Ten years after a disastrous visit to Japan by China's top leader dominated by their bitter wartime past, Beijing and Tokyo are keen to avoid a rerun that would risk damage to the deep economic ties between the Asian rivals.
Chinese President Hu Jintao will retrace some of predecessor Jiang Zemin's steps while in Japan, dining at the Imperial Palace and speaking to students at Tokyo's Waseda University a day after his Wednesday summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.
But few expect the sort of pointed lectures on Japan's 1931-1945 invasion and occupation of China that Jiang delivered at a state banquet hosted by Emperor Akihito, in his own speech at Waseda and during his only news conference in Tokyo.
The two countries "have gone through a very difficult 10 years and have realised that abusing history for short-term diplomatic and political gains has its costs," said Andrew Horvat, a professor at Tokyo Keizai University. "I think they have learned that."
Arriving in Japan not long after Tokyo had apologised to South Korea for its often-brutal 1910-1945 colonisation of the peninsula, Jiang had sought a written apology for China.
When it became clear none was in store, whether because Jiang refused to promise to let bygones be bygones or because hardline Japanese politicians dug in their heels, or both, the Chinese leader delivered a series of harsh rebukes over Japan's past.
By one account, Japanese present "visibly paled" when Jiang lectured on the wartime past in front of the emperor, a scene one Japanese official recalled left him with a "sense of bitterness".
Many Chinese, for their part, were angry and offended by Tokyo's refusal to offer more than a verbal apology.
INTERTWINED ECONOMIES
Despite efforts by both sides to repair the damage, relations chilled again between 2001-2006, when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made yearly visits to Yasukuni Shrine for war dead, seen in Beijing as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.
In a sign that episode still rankles, Japanese media reported that Koizumi would not attend either a state dinner for Hu or his breakfast meeting with former Japanese prime ministers.
