That foreign ministers of Japan, China and South Korea met in Tokyo this week to jointly urge North Korea to stop provocative acts such as its repeated ballistic missile launches and nuclear weapons tests shows that the three countries are better off coming together to deal with common regional challenges than in giving in to their mutual disputes.
Officials of the three governments should also realize that tensions over the mutual differences rise in the absence of top-level diplomatic contacts. It is a positive development in that regard that the foreign ministers reportedly agreed to work toward realizing a trilateral summit of their national leaders in Japan by the end of the year.
Wednesday's talks among Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and his counterparts Wang Yi and Yun Byun-se were the first held in Tokyo in more than five years. The three countries have been taking turns since 2007 to host the trilateral foreign ministerial meeting, but it was canceled in 2013 and 2014 amid the deep confrontation between Tokyo and Beijing over the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.