Anti-Japan rallies rock China cities

Burning Japanese flags and waving banners demanding the country face up to its wartime past, around 10,000 people marched on the Japanese consulate in the city of Guangzhou, said Japanese embassy spokesman Keiji Ide.

Another 10,000 people gathered outside a Japanese supermarket named Jusco in the nearby city of Shenzhen.

An eyewitness in Guangzhou and a protester in Shenzhen said many protesters were wearing T-shirts and carrying banners reading "Don't buy Japanese products," "Terminate Sino-Japanese relations" and "Don't alter history".

Demonstrators were seen kicking a Mitsubishi car and tearing down a Sony billboard. Eggs, bottles and tomatoes were thrown at a Japanese restaurant. As they marched, the protesters sang the national anthem and wartime resistance songs.

Several thousand police ringed the office block housing the consulate and a police van with a loudspeaker later urged the crowd to go home.

Around 100 hardcore protesters tried to break through fences and there were minor scuffles before the four-hour demonstration ended around 1:00 pm.

On Saturday more than 10,000 protesters marched through Beijing, hurling rocks, bottles and eggs and shouting abuse outside the Japanese embassy and the residence of the Japanese ambassador. They broke a total of 25 windows in the buildings.

The protest were triggered by Tokyo's decision to approve a new school textbook which both China and South Korea say glosses over Japanese wartime atrocities.

The demonstrators, most of whom were university students, were also protesting against Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The Japanese government on Sunday demanded an apology. It called the violence "extremely regrettable" and requested China take measures to protect its citizens and businesses.

"We formally demanded China's apology and compensation," Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told reporters after summoning China's ambassador to Japan, Wang Yi.