(Newswire.net — December 31, 2014) Beijing, Beijing — This is yet another revelation about the decision to leave aside differences over the Diaoyu Islands that then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei’s agreed on as a condition to normalize relations in 1972. Soon after, however, the Japanese Foreign Ministry managed to expunge this seemingly insignificant yet vitally important fact from the official record and has since denied it ever existed. (Senkaku is the Japanese name for the islands)
The Japanese Foreign Ministry bureaucracy is well known for being obstinate over sovereignty issues despite the inclinations and wishes of elected politicians like Tanaka. Near the end, the article says Japan incorporated the islands through “lawful means” in 1985 after it ascertained there was no control over them. What it fails to mention is the Japanese annexation occurred at the tail end of China’s defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War of 1984-95 which the Chinese determined as illegal.
At the start of the 21st Century, the tail that wags the Japanese dog, ultra-nationalist politician Ishihara Shintaro campaigned to buy the islands from its private owners, which effectively broke the status quo and infuriated the Chinese. Then, the Japanese government got into the fray (claiming its hand was forced by Ishihara) by nationalizing the islands which was the last straw for China. The result is the ongoing tension between the two countries.
Japan just couldn’t leave it alone!
The Suzuki-Thatcher conversation is just a small vignette of the goings-on at the Foreign Office from a virtual mountain of documents released this month after 30 years of secrecy maintained at the British National Archives. (See yesterday’s post on the Thatcher government’s attitude toward Hong Kong and mainland China following agreement with Deng Xiaoping on the handover. The British are a cynical bunch!)
The Kyodo article can be seen at: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/