After a long hiatus, relations between China and Japan are finally stirring into action.

In late December, Japanese Foreign Minister, Iwaya Takeshi, visited China, where he met his counterpart Wang Yi and other Chinese officials.

In the tradition of the 1971 Nagoya ping-pong diplomacy (which saw the diplomatic map of Asia overturned), they agreed to revive exchanges through sporting events such as the Harbin Winter games and the Asian Games to be held in Nagoya in 2026.

Then during Beijing talks in mid-January with Hiroshi Moriyama, secretary general of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, and other Japanese ruling lawmakers, Wang Yi also indicated China was keen to resume leaders’ visits with Japan.

Beijing, no doubt, saw a chance to use Japan-US trade tariff frictions to China’s advantage

But his informal suggestion that Japan’s Prime Minister, Ishiba Shigeru, visit China for the Asian Winter Games to be held in Harbin on 7 February, was passed over (Mr Ishiba was due to visit Washington on that date) .

Instead Iwaya indicated that Japan would be open to hosting the postponed annual Japan-China-South Korea Foreign Ministers’ Meeting due in early 2025.

(The talks were held last weekend with the usual pledges for future co-operation though all three nations are in serious territorial dispute with each other.)

Prime Minister Ishiba has the progressive credentials to justify closer relations with Beijing. But he clearly has to juggle these relations with the US.

US President Trump did him the honour of placing him high up on his invitation list shortly after taking office. Ishiba responded with promises of massive investments in the US and purchases of LNG to be piped across the US. (Are you listening Woodside Energy?)

Trump even managed to include the Nissan Motor Co, close to bankruptcy, on Japan’s proposed list of Japanese investments in the US.

It is hard to be optimistic about Japan’s future relations with China.

To prove his credentials as a defence specialist, Ishiba, during the meeting with Trump, went out of his way to mention Article Five of the Japan-US Security Treaty binding the US to defend Japan’s claim to the Senkaku Islands in the South China Sea – a claim that has long infuriated Beijing.

China has close to a 1000-year claim to the name of the islands – Diaoyu-tai (Fishing Platform) in Chinese, a name also used by several Beijing palaces. Japan still does not even have its own name for the islands.

Pinnacle Islands was the name given by the British mariners who came across them some 200 years ago. The islands (close to Taiwan) were later seized and claimed by a once militaristic Japan which simply translated Pinnacle into Senkaku – not much Japanese in all that.

Today Chinese Coast Guard vessels have to make almost daily claim-asserting intrusions into the island’s contiguous waters – a dangerous start to a revived relationship.