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Japan PM Heads for China, Seeking to Warm Ties
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi heads for China on Monday for talks aimed at improving chilly ties haunted by history.
Koizumi, who plans a similar one-day visit to South Korea next week, hopes to soothe the anger sparked by his August visit to a Tokyo shrine where war criminals are honoured along with Japan's war dead, and the approval of a controversial history text critics say whitewashes Japan's wartime atrocities.
The Japanese leader also wants to ease concerns about Tokyo's steps toward ever-tighter security ties with America as it rushes to enact a new law to let its military provide non-combat support for a US-led war on terrorism.
But analysts say achieving a fundamental warming of chilly ties will be tough.
"To erase the mistrust among the people of the two countries will be difficult to do merely with a one-day trip," a weekend editorial in the liberal Asahi Shimbun newspaper said.
"We want him to see with his own eyes and experience first-hand the actual situation in the two countries which always stress the problems of history," the paper said. "Then he will understand the difficulties and the importance of diplomacy with neighbours, and take a first step toward repairing frayed ties."
SYMBOLIC GESTURE China, as well as South Korea, had rebuffed Koizumi's call for a leaders' summit after his controversial August 13 to Yasukuni Shrine for war dead, where some convicted World War Two war criminals are also enshrined.
Ties had already been frayed by Tokyo's approval of the controversial school history text, by Japan's decision to let Taiwan's Lee Teng-hui visit for "medical treatment" in April and by trade rows over Chinese imports.
In a symbolic move, Koizumi will kick off his China trip with a visit to the Marco Polo Bridge southwest of Beijing, where Japan used an exchange of fire with Chinese troops in July 1937 as a pretext to launch a full invasion of China.
Koizumi will be just the second Japanese prime minister to visit the site, following Tomiichi Murayama in 1995.
Japanese media said Koizumi would likely echo expressions of remorse and apology for suffering caused by Japan's wartime aggression, based on Murayama's 1995 apology on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.
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