Japan says it is scrambling fighter jets at levels unprecedented since the height of the Cold War in response to foreign aircraft, mostly Russian and Chinese, approaching its airspace.
The Defense Ministry said on April 15 that its fighters scrambled 943 times in the year through March 31, a 16 percent increase on 2013.
That’s just one short of the record set in 1984, when aircraft from the former Soviet Union were very active around Japan.
But the Defense Ministry said no aircraft had violated Japan's airspace.
Japan has ongoing territorial disputes with neighboring China and Russia.
Tokyo and Moscow have conflicting claims over the Kurile Islands, seized by the Soviet Union after World War II.
Japan and China are at odds over islands in the East China Sea that Japan controls.