![]()
1 Reappraising Japan’s territorial disputes with China and Korea1
Prospects and challenges for resolution
Victor Teo and Haruko Satoh
Despite the recent boom caused by the escalating disputes in the East China Sea, the literature covering Japan’s challenges in dealing with her island disputes with China, Korea and Russia is surprisingly sparse. This is especially so with the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, considering the amount of press the issue gets when tension over the ownership is ratcheted up by the international media. Much of the media reports written about the topic are by analysts, government officials or politicians who are often partial to their respective governments’ positions and reiterate their claim to ownership by way of elaborate legal or historical explanations or a combination of both. The occasional third-party analysts and commentators do little more than call for “peace” and “calm” to de-escalate the disputes. A brief literature survey would reveal that most of the analyses are quite dated, if not merely descriptive, and they often focus on the examination the following issues: (1) the origins of the disputes; (2) the contested basis of claims to the islands; (3) a chronological presentation of the disputes since the reversion of the islands to Japan by the United States; (4) how the episodes are utilized by politicians to shore up domestic support and garner political capital; and (5) the impact of the disputes on current international politics in East Asia. In particular, most pieces treat the island disputes as one of the reasons for the developments of the recent tensions between Japan and China, or Japan or Korea and underlines that the island disputes are responsible for the mutual hardening of positions between China and Japan and the possible of war involving China on the one hand and the United States/Japan on the other. In essence, the island disputes are treated as the causes of tensions, as opposed to be a symptom of worsening ties.
There have been very few efforts to focus on ways to ameliorate or resolve the disputes, as if they are impossible to contemplate from the beginning. There have been, of course, a variety of conferences, seminars and research papers, but very few that focus on the prospects of co-operation and resolution. However, there has also been a lack of systematic engagement of, and one may even say enthusiasm from, academic, research and policy elites across national boundaries for obvious reasons. Most officials or prominent scholars cannot be “caught” in their respective domestic setting saying that the islands may not or do not “belong” to their own countries; in fact, they are often in a position that cannot even acknowledge that a dispute “exists”. In such a limited scope for public debates and discussions, any attempts to understand each other’s threat perceptions and how they could be ameliorated to bring negotiating positions closer are seen as lost causes to begin with. Not surprisingly, most domestic conferences on these issues within China, Japan and Korea are there to strengthen their national positions and eventually harden the attitudes towards each other.
This volume has consciously set out to avoid the pitfalls of these previous projects, as these projects tend to antagonize each party’s positions towards the other rather than facilitate mutual understanding for their resolution. Instead, the contributors to this project have been asked to focus on the resolution aspect of the disputes, since there has yet to be adequate studies done on this, and not to take the official rhetoric or received narratives as a given in approaching the issue. Due to the constraints of the project, the editors have also decided to focus the efforts on two of the most pressing issues Japan faces with her Asian neighbours: the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute with China and the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute with Korea. The Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories dispute is being left out of the volume. The objective of this approach is twofold: First, the volume wants to fill a theoretical, methodological and much-needed lacuna in the academic literature on this; but second, and perhaps more importantly, to widen the space for public and policy discussions and debates on this divisive topic by opening a politically neutral avenue for a plausible and forward-thinking dialogue to occur between the parties involved. This space provides latitude for calm reflection on the often emotional dimension of these issues, which we believe is crucial to contemplate possible resolution or amelioration of these issues without judgment or repercussions.
In order to break the mold of thinking and the paucity of policy options contemplated thus far, this collaborative project brings together specialists from different disciplines to produce a mutually agreeable constructive set of ideas, as the issues are rigorously examined through different disciplinary approaches. Collectively, the scholars are able to do this because all scholars work together with a clear end in mind: to see if the stalemate Japan faces in her relations with two of her closest neighbours – the People’s Republic of China and the Koreas – could be ended and relations improved through a possible resolution of the island disputes. In order to propose a set of plausible initiatives to move forward bilateral relations in a frank and amicable manner, the scholars write without paying too much attention to their national viewpoints and/or political correctness.
A principal contribution of this volume would be to provide a venue for these disputes to be conceptualized in a new and radical way. To do this, each chapter tries to reframe the way in which the problem is being seen and diagnose Japan’s challenges in overcoming these foreign policy challenges at a juncture where Japan is also faced with domestic challenges of nationalism. What makes these issues more critical than ever is that after decades of being relatively dormant on the political agenda, the changes in the security architecture of the Asia-Pacific pushed the discussion of these issues to the forefront. The dilemma of trying to untie these Gordian knots in her foreign policy and building a better strategic environment versus the nationalistic impulses to maintain what many Japanese people see as their inherent birthright means that these issues become more critical than ever as both China and Japan seek to become more assertive in their foreign policy.
Over the last decade or so, tensions between China and Japan flared over a group of islets known to the Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands and to the Japanese as the Senkaku Islands. In the course of their modern history since the end of the Second World War and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, both Japan and China have collided over a range of issues, but nothing as sporadic and as spontaneous as the islands dispute. Compared to Japan’s dispute with the Koreas over Dokdo/Takeshima and the Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories dispute, the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute is different in four important respects.
First and foremost, this dispute out of the three island disputes (Senkaku/Diaoyu, Dokdo/Takeshima and Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories) has the most potential to start an actual shooting war that will escalate out of hand. This is because of the possible involvement of the United States and Japan’s invocation of the US–Japan alliance to defend her sovereignty, the amount of nationalism that is involved and, most importantly, China and Japan both genuinely believe their rights have been infringed. In the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, there is no danger of involving the United States in supporting one side of the dispute as the United States is an alliance partner of both South Korea and Japan. If anything, the United States would likely play a stabilizing and calming role if Japan and Korea were to go head to head over the Dokdo/Takeshima Islands. Unlike the Senkaku Islands issue, the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute is not being perceived as a regional strategic issue but a bilateral political one.
The second major difference is that of all the island disputes that Japan has, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are the only set of islands controlled and administered by Japan. While all the islands play a role in Japanese nationalism, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands issue might present itself to be of greater visibility, materiality and hence urgency because Japan has to actively “fend” off sovereignty claims from China and Taiwan compared to the other two cases. Whether it is the Chinese government asserting its claims or Hong Kong/Taiwanese fishermen sailing for the islands, their actions present a consistent threat to Japanese security far more than the Dokdo/Takeshima or Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories disputes. With the rise of China, the sense that the Chinese might just succeed in wrestling the islands away from the control of Japan becomes very real for the Japanese people. Likewise, the continued administration of the islands by Japan, and the voices defending Japanese sovereignty over the islands, only go to aggravate Chinese sensibilities over historical grievances and injustice from the burden of war. The Dokdo/Takeshima dispute has a very different sense of dynamics. In both Japan and Korea, the protests on Dokdo/Takeshima are relatively mild (in the sense they are politically contained) compared to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands protests. In recent years, the dispute has been manifested more by terse diplomatic statements and governmental jabs and relatively contained civic protests concerned exclusively with the islands.
Third, the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue provides an opportunity for domestic political opponents to usurp the issue to gain nationalist credentials and build political capital in Japan, China and Taiwan. These actions provide a platform for greater national and international attention for these actors, providing a spotlight for their agenda, and allow them to command for a short period the initiative in framing the issues and narratives in their national politics. Both the Chinese and Japanese government had at one time or another difficulty constraining the actions if not narratives of these domestic actors, and in the process making them look “weak” politically or strategically. Conversely, in the Dokdo/Takeshima disputes the governments are able to seize the initiative and frame the narratives surrounding the islands, situating and confining the debate very much at the government/state level. Unlike the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, the Dokdo/Takeshima protests do not seem to provide the same kind of opportunity for domestic opponents to leverage upon the national government nor for the government to draw external powers into the quarrel.
Fourth, there were protests over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from 1969 to 1972, in 1978 just before the Deng Xiaoping visit, from 1995 to 1998, and then sporadically throughout the 2000s until the most recent serious outbreak in 2012. For the Dokdo/Takeshima issue, the protests are less expansive and often incur in the context of larger protests against the countries concerned (i.e. anti-Japan or anti-Korea protests). Korean and Japanese protests are in part reactive to perceived political offensive moves (such as the incorporation of Dokdo as Japanese territory in textbooks) and diplomatic exchanges (for instance, the quarrel about the comfort women statues outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul).
Today, in China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan almost all policymakers, diplomats and foreign policy elites naturally subscribe to the tenets of neo-realism. Most believe in the maximization of their respective national interests, backed by adequate force and political will. Few dissenting voices suggest admitting that there is a problem, especially if the disputed islets are under the control of the said country. The standard approach for the country administering the islands is to deny the existence of a “problem”, i.e. Japan will tell China that there is not a problem just as Korea would inform Japan that there is not a territorial issue with the Dokdo. The refusal to entertain queries and concerns accords with the standard line of diplomatic denial.
From a conflict resolution perspective, the states’ behavior is squarely confrontational and they are locked in a zero-sum game. Take the Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument Model2 for instance. Its authors have designed a model with two axis. The vertical (y) axis denotes from low to high the assertiveness (i.e. concern for their own agenda) of the conflicting parties (individuals, companies). The horizontal axis (x) axis denotes low to high in terms of co-operativeness of the parties concerned (i.e. how much you care for the other party). Thus, the model has in the top left quadrant “competing” posture, in the top right “collaborating” posture, in the bottom left “avoiding” posture, and in the bottom right “accommodating” posture. In the centre of the model, there is an overlapping space that is designated the “compromise” sector. The behavior of the states involved in any territorial dispute would normally be located in the top left quadrant (high concern for their own agenda, low concern for others’ agendas) – the “competing” quadrant. Territorial disputes are thus presented as zero-sum games to domestic audiences. Territorial loss or loss of sovereignty is perceived to be zero-sum. In some cases, such as the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, the leaders of China at least have indicated that they would like to postpone the discussions of the dispute for the next generation. This “position” is now being disputed by the Japanese officials – but for a while at least, from 1978 till the mid 1990s, the way the dispute was handled certainly suggests that the “next generation formula” based in the “avoiding” quadrant worked in postponing the conflict.
Successful resolutions of territorial disputes are generally undertaken when the parties are willing to move their postures into the “collaborating” quadrant (high regard for one’s agenda and others’) or, failing that, when a median “compromising” position is achieved. This happens when both parties would have regard for their own as well as their adversary’s interests. Thus, in order to possibly try to improve relations and ameliorate tensions, if not resolve the conflict outright, the behavior of both claimant states must be nudged into the “collaborating” quadrant or the middle intersecting “compromising” sector.
In Asia, the country most successful in resolving many of the territorial disputes plaguing her bilateral relations is, ironically, China. At the time of writing, China is being presented in much of the media as being embroiled in an aggressive expansionist and revisionist agenda to incorporate maritime territories in the South and East China Seas as her economic and military might grow. Yet it is worth looking to the early periods of the post-Cold War era. One of the most successful cases in recent times involved the resolution of the border disputes between the Soviet Union (USSR) and her successor state – the Russian Federation – and the People’s Republic of China. Emerging from the Cultural Revolution after the death of Mao in 1976, the People’s Republic strove to undertake economic reforms and to rebuild the country. This decision was a political one undertaken by Deng to ensure the preservation of the Communist Party, and the first item on Deng’s agenda was to build a strategic environment for Chinese reforms. Thus, the demilitarization of the 7,600 km-long Soviet border was the first step undertaken to reach détente, and the Russian Federation finally managed to achieve a lasting peace with the Chinese after a few years of protracted negotiations, with China obtaining sovereignty of Yinlong (Taraborov) Island, Zhenbao (Damansky) Island and 50% of the Heixiazi (Bolshoy Ussuriysky) Islands (China Daily, 22 July 2008). These negotiations and subsequent agreements show that it is possible for states to enter into discussions and negotiate territorial disputes in accordance with international law and arrive at resolutions peacefully. Likewise, Malaysia and Singapore sought arbitration at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over Pedra Branca (Pulau Batu Puteh in Malay) in 2003 and the ICJ returned with judgment for Singapore in 2008.
Thus, recent developments have shown it is entirely possible for states to negotiate and come to a compromise to resolve island disputes. It is therefore a question of being able to persuade competing states to move their posture from “competing” to “compromising” or “collaborating” to do this. This, however, is easier said than done. Nation-states have enduring memories – formed as a result of conscious cultivation and habits developed across generations. These nations might have their own memories and narratives and their own interests by which they situate the current predicament they are in over the disputed islets (Liao, 2016), and accordingly provide the kind of futures they see for themselves and the way the territorial disputes are handled.
The origins of most territorial disputes, however, are not something that the modern governments choose to have a hand in – they usually originate as part of a larger structure that these nation-states find themselves in today (Hara, 2014). Studying the Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories dispute and subsequently the Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu and South China Sea disputes, Hara argues that it was the creation of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951 and the Okinawa Reversion Treaty in 1971 that has generated unresolved problems in the form of these territorial conflicts (Hara, 2015). These islands are
(Liao, 2018)
To be sure, the processes by which Japan, Korea and China claim to have come into possession of the islands are significantly different from each other, and the bases of their claims are just as varied. This has implications for how the disputes are framed and viewed and how the options to “resolve” the issues at hand might appear differently to different nations. As Satoh points out,3 all four countries/entities are in different phases in their modern history as nation-states, with China, Korea and Taiwan still being in the relatively younger phase of nation-state consolidation and Japan entering a phase of post-Meiji-state reconfiguration. The position of territorial sovereignty as a constituent of each of the countries’ sense of security and state identity formation is different. Without taking into account the evolutionary character of nation-state identity, as the countries are bound to interact more rather than less with each other today in tandem with the historical power transition that is taking place in East Asia, any dialogue on the territorial disputes would only serve to entrench the international politics of the region in the past and fail to untie the Gordian knots. Such a situation will not only be counter-intuitive to the long-term interests of all the countries concerned, but eventually will rob the region of its vitality.
Today, as we look to the motivations and the stakes involved in the respective disputes for China...
