The Maritime Self-Defense Force for the first time has allowed reporters onboard a P-3C patrol plane during a nighttime surveillance training flight designed to prepare for an invasion or other threat to Japan.
Such patrols are held regularly as part of warning and surveillance operations that the MSDF has beefed up amid the growing tension with China over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea area.
The territorial row was sparked by the Japanese government's decision to buy some of the islets from their private owner in September 2012, effectively nationalizing them, after then-Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, an outspoken nationalist, made a bid. This angered the Chinese, who covet the islets as their own.