China's Territorial Disputes (11 page)

11 October members of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan began pressuring their own government to break its silence and reaffirm sovereignty over Tiaoyutai. Facing pressure on the Kuomintang (KMT) government’s political legitimacy, which rested on its claim to represent and govern all China, the premier of the Executive Yuan, Hau Pei-tsun, had to come up with a statement that the government would not tolerate Japanese invasion of Chinese territory and that the sovereignty of Tiaoyutai would be protected. On 14 October, the Taiwanese foreign ministry reported that they had convinced the Japanese government to put a stay on the Seinensha application for official recognition, but by then activists from the Taiwanese associations of fishermen from Ilan and Kaohsiung, two major fishing ports whose economies depend heavily on fishing in the waters off the disputed islands, were getting boats ready for the purpose of sailing to the disputed islands for a show of force.
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It was then that KMT Mayor Wu Dun-yi of Kaohsiung stepped into the picture by organizing two fishing boats to transport athletes from the “Taiwan Area Athletic Meet” with an Olympic torch to plant on the main island to affirm Taiwan’s claim to Tiaoyutai.
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Whether this action reflected Mayor Wu’s own concern and initiative, or whether it had the government’s tacit consent and was done to channel political support to the KMT, as Wu later claimed, remains unclear to this day.
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Probably on account of its low international prestige after the Tiananmen Square incident a year before and its reluctance to further antagonize the Japanese, the PRC did not send or allow any of its fishing craft into the Diaoyudao territorial sea this time, although it did join in the fray to denounce Japan’s claim, which brought forth a response by the Japanese government reaffirming Japanese sovereignty over the islands. The climax of the incident was when the two boatloads of athletes and accompanying journalists were prevented from landing on the Tiaoyutai Islands by twelve patrol ships and two helicopters from the Japanese MSDF, and had to turn back on the same evening of 21 October, mission unaccomplished.
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On the following day, to play down the issue, Premier Hau pointed out that, although his government would do its utmost to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty over Tiaoyutai and the right of its fishermen to enter its waters, the Olympic torch affair was essentially a patriotic activity of a peaceful nature, and as such, the government would not allow its military to interfere in it.
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Hau appealed for calm and reiterated his commitment to settle this dispute with Japan through unofficial diplomatic channels, although that did not stop protestors from demonstrating outside the Taipei office of the Japanese trade and cultural representative by burning the Japanese flag and pelting eggs, nor did it prevent overseas Taiwanese from calling on their home government to use military vessels to escort Taiwanese athletes to the islands and maintain troops there to defeat Japanese aggression. The DPP again attacked the government for not standing up for the national interest of Taiwan, and the fishermen threatened to dispatch 300 boats to the island.
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Although that threat did not materialize for logistical or other reasons, the Taipei government was forced to set up a special 7th (Coastguard) Detachment to deal with such possible incidents in the future. Faced with nationalistic hotheads on both sides who had good emotional cause to escalate the crisis beyond manageable proportions, Tokyo and Taipei tried hard to downplay the issue. On the evening of 23 October, Japanese Premier Toshiki Kaifu came out of a caucus meeting with pro-Taiwan members of the LDP and announced that his government would not proceed with plans to officially recognize the Seinensha lighthouse.
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On the following day, in an interesting demonstration of the convergence in the expectations and interests of the countries involved, the Taiwanese government responded to this positive signal by announcing that it would not protect individuals going to the islands, and it would protect fishermen only if they applied beforehand and avoided entering the islands’ twelve-mile territorial sea.
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The Chinese government also reiterated its claims to the islands, but again called on all parties to shelve the issue of sovereignty and jointly develop the area’s fishing and natural resources.
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That offer was not taken up by any of the parties involved, but this time China did not take any concrete action to back up its claim, probably out of gratitude to the Japanese government for being the first major government of the world to resume bilateral aid to China after the Tiananmen Square incident.
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Aside from the fact that China has been the largest recipient of Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) since 1979, Japan’s ODA to China in 1990 alone amounted to US$723 million in loans and grants.
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The island issue then remained dormant until July 1996, when the Seinensha erected another lighthouse on one of the Senkakus and started another fracas.

The fourth incident: the Kita-Kojima lighthouse (1996)

On 14 July 1996, while the Japanese Diet was debating a bill which would announce Japan’s 200-mile EEZ, members of the largest right-wing Japanese nationalist group, the Nihon Seinensha, built a 5-meter-high solar-powered aluminum lighthouse on one of the smaller disputed islands named Kita Kojima. Supposedly done for the sake of maritime safety, Seinensha’s action was more likely carried out to give substance to the government’s impending 200-mile EEZ declaration, anticipating that the government would involve the country in some maritime boundary dispute with its neighbors once the declaration came into force. True to Seinensha’s anticipation, the Japanese government asserted on 20 July its claim for exclusive economic development rights within the 200-mile EEZ around the disputed islands and the rest of Japan, although it is doubtful according to UNCLOS III if uninhabited or uninhabitable rocks like the Senkakus qualify for an EEZ. At a press conference called by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the press secretary denied any territorial dispute regarding the Senkaku Islands, which he referred to as an integral part of Japanese territory under the effective control of Japan, although he did confirm that a lighthouse had been constructed on Kita-Kojima, and that the MSA was then patrolling the area. However, it was significant that he chose to dodge the “hypothetical” question as to what the Japanese government would do if Japan’s sovereignty were violated, leading one to conclude that the Japanese government was not ready to exacerbate this particular dispute by resorting to military action, at least not at that moment.
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To reiterate Japan’s claims over the islands, another nationalist group calling itself the Senkaku Islands Defense Association erected a Japanese flag on the largest island of Uotsuri.
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After a typhoon destroyed the one-month old lighthouse in August, the Nihon Seinensha again sent some of its people to repair it and put up more flags and a memorial plaque the following month. Coming before the 18 September anniversary of Japan’s invasion of China, this could not have been better timed to provoke the reaction of both the Chinese and its own government. On 30 September Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, leader of the LDP, who had once served as chairman of the “Japanese Association of Bereaved Families of the War Dead,” announced that his party would support Japan’s claims to the islands, probably with a view to capturing the nationalistic vote in the Diet elections set for 20 October. The election saw Hashimoto retain the premiership, more seats for the LDP, and the JSP being replaced as the main opposition party by the Shinseito (New Frontier Party), a new political party formed in 1993 whose main differences with the LDP were over domestic rather than foreign policy.
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Together, both conservative parties controlled 80 percent of the seats in the Japanese Diet after the 1996 general election, with the LDP and Shinseito winning 251 and 156 of the 500 seats respectively.
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Nationalist groups, whose memberships claim but a small minority of the Japanese population, have traditionally been able to exert a disproportionate influence on the political process of post-war Japan. This is because the longtime ruling LDP has always been a factionalized coalition of conservative forces that portrayed itself as the alternative to the opposition socialists, and was especially divided over the question of recognizing China. Since its inception as a political party in 1955 with the amalgamation of the Liberal and Democratic parties,
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the LDP has harbored many nationalist groups or caucuses. The Seirankai, whose members constructed the 1978 lighthouse, is a vigorous right-wing group within the LDP. According to its manifesto, Seirankai means “clear storm society,” denoting “a summer storm that blows away the stuffy atmosphere, enlivens heaven and earth, and creates an iridescent rainbow of hope.” The name was provided by Shintaro Ishihara, novelist and politician, Mayor of Tokyo, and intimate associate of Yukio Mishima, the well known writer who committed ritual hara-kiri in 1970 after a failed attempt to inspire a military coup. The origins of Seirankai may be traced to the spring of 1972, when Ishihara and some 160 LDP Dietmen formed an intra-party coalition for the purpose of resisting moves by the party leadership to establish diplomatic relations with China. In July 1973, thirty-one of the more extremist members of this group announced Seirankai’s formation. Its membership consists of mostly young, discontented men from non-elite schools with little hope for access to leading party positions. Seirankai, like the Soshinkai, another powerful faction within the LDP that included former prime minister Kishi Nobusuke, called for a new constitution without the “war-renouncing clause,” and providing more police power, a greater military build-up, and the inculcation of Japanese ethos and nationalistic morality in schools. Being one of Japan’s 800 right-wing nationalist groups in the 1980s, Seirankai’s membership may have been small, claiming 3,000 at most,
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but it certainly exerted an influence way beyond its limited size to the highest corridors of power, for in its heyday it counted fourteen members of the Fukuda faction and ten of the Nakasone faction in its ranks.
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Although the Seirankai was not directly involved in this Senkaku episode, its leader Ishihara alluded in a newspaper interview to MOFA as a traitorous organization for preventing the authorization of the lighthouse out of consideration for China’s feelings.
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By 1990, the political grouping with the strongest organizing and financial power was the Nihon Seinensha, headquartered and active in Tokyo’s expensive Ginza district. Its founder was one Kusuo Kobayashi, a one-time vice-president of the gangster-group Sumiyoshi-kai.
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After Kobayashi’s death in January 1990, leadership of Nihon Seinensha fell to a fifty-nine-year-old man by the name of Eto Toyohisa, a one-time Seirankai activist who had made Japan’s claim to the Senkaku Islands his life-long cause. It was he who, with half a dozen associates, erected the first lighthouse on Uotsuri in August 1978, and with another six colleagues built the second one on Kita-Kojima in July 1996. He is also closely associated with the Senkaku Islands Defense Association, another nationalist group based in Okinawa’s capital Naha, whose members erected the Japanese flag and unveiled a memorial plaque to wartime residents on the main island.
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Aside from erecting lighthouses on disputed islands, Seinensha also mounts attacks on ultra-leftist groups and supported the Mujaheedin in Afganistan, in line with its founding philosophy of asserting Japan’s territorial claims, opposing Communism and restoring the pre-war rights of the emperor.
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As Eto said in an interview, “Sometimes I wish the government would take the lighthouse over, so I can withdraw from it all.” Authorities estimate there are about 120,000 right-wing sympathizers in the country, though not all of them are involved with the Senkaku issue. However, it can be safely assumed that, to the Japanese in these nationalistic organizations, every former imperial power such as Japan should be entitled to retain captured territories, especially if these are places like the Senkakus, which have been considered to be Japanese territory since as far back as the nineteenth century!

From 28 August 1996, when the Japanese foreign minister asserted Japanese sovereignty over the Senkakus on his visit to Hong Kong, until the 18 September anniversary date came to pass, there were daily protests and demonstrations in Hong Kong. The biggest anti-Japanese protest march drew 20,000 people,
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and provided a great opportunity for Hong Kongers of all political stripes to demonstrate their alleigance to the motherland in anticipation of Hong Kong’s return to China in less than a year’s time. These events were led by the same prodemocracy activists who had been campaigning against Chinese plans to replace the partially elected colonial legislature with a provisional one. These activists were apparently hoping not only to tap into a genuinely popular cause for political support, but also to prepare the ground for future demands that would be difficult for China to resist. An editorial on Hong Kong’s
Ming Pao Daily
captured the popular mood when it declared that

It is significant that we have not lost our nationalist bearing even during the long years of colonial rule. On the contrary, the shameful memory of the loss of our land is vividly clear in our minds. We cannot allow history to be

repeated. We cannot tolerate Japanese militarism raising its ugly head

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again.

To the Chinese, Tiaoyutai is unfinished business, a legacy of the last war with Japan, and issues like that of compensation for the former sex-slaves or “comfort women” of Japanese soldiers, visits to the Yasakuni war memorial by Japanese premiers and politicians, and the anniversary of the outbreak of the Pacific War serve as reminders of the shame and suffering visited on them by the unrepentant and unforgiven Japanese invaders.
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Indeed, the statement by Japan’s foreign minister seemed to have galvanized Chinese everywhere who are often divided over politics and distracted by daily realities. The “Protect Tiaoyutai” activities of the Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and North American Chinese, and the actions of anti-Japanese activists in China, once again went into full swing. Whatever opportunities or win-sets which might have arisen for compromise regarding the dispute at government or semi-official level would certainly have diminished quickly, given the uniformly negative public feedback, at least among the Chinese.