Tokyo on Sunday demanded that Beijing apologise and offer compensation for damage to its embassy and ambassador's residence after they were stoned on Saturday by anti-Japanese protesters during the biggest demonstrations in the Chinese capital in years.
Protests against recent revisions to a Japanese history textbook and Tokyo's efforts to win a seat on the UN Security Council also took place in southern China on Sunday, where thousands of people encircled a Japanese consulate and shopping centre.
The demonstrations illustrate the depth of hostility and suspicion felt by many Chinese toward Japan. They pose a potential policy challenge to China's communist leaders, who have promoted patriotic sentiment in recent years but are also keen to limit disruption of already-strained Sino-Japanese ties amid accusations from some protesters they have been too soft on Japan, which invaded and occupied much of China from 1931-1945.
They also highlighted the strength of nationalist passions even among students at the elite universities in the capital.
Thousands of students marched across town and besieged the Japanese embassy and ambassador's residence in Beijing, pelting them with stones and “breaking many windows and causing other damage”, the embassy said.
The demonstrators, who organised the protest through e-mail, internet postings and mobile phone text messages, also attacked Japanese restaurants, signs and billboards advertising Japanese companies, and Japanese-made cars, it said.
Nobutaka Machimura, Japan's foreign minister, summonedChina's ambassador to Tokyo and demanded an apology and compensation for damage caused during the rally. Mr Machimura urged Beijing to take steps to prevent attacks against Japanese people.
The weekend protests were the largest in Beijing since 1999, when large crowds surrounded the US Embassy after Nato aircraft bombed China's embassy in Belgrade. Student demonstrations have been rare in Beijing since pro-democracy protests centred on Tiananmen Square were crushed by the army in 1989.
Beijing has made clear that it agrees with anti-Japanese demonstrators who accused Tokyo of failing to acknowledge and atone for its brutal invasion more than half a century ago.
However, the Chinese foreign ministry called on demonstrators to be “calm and rational” and stressed that large numbers of security personal had been dispatched to keep order.
Thousands of police flooded embassy districts in the capital but Japan's foreign ministry complained that they did not prevent people from throwing stones.
Demonstrators demanded a boycott of Japanese goods, a call that has received widespread support in China in recent weeks, although Japanese business executives say it is unclear whether such a campaign would be likely to have any lasting effect.
Additional reporting by Mure Dickie
