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Japan’s Transport Ministry appeared to be a step ahead of Toyota last week. It ordered the company to investigate problems on the 2010 Prius hybrid that could cause its brakes to be unresponsive when driving slowly on bumpy or icy roads.

Toyota then said it had corrected the problem on cars built since mid-January. But it now faces a decision on whether to recall more than 300,000 cars sold since the newest version of the Prius was introduced last spring.

The most severe criticism has been over Toyota’s handling of the pedal problem.

The company did not recall cars with sticky pedals in Europe, after it made a design change for new cars, because it considered the problem a “customer satisfaction” issue rather than a defect. None of the 26 complaints it received involved cars that had been in accidents, Toyota officials said.

It introduced the design change for new cars being built in Europe last summer, before sticky pedal problems came to a head in the United States.

Only after Toyota announced a recall in the United States did it then extend the recall to 1.8 million European vehicles as well.

In a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Toyota said it had not realized until October that the pedals in cars made in the United States used the same material as those in Europe — even though both are supplied by the same parts maker, CTS of Elkhart, Ind.

Although it made the change on European models last summer, Toyota initially told American authorities it was unaware of any problems with the CTS-made pedals. Instead, Toyota said it believed gas pedals were becoming trapped in floor mats, the subject of an advisory to consumers that was later followed by a recall.

Toyota had “not been able to single out or verify any other cause” for the unintended acceleration, the company said when the floor-mat recall was made.

Analysts questioned Toyota’s explanation.

“There is no way that Toyota in America or Japan would not have known about a replacement taking place in Europe,” said Tadashi Nishioka, an auto industry expert at the University of Hyogo in Japan. “At Toyota, all information flows to headquarters. It’s that kind of company.”

Colin Hensley, the general manager of corporate affairs at Toyota Motor Europe, said the change would eventually have been brought to cars in the United States under Toyota’s practice of sharing new production methods among its plants.

Shinichi Sasaki, the Toyota executive in charge of quality, added last week: “We did realize that it was not good that pedals were not returning to their proper positions, but we took some time to consider whether we needed to take market action.”

When American regulators visited Japan, they “directed us to think of things from a customer’s perspective,” Mr. Sasaki added. “We took this seriously and made the decision to recall the cars.”

Last week, Toyota dealers began replacing pedals on millions of cars. Factories will start installing them in new cars this week.