Could have been worse. He could have toasted them in Tibetan.
Little Nemo, I know you’re making a joke. But curious why you think Tibetan is worse than Japanese? I mean, it hasn’t been since the Tang Dynasty that Tibet invaded China, whereas 1945 was the end of the Japanese invasion…
I figured making a toast in Tibetan would be seen as support for Tibetan autonomy and/or independence. The equivalent of making a toast in Chechen at a state dinner in Moscow.
I gotcha, whereas using Japanese would be kinda like using German with Nazi phrasing at a state dinner in Moscow. Maybe we’re just splitting hairs…
Seems to me it’d be the difference between “understandable mistake” and “unquestionably deliberate insult.”
Lucky for Mr Kent the White House masked his gaff with a piano rendition of an anti-American Chinese propaganda tune.
An American diplomat’s wife, at some kind of gathering in the Reichstag in Berlin wanted to impress some folks with the fact she’d learned a little German, so because the room they all were in was chilly, she made the mistake of translating the phrase “I am cold!” literally.
She couldn’t understand why everyone got quiet and then the whole room burst out in laughter.
She had just told everyone she was frigid.
Gotta watch them idioms! 
Q
“I am a jelly donut!”
[pedant] Actually Kennedy was correct. [/pedant]
So it’d be like toasting the President of Poland… in German?
“Little baby trees.”