Tokyo ? Japan demanded an apology and compensation from Beijing on Sunday for the contagion of anti-Japanese protests across China, a wave of vandalism and flag-burning triggered by the legacy of unresolved history between Asia’s biggest powers.

The fury on the Chinese streets has gathered traction since the first demonstrations began last week. The protests arose ostensibly in response to Tokyo’s approval of new school history textbooks that soften previous descriptions of Japan’s wartime brutality across Asia.

But there has been a sharpening of several long-standing disputes between Japan and its neighbors in recent weeks. Rooted in historical grievances and national chauvinism, they have left Japan’s official relations with both China and South Korea in a fevered state.

Both countries complain that Japan is methodically recanting past admissions of guilt for crimes committed during its imperial conquests of the first half of the 20th century.

The protests from Japan’s closest neighbors have embarrassed Tokyo’s conservative government, knocking it off stride as it tries to reassert itself as a global actor. In the process, they have raised doubts about Japan’s ability to win wider support in its bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Attacks on Japanese government buildings and private businesses spread to more Chinese cities Sunday, with a crowd of 10,000 chanting anti-Japanese slogans in Shenzhen. Earlier in the day, another 10,000 demonstrators surrounded the Japanese consulate in Guangzhou.

That followed Saturday’s raucous demonstrations in Beijing, where stones were hurled at Japan’s embassy and Japanese supermarkets and restaurants were attacked. Tokyo called the attacks “gravely regrettable” and summoned China’s ambassador to demand a formal apology, as well as guarantees of protection for Japanese businesses and citizens in China.

Wang Yi, China’s ambassador to Japan, told reporters in Tokyo that Beijing did not endorse the violence. But he did not apologize.

The streets of Seoul, South Korea, boiled over last month when a Japanese prefecture revived its claim to rocky islets known as Takeshima to the Japanese and Dokdo to Koreans. Tokyo describes South Korea’s presence on the tiny islands as an “illegal occupation,” and the move revived Korean anger over what is seen as Japan’s lack of contrition for its brutal 40-year occupation of the Korean peninsula that began a century ago.

Then, last Tuesday, Japan’s Education Ministry, a bastion of nationalism, authorized schools to use any of eight newly revised history textbooks. Among other changes, all but one of the texts has dropped references to “comfort women,” the term referring to the thousands of Asian women forced to provide sexual services for Japanese troops.