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Ever since it incorporated the Senkaku Islands into Japanese territory through a Cabinet decision in 1895, the Japanese government has consistently taken the position that the islands are an integral part of the territory of Japan. This stance accords with both international law and the historical facts. The Senkaku have consistently been under Japan’s effective control, except for a period (from 1945 to 1972) when the islands were placed under the administration of the United States as part of Okinawa prefecture.
Before 1971, neither China nor Taiwan made any claims to “territorial sovereignty” over the Senkaku Islands. For 76 years, neither government expressed any objection to Japanese sovereignty over the islands.
Why the change in position? In the late 1960s, a UN agency, the Bangkok-based Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), surveyed the waters around the Senkaku. The survey suggested potentially rich deposits of oil beneath the seabed. After the ECAFE released its findings, in 1971, the Republic of China (Taiwan) made its first territorial claim to the islands. Several months later the People’s Republic of China followed suit.
So, let’s review the history of the issue more carefully. For ten years starting 1885, Japan conducted field surveys on the Senkaku Islands, scrupulously confirming that the islands had never been inhabited and showed no traces of having been under the control of China’s Qing Dynasty.
Based on this research, the Japanese government decided in January 1895 to erect national territorial markers on the islands, officially incorporating the Senkaku Islands into the territory of Japan. This administrative action was consistent with international law, namely the internationally accepted legal theory of terra nullius (land belonging to no one) concerning the rights of acquisition through occupation.
The Historical Record
As the record shows, Japanese inhabited the Senkaku from 1895 until immediately before the start of World War II. Japanese people sometimes lived on the islands to harvest albatross feathers. During another period, a factory was built to process dried bonito. The population of one of the islands, Uotsuri, topped 200 at one point. In 1920, residents of Ishigaki Island, which was under the jurisdiction of Okinawa prefecture, rescued Chinese fishermen caught in a storm in waters near the Senkaku. The Consul of the Republic of China in Nagasaki sent a signed and sealed letter of appreciation for the rescue in the area of “the Senkaku Islands in the Yaeyama District of the Japanese Empire’s Okinawa Prefecture.” The letter cited the names of the residents of Ishigaki Island, whom the consul noted “were willing and generous in the rescue operation.”
Just over three years after the People’s Republic of China’s birth, a January 8, 1953 article in the People’s Daily, an organ of the Communist Party of China had the Senkaku as Japanese territory. A World Atlas published in China in 1960 showed the islands as part of Japan. According to notes taken at meetings of the Chinese government around 1950, copies of which were recently obtained exclusively by the Jiji Press news agency, Chinese government officials were using the Japanese name “Senkaku Islands,” indicating that they considered the Senkaku part of Okinawa prefecture.
