Senior Japanese and Chinese lawmakers agreed Thursday to make efforts toward healing relations damaged by rows over wartime history and the Senkaku Islands.
At a meeting in Tokyo, Masahiko Komura, vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, told Ji Bingxuan, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, that he was glad to see parliamentary exchanges resumed between the two countries.
"A strategic relationship of mutual benefit between the two countries is based on having exchanges at various levels," Komura, who heads a Sino-Japanese parliamentarians' friendship league, said in the Diet.
Ji said his Chinese parliamentary delegation hopes to turn the "cloudy" bilateral ties to "sunny" ones and "continue developing them in a healthy manner."
"We must both work hard to overcome difficulties" by solving issues that have hurt relations, he added.
Senior officials of other parties, including the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan and the ruling coalition's junior member, Komeito, also took part in the meeting, which was partially open to reporters.
Ji leads a Chinese delegation that has come to Tokyo to resume bilateral parliamentary exchanges for the first time in three years. Lawmakers of both countries were to hold a meeting of the Japan-China Parliamentary Exchange Commission, a separate entity from the friendship league, later Thursday and on Friday to discuss cooperation in such areas as disaster prevention.
Similar meetings had been held almost annually since 2005, but none has taken place since January 2012. The chill in Sino-Japanese ties was triggered by Japan's move in September 2012 to bring some of the Senkaku islets in the East China Sea under direct state control. China and Taiwan claim the uninhabited islets, which they respectively call Diaoyu and Tiaoyutai.