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Japan Withdraws Military Aid Offer to China SHANGHAI — After a day of confusion about disaster relief plans, Japan said Friday that it had withdrawn an offer to send tents and other material to China by military aircraft and would dispatch it by civil planes instead. Japanese officials said the abrupt shift came about in deference to Chinese sensitivities to strong lingering resentment of Japan because of that country’s invasion of China in the 1930s. A military airlift would have marked the first mission by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to China since the end of World War II. “Currently, we have no plan to use aircraft of the Self-Defense Force,” chief cabinet secretary Nobutaka Machimure told reporters in Tokyo. “This is not something that should be done if it creates friction.” “The country has different memories of Japan than it does of other nations,” Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in separate remarks to the press. “We have to continue making every effort in an honest way to establish firm relations of trust.” Word of discussions on military aid between the two countries was first reported in Tokyo on Wednesday, when Japanese officials said they had received a request for airlifted assistance from China and were preparing to respond. The Japanese officials said that the Chinese request had not been detailed, but China’s greatest need was presumed to be for tents and other emergency shelter materials. In speaking publicly of the talks on aid between the two countries for the first time, Chinese officials would not say whether Beijing had requested a Japanese airlift or whether the offer had come from Japan. “If the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are ready to provide assistance, then the specifics will be discussed by the two countries’ defense departments,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a briefing Thursday, before the Japanese offer was modified. The diplomatic wording appeared to reflect official Chinese concern over widespread animosity toward Japan. Reports of the possible military airlift prompted swift criticism among many online commentators in China. Relations between the two countries were particularly strained earlier this decade when Japan was led by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Mr. Koizumi made a frequent practice of visiting Yakusuni, a controversial shrine to Japan’s war dead which holds the remains of prominent convicted war criminals. Relations have rebounded under the current prime minister. Yasuo Fukuda. This month, China’s president, Hu Jintao, made a five-day state visit to Japan that was the first by a Chinese head of state in a decade. During the current earthquake crisis, Japan was among the first countries to send search and rescue teams.