Japanese Side: Ministry Official and Transition Process

japanese side: Moreover, the fact that the U.S. government is still in a kind of transition process and widely seen as unprepared for the talks, analysts say, presents an opportunity for Tokyo to gain the upper hand by steering the conversation away from two politically sensitive topics it would rather not discuss in detail currencies and trade deficits tied to automobiles, according to The Japan Times. What matters most is the very fact that we will be able to kick off such an economic dialogue at all under a new U.S. administration, a senior Foreign Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But in what is to be the first in a series of meetings, speculation is rife on the Japanese side that the talks will be a mere formality and yield little in the way of concrete results. We doubt anything drastic will come out of the first meeting. Aso's reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator aside, experts predict Washington's apparent unpreparedness for the talks may work to Japan's advantage. Although symbolic, the dialogue will be overseen by Aso and Pence in a personnel arrangement that experts say is unprecedentedly high-level for such bilateral talks. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.