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On Visit to Japan, China's Hu Has No Time for Old Grudges
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The door for Hu's visit swung open last fall, when Fukuda took over as prime minister and quickly announced that he wanted better relations with China. Just as quickly, he signaled that he had no intention of maintaining the stridently nationalist tone of his two most recent predecessors, which had also angered other Asian nations occupied by Japan before and during World War II.
Fukuda said he would not visit Yasukuni, a Tokyo shrine that honors convicted war criminals along with 2.5 million of the country's war dead. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who left office in 2006, visited the shrine on several occasions.
Fukuda also distanced himself from the efforts of his immediate predecessor, Shinzo Abe, to play down the role of the Japanese military in recruiting sex slaves or "comfort women" for its soldiers during the war.
Abe had pushed to revise Japan's pacifist constitution, which was drafted by the United States during its postwar occupation of Japan. Fukuda quietly dropped the idea, reassuring China and other Asian countries with bitter memories of Japanese military occupation.
In a speech at Tokyo's Waseda University on Thursday, Hu repeated what has become a Chinese government mantra in dealing with Japan: Look forward, not back. "The revival of Asia cannot happen without cooperation between China and Japan," he said.
For all the high-level warmth surrounding Hu's visit, there remains an undertow of noisy nationalism in Japan that perceives a threat in all things Chinese.
The discovery in February of insecticide-tainted Chinese dumplings -- about 175 Japanese consumers ate them and got sick -- triggered boycotts of food from China. Media coverage and some public reaction bordered on hysteria.
Right-wing activists here have seized on Chinese behavior in Tibet as confirmation that China is not to be trusted. On Thursday, as Hu delivered his speech about turning away from old grudges, demonstrators outside chanted, waved Tibetan flags and scuffled with police.
