Tokyo _ In the Spring of 2005, protesters all over China waved placards accusing the Japanese of turning their backs on history. Putting aside Beijing's own skewed historical interpretations for the time being, it's worth taking a moment to ask: How accurate are these claims that today's Japanese have forgotten the past? After 17 years of teaching Japanese university students about their nation's shared history with Asia, I can report that the picture is mixed.

Today's youth know much more about Japan's wartime atrocities in the period from 1931-45 than they did in the past, but this progress is coming from an astonishingly low base. Discussions with my students over the years show a wide spectrum ranging from those who think Japan should bear responsibility for its past misdeeds, to the ``Dr Feelgoods'' of history who hardly acknowledge that Japan did anything wrong.

I recall in 1988 asking students about their views on the reasons for the second Sino-Japanese war (1937-45), and one student replying that he didn't know there had been a first one. Others looked sceptical, as if trying to decide if I was making it all up. After I pointed out the relevant section in the assigned reading, they temporarily suspended their collective disbelief.

There is indeed more to this than a general disinterest in history that can be observed in students worldwide. Many of my students have complained that they were poorly taught, if at all, about Japan's history. The exams only covered the period until 1925, so that's what they studied.

Since wartime Emperor Hirohito died in 1989, the media has significantly increased its coverage of taboo topics relating to the war. As long as he was alive, there was a reluctance, both out of deference and fear of reprisals from ultra-nationalists, to explore topics that might reflect poorly on the emperor.

In the early 1990s, there was a cascade of revelations about Japanese atrocities that profoundly shocked my students, and one young woman told me that it became more difficult to talk with her grandfather after knowing what he had been part of.

Since the '90s, comfort women _ a euphemism for the wartime sex slaves that came mostly from Korea and China _ has been one of the most popular research topics among my students.

The Nanjing Massacre, which refers to the mass rape and slaughter of civilians during the Japanese occupation of 1937-38, has also been a frequently chosen theme.

Virtually all of the students depict this horrible history in ways that I believe most Chinese would find acceptable. Student presentations on these taboo topics do not skirt the gory details and they frequently criticise the government's belated and grudging acceptance of war responsibility.

At the same time, from the mid-1990s the Dr Feelgoods of Japanese history have been asserting a vindicating national narrative that shifted responsibility and denied or minimised atrocities.

One can track support for the revisionists as coinciding with Japan's prolonged economic recession. It is partly a matter of a loss of national confidence just as China has been growing by leaps and bounds. Japan's destiny has been coming increasingly into question, and for some patriotism is a reassuring refuge.

In class, I have found myself arguing with the versions presented by best-selling comic-book writer Yoshinori Kobayashi, on whom a small minority of students, all male, rely as their principal source.

As a member of the Japan Society for History Textbook Reform, Mr Kobayashi wrote the chapter on the Pacific War that was published in the most controversial of the officially approved textbooks for junior high students.

While it is reassuring that the appeal of this whitewashed history has been limited to a small number of school boards (less than 1%), more insidious has been the influence of this 2001 text on the current crop of recently approved textbooks.

Public statements by prominent commentators in Japan also show that such ideas are easily accepted into the mainstream, as demonstrated by one former diplomat's recently brushing aside the Nanjing Massacre as ``irrelevant to history''.

Over the years I've also seen such views reflected in attitudes like those of my former student Nobu, an ardent if inarticulate supporter of the airbrushed version of Japan's rampage across Asia. He is one of the small minority of students who embrace this blinkered history.

He told me that he was sick of carrying the burden of history, and disgusted by the hypocrisy and inconsistencies of the victor's history imposed on Japan. The frightening thing is that China's current behaviour may actually be swelling the ranks of people like him.

The anti-Japanese outbursts at the 2004 Asia Cup hosted by China, a foretaste of what we witnessed last Spring, profoundly shocked my students. Some are angry, others dismayed. Most are worried about what this portends for the future.

Still, the popularity of mainstream revisionist views and the lack of agreement among Japanese about their shared history with Asia is stalling reconciliation. Until there is some sort of consistent interpretation of its own wartime legacy, Japan will continue to send out mixed signals that undermine any goodwill generated by gestures of atonement.

Beijing has managed to quell the protests and relations have swung back from heated antipathy to the deep freeze they have been mired in since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's 2001 visit to Yasukuni. His studied nonchalance about Chinese sensitivities regarding Yasukuni visits is widely deplored by prominent members of the Japanese business community, who are not eager to see lucrative contracts sacrificed on the altar of Yasukuni. They recognise that Japan's future lies in closer ties with their leading trading partner and see Mr Koizumi's provocations as an irresponsible own goal.

Mr Koizumi seems alone on the Yasukuni issue, as even the arch conservative Yomiuri Shimbun made a case in early June against visiting while the War Bereaved Veterans' Association, long a champion of Yasukuni visits, chimed in with a statement that gave him wiggle room.

There remains a high degree of wishful thinking among Japanese policymakers that Japan's shared history with China will fade away as a divisive issue. In various seminars and informal meetings in Tokyo, I have been struck by hardline attitudes regarding China and the naivete about the need for reconciliation.

There is a shared belief in Japan that the key problem is the Chinese government's politicisation of history as a means to divert public attention away from the social convulsions spurred by rapid economic growth and mass migration.

Some Japanese also take comfort in focusing on how the Chinese government distorts its own checkered past. What is striking is the absence of soul-searching about how Japan's abject failure to make headway on war memory, much less responsibility or reconciliation, is the root cause of contemporary Sino-Japanese problems.

The clumsy evasions, dissembling, denial and minimising that are all too apparent in contemporary Japan have made Sino-Japanese history an issue that won't go away.

The uncomfortable conclusion is that Japan has inadvertently politicised history, handing China a hammer that is far too convenient to set aside.

And, for all of those who recommend more exchanges as the panacea for bilateral relations, it is worth bearing in mind that Japanese government surveys indicate that Chinese who study here more often than not return with a negative view of Japan.

My Chinese students are less concerned about discrimination than by how little Japanese seem to know and care about their nations' shared history.

Mr Koizumi did not go to Yasukuni on Aug 15 in order not to make it an election issue. But in recent interviews he has indicated that he will return. Thus, his apologies on Aug 15 have been vitiated by his unwillingness to refrain from visiting a shrine that serves as a talismanic symbol of unrepentant militarism.

Voters handed Mr Koizumi an overwhelming mandate for domestic reform. It seems doubtful that he will use this power to rescue Sino-Japanese relations. He bears responsibility for promoting a national identity shorn of contrition about Japan's rampage through China. Clearly he seeks a legacy of sweeping transformation, but in China is more likely to be remembered as Mr Yasukuni, a man who has ensured that the past remains divisive.

Hopefully, neighbours will realise that Koizumi-mania does not mean that Japanese are all wildly nationalistic or pining for a vindicating and glorious history.

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