This has long bothered politicians including President Trump, who this week is traveling to Japan and other parts of Asia, where one of his goals will be to “emphasize the importance of fair and reciprocal economic ties,” according to the White House. Earlier this year, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the U.S., Trump said that the Japanese “make it impossible to sell cars in Japan.” This is also the line being touted by American carmakers, which accuse Japan of protectionist policies in its automobile market. The American Automotive Policy Council says that historical practices like requiring lengthy car inspections of foreign-made vehicles and prohibiting existing car dealers from selling foreign cars have prevented foreign companies from gaining a large market share.

But protectionism is not the full explanation for why Japanese people don’t buy foreign cars. There are no import tariffs on cars, for example, while the U.S. and European Union impose 2.5 percent and 10 percent tariffs. And while Japanese cars are right-hand-drive, requiring manufacturing modifications before American cars can be sold there, this is no different from many other markets where foreign cars are prevalent.

Instead, the problem is in large part that American car dealers have been hesitant to invest in the kind of dealer network that consumers like Shujiro Urata have come to expect. “The way Japanese consumers buy cars is very different,” Deborah Elms, the executive director of the Asian Trade Center, told me. “Yet the Americans have not invested in a dealer network to break into the market.” Indeed, Ford pulled out of Japan, where it had sold only 5,000 cars annually, last year. General Motors only has 28 dealerships in Japan, and sold about 1,000 cars there in 2016.

Ford did not respond to requests for comment on this story. A General Motors spokeswoman told me that the company sold about 1,000 vehicles in Japan last year. It recently made a “strategic decision” to target niche segments, she said, and offer Japanese drivers left-hand-drive American vehicles including the Cadillac ATS.

Japanese customers also expect to receive services like free maintenance from their dealers after they buy their cars, Urata said. When their cars need a checkup, the dealer comes and picks them up, does work on them, and then returns them. American dealers don’t offer such services. “Developing this network is expensive, and maintaining it is expensive, and that’s one reason U.S. car makers decided to withdraw,” he told me.

I talked to a Japanese man named Hideo Ohashi, who has only bought Toyotas in Japan. He has considered buying a Mercedes-Benz, he told me, but he worried that it would be too expensive and lengthy to get new parts if his vehicle breaks down. A friend of Ohashi’s has a European car and it takes weeks to get parts from the maker, Ohashi said. What’s more, Toyota has a broad maintenance network, so it’s easy to get his car fixed if there are problems. Ohashi has know his Toyota dealer for 10 years, he told me, and they contact him at least once a quarter. “We have a person there who has taken care of our family for a long time,” he said.