Isles of Ill Feeling

The general atmosphere of distrust between Japan and the U.S. is so great today that even the seemingly unimportant issues can set off new tremors of ill feeling. A case in point is the fate of the tiny Senkaku Islands, which lie between Okinawa and Taiwan (see map).

The Senkakus have been claimed by the Japanese since 1896. For the past 27 years they have been administered by the U.S., and they are due to be returned to Japanese control, along with the Ryukyus, on May 15. The problem is that the islands are now being claimed, as ancient Chinese territory, by both Peking and Taipei.

The Japanese expected the U.S., as a matter of course, to uphold their ownership of the Senkakus as it has done in the past. Instead, Washington last month suggested that rival claims to the islands "should be settled by the parties themselves." What this means, the State Department insists, is merely that the Chinese should address their claims directly to Tokyo. Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato and many of his colleagues took the ambiguous message to mean that the U.S. was willing to sacrifice their interests if necessary because it did not want to offend Taipei or Peking.

The Senkakus themselves, which are tiny, rocky and uninhabited, would seem to be an odd subject for such a dispute. But according to a recently published U.N. survey, they may well be surrounded by a vast offshore oilfield in which Tokyo, Peking and Taipei are all exceedingly interested.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.