BEIJING (Reuters) - Japan's coastguard detained a Chinese fishing boat within Japanese waters on Sunday evening, China's Xinhua news agency said, citing the Chinese consulate general in Fukuoka, a city in southwestern Japan.

The captain of the boat, registered in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian, and two crew members have been brought to the southern Japanese city of Kagoshima for questioning, Xinhua said.

It said the captain had admitted he was in Japanese waters.

The incident comes just months after anti-Japanese protests erupted in many Chinese cities over disputed islands near Taiwan, known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese. Those tensions have cooled but could flare up if stoked by nationalists on either side.

A spokesperson for the Japanese embassy in Beijing could not be reached for comment late on Sunday evening.

The Chinese fishing fleet tends to range far into the waters east of China to offset depleted stocks closer to shore.

(Reporting by Lucy Hornby; Editing by Alison Williams)