“Japan’s attitude has been very helpful for China,” said Noriyuki Kawamura, a professor at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies.

“China’s initial response to the virus was insufficient. The question is what Japan will do when those problems are exposed. Will it criticise China or close its eyes?”

Chinese visitors to Japan in January rose 22.6% from a year ago, data released on Wednesday showed. Even though infection numbers in China grew dramatically in late January, Abe’s government only banned entry from Hubei province on February 1.

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Japanese officials have repeatedly said there’s no change to the plan to treat Xi with full state honours “when the cherry trees bloom” in early April, but both sides may find the trip harder to manage.

The virus also appears to be eating away Abe’s long-solid voter support. A poll published this week by the conservative Yomiuri newspaper, which generally backs Abe, showed 52% of respondents were dissatisfied with the way the government has been handling the outbreak. His support rate dropped in all three media surveys published Monday.

The opposition Democratic Party for the People has called for a ban on all foreigners visiting from China. Former premier Yukio Hatoyama’s Twitter announcement that an organisation he heads had donated a million masks to China was met with a barrage of online criticism amid a serious shortage of such items in Japan.

An annual poll by think tank Genron NPO published in October found 46% of Chinese had a favourable impression of Japan, the highest since the survey began in 2005, as more tourists experience the country for themselves. Nearly 10 million Chinese visited Japan last year.

Almost 85% of Japanese respondents to the same poll said they had an unfavourable impression of China. By contrast, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying said gratitude would bring the two peoples together.

“Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the Japanese government and people have expressed sympathy, understanding and support to us,” she told reporters on February 4. “What the virus has done is cruel and will not last. What the people have done is touching and will be remembered forever.”

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She later tweeted in Japanese about China sending testing kits to its neighbour, saying “there are no borders in the fight against the virus.”

“Neither side has reduced its number of patrols close to the islands,” said Tsai Hsi-hsun, director of Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of Japanese Political and Economic Studies in Taiwan.

“They still do not trust each other in terms of national security and that distrust is deeply ingrained on both sides even though, on the surface, the relationship looks better.”