In a move aimed at soothing frayed diplomatic ties, Japan on Friday deported seven Chinese arrested this week on a tiny island at the centre of a territorial row.
The seven were put aboard a China Eastern Airlines flight bound for Shanghai that took off from Japan's southern Okinawa island at around 8:30 pm (1130 GMT), Kyodo news agency said.
Police had handed the seven men, arrested on Wednesday after they evaded the Japanese Coast Guard to land on the uninhabited island, to immigration authorities on Friday.
The flare-up of the dispute over the island - one of a cluster in the East China Sea claimed by China, Taiwan and Japan - had threatened to further fray ties between Tokyo and Beijing.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Japan had dealt with the issue properly and taken care not to let it harm relations with China.
"I've given instructions to relevant authorities from a basic stance that it's necessary to make a decision from a broad perspective so this issue won't have a negative impact on Japan-China relations," Koizumi said.
"I think this needs to be dealt with properly based on such instructions," he told a news conference.
Relations between Japan and China, often testy due to China's bitter memories of Japan's wartime occupation, have been strained in recent times by Koizumi's annual visits to a Tokyo shrine for the war dead where convicted war criminals are also honoured.
"If anti-Japanese sentiment kept rising in China, that would put the Chinese government itself in a difficult position. The Japanese government wanted to avoid that," said Tomoyuki Kojima, a professor at Keio University in Tokyo.
BURNING FLAGS: The arrest of the Chinese, the first by Japanese police on the Japanese-administered island, was denounced by China and prompted flag-burning protests in Beijing. Japan lodged a diplomatic protest over the burnings.
More than 50 demonstrators gathered outside Japan's embassy in Beijing on Friday for a third day of protests, singing an anti-Japanese World War Two-era song and brandishing a banner with photos of wartime atrocities committed by Japanese troops.
Japanese media said the network to which the activists belong was planning another trip on Sunday to the islands, which Japan calls the Senkakus and China the Diaoyus.
A Japanese right-wing group had also made preparations for its own landing but the Japanese Coast Guard said it had issued an order banning the group's ship from setting out.
Tokyo has tried to play down the incident's diplomatic impact, saying it will not adversely affect relations.
"My view is that the island belongs to Japan, and we need to deal with this issue in a cool-headed manner," Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said on Friday.
The Japanese government has come under fire at home for failing to prevent the landing, the first since several activists from Hong Kong and Taiwan managed to get to the islands in 1996.
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