ONE thing distinguishes the Japanese embassy from other diplomatic missions in Beijing. Located behind the big Friendship Store, it is virtually the only embassy in the Chinese capital fortified with steel bars on the windows of the first two floors.
Having invaded China twice this century, the Japanese are deeply unpopular among ordinary Chinese, despite the development of close economic lies in recent years. Foreigners are often taken aback to hear educated Chinese use harsh words to describe the Japanese, especially in northern China which bore the brunt of the Japanese occupations.
Now that anti Japanese passions have been rekindled in a bitter dispute over the ownership of a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, security patrols by the People's Armed Police have been stepped up in the area of the Tokyo mission.
The authorities are believed to be concerned not just with protecting the Japanese embassy, but with preventing any unauthorised demonstrations by nationalists and students in the vicinity which could spin out of control.
A leading nationalist activist, Mr Tong Zeng, was ordered to leave the capital on Sunday evening after announcing plans to lead a demonstration outside the Japanese embassy tomorrow, the anniversary of the start of the Sino Japanese war in 1931.
Mr Tong, who last week urged the Chinese government to take military action to secure the islands, was reportedly escorted by two men in uniform from his home late on Sunday evening for reassignment by his employer, the Ministry of Civil Affairs. His wife Ms Chang Xishen said he had been sent to Lanzhou, 3,000 kilometres from the capital.
Students at Beijing and Shanghai universities put up a small number of unauthorised posters last week protesting against Japan's "occupation" of the islands, according to unofficial reports in the capital. One in Beijing allegedly said: "Without Chinese visas, Japanese should get out of Diaoyu Islands."
The Beijing University Communist Party committee asked teachers to calm the students, according to a Hong Kong newspaper, and three students from the university were refused permission to organise a demonstration.
China is trying to keep the lid on a volatile situation, a diplomat said. Feelings against Japan run - so deep that any demonstration would attract support: many students say that questions of war reparations and compensation for "comfort ladies" - Chinese women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army - have never been confronted, and that it is high time to settle accounts with the Japanese.
Any student unrest would be a source of anxiety to the Chinese authorities, which violently suppressed a student democracy campaign when it threatened Communist Party rule in 1989. Anti Japanese demonstrations in Beijing have led to disturbances on a number of occasions this century. There was trouble in the mid 1980s when students protested against Japan's economic invasion" of China.
Resentment has been simmering among Chinese nationalists on the mainland and in Hong Kong and Taiwan over the erection by a right wing Japanese group of a lighthouse on the disputed rocky out crops in July. This challenged an unofficial truce over the territory, known to the Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands and to the Japanese as the Senkakus Islands.
The return of the Japanese ultra nationalists last week to repair typhoon damage to the aluminium edifice - without any opposition from the Tokyo government - outraged Chinese nationalists who saw it as a semi official renewal of Japan's claim to the islands.
While forbidding protests in Beijing, China has vehemently criticised Japan for allegedly conniving in the "occupation" of the islands. Tokyo's "laissez faire attitude" had led to a strain in Sino-Japanese relations, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. It said that the signing of a peace treaty between Japan and China in 1978 had only come about through an agreement to shelve the issue temporarily.
Japanese officials said in Tokyo they would most likely do nothing about the activities of the Japanese Youth Federation which built the lighthouse on the islands, as they had not broken any Japanese laws.
Tokyo's claim to the islands goes back to 1895, when Japan defeated China and seized Taiwan. Beijing says it has a right to the islands going back many centuries. Taiwan, which broke from China in 1949, also claims the territory. At stake is ownership of the rich marine life and strategic underseas energy resources in the area.
In Hong Kong on Sunday a Japanese military flag was burned at the end of a march by 12,000 people, the biggest anti Japan protest ever in the colony. Using a war time insult, the demonstrators, organised by pro democracy and liberal groups, shouted "Radish heads, get out of Diaoyu Island".
China said it supported the Hong Kong protests, despite evidence that it was tinged with anti government feelings towards Beijing. The Chinese authorities are trying to keep nationalist passions from prejudicing its trading relationship with Japan, a major partner in economic projects in China.