Relations between China and Japan are rarely better than acidic, and last week brought another reminder of how easily they can turn venomous. In Tokyo about 150 parliamentarians attended the Yasukuni shrine, which pays homage to hundreds of Japanese war criminals as well as the country’s war dead, drawing shrieks of protest from Beijing. Yet the persistent enmity between the two countries is bewildering to many outsiders, rooted in squabbles so obscure that they can even look manufactured.
中日關係大多數時候都很差,而最近的事件再一次提醒我們,雙方之間很容易就會變得充滿怨恨。在東京,約150名國會議員參拜了靖國神社(Yasukuni shrine),那裏不僅供奉著日本的戰爭死難者,也供奉著數百名日本戰犯。此事激起了北京方面的嚴厲抗議。然而,中日兩國之間持續的敵意讓許多外界人士感到不解,這種敵意源於一些爭執,而這些爭執是那麼晦暗不明,甚至可能讓人覺得像是人爲捏造的。