Northeast Asia Tensions.

[retromike22]

There's been some recent events in Northeast Asia that are quite troubling. No, not the usual North Korea vs. South Korea business. It's much more complicated.

This is how I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong though:

First, the Senkaku Islands:

Japan claims that they were unclaimed when they found them in the late 19th centrury. The People's Republic of China (PRC) says otherwise. They were directly controlled by Japan starting in 1895, but lost them to the U.S. when World War II ended. In 1972, the U.S. returned them to Japan, which pissed off the PRC because they wanted the islands to be returned to them. And don't forget the Republic of China (Taiwan) which claims that because they are the REAL China that they should have the islands.

So since 1972, it's been a dispute but a mild one. Until... November 2013. In that month the PRC established the "East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone" (ADIZ). In this zone, foreign aircraft traveling though this zone must report their flight plan to the PRC's Ministry to Foreign Affairs.



See those two small island areas just inside the zone? Those are the Senkaku Islands.

So now the PRC is exerting itself in the area against the Japanese.

A PRC frigate locked missiles on a Japanese destroyer and helicopter: http://www.voanews.com/content/chinese-warship-locked-prefiring-radar-on-japanese-navy-tokyo/1597325.html

Both of them went to battle stations:
http://www.nation.com.pk/international/11-Feb-2013/stopping-short-of-war

U.S. Intelligence has found that the PRC is moving ballistic missiles closer to the coast, near the Senkaku Islands:
http://freebeacon.com/beijing-war-prep/

And as a result Japan has stepped up, promising to shoot down any PRC drones in the area... which the PRC says will be an act of war.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/8438156.html

On top of all this... Japan and South Korea are ready to sign a military agreement. Not quite a pact, but the sharing of intelligence:

http://japandailypress.com/japan-ready-to-sign-south-korea-military-agreement-in-light-of-norths-aggressions-1727182/

And in probably the most ridiculous development: The PRC and Republic of China are moving forward together with new high level talks, the first since 1949:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-26129171

Some varied viewpoints:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21290349

So we have Japan and the PRC getting upset over a bunch of rocks, Taiwan (who also wants these rocks) moving toward the PRC, and South Korea moving toward with Japan on sharing military intelligence because of its own threat from... North Korea. And don't forget Japan and South Korea have their own alliance with the U.S.

It sounds messy.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

We've had other threads on this, so I'll just briefly summarize what I've already said.  From the standpoint of both geography and history, the Senkaku Islands clearly belong to the Ryukyu Islands.

However, the history of the Ryukyus is complicated.  For about three centuries, the Japanese controlled the Ryukyus but found it convenient to pretend they remained an independent tributary state of China. Because Japan refused to acknowledge they were a tributary state of China, they couldn't trade directly with China, but the "independent" Ryukyu Kingdom could trade with China and thus serve as the conduit for Sino-Japanese trade. After the Meiji Revolution Japan began to assert itself externally once more.  Japan ended the fiction of Ryukyu independence in the 1880s but left the issue of the uninhabited Senkakus unresolved so as to avoid antagonizing the Chinese. That is why Japan waited until the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 to formally establish its claim to the Senkakus.

[politicus]

We've had other threads on this, so I'll just briefly summarize what I've already said.  From the standpoint of both geography and history, the Senkaku Islands clearly belong to the Ryukyu Islands.

However, the history of the Ryukyus is complicated.  For about three centuries, the Japanese controlled the Ryukyus but found it convenient to pretend they remained an independent tributary state of China. Because Japan refused to acknowledge they were a tributary state of China, they couldn't trade directly with China, but the "independent" Ryukyu Kingdom could trade with China and thus serve as the conduit for Sino-Japanese trade. After the Meiji Revolution Japan began to assert itself externally once more.  Japan ended the fiction of Ryukyu independence in the 1880s but left the issue of the uninhabited Senkakus unresolved so as to avoid antagonizing the Chinese. That is why Japan waited until the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 to formally establish its claim to the Senkakus.

You may call this complicated, but bascally Japan has a legitimate claim to the islands by any objective standard.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Interestingly, during the period in which the Ryukyu Kingdom was doubly vassal to Japan and China, the people controlling it on the Japanese side were neither the emperor and his court in Kyoto nor the shogun and his court in Edo, but the Shimazu family, who were the local lords of the Satsuma Domain in southern Kyushu. The fact that the Shimazu had an entire other nominally independent kingdom blatantly under their control gave them a lot of prestige among the other Japanese territorial magnates, which they used to build up some of the alliances with which they eventually overthrew the shogunate during the Bakumatsu period. Shimazu control over Ryukyu was an enormous, enormous asset in the lead-up to the Meiji Restoration. They leveraged their hegemony over Ryukyu into eventual hegemony over Japan as a whole for their ideological heirs.