Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine on October 16, 2005 -- the day that China's Shenzhou VI safely landed at a designated site in the Inner Mongolian plains bringing a five-day orbital flight to a successful conclusion. The stubborn man with the American Gigolo-Richard Gere hairdo apparently has thoughts other than peace in mind on that date.

The girly man who specializes in the one-envelope-two-letters approach in Sino-Japanese relations is the embodiment of irreconcilable Japanese sentiments today -- petty, selfish, myopic, insolent, seclusive, weird, combative, jealous, and maniacal.

Personally, I believe that since his divorce he has been thrashing about every night in his single bed in pure agony.

His face shows the strain and his left hand shows the stain.

To me it seems he desperately needs a woman other than his sister in his life for a change -- his misdirected impulses have caused him to be irrational as he tried to pick a fight between the two nations so that a wartime clause can be invoked for him to be re-elected for another term.

The narcissist probably thought his recent electoral win at the polls gave him a clear mandate to act as he pleases in areas other than Postal Reform.

He probably thought the Chinese would be irked enough to send more warships to their newly established oilfields in the undisputed area to give him an alibi to trash the peace clause in the Japanese Constitution.

And he probably thought his American masters would appreciate his obnoxious posturing at a time of joyous national celebrations in China.

The timing of the visit left his provocative intentions crystal clear -- the bird perched on the lemon tree pointedly shed its droppings into the bowl when China was enjoying her wonton soup right under the tree.

Ironically, Chinese foreign minister Li had just proposed a meeting on the issue of the East China Sea Oilfields as a result of the decisions reached at the fifth plenary session of the 16th C C P Congress.

Li's proposal on behalf of the Chinese government was a goodwill gesture for the resolution of the continuous irritants marring the relationship between the two important East Asian nations. It showed that the Chinese still harbor certain fantasies about their reckless neighbor.

China's patience was a result of her taking a long view of the vital role of Sino-Japanese co-operation for the rise of East Asia as a whole, not because she is afraid of the Japanese with their Aegis destroyers and anti-submarine planes.

And since this is supposedly the last year of Koizumi's remaining term, China had pinned her hopes on his not rocking the boat at this time of extreme tension in bilateral relations.

But since no one can clap with one hand alone, Japanese non-cooperation is proving to be detrimental to any unilateral conciliatory move.

It certainly looks like at this time Japanese rightists like him are too bewildered by the spectacular Shenzhou success to think logically on their feet and have this great urge to scratch at their collective jock itch until the crotch bleeds.

As opposed to the 1960s, when the LDP was still counter-balanced by a multiplicity of leftist parties, Japanese politics today is the exclusive domain of rightist politicians, and as in the case of the American neocons, they are all spoiling for a fight with China because they feel this is the last chance before China becomes inordinately powerful.

Such a war would be a lose-lose proposition for both sides no matter who 'wins' the shooting war. The oilfields are only 200 miles from China's eastern seashore, but are 600 miles from Japan. The Chinese will win a sea battle because even the land-based long-range Chinese batteries will be able to protect those oilfields operating in the undisputed area 200 miles offshore, let alone the submarines and surface vessels. But winning a battle may be the beginning of a long nightmare.

If Japan loses the sea battle it will give her the reason to go militarist for sure -- unless China is ready to do the ultimate surgery and uproot the entire focking rightist establishment in an all-out war, and so it is possible an acceptable loss is exactly what Koizumi wants.

Koizumi intends to throw the dice simply because he needs a military confrontation to be re-elected and scrap the peace constitution and go ballistic on militarist re-armament. The APPEARANCE of imminent battle is probably what he wants at this time to strengthen his allegation that China is a belligerent nation.

The fact that the Chinese government has now emplaced a special force of intermediate-level combatant vessels around the oilfields means that it has assessed the situation and will back up the ongoing negotiations with a show of force to protect China's sovereignty over the D iaoyutai Islands which happen to be on the same continental shelf as the East China sea oilfields, and which has historically belonged to China.

If a military confrontation is in the works, I have full confidence that the Japanese can be repelled successfully since recent Sino-Russian joint military exercises had obviously given the scenario of joint U.S.-Japanese maneuvers a careful study, and the Americans are unlikely to go to Armageddon just for the benefit of Japanese oil interests in the wake of visits by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld .

According to my study of bacterial colonies on Petri dishes, this unwelcome step is necessary to stop the growth of a particularly virulent strain of selfish Homo sapiens sapiens, but we must gauge the pros and the cons carefully if we are not prepared to dig into the very bottom of the Japanese pit.

A brief win without a concomitant Chinese determination to go all the way to the very kernel of the Japanese soul to uproot their deep-seated animosity against other East Asians may be counter-productive.

So the correct posture for China right now should be two-pronged -- continued patient negotiations as the better part of valor and an appropriate show of force in the undisputed area.

The above content represents the view of the author only.