, “Agents of Influence,” and alleges that Japanese interests spend $400 million a year on hired guns--many of them former government officials. Kuroda denounces Choate as “dangerous” to U.S.-Japan relations.

Kuroda’s new position at Mitsubishi brings his career full circle. He started out 35 years ago at the trade ministry, popularly known as MITI, working in the division that was pushing for the relaxation of tough anti-monopoly statutes imposed on Japan by the postwar American occupation.

The Mitsubishi group--descended from one of the prewar zaibatsu combines that were broken up by occupation authorities--is now attracting attention for its aggressive moves overseas and its bent for increasing economic concentration at home. The group’s real estate arm bought a conspicuous 51% stake in Rockefeller Center last year; in April the group reunited two metal and mining affiliates that had been split apart during the days of trust-busting zeal.

What the straight-talking Kuroda will do for Mitsubishi is not yet clear, but the persona he developed over years of confrontational negotiations with Washington is certain to be a public relations asset, if for no other reason than its shock value.

Kuroda, then MITI’s vice minister for international affairs, gained such notoriety during the heyday of U.S.-Japan trade friction in the late 1980s that he was mentioned in the Doonesbury comic strip--no small distinction in a country where few people could name the Japanese prime minister.

“I always try to respond to the questions we face,” Kuroda said. “The traditional Japanese way, unfortunately, is to try to avoid debate, not to face the problem in a square manner. It may be the Japanese wisdom on keeping good relations . . . but it clearly has not worked in negotiations.”

Kuroda negotiated aggressively, “like a bulldozer,” during critical talks over semiconductors and supercomputers, said one informed observer, who credits him for a constructive role but adds that he “came across as being arrogant and quite frankly contemptuous of the United States.”

When the Reagan Administration was threatening Japan with sanctions for failing to live up to its commitments in the 1986 semiconductor trade agreement, for example, Kuroda repeatedly acted out, for the benefit of his U.S. counterparts, a colorful pantomime of someone smiling while stepping on his partner’s toes. The message was that Japan was getting stomped on.

“Not the most diplomatic of diplomats, Kuroda is blunt even by American standards,” wrote Clyde Prestowitz, a former Commerce Department negotiator, in the book “Trading Places.”

“He does not suffer fools gladly--which may account for the discomfort he caused many U.S. officials since he seemed to consider most of them to be fools,” Prestowitz said. “Nonetheless, I found that, in addition to his obvious intelligence, he had one very attractive quality. If you wanted to know what Japan was really thinking beneath all the layers of politeness, you listened to Kuroda.”

Like many fellow cadres in the elite civil service, Kuroda is a graduate of the law department at Tokyo University. He entered MITI in 1955, and quickly began climbing the ranks.

Looking back over his career, Kuroda sees his four-year stint in Geneva, from 1968 to 1972, as a turning point in his strategic thinking. It was there, hammering out Japan’s position in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development negotiations over international standards, that he was inspired to break from Japanese tradition.

“I especially admired the Anglo-Saxon approach to negotiations,” Kuroda said. “Sometimes they’d have no justification for their positions, but they always had plenty to say.

“We Japanese, on the other hand, were so simplistic and straightforward. We weren’t prepared for attack--all we had was a front line, and when we were overwhelmed we had no defense line behind us,” he said. “I think this affected me. I resolved to one day follow their style.”

Kuroda’s bluntness is matched by few other prominent Japanese--and possibly surpassed only by Shintaro Ishihara, the nationalist member of Parliament who sparked a furor last year by musing about the possibility of withholding Japanese semiconductors from the United States and selling them instead to the Soviets.

“I don’t necessarily agree with Mr. Ishihara,” Kuroda said. “But we need to ask why his book became a million seller (in Japan). I think he wanted to say Americans should appreciate the contributions Japan is making.”

Likewise, Kuroda sees distortions in the U.S.-Japan relationship of “interdependence” because “Americans don’t want to be dependent on someone else.”

Kuroda does not conceal his displeasure with Choate, the critic of Japanese lobbying.

“It’s not his book that’s damaging,” Kuroda said. “He’s damaging. . . . I think he’s very dangerous, and all the more dangerous if he has a good reputation.”

Kuroda acknowledged airing his complaints about Choate to Joseph Gorman, chairman of TRW Inc.--where Choate was a vice president and policy analyst until he was forced to resign in August. TRW does a significant amount of business with Japan, and some observers have alleged that various Japanese associates applied pressure on Gorman to fire Choate.

Kuroda said he never suggested that Choate be terminated but only asked Gorman whether Choate represented the views of TRW.

“It was all part of a rather natural conversation,” Kuroda said. “All I did was ask whether Pat Choate was speaking out while wearing his TRW hat.”

Biography

Name: Makoto Kuroda

Title: Managing director, Mitsubishi Corp; Former vice minister for international affairs of Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

Age: 58

Personal: Graduated Tokyo University Law department 1955. Married, two daughters and a son. Hobbies are golf, contact bridge and “go” (Japanese board game).

Quote: “Keeping good relations with U.S. is not only essential to the Japanese, it is also very important to the United States. Americans tend to ignore that. I am advocating that our interdependence is good for Japan, it is good for the U.S., and it is good for the world in general.”