---

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 22, 1992                   TAG: 9201220319
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and The Washington Post
DATELINE: TOKYO                                LENGTH: Short

---

JAPANESE RETRACTS ACCUSATION

A senior politician retracted his accusation that American workers are lazy and illiterate as Japan scrambled Tuesday to put out the latest brush fires in its increasingly heated relationship with its U.S. ally.

Also on Tuesday, a government spokesman backed away from comments by Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and the head of Toyota Motor Corp. that suggested Japan had not agreed to buy more U.S. cars and auto parts.

U.S. officials have said Japanese cars and auto parts account for two-thirds of Japan's trade surplus with the United States, which Japan on Tuesday said rose 1.3 percent last year to $38.5 billion.

The furor in America over the Japanese officials' comments has stunned many Japanese, who are unused to seeing Japan's chronic trade surplus given such a central role in U.S. politics as it has been in this presidential election year.

Yoshio Sakurauchi, speaker of Japan's House of Representatives, said Tuesday his weekend speech was "liable to cause misunderstanding" and that the uproar over it was "very regretful." He said he had not intended to "disparage or slight American workers."

The speech, in which he reportedly called the United States "Japan's subcontractor" and complained that U.S. workers "turn out so many defective products," drew only moderate attention in Japan before the American reaction to it.

---