Japanese fighter jets scrambled on Wednesday after a Chinese military plane flew through international airspace near Okinawa, Japan’s defense minister said. The Chinese early-warning plane flew between Okinawa and the smaller island of Miyako toward the Pacific and then passed between the islands again to return to China, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters. He said it was the first time that a Chinese military plane had flown between the islands, though Chinese warships frequently sail between them to reach the Pacific. The episode comes amid a lingering dispute between the two countries over islands they both claim, and amid what appears to be a semiofficial campaign in China to question Japan’s rule of Okinawa, part of an island chain that had paid monetary tribute to imperial China.