Now the forum is a major platform for public diplomacy between the two nations. It will see nearly 200 leaders from the political, business, academic and media fields take part in a two-day discussion starting Monday in Tokyo. More than 800 students and journalists have applied for a seat to listen to the panel discussions.

China is set to overtake Japan as the world's second largest-economy in a resurgence that is changing everything from the global balance of military and financial power to how cars are designe

Japan Prime Minister Naoto Kan ordered his cabinet to avoid the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on the Aug. 15 anniversary of the end of WWII. It underscores his shift toward improving relations with Asian neighbors.

A private organization has invited Italian college students to Japan in an attempt to foster cultural exchange between the two countries...The organization, which had mainly offered Italian language and cultural courses for Japanese people, invited the Italian students in a bid to promote bilateral cultural exchange.

On August 10, Prime Minister Naoto Kan issued an apology for Japan's mistreatment of the people of Korea...It was the latest in a long line of expressions of remorse for past misdeeds and part of a carefully calibrated strategy of what Japanese conservatives deride as "apology diplomacy".

President Barack Obama will have to deftly navigate an atomic minefield if he decides to visit Hiroshima, the city destroyed by the first atomic bomb 65 years ago, during his visit to Japan later this year.

Sushi's humble beginnings in Tokyo are of only passing interest to University of Wollongong academic Matt Allen and colleague Rumi Sakamoto...the academics' real interest lies in its culinary colonisation of the world in the past 20 or so years and how this has been influential back in Japan.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan offered a renewed apology to South Korea on Tuesday for Japan’s brutal colonial rule, as part of a statement marking the 100th anniversary of his nation’s prewar annexation of the Korean Peninsula.