Fukuda and Wen smiled in front of the cameras while playing catch with a baseball following a breakfast meeting on the third day of the Japanese leader’s landmark visit to China.

Fukuda held talks with Wen and President Hu Jintao on Friday to lay the groundwork for closer cooperation between the nations in trade, climate change and other fields, but a dispute over maritime gas fields remained unresolved.

Yet at the Saturday breakfast, Wen told Fukuda that his trip to China “is in the middle of winter, but you brought warmth.”

Fukuda replied,”this year started with Prime Minister Wen’s ice-fusing trip to Japan (in April) and will end with my spring-welcoming trip.”

Next year is an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen ties because of President Hu Jintao’s visit to Japan, the Group of Eight Summit there — to which China is invited — and the Beijing Olympic Games, Fukuda said.

The genial five-minute ball-catching session in a Beijing gymnasium included several dropped balls on Fukuda’s part. A young Chinese baseball player was also drafted in to throw the ball around with the two leaders.

Wen sported the same Japanese university baseball uniform he wore when he wowed the Japanese public with his throwing skills in Tokyo in April. Fukuda wore a white shirt and a red cap.

Fukuda is on a four-day visit aimed at deepening ties between the two Asian giants, which have long been wracked over Japan’s World War II invasion of China.

In Friday talks, the two nations agreed to continue to negotiate a territorial dispute over lucrative gas fields in the East China Sea and raise discussions to vice-ministerial level in order to bring a “quick” solution.

Prior to his trip, Fukuda had expressed hopes that the resolution of the dispute could be reached during the visit.

Eleven rounds of negotiations on the gas fields since 2004 have made little progress, with China rejecting the maritime border that Japan considers a starting point for discussions.

After departing Beijing on Saturday, Fukuda visited the eastern city of Tianjin before arriving to Jinan city, capital of Shandong province, where he will tour the nearby ancestral home of ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius in Qufu on Sunday.

In Tianjin, Fukuda inspected Japanese investments, including a Toyota Motor Corp. plant, following a lunch with the city’s Communist Party boss Zhang Gaoli.

Japan is the biggest foreign investor in China and trade between the two nations was worth US$207.35 billion last year, up 12.4 percent from 2005.

China cut high level contacts with Tokyo during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi due to his visits to the capital’s Yasukuni shrine, which venerates war criminals who invaded China, alongside another 2.5 million war dead.

During a speech at Peking University on Friday, Fukuda said his country would “look squarely” into its wartime militarism, calling Japan’s brutal invasion of China “an unfortunate period”.

“I believe it is our responsibility to squarely look at it and to pass it on to our offspring,” Fukuda said, drawing applause.

“I believe we can prevent mistakes in the future only if we properly look at the past, and have the courage and wisdom to repent what we must repent.”

Fukuda — whose father, late premier Takeo Fukuda, signed a landmark friendship treaty with China in 1978 — and his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, have stayed away from the shrine, paving the way for the dramatic thaw in bilateral relations.

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