By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 10, 2008; A09

TOKYO, May 9 -- The two economic giants of Asia courted each other this week during a five-day visit to Japan by Chinese President Hu Jintao that played down wartime grudges and played up pragmatic cooperation.

The visit did not resolve a long-running dispute between the countries over rights to explore for natural gas in the East China Sea. Hu and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said they are working on it.

But the words and images that came out of the visit signaled a broad improvement in relations between the world's second- and third-ranking economic powers, especially as compared with the last time a Chinese president came here.

That was 10 years ago, and then-President Jiang Zemin said Japan had not properly apologized for invading China in the 1930s.

This week, as part of what Hu described as a "warm spring" in his country's relationship with Japan, the Chinese president played Ping-Pong -- rather skillfully -- with a Japanese champion. He offered to lend Japan two giant pandas as temporary stand-ins for Ling Ling, a male panda who died last week in a Tokyo zoo.

And when Hu addressed the Japanese invasion, he did so in a way that seemed intended to calm, not inflame, nationalist sensitivities here and in China.

"This unfortunate history not only caused tremendous suffering to the Chinese people but also gravely hurt the Japanese people," he said. "It's important for us to remember history, but this does not mean we should hold grudges."

China has become Japan's largest trading partner, with the trade volume between the two nations at $236 billion last year. More than 20,000 Japanese companies operate in China, many of them selling precision equipment and industrial materials that are essential to its export-driven boom.

China is destined to be the preeminent economy in Asia, and this week's state visit signals the Japanese government's acceptance of that inexorable trend, several Japanese politicians and government officials said this week.

They said Japan, with an aging population and a low birthrate, must cooperate with its booming neighbor to secure its own long-term prosperity.

"Japan has to accept the reality of life," said Kaoru Yosano, a lawmaker and senior official in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "We cannot overturn a trend by speech. It is very good to have a rich neighbor."

Japan is still the world's second-largest economy, as measured by gross size. But China is growing much faster and has surpassed Japan in purchasing power.

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.