Islands that Nobody and Everybody Wants: Japan's Territorial Disputes in Northeast Asia

Alexis Dudden, Professor of History, UCONN

Islands that Nobody and Everybody Wants: Japan's Territorial Disputes in Northeast Asia

For the past two decades, it has been a political sport in areas of Japan's former empire to make public demands that Japanese officials apologize for horrendous acts committed in their nation's name throughout the first half of the 20th century. In response, some Japanese politicians realized that they could generate substantial support as well as pride in something called "being Japanese" by openly denigrating or whitewashing particular histories - the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese military's system of sexual slavery - and by calling narrators of these events liars and anti-Japanese. Claims about histories that took place 70-100 years ago have become more not less important to the central functioning of the states involved today, turning regional history problems into security issues. In particular, the islands left hanging in the San Francisco Treaty (1952) and terms of subsequent American security arrangements now find themselves at the center of this dynamic, with everyone summoning something they call history as judge.