Photo/Illutration Hideo Tarumi speaks in Beijing on Dec. 4 at his final news conference as Japan’s ambassador to China. (Nozomu Hayashi)

BEIJING--The departing Japanese ambassador to China called on Tokyo and Beijing to stabilize their often rough-and-tumble bilateral relationship at his final news conference.

“The peoples of the two countries cannot bear going through (cycles of ups and downs) as if they were riding a roller coaster,” Hideo Tarumi, 62, told reporters at the Japanese Embassy here two days before leaving his post on Dec. 6.

In November, Tarumi personally met with a senior employee of the Chinese subsidiary of Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma Inc., who has been under detention on suspicion of espionage since March, during a consular visit.

The detention of the employee, who had been stationed in China for about 20 years, has dealt a serious blow to the bilateral relations. He was formally arrested in October.

Tarumi, an old China hand and ambassador to China since 2020, said he went to see the detained man “to show that the Japanese government is addressing the issue directly and also to keep the issue from falling into oblivion.”

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called on Chinese President Xi Jinping to release Japanese nationals detained in China at an early date when they met in San Francisco in November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

China also imposed a blanket ban on seafood imports from Japan in August to protest the release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

“While we have absolute confidence (in Japan’s stance), it is not appropriate to turn a deaf ear as long as China, our neighbor, has a different opinion,” Tarumi said.

During the summit in San Francisco, Kishida repeated Japan’s demand to immediately lift the import ban.

Kishida and Xi agreed to seek a resolution to the issue through dialogue and start discussions among experts from the two countries.

“We expect that experts will bring along ideas and find a common ground at any cost,” Tarumi said.

Japan and China marked the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations in September last year, but a number of ceremonies and related events were canceled due to heightened political tensions.

“Japan and China must establish stable and smooth relations that run like a local train (instead of a roller coaster),” Tarumi said. 

Tarumi said it is normal for the two neighbors to have different stances and experience frictions.

“But they must communicate with each other more closely and effectively when they have conflicting interests,” he said.

Tarumi will be replaced by Kenji Kanasugi, ambassador to Indonesia and a former director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.