Japan's territorial disputes.

• Author: Sylvester, John

Editor's Note: Territorial disputes among nations seem more appropriate to nineteenth century history than to twenty-first century diplomacy, but some still exist and have the potential to become threats to good relations if not to peace. Japan has four such disputes, three of them centered on tiny islands that are valuable primarily for their associated exclusive economic zones. The other, the Kuriles, is an unresolved legacy of Russia's belated entry into the war with Japan in August, 1945. The author, a retired Foreign Service Japan and Asia specialist, recently visited some of these exotic sites, and in this report gives us an update on their status and the diplomacy involved.

Ownership of most of the good land is well settled on the maps of the world. Territorial disputes tend to be over areas lost in earlier wars (for instance, Bolivia's claim to an outlet to the sea conquered by Chile), cold mountains (India's border with China), and islands, some on shifting rivers (Russia and China, or even our country and Mexico). A number of such disputes are over islands in the ocean, often uninhabited and isolated. The stakes are the Exclusive Economic Zones with their value in fishing and possibly oil, and their potential for exploitation by fervent nationalists.

Japan has four such island disputes with its neighbors. No resolution appears likely soon, and, while all four are now quiescent, they could become serious threats to Japan's relations with China, Korea, or Russia.

Okinotorishima

The smallest of these disputes concerns the smallest of the islands, Okinotorishima, a few rocks now inches above sea level on an extremely isolated reef 1080 miles from Tokyo, southwest of Iwo Jima. Known also by its Portuguese name Parece Vela, the reef is administratively part of Tokyo City. Alarmed by the steady erosion of the rocks, the Japanese Government has reportedly spent over $600 million to reinforce them with concrete and build a beacon and building for researchers to reinforce its claim to the place. Japan had formally annexed the islands in 1931 when it found nobody else had done so.

The government states an Exclusive Economic Zone for Okinotorishima which would give it a 200 mile circle of economic control over that part of the ocean. The People's Republic of China has disputed this, saying that Okinotorishima are only rocks, not islands, with no normal human habitation or economic life on them, and thus under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea no basis for an Exclusive Economic Zone. The Japanese Government has produced its own experts to argue the opposite.

Senkaku Islands The uninhabited Senkaku Islands lie northeast of Taiwan and north of, and a little closer to, the southern Ryukyu Islands of Japan. They include five small islands of about seven square kilometers of surface, in this case with vegetation and some endemic fauna. I flew over them once and was struck by their beauty in a blue sea with crashing waves on their shores, but looking to be no place for a person to live. The Chinese call them the Diaoyu Islands, and on foreign maps in the past they have been called the Pinnacle Islands.

The Japanese Government firmly asserts its sovereignty over the islands, citing a history of Japanese visits and maps incorporating the islands, and their inclusion in the return of the Ryukyu Islands from American occupation to Japan's full sovereignty in April of 1972. Both...