The row between China and Japan over a group of islands in the East China Sea has widened to involve Taiwan.

Coastguard vessels from Japan and Taiwan clashed with water cannon after dozens of Taiwanese boats escorted by patrol ships sailed into waters around Tokyo-controlled islands.

Japanese coastguard ships sprayed water at the fishing vessels as the Taiwanese patrol boats retaliated by directing their own high-pressure hoses at the Japanese ships.

The large-scale breach of what Japan considers sovereign territory – one of the biggest since WWII – is the latest escalation in a row over ownership of the islands that pits Tokyo against Beijing and Taipei.

The intrusion complicates the already volatile territorial dispute with China. Taiwan has said that officers aboard some of the patrol ships sent to the area are fully-armed elite coastguard personnel.

China and Japan’s deputy foreign ministers have met to discuss the issue with China’s Zhang Zhijun telling Japan it “must abandon any illusion” it has over a territorial dispute as China “will absolutely not tolerate any unilateral action taken by the Japanese side that infringes on China’s territorial sovereignty”.

Japan administers the uninhabited, but strategically well-positioned archipelago under the name Senkaku. Beijing says it has owned the islands for centuries and calls them Diaoyu.

Taiwan has joined in over a row between China and Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Taiwan also claims the islands, which lie around 125 miles from its coast, and which are believed to have high energy reserves in the nearby seabed.

Relations between Japan and China, meanwhile, have scraped long-unseen lows in recent weeks following Tokyo’s nationalisation of three of the islands, which it bought from a private Japanese landowner.

Meanwhile, South Korea is refusing to allow a Japanese warship to dock at the port of Busan during a joint naval exercise, reports say, as ties between the pair remain strained over a different set of disputed islands.

Tokyo has lodged a protest with Seoul over the refusal during an exercise that also involves the US and Australia with one diplomat calling it “extremely rude”.