Based on Masayuki Takayama’s column, this article examines the South China Sea dispute through historical records and international treaties, arguing that China lacks legitimate standing as a claimant despite its current militarization of the region.

April 23, 2016

In the opening pages of this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Seiron (780 yen), Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column “Ori-fushi no Ki” contains an essay that proves one hundred percent my assessment that he is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.

It is an eye-opening essay that will astonish all Japanese citizens. He is a man who writes nothing but the truth.

Compared to him, it is immediately obvious how utterly base the group represented by Kenzaburō Ōe truly is.

As I read this commentary, the image of Gakuji Nakajima came to mind—he had once spoken on Hōdō Station to the host Furutachi, saying things like, “From China’s perspective, the South China Sea looks like this.”

Takayama calmly writes facts that make it immediately clear just how careless and deceitful a person Nakajima is.

He would probably dislike such wording, but I praise Takayama as a great man. I would like to commend him as possessing an intellect comparable to that of Tadao Umesao.

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Xi Jinping said, “The Han people do not have genes for invading other countries.”

Yet China deeply invaded Vietnam in the Sino-Vietnamese War, colonized Xinjiang and Tibet, and now proclaims maritime hegemony over the Spratly Islands by claiming, “They have been our territory for two thousand years.”

How can such lies be stated with such composure?

One might think it is sheer audacity, but at the recent military parade he even saluted with his left hand—an astonishing sight.

Timidity concealed beneath bravado. Making grand lies seems simply to be a characteristic of the Han people.

The Japanese ambassador, Cheng Yonghua, appears to be of the same type. He arrogantly declared on the front page of China Daily, “Japan should not interfere in the Spratly Islands,” and “Japan is not even a party to the South China Sea issue.”

Two thousand years ago, the Chinese were still wandering around the Central Plains.

They did not even know the sea.

At most, during the Song dynasty, Zhufan Zhi mentioned that “there are many reefs around that area,” and for centuries the Chinese feared the sea as a “realm of demons” (Kō Bun’yū).

The person who thoroughly surveyed that region was a Japanese resident of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Sueharu Hirata, who discovered the Spratlys in 1919 and engaged in phosphate mining.

Prewar international航路 maps even bore the designation “Hirata Islands.”

France once claimed in 1933 that “part of the area is French territory,” but promptly withdrew the claim after Japan’s rebuttal.

As can be seen from territorial disputes such as Alsace-Lorraine, the fact that a country with a reputation for unscrupulous territorial behavior retreated so readily is proof of how firmly the islands were recognized as Japanese territory.

Indeed, in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, a separate clause—distinct from the mandated territories of the South Seas Islands or Taiwan acquired in the Sino-Japanese War—states that “Japan renounces sovereignty and claims to the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands.” Such wording was necessary to forcibly strip Japan of islands that had been discovered by Japanese and whose ownership was internationally evident.

Because Hirata had registered the islands with Kaohsiung City, it came to be assumed that Chiang Kai-shek, who entered Taiwan, inherited their ownership.

In reality, however, surrounding countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan placed bases here and there in the Spratlys and used the area as a kind of “communal sea,” leaving it effectively stateless.

If so, the islands should be returned to their original owner, Japan.

Japan would not be so stingy as to exclude neighboring countries by establishing an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).

Common usage rights would be recognized.

If one argues that Japan renounced the Spratlys and Paracels, then they should be made communal lands for the countries that have used them until now.

If even that is deemed difficult, they should be made the property of Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, where they were registered.

In fact, this January, Ma Ying-jeou, currying favor with Xi Jinping, landed on the Spratlys and declared, “This belongs to the Republic of China.”

That means that from this May onward, at the very least, they will belong to Tsai Ing-wen.

To borrow Cheng Yonghua’s phrasing, China—which is now turning the area into military bases—is “not even a party to the South China Sea issue.”