Tension between China and Taiwan are heating up again, but Japanese government officials seem not as hot and bothered about it as one might expect. Perhaps they have taken a measure of China and decided that Japan will do just fine and is very capable of holding up its own end of Asia.
The impression that emerges from recent interviews in Tokyo, in particular with former Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, who is currently special assistant in charge of foreign affairs to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, is that Japan views the rise of China with more of an overarching sense of patience and of near-inevitability than with trepidation.
These days are not the quietest of times in Asia, however. The Japanese, for starters, are knee-deep in bitter disputes over island territories in the Pacific with China (as well as with Russia and South Korea) and are very wary of China's ally North Korea, which has so far refused to return to the six-party talks organized and hosted by China.