It has become an annual event. At about the same time that the cherry blossoms in Tokyo are at their peak, Japan faces a big foreign-policy headache: how to respond to the United States-led efforts to censure China at the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
"We want to avoid hurting relations with both the U.S. and China. At this time every year, we are put in a position where we are damned if we do and damned if we don't," one senior Japanese government official said, requesting anonymity.
Nearly every year since the bloody military suppression in June 1989 of prodemocracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the U.S., a self-proclaimed champion of human rights and democracy, has submitted a resolution condemning the Communist-ruled country to the 53-member U.N. commission.