'It's only a few people. A lot of Chinese people are good people, so it's not all of China that doesn't like Japan,' said Ms Deguchi.

But her classmate, Ms Morita, felt differently. She said she had visited the mainland twice before on holiday and had not expected the protests.

'Before, I liked Chinese people. I thought in my heart they were good people,' said Ms Morita, from Saitama. 'Now when they talk to me, they are very nice to me on the outside, but I feel that inside, their hearts are not good. My heart has changed towards Chinese people.'

Their class was buzzing about news of the protests and of the two Japanese students beaten up in Shanghai on Saturday night.

Ms Omachi added that the demonstrations had made her too scared to go to places such as the Zhongguancun area in Beijing's northwest and the embassy district in the southeast. Saturday's protest march started in Zhongguancun, home to many hi-tech companies and close to the university district, and ended in front of the Japanese embassy.

Japanese students have a significant presence in Beijing and across the rest of the mainland. In 2003 there were more than 68,000 foreign students in China. About 12,700 were Japanese, second only to South Koreans.

At the Central Academy of Drama, there are about 50 Japanese students studying Putonghua, about half the total foreign student body.

Several felt they should go home immediately, although they had not done so yet, said Ms Morita, who arrived in Beijing in February and plans to stay until December.

The three students said they had never encountered any overt forms of racism while in Beijing.

However, Ms Omachi said that on a bus she had heard an elderly man mutter 'Korea is good but Japan is not good', as well as 'little Japan', a mild insult on the mainland and a reference to the relatively small size of Japan and its people.