Looking forward

Many Chinese, especially the young, have tried to embrace Japan.

Han Feng likes Japan. She watches Japanese movies, and buys Japanese brands.

"I even visited the Yasukuni Shrine, but the overt denial of aggression just made me really angry," she said. Han is from northeast China, where the Japanese set up the puppet regime Manchukuo.

"We really want to let go of the past," said Jiang Yicong, 22, whose great grandfather led the No. 19 Army against the Japanese in Shanghai. "But if they stop the attempt to temper with history, we could get on much better."

Last month, three Japanese cabinet ministers and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife visited the Yasukuni Shrine. In July, Japan's Lower House passed a controversial security bill that would give the Self-Defense Force a greater role worldwide; this is a violation of the country's post-war constitution.

Despite these trying circumstances, the people of both countries never stopped moving closer to each other.

By April 2013, 60 percent of Japan's international students were from China. Similarly, Japan was China's fourth biggest foreign student origin country.

Yano Koji first came to China in the early 2000s to study Chinese, and is now one of the most popular Japanese actors in China.

At first, he played many Japanese soldiers -- the archetypal "bad guys".

Gradually he was accepted by the Chinese audience, and now has tens of thousands of fans. He also has a Chinese wife and a daughter.

"As an actor, I am a conduit," he said. "Everyone who works between China and Japan could be a channel, and we could unite to make a difference, so that in spite of politics, the exchanges between Chinese and Japanese people continue."

Chinese director Lu Chuan was glad to see his movie "City of Life and Death" (2009) shown by Japan's largest online video platform niconico.jp. The film focuses on the Nanjing Massacre.

When the film was shown four years ago in a cinema in Tokyo, more than 40 police officers and several police cars safeguarded the event in case right-wing extremists caused trouble, Lu recalled.

The screening was a good start, Lu said, adding that he hoped the people from China and Japan could have more exchanges "to understand each other better."

Yang Haihui observed that in Japan, elderly people who knew the war better tend to be more friendly toward China than the younger generation.

"There might be many people in both countries who were like me in the past: disliking each other but without really knowing each other," he said.

A book written by Chinese TV host Bai Yansong, who made a program about Japan several years ago, reads: "Love or hatred, put it aside [...] Understand each other first. With enough understanding, everything is possible."