To most foreigners, writes Michael Booth, the Japanese aren’t just nice but “ridiculously nice”, which is why it’s odd that they are so unpopular with their neighbours.

To most foreigners, writes Michael Booth, the Japanese aren’t just nice but “ridiculously nice”, which is why it’s odd that they are so unpopular with their neighbours. In Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea and Japan (Jonathan Cape, £14.99; Tablet price £13.49), Booth sources this resentment in bitter memories of the Japanese atrocities in the Second World War, but feels nonplussed by the unwillingness of Koreans and Chinese to let old grudges go. He thinks another war unlikely, however, as all these societies are ageing fast.

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