TOKYO — Even as Japan’s new leaders have promised to transform the way the nation is governed, they have left one thing unchanged: the prime minister, like many before him, is backed by a shadowy leader who is widely seen as really running the country.

Now, at a time of turmoil in Washington’s ties with Tokyo, American officials are reaching out directly to that power behind the throne.

According to Japanese and American officials, diplomats have been quietly negotiating a visit to Washington as early as next month by Ichiro Ozawa, the secretary general of the governing Democratic Party and its widely acknowledged power broker. The possible visit, which could include a meeting with President Obama, was first suggested to Mr. Ozawa in February by Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell during a visit to Tokyo, said the officials, who asked not to be identified because the plan was still tentative.

The officials said the informal invitation was a move by Washington to improve communications with a new Japanese leadership that has proclaimed it wants more independence from the United States.

One American official close to effort called it part of a broader push to bring more lawmakers of Japan’s new governing party to Washington to meet their American counterparts, visits that members of the Liberal Democratic Party made before losing power last summer.

However, the offer has also drawn some criticism because it could be seen as circumventing the prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, in favor of a scandal-tainted figure who holds no formal cabinet position. Political experts said the fact that the Obama administration would propose such a move, and the government of Mr. Hatoyama might accept it, appears to underscore a shared feeling that current difficulties like a disagreement over an American military base in Okinawa are caused at least partly by an underlying problem: a breakdown in communications.

They said last summer’s historic change in the Japanese government destroyed the two nations’ decades-old channels for talking to each other.

“Gestures like inviting Mr. Ozawa show a disruption in communications,” said Jun Iio, a professor of government at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. “The old structures for talking have been tossed away, but it will take time for the United States and Japan to build new structures.”

Before Mr. Hatoyama’s Democratic Party came to power, the bilateral relationship had been managed for decades by a handful of Japan experts in Washington and their contacts among the Liberal Democrats and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Mr. Iio and others. The Democrats not only swept aside the Liberal Democrats, but they have also tried to fulfill campaign pledges to pry policy making from the hands of bureaucrats and give it to political officials.

The problem, analysts say, is that few new communication links have emerged to take the place of the old ones. The resulting lack of information fed excessive alarm in Washington last fall when Tokyo began to call for changing a 2006 agreement to relocate the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa.

The comments by ministers have often been contradictory and confusing, reflecting a lack of consensus in an inexperienced government, analysts say. While Mr. Hatoyama has said he wants to maintain the two nations’ security alliance, his voice has often been drowned out by the din. One result was that American officials misread Tokyo as seeking a much larger push away from the United States than was actually the case, analysts said.

To remedy the situation, Japanese leaders have been trying to send a clearer message to Washington recently. In speeches and media appearances, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has repeatedly emphasized that while the new government may be more open in its debates, it is also firm in its desire for the Marines and the air base to stay in Japan.

“We are more outspoken than previous Japanese governments, and that might be difficult to understand for those who were used to Japan until now,” he said in January. “But this is the normal way for democracies to interact with each other, I think.”

By suggesting that Mr. Ozawa visit Washington, the Obama administration is reaching out to one of the most controversial figures in Japanese politics, a veteran operator who engineered the Liberal Democrats’ defeat, but who is also seen as continuing its tainted money politics with his control of his party’s finances. Mr. Ozawa has had extensive dealings with American officials, and can be both critical and favorable.

But some analysts warn that the move to bring Mr. Ozawa to Washington could send the wrong message. By suggesting that the Obama administration views Mr. Ozawa as the real center of power in Japan, these analysts say, the invitation could undermine the authority of Mr. Hatoyama, who already faces growing criticism at home for weak leadership. Washington may also be seen as allying itself with an unpopular political figure who has come under a wave of media criticism here as a last holdout of the old regime’s backroom-style politics.

An Ozawa visit might even be seen as an effort by the United States to engage in petty one-upmanship with the Chinese, warned Gerald Curtis, a professor of Japanese politics at Columbia University. American officials risk appearing as if they want him to repeat his performance last December in Beijing, when he took more than 140 Democratic lawmakers to meet with the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, Mr. Curtis said.

Mr. Curtis, like some other American analysts, said the Obama administration had also stumbled by seeming to stubbornly insist that the new government in Tokyo adhere to the existing agreement. They said this heavy-handed approach has appeared to backfire by raising ire here that Washington was failing to recognize the right of the new Japanese government to change the policies. It also seemed to ignore Tokyo’s efforts to scrap the nation’s secretive postwar order.

“How does it help improve accountability in Japan if we strike a deal with the powerful man behind the folding screen?” Mr. Curtis said.