Japanese national pride has attracted $14 million and counting. That’s how much citizens have chipped into a public fund to buy a set of islands the Japanese say is rightfully theirs.

The islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, have been a diplomatic and emotional wedge between the two Asian superpowers, as both countries lay claims to the five uninhabited rocky islets in the East China Sea.

The dispute, which dates back decades, came to a boiling point in 2010 when a Chinese fishing trawler rammed into a Japan Coast Guard vessel on patrol in the island’s waters. Japan detained the crew but later released them under Chinese diplomatic and trade pressure.

Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara never got over that dispute and his national government’s response, which he characterizes as “weak.” Ishihara, an unrepentant nationalist who is loudly anti-China, said when it comes to the islands, China is acting like “a burglar in Japan’s house.”

“Chinese hegemony is totally intolerable to us,” said Ishihara. “We do not want to become a second Tibet and Mongolia. We have no intention of becoming China’s annex. We shall stop China, who is coming to steal our land.”

Driven by that nationalist fury, Ishihara cooked up a plan with a family, who claims to own four of the five disputed islands. That family, the Kuriharas, says it has documents showing the islands’ Japanese ownership dating back to 1890.

Ishihara established a public fund for donors to send in money to the Tokyo metropolitan government. The city of Tokyo would eventually use that money to buy the islands from the Kurihara family, turning them from private Japanese property into government property. Hiroyuki Kurihara said his family would sell the islands to Tokyo’s government, calling a sale in his country’s “national interest.”

“It’s not possible for my family to keep protecting the island, considering the territorial issue,” he said. Kurihara added that as owners, the Tokyo or national government would “protect the island in an appropriate way” from China.

Kurihara and Tokyo’s governor announced the public fund last month. Ishihara said he expected to raise eyebrows and make a point to China about Japan’s interest in the islands. He said he didn’t expect a flood of money.

The fund has raised the equivalent of $14 million and it continues to grow daily.

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