Hu wants to build goodwill after a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, when they agreed to focus on cooperation after years of rancour over Japanese wartime aggression.
In a speech at Tokyo's Waseda University, Hu touched on Japan's 1931-1945 occupation of part of China, calling it "unfortunate history" that had brought terrible suffering. But he said there should be no grudges between the two neighbors.
"History is the textbook richest in wisdom, and to remember history is not to nurse hatred, but to use history as a mirror and look forward to the future," Hu said in a speech broadcast live on both Japanese and Chinese television.
Yet even as Hu spoke in the strictly guarded hall, protests and scuffles outside were a reminder of China's image problems and a crackdown in restive Tibet that have magnified public wariness of Beijing in Japan and other countries.
About 200 demonstrators waved signs outside the university gate saying "Free Tibet" and "No Pandas, No Poison Dumplings." Hu has offered to lend two pandas to a Tokyo zoo, but many Japanese worry more about a row over Chinese-made dumplings laced with pesticide that made several people ill.
Both governments, however, want Hu's visit to be a success. Fukuda wants to lift feeble support ratings that could force him from office, and Hu wants to ease international pressure over Tibet that could mar the Beijing Olympics in August.
Hu praised Japan's economic development and trade ties, and aid to his own country, and urged the two countries to "consider each other as partners for cooperation, not rivals."
