An early fall breeze swept over Peking airport, lifting the first Rising Sun flag to fly there since 1945. As Japan's Premier Kakuei Tanaka stepped out of his DC-8, a Chinese band struck up the solemn Japanese anthem Kimigayo (The Reign of Our Emperor), then switched to the Communist Chinese anthem March of the Volunteers, the staccato marching song that Mao Tse-tung's Red Army sang during its wars with Emperor Hirohito's plundering troops in the 1930s and '40s. It was a moving beginning to a historic meeting that would end a century of hostility and reopen a dialogue between...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
