Anti-China Protest in Tokyo Draws Thousands After Ship Collision
October 16, 2010, 6:52 AM EDTBy Sachiko Sakamaki
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- As many as 3,000 flag-waving Japanese demonstrators marched through Tokyo to protest China’s handling of a ship collision in contested waters last month, highlighting rising tensions between Asia’s largest economies.
Japan’s former air force chief Toshio Tamogami led the procession to the Chinese embassy in the Roppongi financial and entertainment district. The gathering in Japan was matched by a rival protest in Chengdu in Sichuan Province, where a similar number of people chanted slogans such as “fight Japan,” the state-run Xinhua news service reported.
“China has woken up the Japanese people after their sleep,” Hiroshi Miyake, 60, a former city council member in Osaka city shouted to the crowd in Tokyo.
Protesters said the demonstration reflects rising anti- China sentiment as well as disappointment with their own government’s passive foreign policy. Japanese prosecutors released a Chinese fishing-boat captain on Sept. 25 after detaining him for 17 days, following his collision with two Japanese coast guard vessels.
Japan’s freeing of the captain followed demands from China for his immediate release. China also detained four Japanese employees of the construction company Fujita Corp. on Sept. 20 for allegedly videotaping military targets, letting the last of them go on Oct. 9.
China also curbed its exports of rare earth metals necessary for Japan’s automobile and high-tech industries over the incident, Japan’s Economy Minister Banri Kaieda said on Sept. 28.
Thousands Protest
More than 3,200 people took part in the Tokyo protests, organizer Satoru Mizushima said today. Police on the scene who would not give their names estimated as many as 2,800 attended the rally.
The Sept. 7 collision took place near disputed islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. Japanese demonstrators today chanted “we will not allow China to invade” the islands that Japan administers and China claims as its own.
“China’s response to the collision by taking Japanese hostages made me furious,” said Yuko Yamanoi, 31, an employee of an environmental research firm in Tokyo, who attended today’s rally. “I’m boycotting Chinese goods even though it’s difficult to find clothes and other items made in countries other than China.”
Japan is attempting to arrange a summit with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at this month’s meeting of Asian leaders in Hanoi. The two men met in Brussels at an Asia-Europe summit on Oct. 4 and pledged to mend ties frayed by rival claims to the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.
--Editors: Patrick Harrington, Tony Barrett.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo at Ssakamaki1@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net