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Anti-Japanese protests spread across China over the weekend, and the landing of Japanese activists on a disputed island on Sunday sharply intensified tensions between the two countries.

 

Protesters took to the streets in nearly a dozen Chinese cities on Saturday and Sunday in response to Japan’s detention on Wednesday and deportation on Friday of a separate group of activists from Hong Kong, Macau and China who had landed on the same island, part of a chain of uninhabited islands known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkakus in Japan. Demonstrations took place in cities up and down China’s eastern provinces, according to Xinhua, the official news agency.