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The Japanese government has lashed out at Beijing, condemning an incident wherein a flotilla of Chinese government vessels breached Japan-claimed waters around the around the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea.Tokyo has lodged a formal diplomatic complaint after a Japanese-registered private vessel operating within Japanese-controlled waters was approached by four Chinese Coast Guard ships in the early morning hours of Monday. Tokyo says its coast guard patrols forced the Chinese ships to depart the area.Illustrative file image, via Kyodo NewsThe encounter was tense, based on the description given to US military news outlet Stars & Stripes, which recounted...

....The southern tip of the Ryukyu Islands sits only about 80 miles east of the Senkakus. Unlike the uninhabited Senkakus, the Ryukyus host not only roughly 1.5 million Japanese residents, but also the U.S. Marine and Air Force bases that anchor the U.S. presence in the East China Sea. Occupying the Ryukyus would fracture the U.S. strategic position in East Asia -- separating U.S. forces based in Japan (to the north) from those at Bahrain, the other permanent U.S. hub in Asia, far to the west. At a bare minimum, U.S. ships and aircraft would have to detour around Chinese-held...

TOKYO - Japanese fighter jets were scrambled a record high 415 times in response to Chinese aircraft approaching Japanese airspace in fiscal 2013, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday. That surpassed the previous record of 306 times the previous year, said the ministry which began releasing such data by country in fiscal 2001.

TOKYO — When President Bill Clinton signed a 1994 agreement promising to “respect” the territorial integrity of Ukraine if it gave up its nuclear weapons, there was little thought then of how that obscure diplomatic pact — called the Budapest Memorandum — might affect the long-running defense partnership between the United States and Japan. But now, as American officials have distanced themselves from the Budapest Memorandum in light of Russia’s takeover of Crimea, calling promises made in Budapest “nonbinding,” the United States is being forced at the same time to make reassurances in Asia. Japanese officials, a senior American military...

China's official media pointedly said Friday that Japan is the "prime target" of Beijing's newly declared air control zone over the East China Sea, warning that China is willing to engage in "a protracted confrontation with Japan." China's declaration of its Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), announced last week, has sparked strong resistance from Japan, the United States, South Korea and other neighboring Asian nations. The new zone partly overlaps those of South Korea and Japan. The U.S. flew two B-52 bombers through the Chinese zone without informing China this week. South Korea and Japan followed suit. In response, China...

Far East: Wars have started over less weighty issues than the sovereignty of islands in the East China Sea called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. They are barely rocks above water, but they sit atop valuable resources and are rapidly becoming a flash point as a rising power confronts one whose sun has set. These islands have become involved in a three-way tug of war between China, Taiwan and Japan with each sending fishing boats, even armed vessels, to the area. Private boats from Japan recently journeyed to the Senkakus to plant the Japanese flag one more time....

Over the past 48 hours we have written much, describing the perfectly expected surge in nationalist fervor and anti-Japanese sentiment, as the Senkaku Islands Snafu hits its boiling point.... Instead we'll let the pictures do the talking.

BEIJING: Crowds of thousands of Chinese in at least a dozen cities vandalised Japanese restaurants, ransacked department stores, torched Japanese-branded cars and clashed with police as anti-Japanese protests threatened to spiral out of control on Saturday. The protests unfolded amid rising tensions between the two countries over the disputed Diaoyu or Senkaku islands in the East China Sea. Hundreds gathered in more than a dozen cities, chanting anti-Japanese slogans and burning flags. In Beijing, a crowd of more than a thousand threw bottles, eggs and mobile phones at the Japanese Embassy. Tensions over the islands escalated on Friday as China...

China’s top offshore oil and gas producer, CNOOC Ltd., will begin operations this year at a gas field in the East China Sea despite a territorial dispute with Japan. ..CNOOC Chairman Fu Chengyu told reporters on Tuesday he expected the Chunxiao field, located south of Japan, to begin operations in August and September... ....On Monday Japanese media reported Japan had demanded that China halt construction at the Chunxiao natural gas field. Hydrocarbon deposits were found in the early 1970s... In 2004 China’s construction of the Chunxiao natural gas production plant 5 kilometres (3 miles) from the disputed area aggravated tensions...

TOKYO - In a sign of deepening popular and political animosity between China and Japan, Tokyo took formal possession this week of a tiny archipelago in the Pacific waters south of Japan. In the early morning of Feb. 9, Tokyo informed Beijing's embassy here that the Senkaku Islands would be administered by the Japanese coast guard. The unexpectedly bold action by Tokyo received little attention here. But it is seen as a "serious chess move," says one diplomat, in a region where power relations are being redefined, and where tensions over energy, borders, military buildups, and ethnic rivalries are palpable....