The 11th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters in Okinawa Prefecture revealed that two Chinese Coast Guard vessels and six fishing ships were involved in the intrusion near the Senkakus.
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Tomomi Inada, a 57-year old ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmaker and close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, took up her post on Thursday, a day after being appointed.
A postwar Allied tribunal put the death toll at 142,000, but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars deny a massacre took place at all.
Tomomi Inada’s remarks are outrageous, said the Chinese Defense Ministry in a statement.
Inada told reporters on Thursday that whether Japan’s wartime actions should be described as an invasion “depends on one’s point of view”, and said she thought it was not “appropriate” for her to comment on the matter.
When repeatedly asked whether Japan’s World War II actions were acts of aggression or self-defense, Inada said, “I’m not in a position to express my personal opinion here”, according to The Japan Times.
Visits to the shrine by political leaders infuriate China South Korea.
Beijing claims the uninhabited, Tokyo-controlled East China Sea islands, called the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, and occasionally sends its coastguard vessels near them.
Relations between Japan and China have been strained over wartime history, a sensitive topic for the region in times of war-end anniversaries during the summer. Her predecessor at the ministry, Gen Nakatani, stayed away during his term.
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An article in Japan’s pacifist constitution written after World War II does not allow the country to use war as a means of settling global disputes, and until recently the country’s military, the Self-Defense Forces, was permitted to operate only domestically.
