Japan-China dispute: little islands, big problem

The governor of Tokyo wants to buy them, Taiwan says it would like them back and China has made their return a national priority. But for the Kurihara family, the islands Japan knows as Senkaku are just a bit of land they would really rather sell.

"The conflict is escalating more and more," Hiroyuki Kurihara told AFP in an interview about the islands, known in China as Diaoyu, where Japanese nationalists landed Sunday after a similar venture by pro-Beijing activists.

All 14 involved in that action were deported Friday in an apparent bid by Tokyo to head off a potentially destabilising row with Beijing.

"We are worried that the government cannot cope with the situation over the islands," said Kurihara.

His powerful merchant family are the legal owners of four of the five islands in the Senkakus, an archipelago some 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) from Tokyo but less than 200 kilometres from Taiwan.

China, Taiwan and Japan all say they are part of their territory. They are administered by Tokyo, which holds title to the fifth island and bans development on them all, not allowing anyone to land.

While Beijing claims more than five centuries of control, Tokyo says a Kyushu businessman landed on the uninhabited -- and unclaimed -- outcrops at the end of the 19th century.

That businessman was Tatsuhiro Koga, who set up factories there processing bonito fish and albatross feathers.

The tumult of war led to the islands being abandoned, and along with Okinawa they were put under US military control following Tokyo's surrender at the end of World War II.

When Okinawa was handed back to Japan in 1972, the Senkakus were returned to Koga's son Zenji.

Around that time geologists said the seabed nearby could contain large reserves of oil and gas, while Beijing and Taipei began asserting their claims.

With no heir of his own, Koga decided to sell the islands to the Kuriharas, long-time friends from the suburbs of Tokyo who ran a trading house and owned land throughout Japan.

The eldest brother Kunioki, now 70, holds the legal rights to Uotsurijima, Kitakojima and Minamikojima, which the national government leases for 25 million yen ($300,000) a year. A fourth island is owned by his sister and rented to the defence ministry for an undisclosed sum.

Koga made only one demand when he sold the islands to the family.

"My brother promised Mr Koga that he will never do anything to sever history," said Hiroyuki Kurihara. "That means he won't sell them to private entities."

But with a potentially huge inheritance tax bill if the islands are passed on to the next generation, the Kurihara family want to sell up.

Conveniently for them, the nationalist governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, earlier this year announced that his administration wanted to buy them, catching the governments of Japan and China off-guard.

He has since collected more than 1.4 billion yen ($18 million) in donations towards a reported purchase price of up to 2 billion yen.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda stepped into the row in June, saying the national government was also thinking about putting in a bid, provoking a frosty response from Beijing.

The Kuriharas insist their ownership of the islands is not political and they do not want to be involved in the dispute.

"It is not about guarding the islands," Kurihara said. "All that matters to my brother is that he retains his honour as the 17th heir of the Kurihara family."

Japan to replace China envoy amid island row: report
Tokyo (AFP) Aug 19, 2012 - Japan plans to replace its ambassador to China possibly in October amid a growing territorial row over a group of islands in the East China Sea, the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday.

The ambassador, Uichiro Niwa, sparked controversy in June when he warned that the Tokyo municipal government's plan to buy some of the islands could spark an "extremely grave crisis" between the Asian powers.

He has been under pressure from both ruling and opposition parties to resign for misrepresenting Tokyo's position that the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are an integral part of Japanese territory, the daily said.

The Yomiuri said Niwa was expected to be removed in the foreign ministry's reshuffle of executive posts and key ambassadorial jobs after the current session of parliament ends on September 8.

The ministry is making arrangements to replace Niwa with Shinichi Nishimiya, the deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, who has also served as a minister at the Japanese embassy in China and as consul general in New York, it added.

Niwa may leave the post in October or later after attending events marking the 40th anniversary of the normalisation of ties between the two countries on September 29, the daily said.

The island dispute has flared anew as pro-China activists from Hong Kong landed on Uotsurijima, one of the islands, and were deported by Japanese authorities last week.

A group of Japanese nationalists and lawmakers also arrived at Uotsurijima on Sunday with around a dozen of them swimming ashore where they planted Japanese flags.

Niwa, a former chairman of major trading house Itochu Corp., assumed the post in June 2010 with his vast experience in promoting trade and investment links with China.

But in September 2010 he could do little to prevent Tokyo-Beijing ties from worsening when Japan's coastguard arrested and eventually deported a Chinese trawler captain for ramming his ship into two Japanese patrol boats off the disputed islands.

Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara announced in April that he had reached a basic agreement to buy some of the islands.

In an interview with the Financial Times in June, Niwa said Ishihara's move would put at risk the progress achieved since the countries normalised relations in 1972.

"If Mr Ishihara's plans are acted upon, then it will result in an extremely grave crisis in relations between Japan and China," Niwa told the British daily. "We cannot allow decades of past effort to be brought to nothing."