CHAPTER NINE

THE SENKAKU ISLANDS AND JAPAN:

SHIFTING FROM IDEALISM TO PRAGMATISM

TAKASHI HOSODA

Introduction

Recently, Japan-PRC (the People’s Republic of China) tensions have been
growing over the Senkaku Islands,^1 which are effectively controlled by
Japan. Especially since the Japanese government bought three of the five
islets from a private land owner on September 11, 2012,^2 Chinese Coast
Guard vessels have been intruding into Japan’s contiguous zone and
territorial waters around the islands in order to make the world believe in
China’s effective control over them.

(^1) It is surprising that the citizens of the PRC have never conducted any economic
activities on the Senkaku Islands. There have been no records about a PRC
national landing on the islands except some activists who participated in past
demonstrations around Senkaku, although the PRC has insisted on its sovereignty
over the islands since 1971, shortly after the U.N. Far East Economic Committee
published a report about possible rich oil reserves around the islands. Japan
recognized the Senkaku Islands as Terra nullius or a “land belonging to no one”
and included them in Japanese territory in 1895 after 10 years of research on
sovereignty over the islands. Since then, Mr. Koga, an entrepreneur in bonito fish
processing, leased the islands from the government and conducted his economic
activity with 200 workers until 1943. After the Japanese surrender in August 1945,
the United States had put Okinawa, including the islands, under their own military
rule and returned them to Japan in 1972. This means that Japan has kept full
effective control over the Senkaku Islands for almost one hundred years. That’s
why the official standpoint of the Japanese government is that “there is no
territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands.”
(^2) Chinese governmental ships intruded into Japanese territorial water around the
Senkaku Islands more than 50 times from September 2012 until the end of August
2013, according to Asahi Shimbun, 5 September 2013.