TOKYO — The Japanese Foreign Ministry summoned China’s ambassador on Tuesday after Chinese ships entered Japanese-controlled waters for 13 hours, a prolonged incursion that seemed to escalate a standoff over a group of disputed islands.

The ministry said the deputy foreign minister, Akitaka Saiki, strongly protested the incursion on Monday by four Chinese surveillance ships near the islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. The uninhabited island chain, near Okinawa, has been controlled by Japan for decades but is also claimed by China and Taiwan.

The Chinese ambassador, Cheng Yonghua, responded by saying that the islands belong to China and that Japanese ships had no right to be there, the ministry said.

The flare-up of tensions over the sovereignty of the islands in the East China Sea has soured ties between Asia’s two largest economies, leading to anti-Japanese riots and boycotts of Japanese goods in China. Monday’s incursion was one of the longest yet by Chinese vessels since the tensions began several months ago, when the Japanese government began efforts to buy three of the five islands from a private Japanese citizen.