Former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui urged Japan on Thursday to muster the courage to allow him to visit, despite China's opposition, a local evening paper reported.
Lee, now honorary head of the Taiwan Research Institute, told legislators that Tokyo should not have "less guts" than the United States, the Independence Evening News reported.
The U.S. allowed him to visit his alma mater Cornell University in June 1995 when he was still president.
To protest that visit, China suspended dialogue with Taiwan and escalated military tension that culminated in missile tests off Taiwan in the spring of 1996.
Lee told legislators Beijing had actually been informed about his U.S. trip, the newspaper reported.
A former top aide to Lee, Su Chih-cheng, who recently admitted having served as Lee's envoy in secret contacts with China in the 1990s, has also said China was in the know and originally did not object to the U.S. trip.
Senior cross-strait negotiator Tang Shu-bei, vice chairman of China's semiofficial Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, was visiting Taipei at the time, Lee said.
Lee quoted Tang as saying the U.S. trip "doesn't matter." Lee has frequently voiced the wish to visit his alma mater Kyoto University. Last month he made a private one-week visit to Britain, his first overseas trip since retiring from political life after 12 years as president.
Although Lee is now a private citizen, Beijing was incensed by London's decision to grant the ex-president a visa and attempted until the last minute to thwart the trip.
Bowing to Chinese pressure, the University of Manchester canceled a luncheon with Lee.