The Dispute Over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands

A chain of eight small unpopulated islands in the East China Sea that the Chinese call the Diaoyu and the Japanese call the Senkaku has long been a source of contention among China, Taiwan, and Japan. Although all three governments claim the islands, Japan has controlled them since the 1890s, with the exception of a few years following World War II when the United States controlled them. The islands are located approximately 120 nautical miles northeast of Taiwan, about 200 nautical miles east of mainland China, and about 200 miles southwest of the Japanese islands of Okinawa.¹ They are situated at the edge of China’s continental shelf, just before the sea floor plummets into one of the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean, the Okinawa Trough, which is approximately 7,500 feet at its deepest point. The geography itself is cited by the governments of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan, the Republic of China (ROC) as a natural boundary between China and Japan and as evidence that the islands are part of China. Japan, on the other hand, sees the trough as only an “incidental depression” and claims that the islands are part of the Okinawa archipelago.²

How is history possible? Georg Simmel wrote in 1905, “What we must determine—not in detail, but as a matter of principle, is the a priori dimension of historical knowledge.” In the cognition of history, the formative influence of the human mind is “less easily perceived because the material of history is mind itself.”¹ Michel De Certeau is in line with Simmel in factoring in the human mind. As a literary historiographer he views history as a narrative space. He dissects the process of historiography and asserts:

Modern Western history essentially begins with differentiation between the present and the past … This rupture also organizes the content of history within the relations between labor and nature; … it ubiquitously takes for granted a rift between discourse and the body (the social body) … It assumes a gap to exist between the silent opacity of the ‘reality’ that it seeks to express and the place where it produces its own speech, protected by the distance established between itself and its object.²

In that each historical period provides a place for a discourse, De Certeau explains the concept of the Self and its objects in a historical narrative such that “a structure to modern Western culture can doubtless be seen in this historiography: intelligibility is established through a relation with the other; it moves (or ‘progresses’) by changing what it makes of its ‘other’—the Indian, the past, the people, the mad, the children, the Third World.”³

Territorial and boundary disputes have often been the cause of political tensions and conflict between nations, and if neither nation involved in the dispute is willing to withdraw its claims, or to compromise its positions to reach a negotiated settlement, these tensions can persist for years or even lead to war. The sovereignty dispute between China, Taiwan, and Japan over the Senkaku islands has persisted over many decades. Such disputes are often intense and difficult to resolve because they become connected to notions of national identity and patriotism. Such patriotic emotions are themselves the product of cultural memories that emerge as citizens come to understand and share common stories of their nation’s purpose, central values, and history. This chapter will focus on the Japanese national story as told in social studies school textbooks in order to understand how the government actively sought to influence what Japanese students from primary school through high school have been taught about these territorial disputes.

In 1971 the Chinese government issued a declaration that claimed Japan had “colluded” with the United States to “seize” the Diaoyu islands. The declaration asserted: “This is obviously an invasion of China’s territorial sovereignty, the people of China cannot accept this!”¹ The controversy was kept alive over several decades as the Chinese media reported on various public protests and other incidents that reminded the Chinese public of the importance of these islands. For example, in 2003, Chinese activists landed on the islands and unfurled banners asserting China’s sovereignty,² and in 2010 Japanese authorities captured a Chinese fishing boat and detained its crew near the islands.³ The issue really captured the attention of the Chinese public in August 2012, after the Japanese government announced a plan to purchase the disputed islands from their private owners. The announcement sparked protests across China, and provoked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to declare: “This plan disregards historical fact, violates international law and seriously hurts the feelings of 1.3 billion Chinese people; both the Chinese government and the Chinese people are resolutely opposed to this plan.”⁴ The renewed focus on the Diaoyu islands led to the greatest tension to have emerged between China and Japan in decades.⁵ The controversy not only ruptured diplomatic relations between China and Japan but trade between the two nations was also “seriously damaged.”⁶

The century-old dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea was rekindled when news of an attempt by the Japanese government to “nationalize” the islands in September 2012 incited strong responses in China. The Chinese government quickly denounced the attempt and refuted Japan’s territorial claim over the islands. Grassroots activists from Hong Kong took the more radical action of landing on the islands, which had been in the effective control of Japan. Yet the agitation, similar to that of previous anti-Japanese popular movements, was most palpable online.¹ Infuriated reactions to the news once again took the Internet by storm.

On April 26, 2013, Japan’s conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun devoted its entire front page to an editorial calling for a revision of the “National Constitution.” The nationalistic paper proposed the adoption of new articles to give Japan greater “independence from the current peace constitution imposed by General Headquarters (GHQ) for the Allied Powers of the United States after WWII.”¹ The editorial declared that Japan’s rights had been unfairly restricted under the current constitution and urged that it be revised so as to bring the “independent and moral nation back to the hands of Japanese citizens.”² Defining Japan as “a proud nation founded on the privilege of the Japanese Emperor”³ in its first sentence, the newspaper argued that its proposed revision would “maintain the superior position of Japan in an international society.”⁴ The editorial also argued that the ongoing territorial confrontations were a result of Japan’s declining political power.⁵ Consequently, the editorial argued that the Japanese Self-Defense Force should be reconstituted as a full-fledged military force in order to bring back a period of international harmony, especially emphasizing the need to revise Article 9, the section of the current constitution that clarified that Japan would abandon all military power other than that needed to respond to an attack.⁶

The confrontation between China and Japan over sovereignty of the Senkaku islands will be difficult to resolve. Each nation claims its own understanding of history and clings to its own notions of justice, and neither seems willing to compromise. Additionally, the issue is closely tied up in feelings of patriotic nationalism, and compromise in such a situation is easily seen national humiliation, which may result in a loss of political support at home and diminished trust from other nations. The dispute over these small islands is not merely about which nation will profit from the development of natural resources but also about which nation will be seen as the leader of East Asia.

Given that many Americans pay scant attention to international news stories, it is safe to predict that most are not familiar with the dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. It is also all but certain that most of those who have heard of the islands would be unable to locate them on a map. This is not unusual of course as it is often claimed that Americans cannot find other nations on a map until they are at war with them. My research suggests, however, that from 2011 to 2013 those who read leading print media sources in the United States (or the Internet sites of these legacy news organizations) would have encountered significant coverage of the controversy over sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Readers could access thorough, systematic, and relatively detailed discussions of the issue in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Time, Forbes, Bloomberg News, and the Economist (although this last is a UK publication its largest circulation is in the United States, so I include it in this discussion). It is noteworthy, and it also gives an important glimpse into how the issue was framed as an economic threat to the global order, that the business press was especially attentive to the controversy. Newspapers other than those identified here also ran stories on the issue, but in most cases their coverage was not systematic and most of their stories were reprinted from the sources listed or taken from the newswires.

The conduct of diplomacy in the West has changed dramatically over the last few decades. During the Cold War, diplomats negotiated largely in secret and if their strategic goals and objectives were shared with the public at all, they were simply announced by leaders or their representatives. Media outlets reported on these diplomatic discussions and foreign policy controversies in stories that were aligned with the national, political, and cultural values of their home country, and they provided largely sympathetic narratives that supported, rather than questioned, their country’s diplomatic initiatives.

The chapters in this volume clearly demonstrate what a formidable task it will be to produce a negotiated diplomatic resolution to the controversy between China and Japan over sovereignty of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. Yet, it is obvious that this is a serious problem that could end badly—very badly. As the rhetoric in the controversy escalated, so too did the public passions and the military actions. Chinese, Japanese, and US aircraft, ships, and submarines are now all patrolling this small patch of contested sea in the midst of some of the busiest sea-lanes in East Asia. The danger of an accident or a miscalculation escalating into a full-scale military confrontation is very real. Even if the shooting war does not escalate, there is a serious risk of an economic or trade disruption involving the world’s three largest economies that might result in a global economic crisis. The preceding chapters suggest that the governments of China, Japan, and the United States have left themselves little room for compromise or negotiation. China and Japan have made increasingly bold declarations of the legitimacy of their own claims to the territory and of their commitment to defend their interests through the use of force if necessary. The United States has now put itself clearly on record as obliged to defend Japan in the event that the controversy leads to military action, despite the fact that it still claims to take no position on the underlying issue of sovereignty.