Japan Coast Guard officials in Okinawa voiced shock Friday at learning that purported video footage of September's encounter with a Chinese trawler near the Senkaku Islands had found its way onto the Internet.
"It came as a surprise to me," said a senior official at the Ishigaki Coast Guard Office, which has kept the original footage of the collisions.
"It looks quite real, but we must check" if the Internet footage is authentic, the official said. "If the original footage is confirmed as having been leaked, we would have to identify the source of the leak."
Officials from the coast guard's main headquarters in Tokyo have been dispatched to the Ishigaki office to investigate the suspected leak.