Following the July 23 collision of two high-speed trains in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province — blamed on faulty signaling equipment — that killed at least 39 passengers and injured over 200, Japan's media, to their credit, suppressed any obvious overtones of shadenfreude. But in the weeks before the accident, Chinese bullet trains were already a topic of controversy in the media.

Flash's issue of Aug. 2, which went on sale July 19, ran a piece by Yomiuri TV newscaster Jiro Shinbo with a headline denouncing China as a "shameless nation that does whatever it wishes (in the spheres of) military, politics and economics."

I was about to flip the page, but paused at the sight of two photos on the upper left side of the spread. The top showed China's streamlined CRH380A train — used for high-speed rail service between Shanghai and Beijing, reducing travel time between China's two major cities by less than half, to 4 hours 48 minutes — that was just initiated on June 30. Immediately below was a photo of the "Hayate" express — built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries — that runs on the Tohoku Shinkansen. Except for differences in the paint trim, the two might have rolled off the same line.