Telegraph
Two years ago this week, young Chinese rampaged through Shanghai and Shenzhen, smashing up Japanese cars and restaurants in rare street protests.
Today, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, lands in Japan amid mutual effusions of satisfaction at improvements in the two countries' relations. It is the first visit by a Chinese premier to Tokyo in seven years.
Closer ties: Wen Jiabao will be the first Chinese Premier to visit Tokyo in seven years
Briefings focus not on past atrocities, but on record trade figures, and collaboration in addressing regional crises such as North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
Mr Wen is also offering gifts - from rare ibises to lifting a ban on Japanese rice imports.
The new tone between the Far East's historic enemies has caught many by surprise, not least in China.
Silenced both by government warnings and by the sudden turn of events at the top, even those behind the 2005 protests have been left speechless.
"I think it would be impossible to raise that level of protest again," said one of the group of nationalist internet activists who played a large part in arousing anti-Japanese fury. The 2005 demonstrations were the visible sign of a crisis that was threatening to slip out of control. The trigger was an application by Tokyo to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council; the underlying cause of China's resentment of what it says is Japan's failure to atone for war-time atrocities.
In particular, China could not forgive the then Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, for his visits to Yasukuni, at which not only war dead but also 12 Class-A war criminals are enshrined.
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The first signs of change came when police were instructed to control further protests.
Amid a broader shift in China's foreign policy, to stress that its economic rise would not be at the expense of its neighbours, criticism of Japan began to disappear from state newspapers. Even the election of Shinzo Abe, a dyed-in-the-wool nationalist, as Mr Koizumi's replacement did not dent China's insistence on stressing the positive.
Mr Abe announced a revision of Japan's pacifist constitution and upgraded the defence agency into a ministry without receiving more than a mild rebuke from Beijing.
It was not even provoked last month when he outraged public opinion in many other countries by denying that Japan's war-time so-called "comfort women", many of them Chinese, were really forced into prostitution.
Instead, it says it is focusing on the future. "Sino-Japanese relations are at a critical stage and both countries should make an effort to push forward ties," Mr Wen said.
Wenran Jiang, an author on China-Japan relations at the University of Alberta in Canada, said Mr Abe had played a clever hand by making his first public move on China an offer to co-operate on energy conservation and security.
It was an issue far removed from what Beijing was expecting yet addressed one of its prime concerns.
What has not changed, however, is the potential for conflict.
Japan now has a trilateral defence relationship with Australia and the United States, which looks to China like an attempt to surround it militarily and limit its rise.