Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi will meet with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his two-day visit to Japan starting Tuesday, both governments said separately Monday.
Before meeting Abe on Wednesday, China's top diplomat will hold talks Tuesday with Shotaro Yachi, Abe's senior national security adviser, to discuss preparations for an upcoming summit of Japan, China and South Korea.
They are also likely to lay the groundwork for a possible bilateral meeting between Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of the trilateral summit being arranged to take place as early as this month in South Korea.
Yachi invited Yang to visit Japan when they met in Beijing in July.
The Chinese top diplomat's visit to Tokyo coincides with the timing of the news that China has detained another Japanese national for alleged spying.
Sources said over the weekend that the Japanese woman who had been held in Shanghai since June. The news followed revelations that three other Japanese are also being held by Chinese authorities over alleged espionage.
China and Japan have close economic and cultural ties, but have long bickered over their painful wartime history, and have an increasingly bitter argument over ownership of a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea.
Sino-Japanese relations, colored by Japan's occupation of parts of China before and during World War II as well as rivalry for regional influence, have thawed since Abe met Xi twice since last November.