Japan and China eye each other warily—as usual

摘要

Relations between China and Japan have, since the end of the second world war, never been anything but prickly. A brutal shared history has left a lingering mutual animosity. So it was with a sense of grudging familiarity that the Japanese foreign minister, Yohei Kono, travelled to Beijing this week and tried to smooth over the latest tiff, involving a series of incursions into Japanese waters by Chinese naval and intelligence vessels. Japanese defence officials say that on 17 occasions this year Chinese ships have crossed into Japan's 200-mile (370km) economic exclusion zone.