Sales of Japanese cars in China are in free-fall and tourists are cancelling trips to Japan in droves as anti-Japanese sentiment continues over the Diaoyu Islands dispute that threatens to send Japan's recovery from last year's disasters into reverse.

Toyota said yesterday that sales of new vehicles in China dropped 48.9 percent in September from a year earlier to 44,100 vehicles. Honda said September sales plunged 40.5 percent to 33,931 vehicles. Nissan's China sales were down 35.3 percent last month to 76,100 vehicles.

The business and economic shockwaves come after Japan "purchased" last month the tiny islands from a so-called private owner. The move set off mass protests and a widespread call to boycott Japanese goods in China.

Japanese automakers temporarily closed some of their China factories. Production is back up this week - but reduced to lower levels with the collapse in demand.

Last week, Mitsubishi said China sales dropped 63 percent to 2,340 vehicles in September while Mazda's fell 36 percent to 13,258 vehicles.

A study by JP Morgan, released yesterday, projected Japanese auto exports to China to crash 70 percent during the October-December period. It said that the export of auto parts will slip by 40 percent - about the same drop estimated for exports of other products such as electronics.

The aftermath of the spat with China will shave 0.8 percentage points off Japan's gross domestic product growth for the fourth quarter, sending its overall economy slightly downward, instead of the initial forecast for flat growth, the study said.

China, with its growing middle class, was one of the emerging markets that Japanese automakers were counting on to boost sales.

Toyota planned to sell a million vehicles in China this year.

Even the most optimistic scenario does not foresee a recovery in Japan's economy until the second quarter of next year, JP Morgan chief economist Masaaki Kanno said. "What we have ahead of us is going to be terrible. It's like last year's disaster all over again."

The quake and tsunami in northeastern Japan hobbled the economy for months.

Kanno's report said the number of Chinese tourists would decline by 70 percent while Japanese tourists to China would fall by 30 percent.

A spokeswoman for Japan's All Nippon Airways said 43,000 seats had been cancelled for flights to the end of November - 28,000 of them from China to Japan, and 15,000 from Japan to China.

Xinhua news agency said that more than a hundred thousand people had cancelled trips to Japan, and the number of tour groups to Japan had plunged by 40 percent.

Japan's trade with China reached record levels over the past 12 months, more than US$340 billion. China is Japan's biggest export market.

Japanese supermarket chain Aeon Co said damage at one of its stores had cost 700 million yen (US$8.8 million) as protesters broke in and ran amok.

But spokesman Toshiyuki Mukohara said the company remained committed to China, and its 34 other outlets were doing business as usual.

"We are dealing with regular Chinese people," he said.