Japan lodges protest with Chinese

GUANGZHOU, China, April 10 (UPI) -- After some 3,000 Chinese people demonstrated against Japan in Guangzhou, China, Japan lodged a formal protest Sunday.

"We formally demanded China's apology and compensation," Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told reporters after meeting in Tokyo with Chinese Ambassador Wang Yi. Machimura added that Wang had not apologized, the New York Times reported.

The Sunday demonstration involved chanting, singing and the burning of several Japanese flags. It followed a Saturday protest in Beijing, during which several windows in the Japanese embassy were broken.

Japanese Ambassador Koreshige Anami also called on the Chinese government to take stronger measures to protect Japanese citizens in China, CNN reported.

The protests are against Japan's bid to become a permanent U.N. Security Council member and have been further fueled by how Japanese textbooks recount Japan's wartime record.

The textbooks, approved last week by Japan's Ministry of Education, play down such issues as wartime "comfort women," Asian women forced by the Japanese military to work as sex slaves, as well as Asians brought to Japan to work as forced laborers, the Times said.