Japan has denied a report that said United States President Donald Trump had advised Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi not to provoke China over Taiwan’s sovereignty.
In a news briefing on Thursday, Japan’s top government spokesperson Minoru Kihara said “there is no such fact” about an article published in The Wall Street Journal claiming that Trump had made such a remark to the Japanese leader.
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He declined to comment further on the details of the “diplomatic exchange”.
The row between Asia’s two biggest economies began after Takaichi had suggested earlier this month that Tokyo could intervene militarily in any attack on self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory.
Takaichi’s remark ignited anger in Beijing.
After the incident, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping pressed the issue in a phone call with Trump on Monday, saying Taiwan’s return was an “integral part of the post-war international order”.
The WSJ reported on Thursday that, shortly after that phone call between the US and Chinese leaders, “Trump set up a call with Takaichi and advised her not to provoke Beijing on the question of the island’s sovereignty”. The report quoted unidentified Japanese officials and an American briefed on the call.
Takaichi said in her reporting of the call with Trump that they discussed the US president’s conversation with Xi, as well as bilateral relations.
“President Trump said we are very close friends, and he offered that I should feel free to call him anytime,” she said.
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Beijing, which has threatened to use force to take control of the self-ruled island, also took other punitive steps to register its anger over Takaichi’s initial remarks in parliament on November 7.
It summoned Tokyo’s ambassador and advised Chinese citizens against travelling to Japan.
As the diplomatic row escalated, the Chinese embassy in Tokyo issued a new warning to its citizens on Wednesday, saying there had been a surge in crime in Japan, and that Chinese citizens had reported “being insulted, beaten and injured for no reason”.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry denied any increase in crime, citing figures from the National Police Agency in response that showed the number of murders from January to October had halved compared with the same period in 2024.
Last week, Japanese media reported that China will again ban all imports of Japanese seafood as the diplomatic dispute between the two countries escalated.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun reiterated on Thursday a call for Japan to officially retract Takaichi’s comments.
“The Japanese side’s attempt to downplay, dodge, and cover up Prime Minister Takaichi’s seriously erroneous remarks by not raising them again is self-deception,” Guo told a regular news briefing.
“China will never accept this.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s public silence on Japan’s escalating dispute with China has further frayed nerves in Tokyo.
Some officials worry that Trump may be prepared to soften support for Taiwan in pursuit of a trade accord with China, a move they fear will embolden Beijing and cause conflict in an increasingly militarised East Asia.
“For Trump, what matters most is US-China relations,” said Kazuhiro Maejima, a professor of US politics at Sophia University.
“Japan has always been treated as a tool or a card to manage that relationship,” Maejima told Reuters news agency.
Washington’s envoy to Tokyo has said the US supports Japan in the face of China’s “coercion”, but two senior ruling party lawmakers said they had hoped for more full-throated support from their top security ally in Washington, DC.
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