Japan ‘too polite’ to tell UK about Brexit fears

THERESA May received a taste of Japanese restraint and formality during a tea ceremony with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. What might be lost in translation is how unimpressed a key British trade partner is with how the PM is conducting Brexit.

May’s goal of convincing the world’s third-biggest economy to use its trade deal with the EU as a basis for a future agreement with Britain may not be rejected outright – but observers reading the tea leaves see unmistakable signs of discomfort with how Britain is going about the divorce.

“I don’t see it as a simple matter, taking one text and translating it into a bilateral agreement,” Britain’s former ambassador to Japan, David Warren, said.

“I think it would be a little more complicated than that.”

He said May’s hosts had grave doubts about Brexit: “The Japanese simply don’t understand why we’re doing this. They’re far too polite to say so publicly.”

Tomohiko Taniguchi, a special adviser to Abe, picked his words carefully when speaking to BBC Radio: “A sense of crisis may be a little bit of a strong word. There certainly exists a sense of uneasiness.”

Japan is in the final stages of brokering a free-trade agreement with the world’s largest trading bloc, from which the UK is breaking away. That puts May in a difficult position, as her predecessor hailed it as a landmark that would add an annual £5 billion (about R83bn) to the UK economy.

With Softbank Group’s purchase of ARM Holdings and factory expansions by Nissan and Toyota, Japan is eager for reassurances – and the UK was quick to try to provide them. There are 1 000 Japanese companies in the UK employing about 140 000 workers.

“Britain has always cut a special niche for Japan,” Taniguchi said, adding that Japanese businessmen “are telling themselves now is the time to see what’s happening down the road, rather than jumping into an uneasy conclusion”.

That wait-and-see attitude will buy May a grace period as she works through the details of what a transition will look like when the UK parts ways with the EU in early 2019.