China-Japan 400-1300 AD: 900 years of Friendship

I wrote about the China-Japan 50 years of feud,
but I never had the heart to write about China-Japan
 800 years of friendship.   From Han dynasty to Song
dynasty, the immigration and cultural exchange
between China and Japan flourished.  When Mongolians
conquered China and massacred us  into the dark age,
we cheered Japan that survived the onslaught and
thousands of well educated Chinese sailed to Japan.  

When the poet Li Bai heard of his Japanese friend
阿倍仲麻吕's drowning on the trip going back to Japan,
he dedicated his immortal poetry to his lost friend,
 comparing him to the bright moon sinking into the ocean:
明月不归沉碧海，白云愁色满苍梧

That is more or less how I feel.  Once upon a time,
we were a little more than friends, we were teachers
and pupils, we were almost brothers and sisters.
How did it come to this?   our little brother turned into
a raving mad mass murderer rapist robber who use
every pretext under the sun to commit crimes against us
and then deny-deny-apologize-deny-apologize-deny,
possibly ad infinitum.

We lost 10 million mothers and fathers, grandfathers
gradmothers, sisters and brothers.   We mourn for our
loss of lives and we mourn for our loss of innocence
and we mourn for our loss of trust in our erstwhile friends
in Japan.    Many Japanese seemed to have forgotten and
 lived their merry lives and even elected a right wing
denier into their highest office.   We, like all PTSD sufferers,
keep asking ourselves, what did we do wrong?  Why did we
deserve this betrayal?  We blame ourselves, we blame each
other, we blame completely innocent people and make
irrational choices over and over again.


In the back of my mind there's this question: Will we turn
into another Japan?   I don't think so, I hope not.
We inherited this wonderful and unique jewel of culture,
2000 years as semi-serfs and slaves infantized us and made
us the favorite victim of our $#!$#@ neighbors.
The Chinese should cut some snack for ourselves and our friends,
and develop some trust, hard as it is.  Going forward, to fulfill
our human potential and our cultural destiny,
we must as a people renounce violence and irresponsible use thereof.  
We need to heal from  PTSD that resulted from our massive blood-loss
and suffering and betrayal inflicted on us by our #!$%@$^ neighbor
in the first half of 20th century.

We will move on, with or without trusting Japan.   We need
to build trust with ourselves and with other people
who helped us like the Americans.  We will make
new friends, even out of old enemies.

But we must not make the mistake of underestimating
the Japanese capacity for mischief, again.  Some Japanese
are still hallucinating that we are out to get them, so are
desperately working to "contain" China.  Some Japanese
are still motivated by greed and will not scruple to drag
US and China into war for minor gains.   We hope
the japanese public will wake up to the fact, that
battle to the death and self-deception are for the
mentally unstable, like their right wing politicians
and their majority voters.

We, the Chinese and the Americans refuse to be dragged
into the Japanese hell.