The Senkaku dispute is likely to drag on for a long time, the commandant of the Japan Coast Guard said Thursday, stressing the need for more manpower and better equipment to deal with the increasing confrontations with China.

"The Chinese side has publicly declared that the current state of affairs will be normalized. So we have to take measures to be prepared and to respond to that situation over the long term," Commandant Takashi Kitamura said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo. "But the reality is that we only have a limited number of vessels to monitor the areas around the Senkakus."

Kitamura's comments came a day after four Chinese surveillance vessels were spotted in Japan's territorial waters around the uninhabited islets in the East China Sea on Thursday. Such forays have been common since Japan bought three of the islets in September from their Saitama-based owner, effectively nationalizing the chain, which Japan first claimed in 1895.