So Mr Abe too needs to show that the region's two most powerful countries can rub along more peaceably.
Locals rub along with the newcomers well enough, and no candidate from the far-right British National Party is standing.
Big countries are awkward to rub along with (ask any of Russia's neighbours or even America's closest friends in Europe).
At the moment, the three exchanges seem happy to rub along together.
India's Hindu majority and its tiny Christian minority mostly rub along peacefully.
At a moment when nationalistic claims and counter-claims are resounding over the ice-floes, the region's intractability still forces its would-be conquerors to rub along.
It's true that they tend to be friendly: people have to learn to rub along with each other if escape is difficult and circumstances hostile.
But at least this much can be said: there are enough examples of Muslims and non-Muslims learning to rub along, through the trade-offs of local politics, to disprove the fatalists.
While Mr Karamanlis is keen to help Turkey along the road to EU membership, he must contend with elderly Greek-Cypriot leaders who doubt whether they can rub along with their Turkish-Cypriot counterparts in a federal state.
People generally seem happy to rub along though a test of that is thrown up by another rule: that everyone - however fond of their own home dishes - has to eat together in a communal canteen.
Extending that principle, perhaps with special bridges that can support local vegetation and thus allow animals the illusion of an uninterrupted habitat, might be a cheap way of letting man and nature rub along a bit better.
That was hardly an advertisement for Mr Museveni's ability to teach the merits of market economics, but it saved Uganda's privatisation programme and restored faith in the belief that democracy and economic reform can rub along together.
One answer is that in the Balkans, as in some other societies where people of different races and religions rub along together, a strong hand at the top, be it that of an Ottoman viceroy, a Habsburg monarch or a communist despot such as Tito, may be a prerequisite for harmony.
My private theory is that some of the wisdom of the ages has been passed along in their genes, and a little may rub off on me, if I allow it.
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