But domestic politics in both countries came to hinder all opportunity for bilateral summit meetings. The mutual goodwill between the public also declined to the point where negative sentiment placed additional constraints on Koizumi and then Chinese president Hu Jintao and prevented them from repairing the relationship.

China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 was a symbol of its growing stature in the international community, as well as a sign that China sought to take a greater role in global cooperation. The Japanese government supported China’s WTO accession. This was in line with Japan’s China policy at the time, which attempted to encourage China to actively adhere to international rules and fulfil its global responsibilities. Economic integration between Japan and China increased as a result of China’s WTO accession — by 2007, China had become Japan’s largest trade partner (overtaking trade with the United States), and trade expanded continually during the Koizumi years.

On top of this, Prime Minister Koizumi was invited to attend the very first meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia, which China has organised since 2002. It was there that Koizumi delivered a speech titled ‘Asia in a New Century – Challenge and Opportunity’. It was a move to show that in order to claim leadership in regional cooperation, China would require backing from Japan and that Japan welcomed such a notion.

As economic interdependence continued to grow, and both countries emerged as regional powers, Japan and China realised that they could not ignore each other. Nevertheless, strains in the political relationship developed over time, with Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine in particular causing the relationship to deteriorate.

Koizumi first visited Yasukuni Shrine in August 2001, as he pledged when he was elected as the President of the LDP. But in October that same year, he also made a trip to the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression at Lugouqiao (Marco Polo Bridge) in Beijing. During this visit he expressed ‘deep remorse and a heartfelt apology’ as a conciliatory gesture in Japan’s relationship with China.

When Koizumi visited Yasukuni for the second time in 2002, after his speech at the Boao Forum, it drew fierce condemnation from the Chinese side. Ultimately, Koizumi visited Yasukuni annually in his official capacity as prime minister. This prompted China to demand a halt to these official visits as a precondition for resuming top-level bilateral summit meetings.

Although protests against Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits continued, signs of a willingness to take a new approach emerged in China after Hu Jintao’s inauguration as Chinese leader in autumn of 2002. This was manifest in Ma Licheng’s ‘The “New Thinking” on Japan’, which  centred on the possibility of forming a new Japan policy without being constrained by historical issues. The new leadership of China also utilised opportunities — such as international conferences — to maintain summit meetings between leaders of Japan and China. Yet large-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations still broke out across China every weekend throughout the spring of 2005 in opposition to Japan becoming a permanent member of United Nations Security Council.

During Koizumi’s prime ministership, the Communist Party of China (CCP) was undergoing a transition of power from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and it was difficult for the Hu–Wen leadership group to formulate a foreign policy of its own. The anti-Japanese demonstrations were seen as a way to rattle Hu’s leadership and its willingness to take a softer approach towards Japan, and were possibly influenced by struggles within the Party.

Ultimately, this decline in affinity between the Japanese and Chinese people became an obstacle to the restoration of the relationship by the two leaders. In addition, Chinese Baodiao activities (or the Defend the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands movement) and the development of gas fields in the East China Sea were beginning to be regarded as national security threats to Japan. The friction and tension that existed between Japan and China then came to exert influence on wider public sentiment through the media and the internet. In China, this tension was reflected in the form of protests against Japanese students’ performance in Xi’an in 2003, anti-Japan riots over the Asian Cup in 2004 and anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005. Similarly, public opinion polls in Japan revealed significant decline in sentiment towards China.

The various factors that led to the current complications in Japan–China relations became apparent during the Koizumi years. While Koizumi acknowledged the economic development of China as an opportunity, his visits to Yasukuni created political problems for the Chinese leadership, denying opportunities for bilateral dialogue. Yet Koizumi’s historical awareness itself, shown both in his talk at Lugouqiao and in the statement he made on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, should not have been unacceptable to the Chinese leaders. Although the Hu Jintao leadership sought to improve relations with the Koizumi administration, it failed to make any breakthroughs. On top of domestic political issues, a steady decline in goodwill between the Chinese and Japanese public emerged as a new challenge for the leadership of both countries.

Madoka Fukuda is an associate professor at the Department of Global Politics, Faculty of Law, Hosei University, Japan. This article appeared in the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘Japan-China relations‘.