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Tokyo nervous about Beijing rally

Japan has warned its nationals to stay away from a major anti-Japanese rally planned in Beijing today as tension rises between the Asian neighbors.

"According to Internet information here ... 10,000-20,000 people will rally against Japan and Japanese products" in Zhongguancun, the high-tech neighborhood of Beijing, the Japanese embassy in China said.

"Please behave cautiously and stay away from anti-Japanese rallies or protests if you witness one," the embassy said, while urging Japanese nationals to be "careful not to be involved in unnecessary trouble."

Japan ignited a new row with China on Tuesday by authorizing for school use a nationalist-written history textbook that Beijing says glosses over Japanese wartime atrocities.

China's foreign ministry called in Japan's envoy to Beijing to express its "indignation" at the approval of the textbooks and a retail association called a boycott of a series of Japanese products.

But Japan has hit back at China, saying Beijing was whipping up anti-Japanese sentiment.

The Asian neighbors have increasingly been at loggerheads over memories of Japan's bloody occupation of China and a growing dispute over scarce energy resources.

At the same time, however, trade has been skyrocketing with China overtaking the US as Japan's top commercial partner last year as Japanese firms eye China's vast labor pool and emerging consumer market.

The foreign ministry reported April 1 that the number of Japanese people living in China shot up by 28.5 percent year-on-year, with Shanghai now having the third biggest Japanese expatriate population following New York and Los Angeles.
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