By MARTIN FACKLER
c.2010 New York Times News Service
TOKYO – When Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited Japan’s new leaders in October, not long after their historic election, he pressed so hard and so publicly for a military base agreement that the Japanese news media labeled him a bully.
The difference between that visit and the friendly welcome that a high-level Japanese delegation received just two months later in China, Japan’s historic rival, could not have been more stark.
A grinning President Hu Jintao of China took individual photos with more than a hundred visiting Japanese lawmakers, patiently shaking hands with each of them in an impressive display of mass diplomacy.