QUFU, China (AFP) -- Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda called for closer cooperation with China on Sunday as he wrapped up a four-day visit in which the two sides pledged to build on a recent thaw in relations.

“This trip to China has been very meaningful,” Fukuda told reporters after visiting a shrine in eastern China to the ancient philosopher Confucius.
“I have talked with Chinese leaders and agreed that Japan and China can do more if they cooperate than each can do single-handedly.”
Fukuda left later on Sunday after a landmark visit during which he held talks with Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao in Beijing on closer cooperation in trade, climate change and other fields, although they failed to close the gap in a stubborn dispute over maritime gas fields.
Fukuda, however, had accentuated the positive during his trip, his first to China since becoming prime minister in September and the latest step forward in a relationship marred by decades of distrust.
“There’s no good thing if Japan and China confront each other,” Fukuda said Sunday.
Ties between east Asia’s two dominant nations, long colored by Japan’s brutal invasion of China before and during World War II, have improved rapidly.
China cut high-level contacts with Tokyo during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi due to his visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which venerates 2.5 million war dead including war criminals who invaded China.
But Koizumi’s successor Shinzo Abe, and now Fukuda, have reached out to Beijing to keep diplomatic ties on a par with a deepening trade relationship, partly due to intense lobbying by Japanese industrialists seeking a warmer atmosphere.
Both sides have said President Hu intends to visit Japan in 2008, probably in the spring, at the culmination of a series of landmark visits that also saw Wen travel to Japan earlier this year.
In a reflection of the new levity in the relationship, Fukuda and Wen light-heartedly tossed a baseball back and forth during a meeting on Saturday.
Disputes remain, however, particularly the deadlock over gas fields in the East China Sea that straddle the nations’ maritime claims.
The Japanese have been pushing China for progress on the issue but none was achieved during Fukuda’s stay.
In his last stop in China, Fukuda visited a shrine to Confucius in the Shandong province city of Qufu, birthplace of the philosopher, before departing for a flight home.
After leaving Beijing on Saturday, Fukuda had visited the eastern city of Tianjin where he inspected Japanese investments, including a Toyota Motor Corp. plant.
Japan is the biggest foreign investor in China and trade between the two nations was worth 207.35 billion dollars last year, up 12.4 percent from 2005.