The Other Global Warming.(Periscope; SINO-JAPANESE RELATIONS)

Byline: Christian Caryl and Akiko Kashiwagi

Global warming tops the agenda of the July G8 summit of leading industrial nations in Hokkaido, but warming of a more beneficial sort is coming to Japan, too. Asia's two great powerhouses, China and Japan, are trying to calm their long and bitter rivalry, in ways that could transform the region.

The animosity dates to Japan's imperial aggression during World War II, and has been fueled by modern politicians. Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose term ended in 2006, persisted in visiting a Tokyo shrine to war dead, including men the Chinese consider war criminals. This unleashed violent protests in China. Now current Prime Minister Yasuko Fukuda is sending conciliatory signals by avoiding shrine visits in favor of uplifting talk about what unites China and Japan. He's also accepted an invitation to the opening ceremonies of Beijing's Olympics and has pointedly declined to criticize Chinese human-rights violations.

These efforts appear to be paying off. In late June, the destroyer Sazanami became the first Japanese naval vessel to put into a Chinese port since the war. One week earlier, the two sides ended a long-running dispute over natural-gas fields in the East China Sea by agreeing to share the resource. That deal was likely smoothed by Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Japan in May. Hu ...