TOKYO, Aug. 25 -- For the Japanese companies that depend on Chinese rare earth minerals to manufacture semiconductors, electric vehicle motors, and precision components, the question has never been whether the two governments would talk again. It has been when the cost of not talking would become too high to ignore.

That calculation appears to have tipped on Monday, when a cross-party delegation of Japanese lawmakers landed in Beijing for the first direct consultations with senior Chinese Communist Party officials since diplomatic relations between Asia's two largest economies entered what one member of the delegation described as the worst freeze since ties were normalized in 1972.

The visit, which runs through Thursday, was set in mot...