Two schools in northeastern China's Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces were recently rebuilt and renamed after a Japanese man -- a touching episode at a time when bilateral ties are frosty.
The elementary school in Changchun was completed in September 2003 and named Zhicheng Xiaoxue, and the second school, which was finished last month and encompasses elementary and junior high grades in Harbin, was named Zhicheng Xuexiao.
Zhicheng is the Chinese pronunciation of the kanji for Shisei, the name of 67-year-old Shuichi Ito's son, who died in a traffic accident at age 28.
Ito funded the schools' rebuilding out of his own pocket.
He used to work as a secretary to the late Kazuo Shiotani, a Lower House member who worked to establish diplomatic relations between Japan and China.
Ito led a group of parliamentarians' secretaries to visit China in 1975, three years after the two countries normalized diplomatic ties.
He is now trying to improve bilateral relations at a different level. He used 6 million yen of his own money to rebuild the two schools, which had become dilapidated with age.
"My son is still alive in these schools. The children are my grandchildren," Ito said.
