The most significant aspect of the trip by Shinzo Abe, Japan’s Prime Minister, to China and then South Korea is that it is happening. The most consequential result would be for all sides to agree that the conversation must be kept going and institutionalised. If the leaders of Britain, France or Germany had not visited each other’s shores in five years, or met in any forum for 18 months, this would rightly be regarded as extraordinary and disturbing. Yet that was the state of affairs in East Asia before Mr Abe flew to Beijing yesterday for talks with Hu Jintao, the Chinese President.

The senseless standoff between China and Japan should not be repeated. Mr Abe deserves considerable credit, therefore, for seizing the initiative. He has been in office for less than a month but properly recognised that, if he did not make a move, then the diplomatic stalemate would become entrenched. He has been able to hold this tour because he has not been to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine as Prime Minister and has not committed himself to doing so. He has also been assisted by North Korea’s noisy insistence that it will conduct a nuclear test soon. This would cause such a convulsion in East Asian politics that even the most blinkered nationalist politician in Tokyo would have to admit that an overture to neighbouring nations was sensible.

North Korea’s reckless threats have put China on the defensive. For years, the Communist Party leadership has insisted that it could control its erratic and irresponsible political nephew and that, in any case, the extent of Pyongyang’s nuclear programme was exaggerated. Unless North Korea is engaged in a bluff of atypical sophistication, it would seem that Kim Jong Il’s ambitions and independence have been understated. Not only Japan but South Korea will ask hard questions of Beijing if North Korea’s actions force each country to reassess fundamentally its own military position.

Mr Abe obviously did not exploit China’s loss of face in misreading North Korea. He hopefully offered private reassurances that he will not humiliate China again by going to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours 14 prominent war criminals, in 10 months’ time. It cannot be beyond the imagination of the Prime Minister to devise a different ceremonial form and location which allows the huge sacrifice of ordinary Japanese soldiers to be remembered without appearing to be indifferent to the harsh intent and deeds of those who ordered them into battle. Mr Abe, as a nationalist, is better placed than anyone else to do this. If Richard Nixon was the best President to make the journey to China, Mr Abe is the ideal Japanese Prime Minister to travel away from the Yasukuni Shrine.

It would not serve the interests of any of these nations if this fruitful round of talking was followed by a return to silence. Japan, China and South Korea are more mutually dependent than it often suits any of these players to acknowledge. There is the potential for co-operation on trade, a co-ordinated reduction in carbon emissions and creating stability in which all three nations can achieve economic growth and exercise greater influence on the global stage. Neither the bad blood of an unfortunate history nor the posturing of a surreal regime in North Korea must be allowed to interfere with that progress. Mr Abe should return home with more dates in his diary.

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