China, Japan hold "frank and friendly" history talks

BEIJING, Dec 28 (Reuters) Two days of talks between Chinese and Japanese historians ended without touching upon sensitive subjects like the Nanjing massacre, but the two sides agreed to continue the fence-mending process next year.

''Everyone was very earnest, frank and friendly,'' University of Tokyo professor Shinichi Kitaoka, who heads the Japanese delegation, told a news conference yesterday. ''It was a very good start.'' The first meeting concentrated on personal introductions and deciding how to format the next meeting, where two different groups will be set up to look at modern and ancient history, he said yesterday.

''We did not discuss the Nanjing massacre or any specific event,'' Kitaoka said.

Some right-wing Japanese historians play down the 1937 massacre, although China maintains that the barbarity of the event is an indisputable fact.

China says 300,000 Chinese men, women and children were slaughtered by invading Japanese troops in war-time capital Nanjing, formerly known as Nanking.

According to estimates made at Allied war crimes trials after World War Two, Japanese forces killed about 42,000 civilians in Nanjing and more than 100,000 civilians and prisoners of war in the vicinity of the city.

Kitaoka added that the Japanese side was not bound by politics to follow a certain point of view, and was independent.

''At least on the Japanese side we have freedom of speech,'' he said. ''There's no constraints to our study.'' Of the Chinese side he would only say: ''They are freer than you imagine.'' Enmity in China towards wartime adversary Japan is deep-rooted, and Beijing rarely misses an opportunity to remind its people about horrors visited upon them by Imperial Japanese troops before and during World War Two.

Sino-Japanese relations have been cold in recent years, largely because of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, seen by Beijing as a symbol of Japan's militarism during its 1939-45 invasion and occupation of parts of China.

Koizumi's successor, Shinzo Abe, moved to mend fences, visiting China in October just weeks after he took office. At a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, the two leaders agreed on the need for joint history studies.

Reuters BDP GC0948