With anti-Japanese vitriol turning increasingly violent in China following Japan's announcement that it planned to purchase the disputed Senkaku islands, Ms. Aoi lit up China's social media switchboards on Friday by suggesting in a pair of posts that everyone should just try to get along.

"I hope all of us regular people can have good relations... I am a regular person like all of you. Wounded..." she wrote on her verified account on Sina Corp.'s Weibo microblogging service, attaching an image of hand-painted Chinese characters that read "Japanese-Chinese friendship."

At a time when Chinese owners of Toyotas and Hondas are plastering their cars with anti-Japanese messages to avoid having them smashed by unhinged protesters, and when Japanese people have to worry about being assaulted with bowls of ramen noodles while walking Chinese streets, such a plain gesture from a retired adult film actress might not seem particularly noteworthy. But Ms. Aoi is not your average retired adult film actress. A megastar throughout Asia, she boasts more than 13 million followers on Sina Weibo and is popular enough in China that the country's film and TV regulator singled her out in announcing new restrictions on "vulgar" content in April (to which she responded with a defiant picture of herself in dress).

Ms. Aoi's call for calm has certainly been heard: By Saturday afternoon, the two posts combined had been forwarded more than 110,000 times and attracted more than 150,000 comments - a viral performance even by China's high standards.