JAPAN: A heady and volatile mix of history, nationalism and politics is fuelling the current China-Japan spat, David McNeill reports from Tokyo
Those looking for signs of where one of the planet's most important bilateral relationships is headed could find the road forking in two very different directions yesterday. Across China, it was business as usual for firms like Toyota and Panasonic, which are riding a tsunami of Japanese capital into the booming Chinese economy.
In Beijing, firecrackers greeted the opening of a new Ito-Yokado supermarket in the suburbs, as a few miles away the dean of Tokyo University announced the establishment of a new campus in the capital. And further south, in the city of Suzhou, a new school began teaching the children of thousands of ex-pats who work in the 1,300 Japanese-owned factories nearby.
But a much darker vision of the future can be found on websites such as japanpigs.com which helped co-ordinate last weekend's anti-Japanese protests and which lead the charge for a mass boycott of Japanese goods.
The websites celebrate protests when thousands of Chinese surrounded the Japanese embassy in Beijing, pelting it with missiles and shouting "Be ashamed of distorting history."
Thousands more vented their rage in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and elsewhere, dragging Sino-Japanese relations to their lowest point since normalisation began in 1972.
The demonstrations followed Tokyo's authorisation of textbooks that China says whitewash Japan's brutal invasion and occupation (1931-45). War crimes such as the 1937 Nanjing massacre, which generations of Chinese students have been taught involved the slaughter of up to 300,000 innocent civilians, have been toned down; in the Japanese version the crime is relegated to an "incident" and the casualty figures dramatically reduced.
Instead of clearly condemning the violence on the streets, Chinese leaders say Japan is ultimately to blame and have refused to pay compensation. In place of an apology, China's premier Wen Jiabao offered a lecture, saying Japan must "face up to history". Tokyo has reacted with predictable anger.
"These activities can never be excused, whatever the reason," Japanese foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura said. "By showing tolerance the Chinese government is effectively admitting it condones violent behaviour."
Mr Machimura is due to visit Beijing this weekend to try to defuse the crisis but he will have his work cut out.
Into this already bubbling pot went Japan's decision on Wednesday to allow test drilling for gas and oil in a disputed area of the East China Sea. The decision is either bad timing or something more calculated.
Few want this dispute to get out of hand. Japanese businesses have billions of dollars invested in the world's fastest-growing economy, which overtook the US last year to become Japan's biggest trading partner. China desperately needs Japanese capital and know-how while Japanese manufacturers increasingly depend on cheap Chinese labour.
Hot in economics, cold in politics is what they call this odd relationship in the Japanese press, and the hope is that booming trade will trump current tensions. But some fear the heady brew of history, nationalism and politics will eventually drag these two economic giants into further confrontation.
The Chinese government is struggling to deal with the social fallout from over two decades of breakneck capitalist growth and has replaced Marxism with patriotism, even as it risks alienating the Japanese capital is so desperately needs. Many in Japan say the weekend demonstrations and the entire anti-Japanese campaign is tacitly approved, if not organised, by the authorities in China in a bid to scupper Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Japan, too, is grappling with its own economic problems and finds itself increasingly tugged rightwards by a neo-nationalist movement eager to assert itself as the tectonic plates of Asian politics shift to accommodate the growing economic might of China. The new textbooks, which are supported by a large section of the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, are one sign that this movement is making progress. Another is Tokyo's looming decision to end overseas development aid to China after providing billions of dollars over the last two decades.
Which road will the two Asian giants take? In Beijing, Tokyo University's Hiroshi Komiyama said he hoped his new campus in China would "educate young people from both countries for the sake of the future". But in the southern city of Guangzhou, Japanese businesses and civic groups met yesterday to discuss how to protect themselves should riots break out again.
"It's very scary," a Japanese woman told Japan's state broadcaster NHK. "If this continues we may have to return home."