TOKYO  - Hundreds of Japanese on Saturday rallied against Beijing over an escalating island row, days after anti-Japanese protests saw shops and factories vandalised in China. Some 800 demonstrators waved national flags as they marched through downtown Tokyo, denouncing Beijing as a “brute state” and “fascist”. Protesters marched through the Roppongi entertainment district, near the Chinese embassy, shouting: “We will never give in to China’s military threat!” They criticised the sometimes-violent anti-Japan demonstrations which saw tens of thousands march across China last week, forcing firms to close or scale back production.
“We get excited sometimes, but we don’t loot shops like those in China, where the demonstrations deviated from their original intentions,” said Shuhei Takagi, 21, clad in a camouflage uniform. The row centres on the Tokyo-controlled Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, which are claimed by Beijing under the name Diaoyu. Asia’s two largest economies have wrangled about the islands since the 1970s, but the row flared in August after pro-China activists landed on one of them. Tensions escalated dramatically after the Japanese government bought three of them from their private owners. Japan’s coastguard said Saturday it was monitoring seven Chinese ships in waters near to the chain. There had been 14 in the area on Wednesday.