With the visit by Hu, a "warm springtime" blossoms between Beijing and Tokyo
Tokyo (AsiaNews) – "Clearing the way for a new era" in relations between China and Japan was the primary aim of the state visit that Chinese president Hu Jintao made to Japan from May 6-10. It was of historic importance, the editorialist for The Japan Times had written. The results prove him right.
From the first moments of his arrival, Hu had said that "the development of stable and friendly long-term relations between China and Japan is in the fundamental interest of the two nations and of the two peoples". In this perspective, the visit was planned by the leaders of the two countries as early as the autumn of 2006. It followed the visit to Beijing of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in the autumn of 2006, described as an "icebreaker", and the "thawing visit" to Tokyo of Chinese prime minister Wen Jibao (2007), which, combined with the visit to China of current Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda, helped to overcome the lack of communication between the two governments, due to the different interpretations of Japanese militarism.
Fukuda, a supporter of friendly relations with nearby nations in Asia, in particular with China, told Chinese prime minister Wen last December: "I want to make sure that next year, there is a leap forward in relations between Japan and China". The year 2008, in fact, offered him three opportunities to meet with president Hu: the summit that just concluded, the G-8 summit, which will be held in July in Hokkaido (Japan), and the inauguration of the Olympics in Beijing. And his diplomatic ability was able to overcome even the obstacle of the Chinese dumplings contaminated with pesticides, and the more serious obstacle of the repression in Tibet.
The meeting with the emperor and the conversations with Fukuda, which ended with a joint declaration, were the highlights of the visit. On both occasions, Hu Jintao avoided speaking explicitly of the past difficulties. Ten years earlier, under the same circumstances his predecessor Jiang Zemin has repeatedly reminded the Japanese of their imperialist past, fueling resentment in many in both Japan and China. This time, there was an indirect allusion in the joint declaration, where it states that the two nations "will continue to explore a new phase of reciprical relations, looking history in the face with honesty". But almost as if to soften this allusion as well, the Chinese part says that they "appreciate the fact that Japan has continued to be a pacifist nation for more than 60 years after the end of the second world war". For his part, Fukuda addressed "a cordial greeting to Hu for his visit during the year that celebrates the 30th anniversary of the peace treaty signed by Japan and China" (1978).
Speaking to the students in the main hall of Waseda University, Hu was less reserved, because he knew that his listeners were not only Japanese students, but also the entire Chinese people: the speech was broadcast live in Japan and in China. Referring to the past, he clearly state that the war of invasion on the part of Japan "greatly damaged friendly ties, and not only brought about enormous misfortune to the Chinese people but also greatly harmed the Japanese public.''. As for the future, he said, China and Japan "must objectively recognise their mutual development and consider each other partners, and not rivals".
"Warm springtime" is the expression used by Hu to describe the meeting at the summit, almost as if he wanted to say that full reconciliation has taken place. The decision to exchange visits each year at the summit is a concrete beginning of the new phase.
During Hu's visit to Japan, there were two events - apparently peripheral, but of significant symbolic significance - that served to place relations between the two peoples in a wider and more positive historical context. On the evening of his arrival, Hu met with Fukuda for an informal dinner in a Tokyo restaurant known for its connection to Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary hero of China. The wife of the restaurant's owner is a descendant of Shokichi Umeya, a Japanese figure known for having assisted Sun financially. Sun ate at his restaurant when he was in exile in Japan, in the early part of the twentieth century.
He then spent the last day of the visit touring the prefecture of Nara, where he visited two Buddhist temples, Horyuji and Toshodaiji, which have historical ties to China. The Horyuji temple was founded in the seventh century by the prince Shotoku, who had sent diplomatic delegations to China. "Prince Shotoku", Hu said, "spread Buddhism in Japan. What remains of the (primitive) temple is the result of exchanges between the two nations". At the Toshodaiji temple, he stopped to see the statue of Jianzhen, a Chinese Buddhist monk who during the Tang dynasty had come to Japan to teach Buddhist morality.
The symbolic significance of the informal dinner at the Tokyo restaurant and of the visits to the two temples of Nara seems obvious: it is an invitation to build a future without being influenced by the difficulties of the recent past, but recalling the connections with a much more constructive and longer past
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