The business community greeted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Sunday summit in Beijing with Chinese President Hu Jintao, billed as a fence-mending effort by the two countries, with a sigh of relief.
Japan-China relations have been called politically chilly and economically warm, with the political side suffering in part from the annual pilgrimages to Yasukuni Shrine made by Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. Those visits provoked fury in China and South Korea, both of which accuse leaders in Tokyo of distorting Japan's wartime past.
Japanese companies were reluctant to comment on Koizumi's visits to the Shinto shrine, which honors Japan's war dead as well as Class-A war criminals, saying it is not appropriate to speak on political matters. But their worries about how the bad blood between Tokyo and Beijing might affect their business are plain enough.
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