Written by Aaron Krall
Japan is my second foster-country in a row to be involved in a dispute over an island. That seems strange upon first glance, but it makes perfect sense when one learns that a.) every country in Asia is involved in an argument over an island, and b.) they are all arguing with Japan for these islands.
I admit to knowing very little about the Senkaku islands and the row over to whom they belong, other than that Taiwan apparently has the most legitimate claim on them as long as you don’t speak with anyone from any place other than Taiwan. It seems to be that sort of situation–one that, as a foreigner whose homeland has a very simple solution to any dispute over nearby islands (“it’s ours; please address any complaints to the barrels of the rifles being pointed at you”), I don’t think I can ever truly understand.
The basics are easy enough to understand, of course. The islands themselves are of little value, but the territory they come with extends seven miles from its coast, and that territory includes some oil reserves and fishing rights for whomever “owns” them. China claims that their discovery of the islands in the 15th century lead to them “controlling” them up until the end of the 19th century during the first Sino-Japanese war. Japan disputes that China ever truly controlled the islands, and as such the Okinawa Reversion Treaty in 1972–which returned the islands from US control to the Japanese– is the only thing that really counts when the topic of ownership is raised. China’s objections will be examined later.
The relationship between Japan and China, as well as the half non-existent relationship between Japan and Taiwan (Japan does not recognize Taiwan as a legitimate government), however, is where foreigners like myself are unable to truly understand the situation. We can read the synopsis of ROC-Japan relations on Wikipedia, but that is a far cry from living within the confines of that relationship. While one is tempted to say “just take it to an international court; surely there are rules set up for this kind of situation”, we’ll quickly see why that isn’t always an option. I
It’s difficult for me to not compare the situation to that between Japan and South Korea, who are still arguing about who owns Dok-do (“Takeshima” to the Japanese and the Liancourt Rocks to everyone else), two tiny islands, little more than rocks sticking up out of the waters of the East Sea between the two countries. So difficult, in fact, that I’m not even going to try to avoid it. The major difference, however, is that there are no oil reserves in or around Dok-do. There may or may not be natural gas deposits, but the terrible weather would make accessing those deposits difficult. There is fishing to be had, but Korea and Japan–as well as China and other nearby countries–all currently use the waters for fishing and transport, and have done so for centuries. There is little strategic or economic value to those tiny rocks. This is important, because the very fact that they have no strategic or economic value and yet are still fought over–fought over for centuries, in fact–is a part of this particular dispute that allows me to grasp some of the hidden aspects, normally beyond my reach, of the argument over the Senkaku islands.
I lived in South Korea for a couple years and was fortunate enough to be able to visit Dok-do and its neighboring island, the much larger and undisputed Ulleung-do. A condition of the three-day trip, paid for by EPIK (the Korean version of JET), was attending a seminar on why South Korea doesn’t recognize any dispute over the islands. There were many reasons given that are similar to those espoused by the countries arguing over the Senkaku islands (e.g. long before Japan took control, the other party had long laid claim to the islands and thus consider them its territory). In Korea’s case, the only person in history known to actually make a home on the islands was a Korean man in the latter half of the twentieth century, which one must admit seems like a pretty strong claim for territory. The speaker explained that there were two primary reasons why South Korea doesn’t take the argument to an international court: there is no actual dispute because Japan has absolutely no legitimate claim on the islands, and anyway international courts have a tendency to side with the colonizing nation rather than its victims, so legal precedent is not on South Korea’s side.
The latter argument, according to Freud, actually reveals the very thing it claims doesn’t exist. It’s similar to saying “I don’t want to steal your horse, and anyway you have a crummy horse”–it reveals that the speaker at least entertained thoughts of stealing the horse until realizing it was crummy. If South Korea truly didn’t believe Japan had any real claim on the islands, it wouldn’t bother to note the precedent that works against it. According to Freud, anyway, who is dead and can’t be reached for further comment on the situation.
What I found more interesting, though, were the reasons for the ferocity with which South Korea, and likely China as well, will defend their claims. Neither country has forgotten Japan’s invasion and occupation. There are Koreans alive today that remember losing one or more parents to Japanese soldiers during that brutal occupation, and while that was long ago during a different time, South Korea views Japan’s recent attempts to “steal” their land with a great deal of trepidation and anger. It should be noted that the Dok-do issue is one of the few things upon which both North and South Korea agree, despite the two countries still technically being at war with one another.
What I’m getting at is this: there is more to the debate than than old maps and documents and legal precedence, things that someone born and raised in the US– whose foreign policy, much criticized in the last decade, can only be called anything other than self-serving if one ignores huge swaths of recent history–cannot truly understand. Whatever the international community says, South Korea has soldiers stationed on Dok-do at all times, and it appears China is willing to defend what it considers its own territory with equal ferociousness. Both countries well remember the last time Japan arrived uninvited and began laying claim to their territory, and I hope for everyone’s sake that Japan treads very lightly.
