{"id":515,"date":"2017-04-13T10:57:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T10:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/?p=515"},"modified":"2017-05-24T18:05:32","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T18:05:32","slug":"outstanding-territorial-claims-remain-a-priority-for-tokyo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/outstanding-territorial-claims-remain-a-priority-for-tokyo\/","title":{"rendered":"Outstanding territorial claims remain a priority for Tokyo"},"content":{"rendered":"

International relations, Japan and sovereignty issues<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Takeshima.<\/p><\/div>\n

As well as the issue surrounding the Senkaku Islands, Japan has two other pending sovereignty claims which have clouded relations with South Korea and Russia. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says it is keen to resolve the issues through bilateral talks with both governments, as soon as possible, through \u201cinternational law in a calm and peaceful manner,\u201d but says it will not back down from its claims, believing history and evidence is on its side.<\/p>\n

Takeshima<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The first is Takeshima (also known as the Liancourt Rocks or as Dokdo in South Korea), a territory occupied by the Republic of Korea located in the Sea of Japan whose sovereignty is claimed by the government in Tokyo. With a land mass of just 0.21 square kilometres, Takeshima, as it\u2019s known in Japan, is a small, rugged group of islets consisting of Higashijima (Mejima) Island and Nishijima (Ojima) Island, yet is of greater importance to Tokyo than its size.<\/p>\n

The Japanese government says the country had established its sovereignty over the territory by the mid-17th century, and incorporated it into Shimane Prefecture in 1905, but a major turning-point in the dispute dates back to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the 1951 agreement signed between Japan and Allied Powers after World War II. The territory was originally not mentioned in the treaty and when South Korea asked for it to be added (a move which would\u2019ve renounced Tokyo\u2019s claim to the islets), the US government at the time rejected the move. \u201cThis island does not appear ever before to have been claimed by Korea,\u201d the response read.<\/p>\n

Tensions were exacerbated when Korea established the so-called \u201cSyngman Rhee Line,\u201d a declaration of maritime sovereignty which tried to include the islets into its jurisdiction. Tensions rose as Japanese fishing boats were captured by Korean authorities, leading to gunfire and civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

What Tokyo argues is an \u201cillegal occupation\u201d continues to this day and Japanese officials are confident that the evidence backs their claim to what it calls \u201can inherent part\u201d of its territory. Despite three attempts to have the case settled in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in 1954, 1962 and 2012, Korea has refused to agree to an independent tribunal. Tokyo remains firm on the issue: \u201cNo measure taken by the Republic of Korea with regard to Takeshima during its illegal occupation has any legal jurisdiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other outstanding sovereignty claim concerning Japanese officials relates to its somewhat strange (or estranged) ties with Russia. Despite the fact that more than six decades have passed since the end of World War II, unbelievably there has still not been an official peace treaty signed between the governments of Japan and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), only a \u201cJapan Soviet Joint Declaration.\u201d The reason? Four islands, known in Japan as \u201cThe Northern territories\u201d (officially in Japanese, Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai).<\/p>\n

Ties with Moscow<\/strong><\/h4>\n

For Tokyo, resolving the issue is paramount, in order for ties with Moscow to be improved and to finally see a peace treaty signed, all these decades on. All the while, with the issue pushed into the background, trade and relations between the two nations have improved, yet Tokyo says the issue is holding back a \u201creal strategic partnership\u201d that would improve the \u201cpeace and stability of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Japan says the Soviet Union \u201cinvaded\u201d the territory in 1945, after Joseph Stalin had broken the 1941 Neutrality Pact between the two nations. And while Japan accepts it gave up its claims to the nearby Kurile Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin in the 1951 treaty, the four islands in question were not part of that deal, it argues.<\/p>\n

In 1956, the Soviet Union agreed to hand over Habomai and Shikotan after the signing of a peace treaty, but by the time President Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit Japan in 1991, the issue was still outstanding. Despite improved relations, cooperation over travel to the islands and prime ministerial and presidential visits between the nations (including a summit between Japanese PM Abe and Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin in December last year), the two are still yet to progress definitively on the issue \u2014 or to sign that elusive peace treaty.<\/p>\n

@URLgoeshere<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally\u00a0published in the Buenos Aires Herald<\/span><\/a><\/span>, on Friday, February 24, 2017.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Link: http:\/\/www.buenosairesherald.com\/article\/225329\/outstanding-territorial-claims-remain-a-priority-for-tokyo<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

International relations, Japan and sovereignty issues As well as the issue surrounding the Senkaku Islands, Japan has two other pending sovereignty claims which have clouded relations with South Korea and Russia. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says it is keen to resolve the issues through bilateral talks with both governments, as soon as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,38,217,216,37,706,391,99],"tags":[713,696,533,710,711,388,708,709,707,712],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-buenos-aires-herald","category-china","category-japan","category-journalism","category-russia","category-travel","category-world","tag-dokdo","tag-international-relations","tag-japan","tag-korea","tag-liancourt","tag-russia","tag-sovereignty","tag-soviet-union","tag-takeshima","tag-tokyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}