May 23, 2006

Japan's trade minister, known for his close ties with China, received a letter along with a razor blade in the mail, threatening him not to flatter Beijing, Japanese media said on Tuesday.

Toshihiro Nikai, one of the few ministers in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet who has personal contacts with Chinese politicians, met Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing in February in a bid to mend frayed ties between the two countries.

"Don't pander to China. You're handing over Japan's assets and riches," said the letter, according to the reports quoting Tokyo police.

"We urge you to commit suicide," it added.

An official at Tokyo Metropolitan police declined to comment on the reports.

Nikai's ministry is involved in talks with China over disputed natural gas fields in the East China Sea, which Beijing has continued to develop despite Japanese requests not to do so.

The latest round of talks held last week failed to resolve differences, although the two sides agreed to meet in June.

The news comes as foreign ministers from both countries are set to hold a meeting - the first in an year - in Qatar this week on the sidelines of an international meeting.

Ties between the Asian neighbours have deteriorated since Koizumi took office in 2001 and began annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine for war dead, seen by Beijing and Seoul as well as critics at home as a symbol of Tokyo's past militarism.

"We all agree we cannot be tied up by history. We must look at the future, there is no doubt about it," Qin Yaqing, vice president of China Foreign Affairs University , told a symposium in Tokyo. "The bottleneck is Yasukuni shrine. That is the immediate and most serious obstacle we must overcome."

In a sign of Japanese sensitivity, however, Masashi Nishihara, former president of Japan's National Defense Academy, told the same forum that while dialogue was needed to solve Sino-Japanese economic and territorial disputes, Beijing's stance on Yasukuni constituted "interference in Japanese domestic affairs."

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411366/721849

Rightwing extremism reaching new heights.

actually, this styles of threatening on moderate politicans has been going around for a while, i've read a story similar to the article above before in the chinese papers but i just couldn't find any english sources about it on the web at that time.

Brainwashed village Japanese. Japan would be in bad bad recession without the help of the Chinese economic boom.
Japan should thank China for letting them doing business with us.

And China should thank Japan for giving jobs and stuff to export.

It's all part of being a politician.
Sometimes you have to do things that don't please everyone...but that's your job and you do it.

People with extreme views normally resort to extreme action when you act against their wishes.

Japan should thank China for letting them doing business with us.

We should thank china for nothing.

Japan should thank the US for winning the war. Japanese blood and culture would have been assimilated by the 1.3 Billion Chinese citizens if Japan was successful at conqureing the Mainland China.

I think you were joking.

Even without Americans,Japan could not conquer China. What they wanted might be to split China.

Without Mao's rule,Chinese population wouldnt be so big.

The reason Japan's out of this recession is not just because of booming exports to China.

In the past, the Japanese economy had ups and downs. The "ups" happened because of rising exports which temporarily gave the economy breathing space. The "downs" happened because the Japanese domestic market had too many problems for the exports to absorb (e.g. a decrease in retail prices and consumer confidence, bad loans never being paid off, rising debts, etc.).

It's different now because it's not only the exports that are lifting the Japanese economy; the domestic consumers are spending more, the companies are restructuring and getting rid of unprofitable ventures, and the banks have more than halved the number of bad loans.

Therefore, it's the reforms that have helped the recovery. All the Chinese market has done was offer an opportunity: it was up to the Japanese to make the most of it.

there you go, lying again.
without america, you would be speaking japanese today, and europe would be speaking german.
japan was very very successful at occupying china, and the rest of asia.
look at the map of 1940's , china and japan was the same country.
you would be really right at home, since you love japan so much.

"He who exults himself will be humbled, he who humbles himself will be exulted"

See how much of China was not occupied by Japan?



So much for Japan/China the same country

Joe111 is clueless. lol

O and Joe111, Europe wouldn't be speaking German. The Soviets were already winning the Battle of Moscow before Pearl Harbor. The War in Eastern Europe has already turned. Also Japan was unable to gain any ground in China after 1940. If you look at 1940 in China and compare it to 1941 by the time of Pearl Harbor, Japan's expansion did not increase. Both sides fought in a stalemate.

It does not matter if Japan tries to deny and revise history. As it is often the case, a successful movie has the final say on history, and Hollywood decides what everyone know about history. Both Hollywood and Hong Kong are separately producing big-budget movies about the Nanjing Massacre right now. The Hollywood version is mostly based on Iris Chang's the Rape of Nanjing, and I am sure the Hong Kong version is not going to be flattering of Japan as well. Very soon the whole world will see the atrocities Japan committed in WWII on the big screen.

Hong Kong version: budget secured

Hollywood version: in preproduction

I think what China and Korea need is closure from WWII. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that they should beat Japan. I was hoping for the 2002 World Cup to warm up the relations, but instead the opposite has happened thanks to the Tokdo problem, the shrine, the textbook, etc. We need something major to get East Asia to trust each other.

I think the reason why most Americans aren't worried about Japan's right wing is because the US beat Japan during WWII. Americans viewed Japan as a beaten country and now they view Japan as an ally. Another thing is that the US made Japan surrender, so the Americans have closure. Chinese and Koreans are worried about the textbooks and the shrine. They're neighbors to Japan, and they have suffered the most from Japan. If China or Korea were the ones who beat Japan, then I don't think they would be worried about Japan's right wing. It doesn't have to be done this way to develop trust though. Again, don't get me wrong.

There were even French soldiers who landed at Normandy along with the Americans and the British long after France surrendered. I don't how the French feel, but I think they feel that they beat Germany with the help of their allies. The allies divided Germany up, and France controlled the security for a part of Germany. (Later on, the French, British, and the Americans joined their part of Germany to form West Germany).

China and Korea didn't have this sort of closure on Japan. Ironically, the Koreans were the ones who got divided by the allies. Much of the Korean resistance happened during the earlier part of the Japanese occupation (even before WWII). Towards the end of WWII, Koreans were forced to have Japanese names. My Korean teacher remembers how he waved the Japanese flag at a Japanese military parade when he was a kid. (He had a Japanese teacher). Although the Korean partisan army won some battles, they failed to oust Japan out of Korea. (Koreans didn't have an airforce). As a result, they didn't have any say in Korea's future after Korea was liberated.

By the way, my Korean teacher and my grandmother said that the Japanese were kind people but their government was bad. My grandmother told me how her Japanese teacher was curious about the Korean traditional dress, so my grandmother made her one. She gave it to her the next day. The teacher was very happy. There were some things that my grandmother didn't like about the school though. For example, her class was forced to march for hours to get to a Japanese Shinto shrine.

To put it in a blunt way, I think China and Korea are still bitter because the aftermath of WWII didn't turn out the way they wanted it to.

Conclusion; China and Korea should take turns on beating Japan. (Just kidding)

(I editted this many times to make it sound ok, but it still isn't sounding the way I wanted).

Was the Soviet Union bitter after beating the crap out of Hitler? Of course they were, that's why Stalin fored the East Germans to pay vast amount of reparations. Thats why Soviet troops mass raped German girls and women when they were storming to Berlin. And that's why Stalin set up a puppet state in East Germany.

Btw read this article, it states clearly it was a Chinese victory.
Sino-Japanese War