Respect and Resentment
	Japan is becoming impatient with demands that it should constantly apologize for what happened more than 60 years ago
	By Jim Frederick | Tokyo

	KATSUMI KASAHARA / AP HONOR Koizumi's regular trips to the Yasukuni Shrine feed anti-Japanese sentiment abroad

Posted Monday, November 22, 2004; 20:00 HKT
It's nine o'clock on a Thursday night, and six friends from Tokyo's Keio University are sharing a few beers and many plates of Okinawan-style food at a bar in the Azabu-Juban neighborhood. They are all currently students in Professor Ryosei Kokubun's seminar on modern Chinese politics, so the conversation is focused, as it often is, on the complex relationship between Japan and its giant neighbor to the west.

Yuji Hashiguchi, 21, says that when growing up, he was profoundly influenced by the beauty of classical Chinese literature and captivated by the stories his grandmother would tell of the time she spent in China before and during World War II, when his grandfather worked for a firm associated with the South Manchurian Railway Co. Hashiguchi knows all about the atrocities committed in China by Japan during that period, but he has always been inspired by his grandmother's love for the country and its people. "My grandmother told me the Chinese were always very nice to them," he says. "When there wasn't enough food, the Chinese shared with them the little that they had." He strikes the most conciliatory note among the group, decrying Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Hashiguchi says that better relations between the two countries are not just possible, but with a little work, highly likely. "Most people in China have goodwill toward the Japanese," he says. "But the Chinese are a very proud people, and the Japanese scarred their pride by invading. We need to be sensitive about that."

It's a nice sentiment, but it isn't universally shared. Hashiguchi's classmate Kenji Sato, 21, allows that the Chinese individually may be wonderful people, but thinks that the two countries' attitudes toward each other make them virtually destined for friction. And he is skeptical that political tensions are going to ease anytime soon, because he believes the very foundation of Chinese identity is now tied to being anti-Japanese. "I think that even if the Communist Party loses power, the next regime will still remain anti-Japan," he declares.

Hashiguchi and Sato—and their equally well-educated, opinionated friends—are a microcosm of Japan's younger generation and the highly conflicted, often contradictory attitudes it harbors toward China. Nearly 60 years after the end of World War II, Japanese youth are witnessing what they believe is a dramatic shift in power, as the political and economic momentum (to say nothing of military might) in Asia swings inexorably from Tokyo to Beijing. Yet even as they acknowledge that China is the ascendant force of the 21st century, many resent what they describe as China's insistence that they answer for issues they believe should long have been consigned to history.

True, within Japan there is no certain consensus on attitudes to China. Some agree that Japan has never properly atoned for its brutal occupation of much of Asia, but others are exasperated with what they see as Beijing's cynical leveraging of the issue for political and economic gain. For all those who do not support Koizumi's regular visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, there are others who dislike what they see as China's gall in presuming to tell Japan's Prime Minister what he can do in his own country. Some argue against a revision of Japan's pacifist constitution; others become apoplectic at Chinese accusations that "militarism" is on the rise in democratic, nuclear weapon-free Japan, when China is estimated to outspend Japan on defense by up to $20 billion a year. Many acknowledge that the Japanese school system has a tendency to whitewash unsavory events in history, but other Japanese have begun to look with anxiety at China's "patriotic education" program. These issues go beyond college bull sessions. They reach up to the very highest levels of both governments. Increasingly, say analysts, the two great powers of Asia are missing the chance to determine how they plan to coexist in this new century.

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