Surprisingly, bitter feuds between Japan and its two most influential neighbors seem not to interfere with their cooperation on the problem they all have with North Korea, says the top US State Department official who deals with East Asia.
Japan's differences with China and South Korea can be traced almost entirely from the Imperial Japanese Army's often brutal occupation of Asia before and during World War II. Almost all Asia came under the Japanese boot, but Korea and China were among those most drastically affected.
The latest problems arose this year after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ignored requests by China and paid his fourth annual visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shinto shrine, which honors Japan's 2.5 million war dead. Some were executed war criminals, such as World War II Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.
The two also have objected bitterly to what they consider whitewashing of the war experience in Japanese schoolbooks.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told editors and reporters on Friday that he had misgivings early in the year, "when these issues started bubbling over."
He worried that the bad blood among the old enemies would damage the united front the US government wanted to present in six-party talks to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the US are involved in the touchy diplomatic exercise.
Hill said he found he had not needed to worry.
"I'm pleased to say that with respect to the six-party talks, when we get together in the room with all six delegations -- also measured by number of times the Japanese delegation and Chinese delegation get together -- I am pleased to say it has not had any kind of chilling effect within the six-party process," he said.
"I think both sides have a real interest in trying to solve this. It's quite possible that when the two sides have a bilateral problem, they can put that aside in order to solve a problem of mutual interest," he said.
That held also for Japan and South Korea, he said, "who also have had difficult bilateral moments, but they work very well within the six-party talks."
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS