アメリカ人に向けた事件の解説であるが、シンガポールの前首相リカンユウ（Lee Kuan Yew）の言葉が引用されているのが印象的だ。日本と中国の摩擦は東アジア、東南アジア全域に少なからぬ影響を与えている。
The Wall Street Journal
Fracas Over Canceled Visit
Mars China-Japan Detente
Beijing Faults Tokyo's Visits
To War Shrines for Discord;
Feud May Unsettle Region
By CHARLES HUTZLER in Beijing
and MARTIN FACKLER in Tokyo
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 25, 2005;
The Wall Street Journal
Fracas Over Canceled Visit
Mars China-Japan Detente
Beijing Faults Tokyo's Visits
To War Shrines for Discord;
Feud May Unsettle Region
By CHARLES HUTZLER in Beijing
and MARTIN FACKLER in Tokyo
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 25, 2005;
New tensions between Japan and China over an abruptly canceled meeting underscore how Asia's biggest powers are mired in a political stalemate that could upset the region's robust economy and fragile security.
Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi, who traveled to Japan on a fence-mending mission, called off a planned meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday and went home. After initially saying that Ms. Wu had urgent business in China, Beijing said yesterday that Japanese leaders had spoiled the atmosphere for detente by repeatedly insisting on their right to visit a controversial war shrine. Senior Japanese politicians in turn suggested that Beijing should apologize for the cancellation.
The recriminations set back a month of tentative diplomacy aimed at improving relations inflamed by large-scale and sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in China last month. With Beijing and Tokyo once again arguing over an issue that drove those protests, relations appear locked in mutual mistrust and in a situation that highlights the lack of political will in each capital for improving ties.
"China and Japan are both standing on their old principles marking time, waiting for the other side to take the first step," said Jin Linbo, a senior policy analyst at the China Institute of International Studies. "China feels there's no room for concessions because Japan is at fault, and Japan believes it has made no mistakes."
The ostensible issue for the latest fracas -- Mr. Koizumi's recurring visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto temple in central Tokyo dedicated to the country's war dead -- has chilled political ties for four years. Beijing views the pilgrimages as a sign of Japanese militarism and insincerity about wanting to be a peaceful neighbor. It has refused to hold summit meetings with Mr. Koizumi, relegating encounters to the sidelines of international gatherings in third countries, until he stops the shrine visits.
Both sides have so far managed to insulate their intertwined economic relationship, in which Japan has supplied much of the massive investment underpinning China's booming economy. Yet the political frictions are showing signs of upsetting energy cooperation and other economic interests, unsettling a region that has come to see Japanese investment and Chinese demand for raw and industrial materials as pillars of growth.
"If it is badly handled, and the Japanese and the Chinese do not sit down and talk about the past and how to put the past at rest, we will have more eruptions of this, which will be bad for business, bad for the region," media reports quoted Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's former prime minister, as telling a business forum in the city-state at the end of April.
Beijing and Tokyo are already at loggerheads over proposed regional and bilateral free-trade agreements. Signs of a wider spill-over could come next week when midlevel Japanese and Chinese officials hold scheduled talks in Beijing over disputed natural-gas rights in the East China Sea. The governments traded sharply escalating rhetoric over the disputed waters earlier this year and arranged the talks as part of an effort late last month to patch up ties.
But in allowing relations to resume their downward spiral, both governments seem to be choosing powerful domestic interests over larger regional concerns. Both leaderships would alienate their political bases by choosing compromise. In Japan, Mr. Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine enjoy broad support among conservatives in his Liberal Democratic Party. His willingness to take a strong stance on foreign affairs has been a key source of his popularity with voters, many of whom feel Japan needs to be more assertive internationally.
Giving in to Beijing could give the appearance of kowtowing to pressure from Chinese President Hu Jintao, something members of Mr. Koizumi's ruling party said the prime minister can't afford to do. "The Japanese people don't want Mr. Koizumi to lose to Hu Jintao. They want him to stick to his guns," said Yoshiaki Harada, a lower-house member who serves on the LDP's foreign-affairs committee.
In Beijing, similarly, bowing to Tokyo and laying aside the Yasukuni visits would force the Chinese leadership to jettison a policy it has stood behind for four years. Doing so, Chinese political watchers said, could prove perilous for Mr. Hu, still a relative neophyte in international affairs after two years in power, opening him up to criticism from within the leadership and from ordinary Chinese, who took to the streets last month and see Japan as unrepentant for its invasion of China last century.
In dispatching Vice Premier Wu to Japan last week, Beijing was employing one of its most talented officials and diplomats to persuade Japan to concede. Ms. Wu, who has helped defuse trade spats with the U.S. and took over the health-care portfolio during the SARS pneumonia epidemic, made a conciliatory speech at an exhibition in Nagoya on May 18, describing Japan as an "important economic partner."
On the eve of her arrival, however, Mr. Koizumi ratcheted up tensions over the Yasukuni issue, telling a budget committee in parliament that "it is not for another country to interfere" in the shrine visits. The atmosphere continued to sour during meetings in Beijing on Sunday when a senior official in Mr. Koizumi's political party visibly angered a senior Chinese official by saying that China's complaints about the shrine visits were interference in Japan's internal affairs, according to Japanese and Chinese officials briefed on the meeting.
In the wake of the comments and Ms. Wu's sudden departure from Tokyo two hours before her scheduled Monday meeting with Mr. Koizumi, attitudes are hardening on both sides, Japanese and Chinese political analysts said. "If you took a poll today, probably 70% of Japanese would call Wu Yi rude," said Kazuo Kobayashi, a professor of policy studies at Sakushin Gakuin University in Japan. "This visit was going so well. She appeared amiable, friendly, charming. But with one mistake, that charming woman now looks to Japanese public opinion like an enemy of Japan."
Write to Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com and Martin Fackler at martin.fackler@wsj.com
Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi, who traveled to Japan on a fence-mending mission, called off a planned meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday and went home. After initially saying that Ms. Wu had urgent business in China, Beijing said yesterday that Japanese leaders had spoiled the atmosphere for detente by repeatedly insisting on their right to visit a controversial war shrine. Senior Japanese politicians in turn suggested that Beijing should apologize for the cancellation.
The recriminations set back a month of tentative diplomacy aimed at improving relations inflamed by large-scale and sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in China last month. With Beijing and Tokyo once again arguing over an issue that drove those protests, relations appear locked in mutual mistrust and in a situation that highlights the lack of political will in each capital for improving ties.
"China and Japan are both standing on their old principles marking time, waiting for the other side to take the first step," said Jin Linbo, a senior policy analyst at the China Institute of International Studies. "China feels there's no room for concessions because Japan is at fault, and Japan believes it has made no mistakes."
The ostensible issue for the latest fracas -- Mr. Koizumi's recurring visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto temple in central Tokyo dedicated to the country's war dead -- has chilled political ties for four years. Beijing views the pilgrimages as a sign of Japanese militarism and insincerity about wanting to be a peaceful neighbor. It has refused to hold summit meetings with Mr. Koizumi, relegating encounters to the sidelines of international gatherings in third countries, until he stops the shrine visits.
Both sides have so far managed to insulate their intertwined economic relationship, in which Japan has supplied much of the massive investment underpinning China's booming economy. Yet the political frictions are showing signs of upsetting energy cooperation and other economic interests, unsettling a region that has come to see Japanese investment and Chinese demand for raw and industrial materials as pillars of growth.
"If it is badly handled, and the Japanese and the Chinese do not sit down and talk about the past and how to put the past at rest, we will have more eruptions of this, which will be bad for business, bad for the region," media reports quoted Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's former prime minister, as telling a business forum in the city-state at the end of April.
Beijing and Tokyo are already at loggerheads over proposed regional and bilateral free-trade agreements. Signs of a wider spill-over could come next week when midlevel Japanese and Chinese officials hold scheduled talks in Beijing over disputed natural-gas rights in the East China Sea. The governments traded sharply escalating rhetoric over the disputed waters earlier this year and arranged the talks as part of an effort late last month to patch up ties.
But in allowing relations to resume their downward spiral, both governments seem to be choosing powerful domestic interests over larger regional concerns. Both leaderships would alienate their political bases by choosing compromise. In Japan, Mr. Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine enjoy broad support among conservatives in his Liberal Democratic Party. His willingness to take a strong stance on foreign affairs has been a key source of his popularity with voters, many of whom feel Japan needs to be more assertive internationally.
Giving in to Beijing could give the appearance of kowtowing to pressure from Chinese President Hu Jintao, something members of Mr. Koizumi's ruling party said the prime minister can't afford to do. "The Japanese people don't want Mr. Koizumi to lose to Hu Jintao. They want him to stick to his guns," said Yoshiaki Harada, a lower-house member who serves on the LDP's foreign-affairs committee.
In Beijing, similarly, bowing to Tokyo and laying aside the Yasukuni visits would force the Chinese leadership to jettison a policy it has stood behind for four years. Doing so, Chinese political watchers said, could prove perilous for Mr. Hu, still a relative neophyte in international affairs after two years in power, opening him up to criticism from within the leadership and from ordinary Chinese, who took to the streets last month and see Japan as unrepentant for its invasion of China last century.
In dispatching Vice Premier Wu to Japan last week, Beijing was employing one of its most talented officials and diplomats to persuade Japan to concede. Ms. Wu, who has helped defuse trade spats with the U.S. and took over the health-care portfolio during the SARS pneumonia epidemic, made a conciliatory speech at an exhibition in Nagoya on May 18, describing Japan as an "important economic partner."
On the eve of her arrival, however, Mr. Koizumi ratcheted up tensions over the Yasukuni issue, telling a budget committee in parliament that "it is not for another country to interfere" in the shrine visits. The atmosphere continued to sour during meetings in Beijing on Sunday when a senior official in Mr. Koizumi's political party visibly angered a senior Chinese official by saying that China's complaints about the shrine visits were interference in Japan's internal affairs, according to Japanese and Chinese officials briefed on the meeting.
In the wake of the comments and Ms. Wu's sudden departure from Tokyo two hours before her scheduled Monday meeting with Mr. Koizumi, attitudes are hardening on both sides, Japanese and Chinese political analysts said. "If you took a poll today, probably 70% of Japanese would call Wu Yi rude," said Kazuo Kobayashi, a professor of policy studies at Sakushin Gakuin University in Japan. "This visit was going so well. She appeared amiable, friendly, charming. But with one mistake, that charming woman now looks to Japanese public opinion like an enemy of Japan."
Write to Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com and Martin Fackler at martin.fackler@wsj.com
