From what I see of the papers, everything has gone to hell. The Japanese Foreign Minister has turned around to attack the Chinese textbooks for perpetuating the mindset among the Chinese only one perspective - that of the sufferings of the Chinese. Whatever Koizumi has said is going to be spit in the wind if the Foreign Minister doesn't retract what he says soon.

Personally, I find that remark to be very wrong. In the first place, China was invaded by Japan. Because of the war, they had little outside communication and all that and had to deal with the brunt of the Japanese forces during the early days of the Pacific War. It's unrealistic to expect the people to think and consider - "oh, the Japanese civilians must be suffering too!" when you see your own daughters being taken away and your sons drafted into a futile battle. Furthermore, Japanese civilian sufferings never reached any significiant proportion to the amount of killings they had done of civilians overseas until the 2 A-bombs were dropped.

To be fair to the Japanese, though, they are the only nation to have experienced the A-bomb first hand, so perhaps in that way it'd not be fair to neglect saying that their civilians had seen hardship. But the whole glossing over of the wartime atrocities? I'm not going to stand for that even though my grandparents were quite safe and most of my PRC relatives I just don't really know them really.

But just... urgh. Why on earth did that stupid guy have to turn around and accuse Chinese textbooks of being biased? It's among the stupidest diplomatic moves since the new century, I swear.

Ditto. I'm very weary about anything I say in the presence of my older relatives. About the boycotting of Japanese products; I think this have gone too far, in many ways it seem to have gone beyond simple anger, it has began to feel more and more like a popularity contest. And complete agreement on the attack of Japanese citizens. I think it is wrong, and downright sick. You do not go after innocent citizens who knows nothing about the war. In addition, riots againsts Japanese stores in China make me cringe and very shamed. The news about the filipino family make me sad, tired and more than a bit angry. I'm sorry seem so little in this type of situations.

On the point of your grandmother, I belief everything is personal, the fact that your grandmother experienced something favourable and that make her perceive the Japanese as kind than I see no wrong with it. Hell, this is more of a points for the soldier in question. It isn't anyone that can keep rational thoughts in situations like the war.

Koizumi have apologised (a first on the matter of WW2), but as code_renegade said, the Japanese Foreign Minister have screwed up any chance of, 'let's do a hand shake and move on,' by attacking Chinese text books being biased, that is, talking about the sufferings of the Chinese. You can guess how that went down.