TOKYO -- More than 100 sports, children's and other events and programs aimed at promoting exchanges between South Korea and Japan have been canceled or postponed since Tokyo rejected earlier this month demands from Seoul to revise controversial Japanese school textbooks, Kyodo News reported Wednesday.

As of Wednesday morning, 115 events and programs planned in Japan's 38 prefectures have been canceled or suspended mostly at the request of South Koreans, the Japanese news agency said.

Many of the events were planned by local governments on the Japanese side of the Sea of Japan, across which lies South Korea, and by those communities hosting World Cup soccer games in 2002, a landmark event to be hosted jointly by Japan and South Korea.

In Tottori Prefecture, 12 events and programs have been affected, the report said, adding that Tottori officials including the governor, mayors and assembly members have received 21 letters from their South Korean counterparts requesting that local education boards not adopt a particularly controversial textbook penned by a group of Japanese nationalist historians.

In Fukuoka Prefecture, 11 events and plans have been canceled, while in Oita Prefecture, which will host some World Cup games, 10 events have been either suspended or postponed including an exchange program of high school soccer players.

In canceling these events, South Koreans have cited rising anti-Japan sentiment as the reason and noted that such sentiment is perhaps stronger than what may be anticipated in Japan, Kyodo quoted local governments and communities as saying.

On July 9, Japan essentially rejected South Korea's demand that revisions be made at 35 points in eight history textbooks approved by Japan's education ministry, including one written by the nationalist Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform.

The textbooks, which are for use in Japanese junior high schools beginning in next April, have drawn strong criticism from China and South Korea for distorting history and justifying Japan's past aggression against its Asian neighbors.