Japan and China, each seeing its own pain

I have been a professor in Japan for more than 18 years. But only recently have I begun to receive lots of worried inquiries from family and friends in China, asking if I and my family are sheltered from the "demonstrations and riots in Japan". I have had to tell them again and again that there are no riots - the several large demonstrations in the summer were all against the Japanese government's approval of the reopening of nuclear power plants. The only one against China was a protest involving hundreds in Tokyo last month. When the marchers came close to the Chinese embassy, only five people were allowed to pass at a time and they were escorted by police.

There is certainly misunderstanding and misinformation on both sides. There is little discussion in China of the background under which the Noda administration decided to nationalise the Diaoyu Islands. For the record, the Democratic Party of Japan did not come to power in 2009 with a confrontational strategy in mind. On the contrary, its leaders Yukio Hatoyama, Ichiro Ozawa and Katsuya Okada all expressed a strong desire to build closer ties with China, with proposals for a European-Union-like relationship and a currency zone in East Asia. Ozawa even led a large group of congressmen on a three-day visit to China.

However, these friendly gestures from Japan appear to have been overlooked by China.

Then came the collision in 2010 between a Chinese fishing boat and a Japanese patrol ship near the Diaoyus. The captain was officially arrested, an unfortunate action that vividly shows the Naoto Kan administration's inexperience in foreign affairs. Soon afterwards, Premier Wen Jiabao warned Japan that it would suffer severe consequences if the captain was not released immediately. To ordinary Japanese, this looked like a slap on their leader's face.