The Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu Islands in China and the Diaoyutai Islands in Taiwan, are a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, administered by Japan. They were historically known in the Western world as the Pinnacle Islands. The islands are located northeast of Taiwan, east of China, west of Okinawa Island, and north of the southwestern end of the Ryukyu Islands.
The islands are the focus of a territorial dispute between Japan, China, and Taiwan.McDorman, Ted L. (2005). "Central Pacific and East Asian Maritime Boundaries" in China claims the discovery and ownership of the islands from the 14th century, while Japan maintained ownership of the islands from 1895 until its surrender at the end of World War II. The United States received administrative rights of the islands from Japan under the Treaty of San Francisco and administered the islands as part of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands from 1945 until 1972, before returning them to Japanese control under the 1971 Okinawa Reversion Agreement.Lee, Seokwoo. (2002). A major catalyst for further interest in the disputed islands was the discovery of potential offshore oil and natural gas reserves beneath the seabed of the East China Sea, which was confirmed in official reports of several international organizations in 1968 and 1969. Despite the diplomatic stalemate between China and Taiwan, both governments agree that the islands are part of Taiwan as part of Toucheng Township in Yilan County. Japan administers the Senkaku Islands as part of the city of Ishigaki in Okinawa Prefecture. It does not acknowledge the claims of China nor Taiwan, but it has not allowed the Ishigaki administration to develop the islands.
As a result of the dispute, public access to the uninhabited islands is restricted; Japan’s central government has denied landing requests even from local authorities. Although the islands are administered by Japan since 1895, a continuity interrupted only by US administration from 1945 to 1972, this long-standing status quo has been increasingly challenged by China since 2010s; Since the early 2010s, China Coast Guard have frequently entered the surrounding waters of the islands, prompting responses and exchanges of warnings with the Japan Coast Guard. China has also announced territorial-sea baselines (2012) and established an East China Sea ADIZ (2013), all of which are contested by Japan. The United States, which returned administrative rights of the islands to Japan in 1972, takes no position on the ultimate sovereignty but acknowledges that the islands are under Japanese administration and are covered by the US–Japan security treaty. Recent US–Japan statements also refer to Japan’s longstanding administration and oppose any unilateral actions that seek to undermine it.
The Senkaku Islands are important nesting sites for seabirds, and are one of two remaining nesting sites in the world for the short-tailed albatross, alongside Tori-shima, Izu Islands.
Names The islands are referred to as the in Japanese. In mainland China, they are known as the Diaoyu Islands () or more fully "Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands" (), while in Taiwan they are called the Diaoyutai Islands, or previously spelled as Tiaoyutai Islands (). In Western sources, the historical English name Pinnacle Islands is occasionally still used when neutrality among the competing national claims is desirable. cites Hagstrom 2005; "The islands are also called 'Pinnacle Islands' for convenience and neutrality sake by Western scholars"The Diaoyutaiisenkaku Islands Dispute: its History and an Analysis of the Ownership Claims of the P.R.C., R.O.C., and Japan , Occasional Papers/Reprints Series in Contemporary Asian Studies, Nr 3 – 1999 (152), p.13What's in a name? , BusinessMirror: "The disputed islands East China Sea are called the Senkaku Islands by Japan, Diaoyu Islands in China and the Diaoyutai Islands by the government of Taiwan. In the West, these rocks are called the Pinnacle Islands as a loose translation of the Japanese name."Japan's Territorial Disputes , American Diplomacy: "The Chinese call them the Diaoyu Islands, and on foreign maps in the past they have been called the Pinnacle Islands."
In Okinawan (northern Ryukyu), the islands are known as , while their Yaeyama (southern Ryukyu) name is iigunkubajima.
Chinese records of these islands date back to as early as the 15th century, when they were referred to as Diaoyu in books such as Voyage with a Tail Wind () (1403)Title: Liang zhong hai dao zhen jing / [Xiang Da jiao zhu].Imprint: Beijing : Zhonghua shu ju : Xin hua shu dian Beijing fa xing suo fa xing, 2000 reprint edition. Contents: Shun feng xiang song—Zhi nan zheng fa. (順風相送--指南正法). . pp96 and pp253 . The full text is available at wikisource . and Record of the Imperial Envoy's Visit to Ryūkyū () (1534). Adopted by the Chinese Imperial Map of the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese name for the island group (Diaoyu) and the Japanese name for the main island (Uotsuri) both mean "fishing" or "angling".
History
Early history Historically, the Chinese had used the uninhabited islands as navigational markers in making the voyage to the Ryukyu Kingdom upon commencement of diplomatic missions to the kingdom, "resetting the compass at a particular isle in order to reach the next one."Suganuma,
The first published description of the islands in Europe appears in a book imported by Isaac Titsingh in 1796. His small library of Japanese books included by Hayashi Shihei.WorldCat, Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu ; alternate romaji Sankoku Tsūran Zusetsu This text, which was published in Japan in 1785, described the Ryukyu Kingdom.Cullen, Louis M. (2003). Hayashi followed convention in giving the islands their Chinese names in his map in the text, where he coloured them in the same pink as mainland China.
In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation.Klaproth, Julius. (1832).
The name, "Pinnacle Isles" was first used by James Colnett, who charted them during his 1789–1791 voyage in the Argonaut."Pinnacle Rock in Latitude 29°40 and Longitude 132° E. of London... This Navigation is no ways dangereous were you sure of your Latitude and to make Pinnicle Isle". James Colnett, The Journal ... aboard the Argonaut from April 26, 1789 to Nov. 3, 1791, ed. with introd. and notes by F. W. Howay, Toronto, Champlain Society Vol. 26, 1940, p. 47. William Robert Broughton sailed past them in November 1797 during his voyage of discovery to the North Pacific in HMS Providence, and referred to Diaoyu Island/Uotsuri Island as "Peaks Island".William Robert Broughton, William Robert Broughton's Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific, 1795–1798, edited by Andrew David; with an introduction by Barry Gough, Ashgate for the Hakluyt Society, Farnham, England; Burlington, VT, 2010, p. 202. Reference was made to the islands in Edward Belcher's 1848 account of the voyages of HMS Sammarang.Suganuma, Unryu. (2001). Captain Belcher remarked that "the names assigned in this region have been too hastily admitted."Belcher, Edward. (1848). ; Belcher, Belcher reported anchoring off Pinnacle Island in March 1845.Belcher, ; excerpt at p. 317, "On the 16th, we endeavoured to obtain observations on Tia-usu; a landing was effected, but the absence of sun prevented our obtaining satisfactory observations, and bad weather coming on hastened our departure. This group, comprehending hô-pîng-san (和平山, "Peace Island", Uotsuri-shima), Pinnacle Rocks, and Tias-usu (Kuba-shima), form a triangle, of which the hypothenuse, or distance between Hoa-pin-san and Tia-usu, extends about fourteen miles, and that between Hoa-pinsan and the Southern Pinnacle, about two miles."
In the 1870s and 1880s, the English name Pinnacle Islands was used by the British navy for the rocks adjacent to the largest island, Uotsuri-shima / Diaoyu Dao (then called ); Kuba-shima / Huangwei Yu (then called Ti-a-usu); and Taishō-tō / Chiwei Yu.Suganuma, ; Jarrad, Frederick W. (1873).
A Japanese navy record issued in 1886 first started to identify the islets using equivalents of the Chinese and English terms employed by the British. The name "Senkaku Retto" is not found in any Japanese historical document before 1900 (the term "Senkaku Gunto" began to be used in the late 19th century), and first appeared in print in a geography journal published in 1900. It was derived from a translation of the English name Pinnacle Islands into a Sinicized Japanese term "Sento Shoto" (as opposed to "Senkaku Retto", i.e., the term used by the Japanese today), which has the same meaning.Suganuma,
The collective use of the name "Diaoyutai" to denote the entire island group began with the advent of the controversy in the 1970s.Koo, Min Gyo (2009). Disputes and Maritime Regime Building in East Asia, p. 103 n2. citing Park (1973) "Oil under Troubled Waters: The Northeast Asia Seabed Controversy", 14 HILJ (Harvard International Law Journal) 212, 248–249; also Park, Choon-Ho (1972). Continental Shelf Issues in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea. Kingston, Rhode Island: Law of the Sea Institute, pp. 1–64.
Control of the islands by Japan and the US
As the uninhabited islets were historically used as maritime navigational markers, they were never subjected to administrative control other than the recording of the geographical positions on maps, descriptions in official records of Chinese missions to the Ryukyu Kingdom, etc.
The Japanese central government incorporated the islands into Okinawa Prefecture in January 1895 while still fighting China in the First Sino-Japanese War. Around 1900, Japanese entrepreneur constructed a bonito fish processing plant on the islands, employing over 200 workers. The business failed around 1940, and the islands have remained deserted ever since. In the 1970s, Koga Tatsushirō's son Zenji Koga and Zenji's wife Hanako sold four islets to the Kurihara family of Saitama Prefecture. Kunioki Kurihara owned Uotsuri, Kita-Kojima, and Minami-Kojima. Kunioki's sister owned Kuba.Ito, Masami, "Owner OK with metro bid to buy disputed Senkaku Islands", Japan Times, May 18, 2012, pp. 1–2
The islands came under US government occupation in 1945 after the surrender of Japan ended World War II.Kaneko, Maya, (Kyodo News) "Ishigaki fishermen fret over Senkaku encroachment ", Japan Times, December 8, 2010, p. 3. In 1969, the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) identified potential oil and gas reserves in the vicinity of the Senkaku Islands. In 1971, the Okinawa Reversion Treaty passed the United States Senate, returning the islands to Japanese control in 1972.Finney, John W. "Senate Endorses Okinawa Treaty; Votes 84 to 6 for Island's Return to Japan" , The New York Times. November 11, 1971. Also in 1972, the governments of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China each officially asserted sovereignty over the islands.Kyodo News, "Senkaku purchase bid made official ", Japan Times, September 11, 2012, p. 2
Since 1972, when the islands reverted to Japanese government control, the Ishigaki government has been granted civic authority over the territory. The Japanese central government, however, has prohibited Ishigaki from surveying or developing the islands.Ito, Masami, "Jurisdiction over remote Senkakus comes with hot-button dangers ", Japan Times, May 18, 2012, p. 1
In 1978, a Japanese political group constructed the first lighthouse on Uotsuri Island and grazed two goats. Since then, goats have proliferated, while affecting the island's vegetation.The Problem of Feral Goats on Uotsuri-jima in the Senkuku Islands and Appeals for Countermeasures to Resolve the Problem. , Japanese Journal of Conservation Ecology 8, p.90. Yasushi Yokohata, Laboratory of Environmental Biology, Faculty of Education, Toyama University. 2003.