A court Tuesday rejected damages for Chinese victims of Japan's notorious World War II germ warfare unit, standing firm on Tokyo's refusal to compensate individuals amid a bilateral row over wartime memories.
The Tokyo High Court, upholding a 2002 lower court decision and consistent with a long line of rulings, recognised wrongdoing by imperial Japan but said any compensation had to be made by the government.
The lawsuit was brought by 180 Chinese who said they were survivors or relatives of the victims of Unit 731, which conducted human experiments and bombed cities with the plague, cholera and other germs.
The plaintiffs, who were in Zhejiang and Hunan provinces from 1940 to 1942, had demanded the court order the government to apologise and grant them each 10 million yen (90,000 dollars) in compensation.
Around 90 Chinese people, some visiting from the mainland, marched through Tokyo's Kasumigaseki government quarter after the ruling, chanting "The Japanese government should admit its crimes."
"This ruling makes me feel so angry," Chinese villager Zhang Lizhong, 73, told reporters.
"Eight of my family members died in the war, four of them because of the attacks of Unit 731. I will pursue justice until my last breath," he said.
The ruling was no surprise. In April, the same court rejected a separate compensation lawsuit filed by victims of Unit 731 together with survivors of the 1937 massacre in the city of Nanjing.
But the lawsuits come amid rising tensions between Japan and China in recent months over memories of Japan's bloody 1931-1945 occupation.
China accuses Japan of whitewashing its past, pointing to the approval in April of a textbook that makes little mention of atrocities.
China saw three weekends of major anti-Japanese demonstrations in April and has said relations were at a three-decade low because of the history issue.
Japan accuses China of stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment, noting that it has repeatedly apologised for the past and provided generous development aid to Beijing. Unlike South Korea, China has refused to accept outright compensation for the war.
On Tuesday, a 25-strong Japanese team went to the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on the latest mission to remove leftover chemical weapons.
Unit 731, however, remains one of the most sensitive points for Japan.
The Japanese government denied its existence until 1998, when the Supreme Court indirectly acknowledged it by ruling that there was an academic consensus that Unit 731 existed. At the same time, the government says it knows nothing about specific wrongdoing by the unit, which was disguised as a water purification bureau, and has rejected related damages claims.
In Tuesday's ruling, Judge Yukio Ota also said Japan caused suffering under Unit 731, which was set up in the puppet state of Manchuria and conducted experiments such as bombing cities with germs.