Heat Back on for Japan - China Relations? Guest Post: Tokyo Could be About to Get Bigger by Imogen Reed

   Senkaku or Diaoyou Islands?

Shintaro Ishihara, the much beloved governor of Tokyo, has managed to raise 76 million yen in just five days since launching his crusade to purchase the Senkaku Islands. These donations have come from around 5,500 people across Japan and work out at about a million US dollars. Ishihara’s plan, however, is likely to provoke an international and regional storm as many believe the islands are not Japan’s to sell or buy.

An alternative title for this article could have been “A Game of Rocks,” but that was buying a little too much into a popular TV show. It is, however, quite apt when you think about it. The history of the Senkaku Islands are not long, but they are murky. It is this lack of clarity and agreement that have caused the problems. It is far less clear than other territorial disputes such as the Falkland Islands. It is also one of several island-based disputes involving Japan. The others being the Liancourt Rocks (Takeshima/Dokdo) and the South Kuril Islands (Chishima Retto).

The Senkaku Islands a group of islands north of Ishigaki Island in the Yaeyama archipelago south of Okinawa, and east of Taiwan. The Yaeyamas are a beautiful range of islands with their own culture and language. They had, however, little to do with the Senkaku Islands, which are so remote they would require courier international services to communicate.  Geographically speaking, the Senkakus are a group of five islands named Uotsuri (Diaoyu), Kuba (Huangwei), Taisho (Chiwei), Minami Kojima (Nan Xiaodao), Kita Kojima (Bei Xiaodao) and three rocks. They are currently uninhabited by humans, but are home to some rare species such as the Okinawa-kuro-oo-ari ant, short-tailed albatross and the Senkaku mole.  

Legal disputes arose in 1951 with the nullification of the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco between Japan and the Allied Powers. The treaty states that Japan relinquishes control of territories that are not historically part of Japan. Though it did allow Japan to keep the Ryukyu and Yaeyama Islands, which were not historically part of Japan until the 19th century.

Taiwan and China, the latter claiming the islands on behalf of a Greater China, believe they were only signed over by the Treaty of Shimonoseki as part of the territory of Formosa (Taiwan) and should therefore be returned. This is where it gets very Japanese and murky. In 1885 Okinawa’s Governor, Nishimura Sutezo, suggested they take the islands, but Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru argued they must be Chinese as they had Chinese names and had been claimed in a Chinese newspaper. When at war with China during the First Sino-Japanese War they decided as there were no settlements on the island, they could be termed uninhabited and therefore uncontrolled.

Since then, one of the islands was used as a bonito canning factory until the company went bust in 1940. After that, the islands have been rented by the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications from the owners of the business, the Koga family. They have been administered by the Ishigaki Island government, patrolled by the coastguard, but no one is allowed to set foot on the islands. The reason for this is unknown.

This brings us back to Ishihara’s plan. Under Japanese law, the islands are owned by the Koga family who now live in Saitama. He has been told that if he can raise 200 million yen by the end of the year, he can purchase the islands on behalf of Tokyo. This would make Tokyo the biggest prefecture in terms of distance between its constituent parts. In order to finalise the agreement, Japanese law states that the metropolitan assembly must approve the purchase as the islands are larger than 20,000 square meters in size.

While Ishihara’s move seems to have the approval of Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, experts are warning that the Mayor’s moves can only inflame tensions over the territory. China and Taiwan have already criticised the move. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that “the Diaoyou Islands have been China’s inherent territory since ancient times.”

Regardless of who buys the land, the ownership of the islands will not be decided until the three nations make an actual agreement.

Imogen Reed is a full-time professional writer and researcher.

Is Japan Doomed? USA Moves Marines out of Okinawa!

Break out the wine glasses... Some US military are finally leaving Japan!

People have been so indoctrinated by bad information and state-run education that they take completely false premises as gospel truth. A very common example is the ridiculous notion that "War is good for the economy" or "disasters are good for the economy" because they cause us to rebuild and that  creates jobs. Folks, building stuff and blowing it up or repairing destroyed property is not good for the economy. 


If disasters, like say, Katrina or the March 11 earthquake and tsunami (and subsequent nuclear disaster) were good for the economy then why don't we just bulldoze the entire country (including your house) underground and rebuild it... We'll be rich!


It's pretty obvious, if you think about it that way, why this notion is completely false. Read more about that in the "Broken Window Fallacy" here. 


Some other dumb ideas are idea is that the government creates jobs. No, it doesn't. The government destroys wealth. It takes money from the productive part of society and gives it to the non-productive part of society. For example; the military. Sure, people in the military get paid and can call it a "job" but they don't give or create wealth in any way shape or form. Yours and my taxes pay their salaries. They don't contribute to the economy at all.


And while we're on the subject of the military, (and the US military is not unique in this case), wherever the military goes, bad things follow... A military base is a scourge for the local population. I am not one against prostitution, but, it is a fact of life that one of the main businesses around military bases is nightlife and adult entertainment.


It's been that way since the days of the Roman empire.


Lew Rockwell wrote about military bases in Slouching Towards Statism:

Young people are put in distant places where they face no supervision from family or an organic community. They have little work to do and an abundance of discretionary income. Their housing, food, medical care, and clothing are provided at no charge by the government. Nobody need plan, for example, to come up with next month's rent.

The grayness and regimentation of the military base masks a deep debasement. Illegal drug use is rampant, on and off the base, and has long involved more than half of the enlisted men (recent declines in reported drug use measure only a rise in dishonesty). Alcoholism is more than double civilian levels. Tattooing is normal, gambling is rampant, and in its discount stores, the U.S. military is the biggest purveyor of pornography in the world.

Go to any military base in the country and look at the kinds of outlying enterprises taxpayers unwittingly support. Once-nice communities have been turned into magnets for nude dancing, prostitution, and every manner of sexual profiteering.

Look at Georgia's Fort Benning. Apart from the military, the area is populated by traditional people with traditional morals. Yet along the main drag you pass dozens of brightly lit sex parlors, an alarming sight in the Deep South. The military here is a cultural cancer that lives off the taxpayer. It's no surprise that the military is riddled with sexual abuse: in their off-hours, these guys are feeding our tax dollars to naked performers. It reflects the absence of chivalry inherent in all government operations.

Other businesses popular around military bases are pawn shops and the sort of car dealers that cater to people who don't pay their debts. That reflects another dirty secret of the military: live-for-the-moment attitudes and bad credit are typical, as in any welfare culture.

Like I said, it's not just the US military that is this way. It is the way of all imperial powers and their militaries. To think that a foreign military occupation is a boon to the local society or economy is to selectively view a small slice of the issue. 


While I go off on a tangent about the military, let me talk about the US military in Japan. Another really ridiculous idea is that if the USA closes military bases in Japan, then the Chinese will invade Japan and occupy it. Ha! That's funny! 


Hold that thought and let me get back to it in a moment.... But first some news; Folks, Japan is an occupied country right now and at this very moment! The USA occupies it. 


Anyone who thinks the USA is a benevolent country that fights wars to protect the rights of poor people and the disadvantaged and isn't interested in building an empire just hasn't been paying attention over these last, oh, 150 years. If the USA weren't interested in building empires (wars for resources, etc.) then the USA wouldn't have troops in over 130 countries, including Japan and they'd be long gone from Iraq (remember, "In and out in four weeks"?)


In spite of what the US government says, and is taught in school, to repeat; Japan is an occupied country.


Still don't believe me? Did you know that the US military enforces a "No Fly Zone" over some areas of the main island of Japan? Yep... Just like the USA did in Iraq and Libya. For example, for over the last 30 years Japan has been begging the United States to give her back the airspace above and around areas of Tokyo. Here is an extract from an article entitled U.S. to return part of Yokota airspace that appeared in the Japan Times on March 12, 2006:

"The United States has basically agreed to return part of the airspace over Yokota Air Base in Tokyo as part of the realignment of U.S. military forces in Japan, informed sources said Saturday.

"The basic agreement is expected to alleviate the overcrowding caused by the 470 commercial flights that must take detours around the so-called ‘Yokota RAPCON (Radar Approach Control)' area each day.

"The Yokota RAPCON covers the airspace above Tokyo and eight prefectures — Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Niigata, Nagano and Shizuoka. The military airspace is 7,000 meters high at its northern part and 3,700 to 5,500 meters in its southern part near Tokyo.

"Flights bound for western regions, such as Chugoku and Kyushu, have to ascend to avoid entering the banned airspace, while flights originating from those regions must make a detour south of Yokota, according to the transport ministry.

"The agreement, however, will effectively shelve Japan's request for the complete return of the airspace, which it has been seeking since the 1980s."

For decades, Japan has also been trying to get US military bases off Okinawa where there has been much animosity between the locals and the military due to cases of US military crimes that included murder of locals and the rape of children and just generally raising hell. As CRI English reports:


The whole dispute roots in the 1995 kidnapping and rape of a schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen in Okinawa. Though top U. S. government officials publicly apologized for the crime, tensions continued to grow on the island.


While I disagree with the above quote as being too simplistic, it was a symptom of the larger problem. These sorts of things used to happened far too much on Okinawa.. They haven't happened in the last few years because US military personnel are restricted to base.

But, now, there's been some good news that Marines are being moved off of Okinawa. From Japan Today: U.S. to move 9,000 Marines from Okinawa; no change to Futenma plan

The United States is to shift 9,000 Marines out of Japan in a move Washington hopes will ease sometimes fractious relations with its ally over a huge American military presence.

The redeployment, which will see troops moved to Guam, Hawaii and Australia, will go ahead regardless of any progress on the moving of a busy airbase on Okinawa that had originally been a key plank of a deal with the U.S.

In a joint statement issued in Washington and Tokyo, the two sides said they remained committed to the relocation of the Futenma base from its present urban location to a coastal spot—a move that is heavily resisted in Okinawa.

The two governments “reconfirmed their view that (this) remains the only viable solution that has been identified to date,” the statement said.

This is good news as having US troops on Japanese soil is not good for Japan at all. Hopefully we can get rid of all US troops on Japan in the near future. 

That being said, though, there are a lot of people who have bought into the government story that "US bases are good for the local economy" hook, line and sinker. They think the closing of bases will hurt the local economy (as if the US taxpayer should be paying to support businesses in Okinawa). Or, even worse, they think US troops on Japanese soil have prevented wars in Asia or Japan... Some people even think that the Chinese will move in when the Americans leave.

Laughable.

Japan has a quite large military (#6 in the world on military spending in 2010) as it is, thank you, and can defend herself. The USA being on Japanese soil gets Japan involved as a second-class citizen with her Asian neighbors and that doesn't help anyone. I wrote about that once in the Paradox of Japanese Remilitarization.

Anyway, if the people of Okinawa want the US military off their land, then it is, after all their land. The people get what they want. It's called democracy and it's supposed to work that way.

That's the funny thing about foreign occupation, though... It seems the antithesis of democracy. Occupation, military and politics seem to involve big money changing hands... The desires of the public are third-rate concerns...


For both the good of the Japanese public and the American public, the sooner the USA closes these foreign bases and gets her financial house in order, the better for everyone. The people of the USA cannot afford this empire anymore.

For the Japanese, the sooner they get on even and mutually respectable terms with her Asian neighbors without having to be a little sister behind the skirt of her American big sister, the better for everyone.

The Philippines got rid of their US bases in 1992 and the Chinese haven't invaded them... The Chinese haven't invaded Taiwan, either.... 

Probably the only people who really do want to keep the bases open are local politicians and anyone else who can exploit people and get kickbacks. Don't worry, folks. With or without US bases in Japan... Japan can defend herself; the Chinese aren't coming here anytime soon; and Okinawan businesses will most likely survive as businesses did in the Philippines after the closing of US bases...


No, the people can do better for themselves than servicing the empire. The sooner they start, the better life can be for their children. The USA out of Japan - and every other foreign nation!

Fire Just Turned On In North and South Korea - Missing Submarines, Japanese Missiles and North Korean Threats of War

You can't make this stuff up. Just when you were thinking that, at least for a while, maybe we've avoided a hot war with Iran, the lunatics in charge turn up the heat on the Korean peninsula. It seems that someone, somewhere is dead-set on breaking the final straw on the camel's back that is our fragile world economy. 

Go ahead and try it, big guy!

It seems that Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong Un, might be just as crazy as his old man... Or, we've just decided to goad and push him as much as we did with did with his father at this time for some strange reason...


ABC News (Australia) reports a bunch of bad news in S. Korea Hunts for North's Missing Subs that sounds like a script for a bad war flick where one stupid move by someone could spark an all-out war in Asia... A war over what exactly is kind of hard to figure out wince no one could possibly benefit from a war, excepting, of course, the Military-Industrial Complex of the United States. The report reads:

South Korea is reportedly searching for four North Korean submarines that disappeared after leaving their bases on the tense peninsula.

A military source quoted in a South Korean newspaper says up to four North Korean submarines slipped out of port in recent days and have so far avoided detection.

The source was also quoted as saying that Pyongyang has stepped up submarine infiltration drills as the weather has warmed.

Seoul is now on alert for a possible strike against a South Korean naval ship.

The South accuses the North of using a midget submarine to sink the corvette the Cheonan two years ago, which left 46 South Korean sailors dead.

But there's more bad news! North Korea has said it will test launch a missile sometime next week to which Japan has said its response will be "nothing unusual" but will shoot the missile down! The North Koreans have said that will be an act of war. The Wall Street Journal reports in Japan Readies Response to Pyongyang's Launch: 

On Friday, Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka told reporters that nothing unusual should be read into the southern deployment. "It's not related to a strengthening of our defense structure," he said. "It's just in case."

Late last month he ordered troops to destroy the rocket if it threatens to hit Japanese territory, although this is considered highly unlikely unless it goes off course.

Japan is preparing for any eventuality with the planned launch, with missiles situated on ships and on islands. It is mobilizing three Aegis-equipped ships, which carry SM-3 missiles, and is deploying eight land-based Patriot missile batteries: four on Okinawan islands, and four in Tokyo and surrounding areas.

Well, this doesn't sound good! But wait! There's more! The USA (always sticking its nose in everyone's business) says that if North Korea launches the missile, it will cancel food aid to which North Korea says that if that happens, they will resume nuclear weapons testing... So what does the USA do? They cut off food aid before the missile launch! How does North Korea react? They become more obstinate so they are forced to go ahead with the missile launch!

The State Department spokeswoman says in typical Orwellian fashion, "We don't link news with the nuclear issue! But we do have to have confidence in the commitments that the government is making to us with regards to the monitoring situation before one can go forward!" Wait a minute! Is she speaking for North Korea or the USA? Or is that interchangeable?


To see how well USA foreign policy fits with double-talk and incredible hypocrisy, watch this short video:

Great news. Just great. Thank you USA...


I winder when, oh when, South Korea and japan can get the US troops off their shores so that we can sit down and talk with our neighbors as equals rather than having the 900-lb gorilla in the room always sticking his grubby paws into everything?


If the start of spring and the blossoming of the cherry blossoms wasn't enough to give you an excuse to drink, then this news certainly is enough of an excuse for any man to raise a glass.... Cheers!