Japanese lawmakers on Monday said a coast guard video shows a Chinese trawler intentionally ramming Japanese vessels in an incident that sparked the worst row in years between the Asian giants.
The Japan coast guard showed 30 lawmakers video footage of the September 7 collisions between the Chinese boat and Japanese patrol vessels near a disputed island chain called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.
"It showed the moments of collisions very clearly. It was the Chinese ship that bumped into (Japanese vessels)," said Hiroshi Nakai, chairman of the lower House of Representatives Budget Committee.
The footage confirmed the Japanese government's stand that the Chinese ship rammed into the Japanese ships intentionally, the ruling-party lawmaker said after seeing the edited video, whose total duration is less than seven minutes.
It threatens to further inflame a row that has escalated into protests, scrapped bilateral meetings between the two sides and accusations that China is blocking exports of vital minerals.
Japan's coastguard in the early hours of September 8 arrested the Chinese captain of a fishing boat, which had collided with two Japanese coastguard vessels in a high-speed pursuit.
The skipper was held on suspicion he had rammed the patrol boats on purpose but Japan released him weeks later, following a barrage of protests and reprimands from China which called the arrest invalid and illegal.