Japan's Vice-Foreign Minster Mitoji Yabunaka and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Guangya, held the meeting behind closed doors in Tokyo, as part of efforts by Asia's two biggest economies to ease years of tension.

"We held candid talks for four hours and a half," Japan's foreign ministry said in a one-page statement after the talks.

It said the two nations "renewed the recognition of the importance of this dialogue," without releasing further details.

But Jiji Press, quoting anonymous sources, reported that the two sides failed to narrow the gap in the renewed row over a gas field, called Tianwaitian in Chinese and Kashi in Japanese.

The two sides agreed only "to start negotiations soon on details about the agreed joint development" of other fields, Jiji Press said.

Japan and China, two of the world's biggest energy importers, struck a deal in June to end the long-running dispute over gas fields in the East China Sea by jointly developing one of them and holding talks on the others.

But Japan recently protested that China was unilaterally developing the Tianwaitian field. China says the field is in its territorial waters but Japan says the two countries agreed to negotiate its status under last year's deal.

Japan said earlier that it planned to press China in the talks to halt any development of the fields under discussion.

The session is the latest round of so-called "strategic dialogue" between Japan and China, which have been working to repair ties since 2006.

China refused to hold high-level dialogue with Japan during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi, citing his visits to a controversial shrine honouring Japan's war dead.

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