Senkaku Islands
The Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu Islands in China and the Diaoyutai Islands in Taiwan, are a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, administered by Japan. They were historically known in the Western world as the Pinnacle Islands. The islands are located northeast of Taiwan, east of China, west of Okinawa Island, and north of the southwestern end of the Ryukyu Islands.
The islands are the focus of a territorial dispute between Japan, China and Taiwan. China claims the discovery and ownership of the islands from the 14th century, while Japan maintained ownership of the islands from 1895 until its surrender at the end of World War II. The United States received administrative rights of the islands from Japan under the Treaty of San Francisco and administered the islands as part of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands from 1945 until 1972, before returning them to Japanese control under the Okinawa Reversion Agreement. The discovery of potential undersea oil reserves in 1968 in the area was a catalyst for further interest in the disputed islands. Despite the diplomatic stalemate between China and Taiwan, both governments agree that the islands are part of Taiwan as part of Toucheng Township in Yilan County. Japan administers the Senkaku islands as part of the city of Ishigaki in Okinawa Prefecture. It does not acknowledge the claims of China nor Taiwan, but it has not allowed the Ishigaki administration to develop the islands.
As a result of the dispute, public access to the uninhabited islands is restricted; Japan’s central government has denied landing requests even from local authorities. Although the islands are administered by Japan since 1895, a continuity interrupted only by US administration from 1945 to 1972, this long-standing status quo has been increasingly challenged by China since 2010s; Since the early 2010s, China Coast Guard have frequently entered the surrounding waters of the islands, prompting responses and exchanges of warnings with the Japan Coast Guard. China has also announced territorial-sea baselines and established an East China Sea ADIZ, all of which are contested by Japan. The United States, which returned administrative right of the islands to Japan in 1972, takes no position on the ultimate sovereignty but acknowledges that the islands are under Japanese administration and are covered by the US–Japan security treaty. Recent US–Japan statements also refer to Japan’s longstanding administration and oppose any unilateral actions that seek to undermine it.
The Senkaku Islands are important nesting sites for seabirds, and are one of two remaining nesting sites in the world for the short-tailed albatross, alongside Tori-shima, Izu Islands.
Names
The islands are referred to as the Senkaku Islands in Japanese. In mainland China, they are known as the Diaoyu Islands or more fully "Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands", while in Taiwan they are called the Diaoyutai Islands, or previously spelled as Tiaoyutai Islands. In Western sources, the historical English name Pinnacle Islands is occasionally still used when neutrality among the competing national claims is desirable.In Okinawan, the islands are known as 2=魚蒲葵島, while their Yaeyama name is iigunkubajima.
Chinese records of these islands date back to as early as the 15th century when they were referred as Diaoyu in books such as Voyage with a Tail Wind and Record of the Imperial Envoy's Visit to Ryūkyū . Adopted by the Chinese Imperial Map of the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese name for the island group and the Japanese name for the main island both mean "fishing".
History
Early history
Historically, the Chinese had used the uninhabited islands as navigational markers in making the voyage to the Ryukyu Kingdom upon commencement of diplomatic missions to the kingdom, "resetting the compass at a particular isle in order to reach the next one".The first published description of the islands in Europe appears in a book imported by Isaac Titsingh in 1796. His small library of Japanese books included Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu by Hayashi Shihei. This text, which was published in Japan in 1785, described the Ryūkyū Kingdom. Hayashi followed convention in giving the islands their Chinese names in his map in the text, where he coloured them in the same pink as China.
In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation.
The name, "Pinnacle Isles" was first used by James Colnett, who charted them during his 1789–1791 voyage in the Argonaut. William Robert Broughton sailed past them in November 1797 during his voyage of discovery to the North Pacific in HMS Providence, and referred to Diaoyu Island/Uotsuri Island as "Peaks Island". Reference was made to the islands in Edward Belcher's 1848 account of the voyages of HMS Sammarang. Captain Belcher remarked that "the names assigned in this region have been too hastily admitted." Belcher reported anchoring off Pinnacle Island in March 1845.
In the 1870s and 1880s, the English name Pinnacle Islands was used by the British navy for the rocks adjacent to the largest island Uotsuri-shima / Diaoyu Dao ; Kuba-shima / Huangwei Yu ; and Taishō-tō / Chiwei Yu.
A Japanese navy record issued in 1886 first started to identify the islets using equivalents of the Chinese and English terms employed by the British. The name "Senkaku Retto" is not found in any Japanese historical document before 1900, and first appeared in print in a geography journal published in 1900. It was derived from a translation of the English name Pinnacle Islands into a Sinicized Japanese term "Sento Shoto", which has the same meaning.
The collective use of the name "Diaoyutai" to denote the entire group began with the advent of the controversy in the 1970s.
Control of the islands by Japan and the US
As the uninhabited islets were historically used as maritime navigational markers, they were never subjected to administrative control other than the recording of the geographical positions on maps, descriptions in official records of Chinese missions to the Ryukyu Kingdom, etc.The Japanese central government incorporated the islands into Okinawa Prefecture in January 1895 while still fighting China in the First Sino-Japanese War. Around 1900, Japanese entrepreneur Koga Tatsushirō constructed a bonito fish processing plant on the islands, employing over 200 workers. The business failed around 1940 and the islands have remained deserted ever since. In the 1970s, Koga Tatsushirō's son Zenji Koga and Zenji's wife Hanako sold four islets to the Kurihara family of Saitama Prefecture. Kunioki Kurihara owned Uotsuri, Kita-Kojima, and Minami-Kojima. Kunioki's sister owned Kuba.
The islands came under US government occupation in 1945 after the surrender of Japan ended World War II. In 1969, the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East identified potential oil and gas reserves in the vicinity of the Senkaku Islands. In 1971, the Okinawa Reversion Treaty passed the United States Senate, returning the islands to Japanese control in 1972. Also in 1972, the Republic of China government and People's Republic of China government officially began to declare ownership of the islands.
Since 1972, when the islands reverted to Japanese government control, the government of Ishigaki has been given civic authority over the territory. The Japanese central government, however, has prohibited Ishigaki from surveying or developing the islands.
In 1978, a Japanese political group constructed the first lighthouse on Uotsuri island and grazed two goats. Goats have since proliferated and affected the island's vegetation.
In 1979 an official delegation from the Japanese government composed of 50 academics, government officials from the Foreign and Transport ministries, officials from the now-defunct Okinawa Development Agency, and Hiroyuki Kurihara, visited the islands and camped on Uotsuri for about four weeks. The delegation surveyed the local ecosystem, finding moles and sheep, studied the local marine life, and examined whether the islands would support human habitation.
In 1988, a Japanese political group reconstructed a lighthouse on Uotsuri Island.
In 2005, a Japanese fisherman who owned a lighthouse at Uotsuri Island expressed his intention to relinquish the ownership of the lighthouse, and the lighthouse became a national property pursuant to the provisions of the Civil Code of Japan. Since then, the Japan Coast Guard has maintained and managed the Uotsuri lighthouse.
From 2002 to 2012, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications paid the Kurihara family ¥25 million a year to rent Uotsuri, Minami-Kojima and Kita-Kojima. Japan's Ministry of Defense rents Kuba island for an undisclosed amount. Kuba is used by the US military as a practice aircraft bombing range. Japan's central government completely owns Taisho island.
The reaction of the Kan Cabinet to the September 2010 Senkaku boat collision incident was seen by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as "a very foolish move" and "frighteningly naive".
On December 17, 2010, the city of Ishigaki designated January 14 as "Pioneering Day" to commemorate Japan's 1895 incorporation of the Senkaku Islands. China condemned Ishigaki's actions.
In May 2012, both the Tokyo Metropolitan and Japanese central governments announced plans to negotiate purchase of Uotsuri, Kita-Kojima, and Minami-Kojima from the Kurihara family, and on September 11, 2012, the Japanese government nationalized its control over Minami-kojima, Kita-kojima, and Uotsuri islands by purchasing them from the Kurihara family for ¥2.05 billion. China's Foreign Ministry objected saying Beijing would not "sit back and watch its territorial sovereignty violated."
In 2014, Japan constructed a lighthouse and wharf featuring Japanese flag insignia on the islets.