Japanese coast guard officials have defended a weekend attack on a suspected North Korean spy ship, saying that the clash - which left the two dead and 13 missing - was carried out in self-defence.
The government released night-vision video footage that depicted the mystery ship apparently firing a rocket at Japanese gunboats.
"We fired shots in legitimate self-defence, and I think we took appropriate actions," said Tetsuo Yokoyama, operations chief for the Maritime Safety Agency.
Masao Kurusu, captain of the Amami, said the unidentified trawler opened fire first, after the Amami and two other Japanese ships surrounded it late on Saturday night.
The boat foundered within minutes of the Japanese returning fire, but it was unclear whether it was sunk by gunfire or scuttled by its crew.
Two of its estimated 15 crew members were found dead, with the rest still missing today. Two Japanese sailors were also injured in the battle.
The bullet riddled Amami returned to a southern Japanese port today, its bridge windows shattered. Other ships involved in the chase were expected back later in the day.
Japanese ships began a six hour chase for the mysterious trawler when it ignored orders to stop for inspection off the Japanese coast. The ship fled toward China and eventually sank in the East China Sea just outside Chinese territorial waters.
Beijing said it was "concerned" about Japan's use of military force in waters near China and said it would petition Tokyo for more information about the incident.
Limited evidence from the scene has suggested the sunken boat was a Korean vessel.
One of the recovered bodies was wearing a life jacket with a Korean label, and an empty sweet bag with Korean writing was found in the other man's pocket.
It was not immediately known whether the articles were manufactured in communist North Korea or democratic South Korea.
Autopsies were planned to determine whether the men committed suicide to avoid capture - a characteristic of past North Korean intelligence operations.
Japanese defence officials and analysts said that it closely resembled two suspected North Korean spy ships detected off the western coast of Japan in March 1999. Those ships, rigged as fishing boats but built to move at high speeds, escaped.
AP