What a difference five months can make.

Despite a relationship overshadowed by Japan’s wartime past and a territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea, the leaders of China and Japan held a 29-minute meeting on Wednesday on the sidelines of a conference in Jakarta -- and even managed to look a bit more relaxed than their last chat in November.

Dressed in suits, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wearing a blue tie and President Xi Jinping a light purple tie, the heads of Asia’s two biggest economies smiled at each other and shook hands firmly, even if their eye contact was a little awkward.

It was hardly an auspicious time for a meeting.

Abe this week prompted complaints from China after he sent a traditional offering for the start of the spring festival at Tokyo’s Yasukuni shine, a place that honors war dead including more than a dozen Class A war criminals.

Abe also said on Monday he did not plan to repeat Japan’s previous war apologies in a statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. China and South Korea have both called on Japan to do more to atone for its militarist past.

Still, the atmosphere of the meeting seemed more positive than Abe and Xi’s 25-minute conversation in November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperationforum in Beijing. That probably reflects a more pragmatic understanding of the challenges for the major trading partners, according to Lian Degui, a deputy director of Japanese studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.

David Fuller's view

Progressive and economically ambitious leaders of countries learn to work together.  WWII was a terrible event but it occurred and ended before either Xi or Abe and most of China’s and Japan’s current citizens were born. 

China and Japan can work together and prosper.  Alternatively, if they chose to live in the past, they can sow the seeds for WWIII.  Who benefits from that?