Trade Minister Emerges as Japan’s New-Style Politico : Asia: The nation’s point man in the U.S. auto talks, Ryutaro Hashimoto, stands out like a samurai warrior.

In the gray world of Japanese politics and bureaucracy, where vague language and backroom deal making are the norm, Minister of International Trade and Industry Ryutaro Hashimoto stands out like a swashbuckling samurai warrior.

An accomplished practitioner of kendo, the medieval Japanese martial art in which masked duelists bash each other with heavy bamboo poles, the debonair but often sarcastic Hashimoto is Japan’s point man in the bruising auto trade talks with the United States that are set to resume next week.

A leading contender to be Japan’s next prime minister, Hashimoto, 57, is representative of a new generation of Japanese politicians and bureaucrats who are less scarred than their elders by Japan’s defeat in World War II--and less influenced by American magnanimity during the postwar occupation.

The irreverent Hashimoto, who keeps his martial arts gear in a corner of his office, has even used images of kendo duels to offer grudging praise to his auto talks counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor. A kendo match “is the same as arguing with Kantor-san,” he once said. “If you don’t pay attention to your rival, you get hit on the head.”

Hashimoto shifted to a different image, but kept the same spirit, when auto talks hit an impasse last month in Canada. Hashimoto informed reporters that Kantor “is more scary than even my wife when I come home drunk.”

Kantor, himself a hard-knuckled lawyer who does not shrink from tough tactics, shot back, “I’d like to hear your wife’s side of the story.”

Hashimoto and Kantor remain in a standoff, with Washington threatening to impose $5.9 billion in taxes on 13 models of Japanese luxury car imports unless an auto trade agreement is reached by June 28. The next round of talks begins Monday in Geneva.

In Hashimoto and other officials involved in the trade talks, the Clinton Administration has run up against a generation of Japanese leaders who do not act in the same way as their predecessors, said Minoru Morita, a prominent political analyst.

Just 8 years old when World War II ended, Hashimoto “received his education after the war . . . and many of the trade ministry bureaucrats were educated in the United States,” Morita said. “This younger generation has a sense of equality with America. When the United States makes unreasonable demands, they get angry. That’s the background to the current auto talks.”

A highly knowledgeable policy expert who is respected by bureaucrats, Hashimoto sometimes seems “a bit arrogant,” Morita said. “He is capable of throwing out his chest and projecting a strong negotiating image for Japan. He is the perfect person to exchange blows with Kantor.”

But Hashimoto is no knee-jerk America basher. One of his key previous roles on the international scene came when, as finance minister, he approved Japan’s contribution--despite considerable domestic opposition--of $13 billion to the international effort in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Nicholas F. Brady, U.S. Treasury secretary at the time, was so impressed by Hashimoto’s handling of the issue that when Japanese stock market scandals threatened Hashimoto’s hold on his Cabinet post later that year, Brady rushed to support him.

When the United States asked Japan to boost its financial commitment to $13 billion from an already-pledged $4 billion, “he said yes in 15 minutes,” Brady said.

“It was the kind of reaction from a partner that was very helpful,” Brady said. “He never came back and said, ‘Less, less.’ He deserves a pat on the back.”

However, that year nearly all the major Japanese securities firms and banks monitored by the finance ministry admitted to a range of unethical practices. Scandal even reached Hashimoto’s office, when a political secretary admitted to having helped arrange illegally handled bank loans for three close friends of Hashimoto.

While Hashimoto himself was not accused of wrongdoing, he ultimately resigned, in the Japanese tradition, to take formal responsibility for his ministry’s failures in oversight. The scandals set back his prospects to become prime minister in the early 1990s, but by resigning and maintaining a low profile for a couple of years, he positioned himself well to emerge again as a future leader.

The whiff of scandal did not stick on Hashimoto because “as a powerful LDP [Liberal Democratic Party] politician . . . he has been regarded as clean compared with other leading members,” political analyst Takao Toshikawa said.

“He is too smart. He is too keen. If bureaucrats give a background briefing, Mr. Hashimoto is likely to be quite accurate in pointing out a misunderstanding in the bureaucrats’ briefing. So no bureaucrats like him. But everyone must recognize he is smart and that he has power,” Toshikawa said.

Hashimoto, who wears dapper blue suits, smokes cigarettes from a holder and uses ointment to slick his hair up and back in a pompadour style, was first elected to Parliament in 1963 at age 26, to fill the seat vacated by the death of his father. Commentators said at the time that his matinee-idol good looks boosted his popularity among voters.

Various aspects of Hashimoto’s career have given him a conservative image that sometimes borders on harshness. He is the chairman of the Japan War Bereaved Families Assn., which honors those who died in World War II, and has helped lead controversial annual visits by conservative politicians to Yasukuni Shrine to pay respects to the memory of fallen soldiers.

Last year, he drew criticism when he said in Parliament that it is “a delicate matter of definition” whether Japan committed aggression against Asian countries during World War II. “It was not those countries Japan chose to fight, but the United States, England and others,” Hashimoto said.

In 1990, when a government study showed that the average number of children born to Japanese women had dropped to 1.57, too low to maintain Japan’s population, Hashimoto touched off a furious controversy with a comment that seemed to blame the low birthrate on college education for women.

“Higher education, if we consider including women, is contributing to lowering the birthrate,” Hashimoto was reported as saying. “I want the government to study this point.”

Hashimoto insisted his comments had been misunderstood, but they contributed to the view by some Japanese that he is particularly haughty toward women.

Kuniko Inoguchi, a political science professor at Sophia University, said this perception is probably unfair.

“Japanese society itself has been a very male chauvinist society,” she said. “I’m not sure whether Mr. Hashimoto is particularly male chauvinist himself. As far as I have talked with him, I have never been offended. He’s pleasant and outgoing and very cheerful.”

Indeed, he can be downright funny.

In a meeting with U.S. officials at the Group of Seven summit in Naples last year, Hashimoto asked the Americans if they knew what Japan does with the money from its huge trade surpluses.

He then patted the belly of Finance Minister Masayoshi Takemura, who is rather portly by Japanese standards, and cracked, “It’s in here.”

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Megumi Shimizu of The Times’ Tokyo bureau contributed to this report.