The Beijing Games fit a narrative set by the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and continued with the Seoul Games of 1988 that show each in turn stepping forward and changing their international image.

So when President Hu Jintao heads to Japan next week, leaders of both countries will be keen to ensure that it is the parallels between the 1964 Games and the Beijing Games that take centre stage, not the political animosity that has in the past spilled onto the sports ground.

'For Japan, the '64 Olympics was very, very important symbolically,' said Mr Lam Peng Er, a senior research fellow at Singapore's East Asia Institute.

'In fact, the first country to achieve a peaceful rise after the Second World War was not China, but Japan. Japan in 1964 acquired a new persona,' he said.

When the Games open in August, both countries will be hoping to avoid the ugliness that marred the 2004 Asian Cup, when Chinese fans booed and jeered Japan's national side and rioted after Japan defeated China 3-1 in the final.

The spat led Japanese media to question Beijing's qualifications to host the 2008 Games.

But four years on, a change of leadership in Japan and a realisation among both of the need to improve ties means that Mr Hu's meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will be held in a far friendlier atmosphere.

Ping-pong diplomacy
Ties remain strained over a number of unresolved issues, including a dispute over natural gas resources, but sports helped thaw each country's image of the other during reciprocal visits last year between Mr Fukuda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

Japanese fans were delighted by Wen's pitching to a university baseball team and his impromptu sprint around the field during a visit last year. Mr Wen and Mr Fukuda reprised the moment months later when they played a game of catch in Beijing.

This time around, Mr Fukuda is set to continue the tradition with Mr Hu over a game of ping-pong, Japanese media has reported.

The choice of baseball, huge in Japan, and ping-pong, a Chinese national obsession, was no accident, analysts say.

'Baseball was a positive gesture because the leader of China was willing to put himself in a position of inferiority,' said Mr Peter Gries, a China specialist at the University of Oklahoma. 'Ping-pong would be a return of the favour.'

The choices also have a historical parallel, said Mr Gries.

The United States famously dispatched its ping-pong players to China as a friendly gesture before the two had diplomatic ties.

Less well known is the visit of the Washington Bullets, who played China's national basketball team in 1979, the year relations were normalised.

In the first sport China was dominant, in the second, the United States.

Although match-ups at the August Games between China and Japan could yet be tense, anger in China over Western countries' reactions to unrest in Tibet means fans could direct their frustration at new targets.

China has also indicated it is hoping to leverage the shared experience of hosting an Olympics when Hu and Fukuda meet.

'We feel the 1964 Olympics changed the views of a generation of Japanese toward the world,' Mr Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador to Japan, told Japan's Fuji TV, in an interview published by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

'We also hope that through hosting the Olympics we can pursue peace, friendship, cooperation and development,' he said. -- REUTERS