New! Japan confronts Taiwanese fishing boats

Japanese coast guard have fired water cannon at dozens of Taiwanese boats near a chain of disputed islands.

The Taiwanese fleet, which includes fishing boats and armed coast guard vessels, entered the waters in the East China Sea on Tuesday, according to the Japanese coast guard.

After Japan and China, Taiwan is the third country to lay claim on the islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Japanese coast guard vessels fired water cannon to turn away around 40 Taiwanese fishing boats and the accompanying Taiwanese coast guard vessels early on Tuesday morning, a government official said.

Osamu Fujimura, the Japanese cabinet secretary, said that the coast guard used water cannon and other measures to get the Taiwanese boats to change course.

"We've just lodged a protest with the Taiwan side," he said.

"Our stance is that this is something that needs to be solved in the context of good bilateral ties between Japan and Taiwan. We would like to address the issue calmly."

Al Jazeera’s Steve Chao, reporting from Japan’s Yonaguni islands, said that Taiwan, which until now has not involved itself in the conflict, made its claim “very loudly” on Tuesday.

“[Japan’s] concern is not so much the fishing vessels, but the fact that they are being accompanied by about 10 Taiwan coast guard vessels,” he said.

The boats were part of a fleet that left Taiwan on Monday pledging to stake their claim to islands where they say they have ancestral fishing rights.

Aljazeera