The realistic solution to the islands dispute between Japan and China

Posted by on Sep 19, 2012 in blog | 0 comments
Nothing but bad news here in this Japan Times article: this collection of Prime Ministerial hopefuls in the upcoming LDP Party presidential election, which includes Nobuteru Ishihara, son of  the hardline nationalist and controversial Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, are all, if you read between the lines, talking about revising the Constitution and creating “a stronger Japan” – code for “a Japan with regular armed forces and nuclear weapons”. The upcoming political movement Osaka Restoration Society, which has just gone national (Nippon Ishin no Kai) and is led by the ‘charismatic’ Toru Hashimoto, Mayor of Osaka, also has foreign policy and defence aims which are close to those of the LDP.. The party includes in its new logo both the Senkaku islands, disputed with China and the Kurile islands, disputed with Russia. On the Kurile Islands, Japan has a much stronger case but that is altogether a different issue from the Senkaku Islands dispute.
The Japan Times is a western-aligned globalist newspaper, closely connected to the LA Times and other ‘Anglo-sfear’ news organisations. Here we see its editorial line on the Senkaku Islands dispute – more unreality:
The only actual realistic thing to do, indeed the right thing to do,  is to hand these uninhabited nonentities (alleged undeveloped maritime resources notwithstanding) over to China a.s.a.p., which would be a sign of real goodwill and good-neighbourliness on the part of Japan. After all, these islands have never been part of historical Japan proper, nor were they part of the Kingdom of Ryukyu (Okinawa) which the Japanese feudal domain of the Satsuma clan (southern Kyushu) have controlled since the early 17th century but which the Japanese State has only formally controlled since 1879. But no-one in the Japanese political scene will dare to suggest handing over the islands, as for many, it would imply a great loss of national face; there would be talk of “surrender to the Chinese bully” etc. The Japanese people now have to decide: are they really the great nation of peacemakers and peacelovers they have constantly claimed to be since 1945, and which many of them do sincerely want to be, or are they prepared to go so far as to risk military conflict and war over these miserable islets? The very idea is preposterous, but when it comes to nationalism and face in East Asia, the preposterous can easily become very possible. Is ‘face’ more important to them than good relations with their closest neighbours, China, Taiwan and Korea? That is the question they have to ask themselves.
In this recent Japanese film (2011) Hara-kiri Death of a Samurai we see the tragic and violent consequences of  ‘face’ (here called ‘honour’) in Japan:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzEgqHUp1v4&feature=related
Huge anti-Japan demonstrations have taken place in dozens of Chinese cities. The Chinese have already sent 6 armed marine surveillance ships to the islands, which they are insistent belong to them as their ‘sacred territory’. They have made extremely forthright official public statements. They cannot back down after this, especially with the new Politburo appointments coming up and the highly publicised new government takeover. It’s like the US elections for them in media terms. The public statements they have made (“China will not back down one inch” etc etc) mean they are out on a limb with their own people here. Their next step  may well be a much more sizeable naval presence which would seek to intimidate the Japanese naval forces, or else they will land troops, and then the Japanese government would really have their bluff called.