Dousing the dragon's flame

For every yin, there is a yang.

Xinhua, Beijing's official press agency, expects the Olympic torch relay in the Japanese city of Nagano on Saturday to expand the "traditional friendship between the Chinese and Japanese people" and transcend differences between "states, races and ideologies, for gorgeous pictures and harmonious melodies of the earth," it adds, with rhetorical flourish.

Tokyo does not inhabit Beijing's pastoral utopia. Japan has already made clear it will not welcome the torch's phalanx of heavy-handed, blue-clad Chinese paramilitary guards. The relay, originally to set off from a celebrated Buddhist temple, will instead start in a car park due to fears of anti-Beijing protests. The running of the torch has already descended into chaos in some countries as pro-Tibet demonstrators scrambled to extinguish the flame.

Japan-China relations are stagnating, and Tibet is now beginning to encroach on the bilateral agenda. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda recently told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi that the plight of Tibet was an international issue, challenging Beijing's repeated assertions that it is a domestic matter.

Ties have also been strained by a health scare over Chinese-made dumplings and a dispute over lucrative drilling rights to gas fields in the East China Sea. Japanese public opinion also shows some signs of turning against China, with protests at the relay now looking likely.

Protesters will do well to snuff out the flame: each torchbearer for the Japan leg will be encircled by five riot policemen, who will be flanked by about 100 uniformed police officers forming two columns on either side.